[MD] Rorty's Relativism

[Steve Peterson]

Hi DMB,
>
> Steve said:
> ...Cindy Sherman believes that the role of the artist in society is to 
> expose its myths. Later I read Joseph Campbell who wrote that the role 
> of the artist is to create myths. I realize that these two people have 
> a very different idea of myth. Sherman meant that the artist reveals 
> the lies that society tells about itself while Campbell meant that the 
> artist creates the context in which experience will be interpreted. 
> Though they meant different things, I still think there is something 
> interesting about the mythologist seeing the artist as creating myths 
> while this artist sees herself as a debunker of myths. ..
>
> dmb says:
> That's an interesting way to frame things. You're right to notice that 
> Sherman and Campbell are using the terms "myth" in two completely 
> different ways. In fact, they're approximately opposite ways of using 
> the word.

Steve:
If they are making opposite claims based on the opposite use of myth 
then maybe they are saying the same thing.


DMB:
> But if I were to play along with this framing, I'd want to remind you 
> what Campbell says about theists and atheists. Both of them take 
> religious myths as facts. The former accepts this facts as true and 
> the latter rejects this facts as untrue. Campbell says they are both 
> wrong because myths can't be rightly understood when they're taken 
> literally. Myths are written in a symbolic language and their 
> truthfulness can only be approached by reading them as symbols, as a 
> picture language that refers to psychological truths or spiritual 
> experiences. If we extend this notion to Rorty, by analogy anyway, 
> he's an atheists. He takes metaphysics literally, as a set of factual 
> claims, and says that they're not true. He opposes those who also take 
> it as fact but think it is tr
>  ue. And I would draw an analogy between Pirsig (who recommends 
> Campbell in Lila) and Campbell. He thinks its worthy and valuable only 
> when you don't take it literally at all.

Steve:
Are you saying that we should not take the MOQ literally as a 
metaphysical system? I'm not sure what that means but maybe it is 
something like Rorty's ironism.


> DMB:
> I mean, its interesting that Pirsig and Rorty use the word 
> "metaphysics" so differently. The former thinks it's something 
> everybody does, that it's unavoidable for anyone who is capable of 
> making sense of the world. This is just a way of saying that its 
> impossible to NOT have a world view, however deliberate and articulate 
> that may or may not be. People just can't function without some way to 
> make sense of things. By that definition, it would be absurd to say 
> that we ought to abandon metaphysics. On the other hand, if we adopt 
> Rorty's use of the term, where metaphysics is supposed to be about 
> eternal truths and ultimate foundations, Pirsig isn't going to touch 
> that with a ten foot pole. ( I once got into a fist fight with a ten 
> foot Pole (he was from Warsaw) but that's an entirely different 
> story.)


Steve:
The idea in the Ironism thread was to consider the question of whether 
Pirsig means something different from what is traditionally meant by 
metaphysics in philosophy. I think Rorty's use is the traditional view 
though not how traditional metaphysicians would like to be 
characterized. I also think Pirsig is doing something different when he 
claims to have created "A metaphysical system"--one of many possible 
descriptions--as opposed to claiming to have uncovered the true nature 
of reality.

> DMB:
> But more to the point, the thing that bothers me about Rorty is that 
> his project is almost entirely negative. He and Pirsig are not all 
> that different right up to the point where the tearing down ends and 
> the new construction begins.

Steve:
That was what I meant with the Sherman/Campbell deal. I think Rorty's 
project as far as philosophy is concerned was mostly negative. He was 
calling for an end of Philosophy as the activity of trying to unpack 
the essences of Truth, Reality, Reason, etc in favor of philosophy as 
one form of literary criticism.


DMB:
> Pirsig doesn't just reject SOM or foundational metaphysics, he also 
> says something positive. He replaces SOM with the MOQ, as we all know, 
> whereas Rorty more or less leaves things hanging. He has strategies 
> for dealing with the emptiness that exists where SOM once stood but, 
> like you say, he wasn't out to create a new system. He didn't even 
> think such a thing was needed or possible or desirable. I suppose that 
> has a lot to do with his particular way of diagnosing the problem, 
> that he thought there were good reasons to avoid this positive second 
> half. But as I see it, this just means Rorty's pragmatism is sort of 
> half-baked. He tore down a house that needed tearing down but then 
> left us an empty lot.

Steve:
Yes, Rorty cleared some intellectual space so that new work can be 
done, but he did not want to offer a new philosophical system. Instead 
he made suggestions about how we should look at systems in general. You 
can call that "half-baked" if you want, but there is still the question 
of whether we are better or worse off for Rorty's work in clearing 
space. You've been suggesting that we are worse off, and we can 
continue to discuss the issue.

>
> Steve said:
> Students who only read one philosopher tend to be swayed by the 
> arguments. ...The students see that all these philosophers or 
> religions have promised a deep foundation for their ethical systems 
> and claimed to have such a universal grounding which was later shown 
> to be empty and that all these philosophers and religions discovered 
> different and contradictory things about the good life. They decide 
> that the best we can hope for are systems that are self-consistent and 
> are getting the idea that being self-consistent isn't even that hard 
> to do. Now what went wrong here? How were these students turned into 
> nihilists or skeptics or relativists? The problem isn't that they were 
> never taught the one system that really does have the sort of 
> universal grounding that was promised. The problem was that they 
> learned to expect that any legitimate moral claim needs to have the 
> sort of foundation that was promised, some transcultural or natural 
> law, the sort of foundation for justifying our
>  moral beliefs that we are just never going to get.
>
> dmb says:
> That's not how I experienced it at all. In fact, I had to be convinced 
> that any philosopher had ever been willing to claim eternal truths.


Steve:
In my experience of discussing philosophy with people you are 
exceptional in this regard.


DMB:
> I had thought that only religious fanatics made such claims. Then I 
> saw that philosophers had made such claims. But then I realized that 
> most of those philosophers were religious fanatics of one kind or 
> another. Plato and Hegel spring to mind, for example. As I see it, 
> their absolutism was thinly disguised theology. I mean, the idea that 
> our morals are underpinned by the founder of the universe was 
> something I saw as quite ridiculous when I was in 7th or 8th grade.

Steve:
I don't that even Rorty would say that it was a ridiculous idea. I see 
it as a project that didn't pan out.


> Steve said:
> One of the things he tried to get us not interested in asking was "is 
> it absolute or relative?" For that (and, admittedly, for being too 
> careless in the unfortunate pragmatist tradition of making pithy 
> slogans that were right in what they rejected but too easily construed 
> as wrong or misleading in what they asserted) he was often labeled a 
> relativist. But I think it is wrong to do so unless all you mean by 
> the term is that he had given up on the sort of grounding for ethical 
> and factual claims than was promised by philosophers of the past. 
> Instead of trying to "lend our current practices the prestige of the 
> eternal," he gave us ideas about how to create a future that will be 
> "unimaginably better than the present."
>
> dmb says:
> Okay, let's agree that Rorty is right about the impossibility of 
> lending "our current practices the prestige of the eternal". Let's 
> agree that such nonsense is completely off the table.

Steve:
If such nonsense is off the table then it's hard for me to see what 
difference you see in Rorty's relativism and your view.

Best,
Steve