[MD] Philosophy and Abstraction

[david buchanan]

dmb said to Matt:
As I understand it, psychological nominalism has nothing to do with radical empiricism and I really don't see how it's at all plausible to  assert that they are somehow parallel. ... Radical empiricism is not making any claims that would be at odds with what Sellars is doing.

Matt replied:
Yes, indeed, I agree. You appear to have thought that I was wielding psychological nominalism as an attack on radical empiricism.  Either that's a mistake in what you've thought I've been suggesting for a few years, or I don't yet understand what you think the difference is between them that makes a difference.

dmb says:
No, I don't see it as an attack on radical empiricism. Again, I don't see how they are even related, let alone parallel to each other. You say that you don't see any difference that makes a difference and I'm saying they are not even similar. You think they are close enough that one could replace the other but I think apples and oranges have more in common. 

Matt said:
Yes, Sellars--as Rorty points out in Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature--has some residual scientism that we're gonna' want to toss out.  And, generally speaking, I thought you wanted us to look beyond the tone and temperament of a thinker at the content of  their thought?  Isn't that what you keep telling me about you?

dmb says:
Well, there are two different ideas. One is just about being polite in conversation but that's relatively trivial compared with the philosopher's temperament. For both Pirsig and James, their central goal is to integrate two basic temperaments. Classic and Romantic, empiricist and rationalist, tough-minded and tender-minded, seekers of the many and seekers of the One, Aristoteleans and Platonists, geeks and freaks, nerds and artsy fartsies. A man's vision is the most important thing about him, James says. These two styles answer different needs and those answers appeal to different types. This is a matter of degree, of course, and hardly anyone is just one or the other. That's what I'm talking about with respect to Sellars in particular and analytic philosophers in general. 

See, you've attached yourself to the kind of pragmatism that comes out of the analytic school. They're coming out of the positivist tradition, out of logical empiricism and guys like Sellars and Rorty are basically attacking the goals of positivism and sensory empiricism. The basic focus was on the scientific analysis of language and so Sellars' attack on the myth of the given is all about saying why that's a misguided goal. It simply doesn't speak to radical empiricism, which levels its own attack on Cartesian dualism and traditional empiricism. As you may recall, Pirsig attacks traditional empiricism because it fancied itself to be anti-metaphysical but, he says, they rejected a whole range of empirical realities for metaphysical reasons. He says they weren't empirical enough. The post-positivists don't want anything to do with empiricism and the classical pragmatists move in the opposite direction.

Sellars's "residual scientism" can be seen as symptomatic of the whole tone and temperament of these analytic types. You can see it in the labels they wear; verbal behaviorism, eliminative materialism, non-reductive physicalism, and in the general tendency to equate brains and minds and otherwise rely on a kind of scientific functionalism. And so, to my mind, it's only natural that you'd have a hard time equating that sort of pragmatism with the vision James and Pirsig lay out. They are both quite fond of the empirical, tough-minded side of things but also both had their romantic buddies, John Sutherland and Josiah Royce, and they were both very interested in the mystical experience. That's gonna be jarring to anyone who subscribes to scientism or settles upon material explanations for consciousness.