[MD] DMB and Rorty

[david buchanan]

Steve said to dmb:
Abandoning truth means abandoning theories of truth?  You say it's the third time, but that is a new twist to me. It seems to me that you were unable to make your claim stick that Rorty is missing something by not talking about experience, then you moved onto "abandoning truth," but since  Rorty obviously does talk about truth you've now tried to shift the argument once again to truth theories. But I've always said that Rorty does not claim to have a theory of truth and thinks we ought to give up the project of seeking a theory of truth, and I've spent a lot of time explaining why that is.


dmb says:

Yes, I'm talking about abandoning epistemology and truth theories. I'm talking about why Rorty does that and why I think it's a mistake. The argument has not "shifted" from truth theories to the claim that Rorty is missing something by not talking about experience. Both complaints are part of the same argument. For James and Pirsig, the pragmatic theory of truth and radical empiricism both heavily rely on experience. This is what distinguishes Rorty from Pirsig and James. The explanations I offered about the differences between radical empiricism and traditional empiricism are also part of the same argument. The debate we just had about the question of truth not being a loaded question is part of this same argument. I'm asking you to think in paragraphs here, Steve. And yes, yes, yes again. We are talking philosophy. We're talking about epistemology and theories of truth. And we're talking about Rorty's refusal to talk about them as compared with the willingness of James and Pirsig to assert them both.  



Steve said:

I already quoted Rorty explaining why he doesn't think truth is the sort of notion we ought to try to have a theory about:
"...The question is precisely whether “the true” is more than what William James defined it as: “the name of whatever proves itself to be good in the way of belief, and good, too, for definite, assignable reasons.” On James’s view, “true” resembles “good” or “rational” in being a normative notion, a compliment paid to sentences that seem to be paying their way and that fit in with other sentences which are doing so.  the pragmatist does not think that, whatever else philosophy of language may do, it is going to come up with a definition of “true” which gets beyond James. He happily grants that it can do a lot of other things. For example, it can, following Tarski, show what it would be like to define a truth-predicate for a given language. The pragmatist can agree with Davidson that to define such a predicate – to develop a truth-theory for the sentences of English, e.g, – would be a good way, perhaps the only way, to exhibit a natural language as a learnable, recursive structure, and thus to give a systematic theory of meaning for the language."

dmb says:

I'm trying to explain that this is NOT how James defined "the true". Rorty is leaving out experience, which is central to James's theory of truth. I've dished up many James quotes to show you that. As you can see from the redacted Rorty quote, he puts all the emphasis on sentences and language and says true is just a normative notion, a compliment paid to sentences. Rorty has linguisticized James in such a way that it no longer has that central empirical dimension. 


Steve continued:

We've been through all this already. This is when you criticized Rorty for leaving out experience, which is when I asked you to explain what he is missing, which is when you dropped that line of criticism, and now we've come full circle. ... Now you add that he also has refused to do epistemology and quote this... [from Stanford's article on Rorty] "Rorty suggests, that "we see knowledge as a matter of conversation and of social practice, rather than as an attempt to mirror nature." (PMN 171) Rorty provides this view with a label: "Explaining rationality and epistemic authority by reference to what society lets us say, rather than the latter by the former, is the essence of what I shall call ‘epistemological behaviorism,’ an attitude common to Dewey and Wittgenstein." (PMN 174) ... Indeed, many who share Rorty's historicist scepticism toward the transcending ambitions of epistemology—friendly critics like Hilary Putnam, John McDowell and Daniel Dennett—balk at the idea that there are no constraints on knowledge save conversational ones. Yet this is a central part of Rorty's position, repeated and elaborated as recently as in TP and PCP."   I find it pretty strange that you object to Rorty dropping epistemology while quoting a passage describing what Rorty calls his "epistemological behaviorism."


dmb says:
C'mon Steve. Look at the substance and the meaning of the quote. It is a very succinct explanation of what Rorty is missing. It seems the answer to the question only prompts you to ask the question. "Epistemological behaviorism", despite the name, refers to Rorty's anti-empirical stance. It refers to the view that knowledge is "a matter of conversation and of social practice, rather than as an attempt to mirror nature". That's the whole thing in a nutshell. That is Rorty giving up on epistemology because, for him, epistemology is defined as the attempt to mirror nature. This is where I point out that his criticism of attempts to mirror nature cannot be applied to radical empiricism simply because it is equally critical of that same attempt. Because Rorty defines the question in terms of that failed answer, he thinks we should give up on the question altogether. I'm saying that is not a valid conclusion. I'm saying that pragmatism and radical empiricism can and do reject the correspondence theory of truth (the mirror of nature) and yet they still has epistemological thought. They're still empirically based so that the true and the real are NOT just a matter of "what society let's us say". As the article notes, you don't have to be a realist to find Rorty's conclusions objectionable. Like I said, "we might agree that there are certain questions that should be dropped, questions about thee objective truth or the essence of truth for example but Rorty thinks that dropping those particular questions means dropping epistemology in general. James and Pirsig don't take that approach. Instead of rejecting empiricism, they improve and expand it. In a very real sense, they go in the exact opposite direction from Rorty".


Steve said:

What is it that you think Pirsig and James say about knowledge that Rorty doesn't agree with?


dmb says:

That it is grounded in experience, that experience is the test of truth and defines our range of knowledge. They don't call it radical empiricism for nothing. It is an explicitly epistemological position. Rorty's refusal to have such a position means he doesn't agree. That's pretty obvious, isn't it? 



Steve said:
Of course I don't deny Rorty's position on theories of truth. We've debated that issue numerous times, so it is strange that you would think that I would deny Rorty's position. He doesn't think that philosophical inquiry into truth will help us determine what is true beyond simply saying with James that true beliefs lead to successful action, and if a theory of truth doesn't get us past James (as no offered theory ever has), well then it just isn't worth having.


dmb says:

Well, as I see it, that's just one of the nonchalant ways to abandon epistemology and truth theories. To say it's not worth having or it's not interesting enough to do is just the kind of dismissive, subject-changing approach Rorty recommends. And if the correspondence theory were the only truth theory I'd probably agree. My point is that it is not the only theory, not the only question. My point is that Rorty has distorted the pragmatic theory of truth and dismissed radical empiricism altogether and that these moves make him very, very different from Pirsig and James. In Pirsig's case, for example, dismissing radical empiricism means taking DQ out of the MOQ. In James's case, dismissing radical empiricism means overlooking the attack on SOM, overlooking the direct attack on the metaphysical assumptions underlying the correspondence theory and traditional empiricism. These are James's ideas but they certainly get us past Rorty's idea of James.  


Steve said:
Just in case you may want to choose to answer any of the questions I asked previously, I'll re-post the following from my last post to you where I complained that you still hadn't answered my questions from the previous post...


dmb says:

To be honest, I saw your questions as evidence of confusion because you asked them in response to answers already supplied. Or sometimes they seemed to answer themselves. This one, for example: "How does your talk about empirical reality add anything to saying that true beliefs lead to successful action?"  I don't understand this question because "action" IS "empirical reality". And then there are the questions that I've been answering the whole time in lots of different ways, like this one: "What tools do you have for justifying beliefs to others that Rorty could not use?" Seriously, isn't it completely obvious by now? James and Pirsig have an empiricism and a theory of truth. That's what he does not have for justifying beliefs. For him, the only constraint is conversation within what society allows us to say. 

Honestly, now. You don't see that? 

Steve said:
I understand completely that you think that Rorty has left something important out by not talking about empirical reality. I'm still wondering what that something is. What is the practical difference  between James saying that true beliefs lead to successful action and saying that true beliefs lead to successful action IN EXPERIENCE? Does that last bit add some explanatory power? Does it keep us from getting fooled or keep us from being able to fool others?

dmb says:

Well, "action" counts as experience but it doesn't make for a theory of truth all by itself. That's makes a practical difference. Rorty is refusing to do epistemology while Pirsig and James have an epistemology based on experience and a theory of truth based on agreement with experience. For Rorty, truth is verbal, is a matter of a sentence's ability to fit in with other sentences. This is where the concerns about relativism come into the argument because that has practical consequences. For a pragmatist, talking about empirical reality makes a practical difference because empirical reality IS practical reality. Truth is what happens to an idea in the course of experience. It is made true by events, not by mirroring objective reality or revealing the essence of truth, whatever that is. This is what it means for truth to lead to successful action. If we can ride an idea into the future then it proves itself true. If "action" means conversation or intersubjective agreement, well then you're talking about something very much more narrow than James or Pirsig. We can't persuade a motorcycle to fix itself by using the right vocabularies or the right rhetorical strategies. Your ideas about the machine are going to lead you through the process of repairing it or they are not. Trying to fix it with the wrong ideas in mind is probably going to teach you something about what's true and what isn't. I think Pirsig chose a practical, hands-on analogy to explain the scientific process AND Zen meditation for a reason. Think about that. Think about how non-verbal that second one is and how empirical they both are. That's what Rorty ain't got. 


 		 	   		  
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