[MD] Radical empiricism and the anti-empiricism of postmodern radicals

[david buchanan]

Howdy MOQers:

This exchange has been moved from the "Blink" thread. I have a little 
project going here, so forgive me for changing the subject back to 
pragmatism. All I can do is hope you find it interesting.

Case said to dmb:
Maybe you are not really saying that at-one-ment means identity with or 
one-to-one correspondence with the world.

dmb replies:
Right. I'm saying at-one-ment obviates the whole idea of correspondence. Its 
not like one retains the distinction between self and world and then claims 
they are the same. Instead, the distinction between them is seen as a 
concept rather than a natural feature of a pre-existing reality. This is not 
to say that it is unreal, exactly, but the status is lowered from 
metaphysical starting point to a secondary, conceptual reality. You know, 
experience (Quality) creates subjects and objects instead of the other way 
around.

Case said:
I do think it is a mistake to think that we can gain a greater understanding 
of our self or the world by simply playing tinker toys with logical 
constructs or focusing exclusively on our private experiences. I surely 
don't think that's what James did for example. He combined the best of 
philosophy and science and showed that when the two approaches are combined 
extraordinary things result.

dmb replies:
Well, I think one of the central advantages of radical empiricism is that it 
puts experience over theory. Pirsig reports that he was not very impressed 
with those positivists who were trying to get at the world through the 
logical analysis of language and aims his attack at their metaphysical 
assumptions. Don't get me wrong. None of this is supposed to be 
anti-scientific and I suppose we'd agree that any philosophy that fails to 
agree with scientific data is a steaming pile of shit. The idea here is to 
overcome the limits of empiricism as its traditionally concieved within a 
subject/object metaphysics. Within that framework, we are limited to what 
can be known through the senses and their extentions. (Microscopes, 
telescopes, etc..) It expands the notion of what counts as valid empirical 
data so as to expose the tinker-toy nature of the logical constructs used by 
that narrower version of empiricims. This is part of the reason for pointing 
out that the whole SOM premise is a metaphysical assumption, a secondary 
conceptual interpretation of experience rather than the basis of experience.

This is from chapter 5 of LILA...

"Positivism is a philosophy that emphasizes science as the only source of 
knowledge. It sharply distinguishes between fact and value, and is hostile 
to religion and traditional metaphysics. It is an outgrowth of empiricism, 
the idea that all knowledge must come from experience, and is suspicious of 
any thought, even a scientific statement, that is incapable of being reduced 
to direct observation. Philosophy, as far as postivism is concerned, is 
limited to the analysis of scientific language.

Phaedrus had taken a course in symbolic logic from a member of logical 
positivism's famed Vienna circle, Herbert Feigl, and he remembered being 
fascinated by the possibility of a logic that could extend mathematical 
precision to solve problems of philosophy and other areas. But even then the 
assertion that metaphysics is meaningless sounded false to him. As long as 
you're inside a logical, coherent universe of thought you can't escape 
metaphysics. Logical positivism's criteria for 'meaningfulness' were pure 
metaphysics, he thought.

But it didn't matter. The MOQ not only passes the logical postivists' tests 
for meaningfulness, it passes them with the highest marks. The MOQ restates 
the empirical basis of logical positivism with more precision, more 
inclusiveness, more explanatory power than it has previously had. It says 
that values are not outside of the experience that logical positivism limits 
itself to. They are the essence of that experience. Values are more 
empirical, in fact, than subjects and objects. ...

What the MOQ would do is take this separate category, Quality, and show how 
it contains within itself both subjects and objects. The MOQ would show how 
things become enormously more coherent - fabulously more coherent - when you 
start with an assumption that Quality is the primary empirical reality of 
the world... ...but showing that, of course, would be a very big job..."

The quotes on radical empiricism that I posted last time come from chapter 
29. They appear after three hundred pages of explaining and demonstrating 
this post-positivist epistemological starting point.

At the risk of insulting your intelligence, I think the basic idea here is 
that the positivist project was aimed at getting rid of religious and 
metaphysical beliefs and thought they could do so by eliminating all 
statements and assertions that could not be verified by "objective" reality. 
They wanted to get rid of all beliefs that were merely subjective. This is 
the epitome of SOM. As I understand it, this is the background info on where 
we find ourselves today. This is where the intellectual paralysis comes 
from. This is where Rorty's language-centered relativism comes from.

The main reason for this is that SOM still "dominates present social 
thought". As a result we have a postmodern situation wherein the Modern 
perceptual model is recognized as having failed and yet the assumptions 
remain in place. The postmodern, poststructualist situation leads almost 
every serious thinker to believe that they are subjects living in a 
phenomenal world, but that there is no way to get at it objectively. They 
retain the assumption that there is an epistemological gap between self and 
the world, but have concluded there's no way to bridge that gap. We can't 
escape language, they say, and empirical verification is not possible so 
let's abandon epistemology altogether and just focus on our ways of talking.

By contrast, the MOQ points out that the gap has been created by those very 
assumptions and so rejects the assumptions. It does not abandon empiricism 
or the notion that our beliefs must be based in experience, but rather 
reformulates its epistemology. It overlaps with postmodernity, not least of 
all because they both reject the notion of objectivity, but they have two 
entirely different starting points. That's my little thesis these days. This 
is what leads me to draw a distinction between Pirsig's pragmatism and 
Rorty's neopragmatism. But its not really about Dick. He's just the most 
famous American postmodern figure. He just happens to be the one I 
encountered in any serious way. He just happens to be the one Matt 
introduced into this forum. But he also happens to be an appropriate target 
here, I think. His work looms large enough and he is typical enough that it 
makes a certain amount of sense for him to represent the kind of paralysis 
Pirsig was talking about.

Let me give you an example. Keith Jenkins' "Re-thinking History" was among 
the readings assigned last week. He tells us that, in the light of what 
Rorty and Foucault say, history "is anything you want it to be" (13). 
Following his neopragmatic pal Rorty, he says, "we are incapable of 
accessing the phenomenal world" and that there is "a similar separation 
between the phenomenal past and discursive history" (36). The past and 
history, "float free of each other"(7). Jenkins says we can escape this 
"hapless relativism" (30) by using history to deconstruct the power 
structures of society until we get down to a "general recognition of how 
things seem to work" (31). But this is just an example and it seems that the 
general thrust of postmodernity is an application of this relativistic 
anti-epistemology to the Humanities in general. The paralysis that dominates 
social thought today, I think, can be traced back to this post-positivist, 
anti-epistemological starting point. Jenkins' use of it with respect to the 
theory of history is just one specific example of what the larger movement 
is doing.

Later,
dmb

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