[MD] Harris and Steve

[david buchanan]

Steve said:
If you recall that bit in The End of Faith that you pointed out to me (you can find it by looking for Rorty in the index), Harris does not subscribe to such a view. He holds to realism and the correspondence theory of truth, so facts are not viewed as cuturally contingent at all. Facts are whatever it is about reality that our ideas are supposed to correspond to. ...DMB, I wonder if you recall the part where Harris attacks pragmatism and have any thoughts on it.



dmb says:

According to some end notes I just checked, Harris identifies pragmatism with Rorty and so takes its core theses to be the claim that, "All statements about the world are 'true' only by virtue of being justified in a sphere of discourse." He thinks this view is "incredible" and "covertly realistic" and that it "falls into contradiction" in several ways. I think it's safe to say he's not a big fan of Rorty's brand of pragmatism. 

Instead, he subscribes to a kind of epistemological realism, which he distinguishes from ontological realism and from naive realism. He also takes the view that we should exhaust common sense solutions to our moral problems before we bring philosophical ethics into it. He is writing for a general audience and so I think this is a fitting strategy. 


 		 	   		  
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