[MD] Rorty's Relativism

[david buchanan]

Matt said:
Personally, I actually agree with Steve about using the word relativism, but--and this is partly for Steve--I wouldn't get too upset about it if people want to wrap themselves in a generally disparaged term as a way of reclaiming it.  After discussing with a person, and seeing what they mean by it, you can generally figure out if they _are_ something that should be disparaged, or rather actually something you refer to by simply a different term: which I think Marsha is, given years of discussion--I would call her a panrelationalist: everything relates to something else.  What's the difference between that and relativism, everything is relative to something else?  Hell if I know, but this is rhetoric,.. 

dmb says:

Panrelationalism and relativism are two completely different concepts. Maybe that's why we seem to be talking about things. Maybe Marsha thinks she is defending the net of jewels idea, where everything exists in relation to everything else. In Rorty's case, this idea is about how words exist in a giant web of beliefs, where each concept derives its meaning by virtue of its relationship to all the other concepts in any given language. In both cases, the idea is that nothing has an intrinsic nature in and of itself. 
Relativism, on the other hand, is a skeptical stance toward truth claims, value claims, ethical claims, moral assertions and the like. As we saw the other day in the quote Steve provided, the kind of relativism that says all claims are equally valid doesn't really exist. But then there is the kind of relativism we find in Rorty, where it is asserted that we have no way to privilege one view over the other. The only thing we can do is get others to agree by way of conversation. All one can do is cheer for the heros and boo at the villains. 
And, as Steve asked back on January 20, I still don't see how pan-relationalism has anything to do with radical empiricism, let alone how the former can replace the latter or how the two can be equated. I suspect that idea is a result of misreading William James' discussion of "conjunctive relations" in his essay "A World of Pure Experience". In that essay, he sought to show that there is a continuity in experience and so the "conjunctive relations" are those overlooked features of experience that connect the terms that are so often taken as separate, distinct parts. Naturally, he was thinking of subjects and objects and all the fake philosophical problems that arise from taking them as so separate and distinct. (By the way, "conjunctive" means "serving to join, connective".) This is the feature of experience that he wants us to notice and he says they are just as important and just as real as the final "terms". Here, I think, "term" is not just another word for word. It also has the connotation of an end point, a destination at which we arrive. In James's example, he takes us on a walk through the Harvard campus. When he begins this walk he has an idea of where he's headed. He can picture Memorial Hall in his mind even though the actual building is not yet within view. When he arrives in front of the building he sees that the "object" matches his "subjective" image of it. The traditional empiricist is very much concerned with the problem of getting our ideas to match those "physical" realities but James is saying they are already connected, quite naturally, in the continuity of experience. His walk from takes him seamlessly from one to the other and so represents those conjunctive relations. This emphasis on the continuity of experience is meant to show that the supposed epistemic gap between subject and object is a fiction created by the failure to notice and take seriously these connecting experiences. 
And of course this emphasis on experience as its had is very far away from the notion that all concepts and words exist in relation to each. I mean, a person can hold both views. They aren't mutually exclusive because they aren't related to each in such a way that a person would have to choose one or the other. They're related to each other the way politics is related to fishing. As I understand it, replacing radical empiricism with pan-relationalism would be like replacing your car tires with a toaster oven, which only shows that you don't understand what tires are supposed to do.

Not that I have anything against toast.

 




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