[MD] Rorty's Relativism

[Steve Peterson]

Hi Marsha,

> First, I do not think we have access to 'The Way Things Really  
> Are'.  The
> measuring event is the process that creates self and object, and it is
> relative to that particular event. Static patterns of value are  
> relative an
> experience.

To characterize our situation as not having access to "The Way Things  
Really Are" is to buy into the subjective side of SOM--to say that we  
stand behind an impenetrable veil of appearances. This really is  
relativism, but it's not what Pirsig is saying. He denies SOM, the  
perspective from which it makes sense to ask "is it absolute or  
relative."

Rather than wonder whether or not we can know reality as it really  
is, Pirsig drops the notion of "The Way Things Really Are"  
altogether. The goal of inquiry in creating new and better  
intellectual patterns is not to better represent reality or get  
closer to the Truth. The goal of intellectual inquiry like the goal  
of anything else we do is Quality.

We have to take a very different perspective on inquiry in general  
from that of theists and SOM philosophers. We don't want to think of  
inquiry as having the goal of unearthing eternal truths since we  
could never know when we've achieved it even if we had. So the  
question of whether such eternal moral principles exist is one that  
pragmatists would prefer to be unasked. But while we can't aim at  
truth, we can aim at better justification for our beliefs. If inquiry  
is a search for truth as traditionally understood, there is no way to  
talk about progress without already knowing what the truth is. But if  
inquiry is concerned with justification, then we can measure progress  
in terms of assuaging doubts.

As Rorty puts it, "pragmatists hope to make it impossible for the  
sceptic to ask the question, 'Is our knowledge of things [whether  
scientific or ethical]adequate to the way things really are?' They  
substitute for this traditional question the practical question, 'Are  
our ways of describing things...as good as possible? Or can we do  
better. Can our future be made better than our present?"' In other  
words, can we create higher quality intellectual patterns?



> Relativism doesn't deny that an event may be of higher or lower
> value, and I agree with the MoQ that intellectual patterns have a  
> higher
> value than social patterns.

Another problem with the term "relativism" is that it is pretty  
unclear what this word it supposed to mean. Can you give a definition  
of what you think relativism is?


>
> The rest of what you've written doesn't make sense to me.  Isms, brown
> tables, essences, language?  These are all static patterns of value  
> relative
> to some experience.

Right, and it's hard to know what experiences we have in common  
enough that my attempt at explaining will be helpful, but if it's not  
all mumbo-jumbo to you I'm willing to keep trying to explain in other  
ways.

In short, my argument is that it is not Pirsig's evolutionary  
hierarchy that gets him out of relativism but his (and Rorty's)  
denial of the SOM picture, since it is only from within the SOM  
picture that such a charge could be made.

Best,
Steve