[MD] What does Pirsig mean by metaphysics?

[david buchanan]

dmb said to Steve:
...relativism and foundationalism aren't the only two options and I'm opposed to them both.


Steve replied:
I agree, and so does Rorty. The key difference may be that you see "other options" as middle ground, while I see the alternative as dropping the notion of grounding all together.

dmb says:

Exactly, I'm saying that foundationalism and relativism are the extreme positions and the other options would be somewhere in the middle. See, dropping the notion of grounding altogether is the purely anti-foundational move that results in relativism. In this case, that's not an alternative to relativism but rather the cause of it. Because he thinks no reconstruction project is desirable or even possible, Rorty ends up holding the extreme position. As Hildebrand puts it, "Rorty's neo-pragmatism harbors such a deep skepticism about traditional epistemologies and metaphysics that it can accept only a wholesale rejection of their projects" (103). As Rorty saw it, Dewey was either intentionally slipping back into essentialism or he was doing so unconsciously. Hildebrand calls this "Rorty's Fork", which I take to be a version of that all-or-nothingism I keep seeing again and again. Rorty even suggest that we bracket out all of Dewey's constructive work (bad Dewey) but applaud the anti-foundationalism, anti-Cartesianism and the other similar demolition projects. Rorty thinks Dewey was just so confused or whatever that when he offered his reconstructions, Dewey somehow aligned himself "with doctrines he repudiated, becoming, in effect, his own nemesis" (105). Hildebrand is making a case here that this unflattering Janus portrait of Dewey is not untrue, bracketing out the reconstructive side "eviscerates" pragmatism. I agree. For all the same reasons, Rorty's neopragmatism would have cut out of the MOQ as well. 
By now it should be clear that central notions like primary and secondary experience and projects seeking the generic traits of existence cannot be expunged from Dewey's philosophy, nor do they need to be. Rorty's claim that such notions only indicate Dewey's fealty to the obsolete tenets of traditional metaphysics does not stand scrutiny. It is unfortunate that Rorty cannot shake his conviction that ANY philosophical project that aims to describe the most general features of reality must be seeking the divine. Dewey understood the vice of overgeneralizations, and so he admitted generalities into metaphysic only insofar as they could be functionally justified. In other words, he knew that a metaphysical inquiry would only be worthwhile if it begins from a living starting point and is set up with categories that can adjust to the tests and revisions of future experience. An empirical metaphysics begins not with a THEORY that life is interactive but with the interactions - the EXISTENCES - themselves. (120) 

By contrast, because Rorty's "approach is based on the demonstration that all vocabularies are metaphysically equal - i.e., no vocabularies can claim to 'get at' what we now know is a phantom, the 'really real' - it offers an opportunity for the downtrodden humanities to take back power from thier scientistic oppressors. It's a sexy fantasy, but not one on which Rorty's neopragmatism can deliver" (124). Hildebrand even thinks that, at times, Rorty's "linguistic pragmatism borders on whimsical nonsense". (124) 





 		 	   		  
_________________________________________________________________
Hotmail: Trusted email with Microsoft’s powerful SPAM protection.
http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/196390706/direct/01/