dmb, dmb says: > > While it's true that pragmatism is opposed to metaphysical claims, I don't > see why that would preclude the discussion of ideals. > > > And the person you quoted makes no mention of the pragmatist's reasons for > being opposed to metaphysics. In fact, he sort of pretends there are no > reasons and instead attributes this stance to closed-mindedness and > laziness. What kind of professional talks like that? It's dumb and childish. > > Jc: Well, to be sure, I can't quote the entire book. I think that's illegal for one thing. But he lays a dichotomy between two different "territorys" for American Pragmatism - Radical Empirical and Idealistic. James and Dewey he associates with the first, Peirce and Royce with the second.
"The Dewey-James approach decapitates philosophy, forbidding it fully to use its powers of abstraction, for fear that it will put the head before the embodied heart and neglect or try to tyrannize the "problems of men," in Dewey's phrase, with the "abstractions of philosophers". Given the excesses of rationalistic philosophy in its history in the West, this is certainly a legitimate fear. Royce and Perice, on the other hand, cut off philosophy at the knees, giving it scope and applicability only within the domain of human cognitive endeavors" I believe this aligns nicely with the MoQ because it keeps 4th level patterns distinctly in their place and as Auxier explains, "the Perice--Royce approach makes for better pragmatism. The reason is that phenomenology was, then, and remains the better horse to bet on than the nominalist nightmare of depriving philosophy of its functional universals" "This inability to deal with abstract thining is most keenly problematic when Dewey and James (and their contemporary proponents, Rorty and Putnam) are obliged to confront ideals. Clearly Putnam, for example, does not want to concede that pragmatism must be nominalistic, and he wants to hold on to universals--even cultural universals, which are surely the most unpopular strain. But Putnam has not yet incorporated Royce and Perice into his defense of universals . Until he does, he will be susceptible to Rortyan criticisms. It might be fair to say that neo-pragmatism is what happens to pragmatism when it refuses to deal with, formally and logically, the reality of ideals, or denies that ideals havae any reality (and so embraces nominalism, willy nilly) While ideals are treated as concrete concepts by Royce and Perice, available for the work of philosophical reflection, they are bloodless abstractions in James's estimation, and at most promissory notes in Dewey's view. One will not be able to keep a philosophy in play for very long without learning to work with ideals, and that requires a mastory of logic and metaphysics." > > If one wanted to make a case for metaphysics, the first task would be to > address and defeat the pragmatist's criticisms of metaphysics, especially > the metaphysics of idealism. I'd bet a very large sum, John, that you have > no idea what those criticisms are about. > > > Wouldn't it fun to surprise me? Please, prove me wrong about that. I'll > give you full credit even if you only some vague idea or only get some > small part of it right. I'll bet you have zip, zero, zilch comprehension > (of your own claims). > > > Admittedly I'm relying heavily upon one philosophologist, but he jibes pretty closely with the intuitive grasp I got when first reading Royce in that library so long ago and realized I understood this 19th century windbag BECAUSE I'd been exposed to Pirsig's philosophy which had solved these problems already, albeit from a different angle. Sometimes it helps a lot to see the same problem from different angles. But if it gets too irritating, delete without comment. I won't mind. John Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org/md/archives.html
