[MD] Harris and Steve

[Steven Peterson]

Hi DMB,


> dmb said to Steve:
> 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.
>

> Steve replied:
>
> Do you see some agreement with Jamesian prgamatism somewhere? It is safe to say that he is not a fan of anybody's brand of pragmatism since he specifically endorses the correspondence theory of truth.
>
>
> dmb says:
>
> Well, like I said, Harris identifies pragmatism with Rorty. For Harris, in other words, pragmatism is Rorty's pragmatism. James doesn't enter into it, except for one dismissive mention in a footnote. Harris says, "For the tenets of pragmatism, I have principally relied on the work of Richard Rorty, who articulates this philosophical position as clearly and consistently as any of its fans or critics could wish." (p278) Rorty is discussed at length and Harris opposes his views in favor of a kind of realism.


Steve:
You've avoided comment on the fact that Harris subscribes to a
corespondence theory of truth and therefore takes issue with
everyone's pragmatism not just Rorty's.

Harris on pragmatism: "The pragmatist's basic premise is that, try as
we might, the currency of our ideas cannot be placed on the gold
standard of correspondence with reality as it is."

He does focus on Rorty as pragmatism's "most articulate spokesman"
(p179). He saw Rorty as the pragmatist most worthy of his engageent.
On James he says, "William James is usually considered the father of
pragmatism. Whether he should be viewed as having extended the
philosphy of Charles Sanders Pierce,or utterly debauched it, eems to
be very much an open question--one that can be persuasively answered
either way by consulting James in half his moods. There is no doubt
that the great man contradicted himself greatly." (p278)

Do you see any possibility of persuading Harris with talk of radical
empiricism? Or do you think that Harris would read it as wooly
nonsense?



> Steve said:
>
> I don't have the book handy, but as I recall, his argument that pragmatism is a covert realism comes from supposing a mystic who claims to have knowledge through an unmediated experience. He says that the pragmatist's denial of the possibility of such an experience is an endorsement of realism since it is a claim that such knowledge really is impossible. Of course the pragmatist says no such thing. She just says that she can't make any sense of the notion of "unmediated experience."
>
>
> dmb says:
>
> Well, since Harris takes pragmatism to mean Rorty's position and since Rorty is no mystic, that seems pretty unlikely. In any case, I've not seen any such argument.


Steve:
As unlikely as it may seem, his argument can be found on page 181 (I'm
using the paperback.) You seem to only be reading the footnotes rather
than the text that they expound on.



DMB:
On page 282, Harris says, "It might be, that talking about truth and
knowledge in terms of human 'solidarity', as Rorty does, could
ultimately subvert the very solidarity at issue. While I believe that
a pragmatic case against pragmatism can be made, I have not made it
here. Instead, I have attempted to show that pragmatism is covertly
realistic, arguing that in the act of distancing himself from the sins
of realism, the pragmatist commits them with both hands. The
pragmatist seems to be tacitly saying that he has surveyed the breadth
and depth of all possible acts of cognition and found both that all
knowledge is discursive and that all spheres of discourse can be
potentially fused. Pragmatism, therefore, amounts to the assertion
that any epistemic context wider than our own can be ruled out in
principle. While I
>  find these claims incredible, the more important point is that a pragmatist can believe otherwise only as a realist".

Steve:
The above quoted footnote refers to the argument he makes on page 181.

His disagreement is not with Richard Rorty but with pragmatism's basic
premise--the denial of correspondece theory.

Best,
Steve