[MD] Harris and Steve

[Matt Kundert]

Ian said:
If we are going to evaluate Harris views in ascribing isms and theories to them then I get bored very quickly ;-)

All I will say is my reading of Harris is that his realism is very pragmatic - I doubt he would subscribe to Rortian or Wittgensteinian views himself - but that's irrelevant IMHO.

Matt:
I can understand the narcolepsy with isms, but if we can't find a higher domain in which whether you take a Wittgensteinian stance towards language or not doesn't matter--a philosophical space I'm unclear about in regards to Harris--then it might matter.  "Wittgenstein" and isms are just metonymies for philosophical positions, and whether Harris has ever read Wittgenstein is, indeed, irrelevant when figuring out where we agree with Harris, which a metonymy like "Wittgensteinian stance towards language" merely facilitates (for some people).

So when you say "his realism is very pragmatic," what I hear--if I were to subscribe to this--is "Well, Harris talks about rejecting pragmatism in favor of a correspondence theory of truth, but if you look closely, such a theory plays no role whatsoever in his real aims and objectives to do with science and morals.  It's just bad philosophy on his part we can ignore."  Something like that?

Matt
 		 	   		  
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