[MD] Harris and Steve

[Ian Glendinning]

Hi Matt,

Something like that
ie when he says he favours Correspondence Theory (of Truth) over
Pragmatism I interpret this two ways.

(1) It's fact and truth he is corresponding, not fact and reality, or
truth and reality, or language and reality. (See JC's note on
conflating truth with reality, though I suspect you didn't need
reminding Matt) So it's just a "pragmatic" statement he is making.
Fact and truth DO correspond - by agreement - cultural, narrative, etc
...

(2) The Pragmatism he is rejecting is the "too cynical" kind - agreed
for "local convenience" ... or the too nihilist ... too accomodating
... total relativist ... the kind we "might" ascribe to Rorty (as DMB
does, but you don't). If you think of the dichotomous "Faith" debate
Harris is / was engaged with ... being "too pragmatic" is not the
solution. Like you I see the Wittgensteinian insight on language ...
but unlike (caricatures of) Rorty I don't see this as the death of
philosophy, just a reason to look for "pragmatic" living, evolutionary
philosophy - the death of too-academic too cut and dried, SOMist
philosophies.

I recognize I am projecting "my reading" of Harris onto what I hear
him say ... all I can do is repeat that, taken in the whole, I find
his take pragmatic and much more subtle / sophisticated than any black
and white categorical isms. If that's is "bad philosophy" academically
speaking, like Pirsig (and James ?), so be it.

Ian

On Fri, Apr 9, 2010 at 7:32 PM, Matt Kundert
<pirsigaffliction at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> 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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