[MD] Neopragmatism isn't pragmatic.

Sun Oct 29 13:17:28 PST 2006

DMB, Ant,
I'm no expert or fan of Rorty though I have read both "CI&S" and The
Mirror and asked Matt for help on previous occasions. All I want to
add is this ...

I think we need to make a distinction here beween the Linguistic
angle, and the SOM vs Experience angle. Even when discussing the
experiential Pirsigian view, we are bound by language. Dave you make
that point yourself early on, the distinction between language
symbolic of some "objective reality", and language symbolic of
"experience".

I wouldn't be surprised to find Rorty's underlying world-view was one
based on what he considers to be objective reality. This underlying
world-view may be misguided, but I find the linguistic angle pretty
pragmatic (useful, in the living as opposed to dead sense.) So no
suprise that Rorty is not a Pirsigian pragmatist, it would be more
surprising if he were, surely.

The actual differences between Rorty and Pirsig is indeed interesting
though - given the Chicago connections, something I've followed up on
several occasions. (Also recommended Dean's paper on several
occasions.)

Ian
PS Too late to mention this coincidence, but I honestly noted down in
the margins of the copy of J.S.Mill "On Liberty" this morning "Dead
Metaphors Society" as a working title for an essay.

On 10/29/06, Ant McWatt <antmcwatt at hotmail.co.uk> wrote:
> David Buchanan noted to Matt Kundert October 29th:
>
> I was astonished to find that Hildebrand [in "BEYOND REALISM AND
> ANTIREALISM; John Dewey and the Neopragmatists"], despite the complete
> absence of Pirsigian terms or a single reference to his work, has also
> traced Rorty's relapse in terms of subject/object dualism. He says that
> Dewey's contemporary New Realist critics, as well as Rorty and Putnam failed
> to address "the underlying subject/object dualism responsible for their
> problems." ("BEYOND REALISM AND ANTIREALISM", page 185) You'll notice Rorty
> does this in his "Consequences of Pragmatism" where he implicates - I mean
> cites - Derrida, Foucault, Heidegger and others for support…
>
> Here we get the implication that objective correspondence is the only kind
> of correspondence and subjective experience is the only kind of experience.
> Rorty seems to reason that since we can't have either of those, we can have
> nothing at all. As Hildebrand puts it:
>
> "Rorty's zeal to dismiss certain aspects of the history of philosophy - such
> as the very possibility of any kind of representationalism - causes him to
> make an illegitimate inference from the unintelligibility of metaphysical
> realism (especially the idea that words have meaning by virtue of a fixed
> totality of things outside them) to a total skepticism toward any
> representation relation at all. This conclusion is unwarranted." ("BEYOND
> REALISM AND ANTIREALISM", page 168-9)
>
>
> Ant McWatt comments:
>
> Well said Dave.  I think you are correct in concluding that neo-pragmatism
> isn't pragmatic.  From my initial acquaintance with Rorty's "Contingency,
> Irony and Solidarity" I always suspected his work was just a disguised form
> of linguistic analysis rather than genuine pragmatism.  However, your post
> indicates that it's even more insidious than its mid 20th century forebear
> because the SOM assumptions that Rorty's philosophy is boxed into are
> completely overlooked by the man himself and his followers.  BTW, this
> omission is also observed by Professor David Cooper in "The Measure of All
> Things" (2002) which I would recommend to anyone seriously interested in
> this issue to read.
>
> However, a wider point about Rorty's type of neo-linguistic analysis that
> particularly disturbs me is that it has largely hijacked the progressive
> pragmatic project of John Dewey.  Remember that Rorty was taught and
> strongly influenced by Richard McKeon towards Aristotle and Plato in the
> late 1950s rather than the work of Dewey (McKeon's predecessor at University
> of Chicago).  If one examines the history of Chicago University this move
> from the pragmatism of Dewey towards McKeon's "safer" concerns with
> Aristotle and Plato occurred in the 1950s with the cold war.  This process
> (which is alarmingly echoed in Matt Kundert's non-partisan writing on MOQ
> Discuss) was partly due to conservative concerns in removing radical
> politics from American colleges:
>
> "By the 1940s, progressive ideology and rhetoric (but not necessarily
> progressive practices) had become (in historian Lawrence Cremin's words) the
> 'conventional wisdom' in American classrooms. In the cold-war atmosphere of
> the 1950s, however, educational progressivism came under serious attack.
> Progressive education was seen as endorsing Dewey's… ethics and as being
> insufficiently patriotic. Progressive curricula were held responsible for a
> lag in preparation for scientific and technological careers, culminating in
> the Sputnik crisis of 1957."
>
> (http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/1012.html)
>
> Fortunately, McKeon and his cold war anti-progressive influence on his
> students didn't completely hold sway.  For anyone interested in knowing what
> _genuine_ pragmatism has developed into, may I suggest "Pragmatism and The
> Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" the excellent paper by Dean Summers (at
> www.robertpirsig.org/Pragmatism.htm) which shows how the work of Pierce,
> Dewey and James has been developed (and improved on) by Robert Pirsig.  The
> conclusion of Dean's paper is pasted below.
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Anthony
>
> =====================================
>
> We have shown in outline that [Pirsig's] philosophy is a substantial one –
> it provides much ground for comparison with the work of Peirce, James, and
> Dewey. It is also a coherent philosophy that seems to remain consistent
> throughout, that is, from the central concept of reality as being Dynamic
> Quality, his concepts of experience, knowledge, truth, and of evolutionary
> morality follow logically and without contradiction. If one accepts the
> concept of dynamic quality then it is difficult to see how one could then
> deny any of the ideas which Pirsig believes that it entails.
>
> His philosophy then, which he calls the Metaphysics of Quality, seems to
> deserve rather more consideration, as a genuine philosophy, than it has so
> far received. Not only is it interesting and controversial in its own right,
> but it is also consistent with and a significant development of American
> pragmatism. The fundamental development consists in the metaphysical concept
> of reality. This is not found in previous pragmatic thought, but it does not
> contradict it either. In fact it seems to allow for considerable
> strengthening of the pragmatic position in terms of its epistemology, of its
> idea of truth as the "highest quality intellectual explanation" (Pirsig,
> 1991, 103), and of its ethics in which morality is shown to be real in the
> human realm because humans are part of a, quite literally, moral universe…
>
> Perhaps though the most important thing, the ultimate demonstration of
> Pirsig's pragmatism is that his philosophy grounds out in everyday
> action...in everyday life. Like the founders of pragmatism Pirsig shows
> above all that there is a demonstrable reason why that which we feel is
> good, is good. Experience is not subjective, it is of the good, therefore
> the moral good issues directly from reality. Pragmatism breaks the picture
> in which knowledge is somehow 'higher' than experience and action. It does
> this by showing that knowledge is actually a form of action which is guided
> by experience. Pirsig's contribution has been to show that that experience
> is of an absolutely real good. Furthermore, the moral theory that this gives
> rise to is an extremely interesting one. It is perhaps the most dramatic
> advance that he makes upon pragmatism, which is itself, for most critics,
> above all a moral philosophy. If for this reason alone, Pirsig's philosophy
> deserves to be re-evaluated in order to generate further analysis of its
> concepts.
>
> Dean Summers, 1994, www.robertpirsig.org/Pragmatism.htm
>
>
> .
>
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