[MD] All the way down

[Steven Peterson]

Hi All,

dmb:
In this case we have one pragmatist who says
[1, Pirsig] the fundamental nature of reality is outside of language

and another who says

[2, Rorty] it's language all the way down.

Steve:
Whether they are both right, or both wrong, or one right and one wrong
is a matter of what they mean by such statements.

If we view them as positive metaphysical then they amount to saying:

[1] Language is the sort of thing that has an essential nature that
language seeks to capture but always fails to capture.

[2] Everything is language.

Neither philosopher wants to say either of these things. Bit if that
was what they meant they would both be wrong.

If we view them both as denials of Platonism and correspondence theory
of truth. we have this point of agreement:

[A] Reality isn't composed in such a way as to enable exhaustively
chopping up reality in sentence-sized chunks.

They are both right.

Rorty and psychological nominalism in general also makes (Matt,
correct me if I am wrong) the following stronger claim:

[B]  Language use is a process of relating things to other things, but
language never bottoms out. The things that are being related by
language are bits of language to other bits of language. Rather than
knowledge being a matter of finding the proper correspondences between
sentences and non-language, such linguistic relations go all the way
down. The test of truth for a knowledge claim is then not
correspondence with non-linguistic reality but the consequences of
believing or disbelieving a claim.

Rorty and Pirsig agree on [A]. Does Pirsig agree with Rorty on [B]?
The only way Pirsig could be right and Rorty wrong is if Pirsig denies
[B].

Best,
Steve