[MD] Philosophy and Abstraction

[Steven Peterson]

Hi DMB,

> Steve said:
> ...Rorty of course would never want to argue about whether or not material descriptions are adequate to reality. The issue for the pragmatist is adequacy for given purposes. Rorty would point out that material descriptions are inadequate to the purposes for which we write love poems but very good for predicting and controlling things.
>
> dmb says:
> I guess this is one of those places where Rortyism doesn't translate very well. You're pitting "adequacy to reality" against our "given purposes" and saying never to the first. But for a radical empiricist those are not two different things. The pragmatic test of truth does want to argue about whether or not our descriptions are adequate to reality, but reality is equated with experience itself. Concepts and truths work within this reality or they are inadequate.

Steve:
Ok, whatever. Finding the best translation is beside the point. You
accused Rorty of being something problematic with regard to
scientistic reductionist materialism. I defended Rorty and explained
that his version of materialism is nothing scientistic or
reductionist. I explained Rorty's view in a way that Pirsig would not
disagree with, i.e., everything CAN be given a material description
though such descriptions are good for some purposes but not so good
for others.


> Steve said:
> And it would be just as wrong to read Pirsig's statement as implicitly saying that reality has a fundamental nature of which language is inadequate to capture as it is to read Rorty as saying that that kicking a rock is the same as kicking a sentence.
>
> dmb says:
> Huh? But Pirsig IS saying that language is inadequate to capture the mystic reality. He says so explicitly and repeatedly.

Steve:
I think that Pirsig's view of language use and intellect as symbol
manipulation includes a denial of correspondence theory of truth which
renders the notion that language captures or fails to capture this or
that aspect of reality unintelligible. I think the notion of language
capturing or corresponding ought to be incoherent to a pragmatist. It
would be wrong to say that language fails to do something that makes
no sense. It's like saying that language fails to turn itself inside
out or fails to hzakjdlsa. We don't know what that could even mean, so
how can we say that language fails or succeeds at it?



>
> Steve said:
> The problem is that the charge [relativism] can't be answered directly. The question, "are morality and truth absolute or relative?" is a version of the question, "is the quality in the subject or the object?" Both Rorty and Pirsig need to attack the premises underlying the question rather than take one side or the other on the question. Unfortunately for both of them, anyone buying into to the subject-object picture will see them both as relativists until they can be convinced to stop asking the question, "is the quality in the subject or the object?"
>
>
> dmb says:
> Well, yes. In both cases the dilemma can be avoided if you can find a way to reject both options. I agree that absolutism could be described as the view that truths are objectively true while the relativists say that truth and morality is just subjective. But you've framed it as if the charge against Rorty MUST depend on buying into the subject-object picture. You seem to think that SOM is the only basis on which to level such a charge. I disagree.

Steve:
I do think that the only basis for the charge of relativism is
Platonism.I can't see how anyone (you in particular) who has stopped
asking "is the quality in the subject or the object?" would be
interested in accusing someone of being a relativist. I mean, there
are some liberal intellectuals out there that Harris complains about
who refuse to say that any cultural practice is better than any other,
but Rorty was not such a person.



DMB quotes Rorty:
> "What ties Dewey, Foucault, James and Nietzsche together", Rorty says, is "the sense that there is nothing deep down inside us except what we have put there ourselves, no criterion that we have not created in the course of creating a practice, no standard of rationality that is not an appeal to such a criteria, no rigorous argumentation that is not obedience to our own conventions."
>
> How does that NOT count as relativism? Isn't that practically the definition of relativism? I think so.


Steve:
Are you trying to say that James or any one of these others DOES offer
a criterion for knowledge or a standard for rationality that was not
created in the course of creating a practice? Are saying that certain
criteria are simply handed to us by reality? Are you saying Pirsig
thinks so? Surely not. But then what the heck could you be objecting
to here?

Best,
Steve