[MD] Philosophy and Abstraction

[Matt Kundert]

Ian said:
Matt you cited James' own one sentence definition .... it hardly 
addresses the problem though.

Still leaves "proof" and "good" undefined (and retrospective), and the 
second clause doesn't even address the qualities of "definite 
assignable reasons". Don't get me wrong, I obviously have a quality 
based definition of truth in mind too, but tossing this sentence back 
in just adds to the linguistic games.

Matt:
I think it did answer _Steve's problem_ with Dave's implication of 
saying that James denies what Rorty affirms.  "Proof" and "good," in 
James's pithy slogan, are minimally defined by "definite assignable 
reasons."  Steve was implying that James agrees with Rorty that truth 
and goodness are all defined within a _practice_.  So I was providing 
the evidence.

The second clause, as you point out, doesn't address the specific 
qualities of these reasons.  But it wasn't supposed to.  James was 
implying that if you are going to look for the definiteness, you are 
going to look into the specifics of a practice.  Otherwise you are 
going to just get vague generalities like "accord with experience."  He 
offered those too, but this is where he suggests that if you want 
more, we need to start talking about a specific practice involved in 
getting a specific job done.

I'm not playing games, I'm just trying to provide evidence for the 
specific thing I am, and I think Steve is, affirming.  "The problem" 
that isn't being addressed are the specifics beyond that, but that isn't 
yet Steve or I's problem.

Matt

> On Wed, Dec 15, 2010 at 7:36 PM, Matt Kundert
> <pirsigaffliction at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > DMB said:
> > "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 said:
> > 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?
> >
> > Matt:
> > The answer to Steve's rhetorical questions for James, I think, can
> > be found in one of James's famous definitions of truth:  "The true
> > is the name of whatever proves itself to be good in the way of
> > belief, and good, too, for definite, assignable reasons" (from "What
> > Pragmatism Means").  Stanley Fish once pointed out that people
> > often only quote the first half of the sentence, but that you won't
> > understand pragmatism without "and good, too, for definite,
> > assignable reasons."  It's those "assignable reasons" that puts us
> > within a conventional practice.