[MD] brief tangent with Steve

[Steven Peterson]

DMB,


 david buchanan <dmbuchanan at hotmail.cosaid:
> ...Teed Rockwell wants to say that Rorty makes an unwarranted leap from one to the other and that it's perfectly plausible to say that
>  astronomers can do astronomy without looking for crystalline spheres and, by the same token, philosophers can have truth theories without search for thee Truth.  ... Rorty would look at James's theory of truth and say that it's not really of theory of truth because it provides no promise of thee Truth.
>
> Matt replied:
> No, he would say it's not a theory of _truth_ because it is a theory of _knowledge_, i.e. of justification, the dynamic of a live being ascribing truth to sentences, a live being deciding to believe or not. This is what Rorty thinks the analytic conversation has helped sharpen in a good way--the understanding that we cannot collapse truth into justification, as Dewey and James sometimes seem to suggest.  I guess what I don't understand is what you think a "theory of truth" is or an "epistemology" is, an understanding against which I could judge whether Rorty has one or not.
>
>
> dmb says:
> Well, the objection you've articulated here is just a slightly more specific version of the leap referred to in Rockwell's analogy. To say James's theory is only about justification and not about truth is to assert a certain definition of truth,...

Steve:
right. Therefore Rorty actually _has_ a theory of truth if that is
what you mean by a theory of truth.

DMB:
...one that says that truth is something over and above justification.
That kind of truth is the crystalline sphere in his analogy.

Steve:
Rorty's conception of truth is not a something which can be over and
above something else. He just supports the notion of making a
distinction between truth and justification. He preserves the common
sense notion and usage of the word "true" in that what we are
justified in believing may not be true. James of course drops this
common sense note of caution. Doing so gets him in lots of trouble,
and he is often labeled a relativist for not making a distinction
between truth and justification.

DMB:
But James re-conceptualized the meaning of truth such that it can only
ever be what's justified in experience. For James, truth can never be
anything more than that and so he is not looking for anything over and
above that. To say that James doesn't really have a theory of truth
because it collapses truth and justification is to say he is not doing
astronomy because he's not looking for crystalline spheres.

Steve:
This just depends on what one means by astronomy or a theory of truth.
Depending on how you define a theory of truth, James's collapse is a
denial of theories of truth. If a theory of truth is defined as a
method for bridging the gap between truth as it is commonly understood
and justification as it is commonly understood, well then, James has
clearly not even attempted to do that. He doesn't have a theory of
truth in that sense. He wasn't playing that game. He was changing the
rules--making up a new game and encouraging others to play that one
instead of the truth theory game. Of course, if you define a theory of
truth as any claim about truth then of course James has a theory of
truth. But then so does Rorty who says that when we call a belief true
we mean that no other belief is as far as we know a better habit of
action.


> dmb said:
> ...Is it not true that he's given up on truth theories and epistemology altogether? Isn't that why his answers take the shape they do. Is this not the center of his vision?

Steve:
Here is an analogy for your issues with Rorty's rejection of truth
theories and epistemology:

Rich claims to be an atheist, he therefore thinks God does not exist.
Dave thinks that God is the universe. Therefore Rich is a complete
idiot since Rich's denial means that Rich thinks the universe does not
exist???

Here's another approach. Let's see what Rich means by God in asserting
that there is no such thing and what Dave means when he says there is
a God. One person's denial and the others support for the existence of
God could actually be equivalent beliefs about the world.

By analogy, why not try to see what Rorty means in calling for an end
to epistemology and a theory of truth before criticizing him for it
since he probably doesn't mean what you mean by the terms?




> Matt replied:
> As I've been attempting to intimate, no, that is not true.  It is based on a deformation of the meaning Rorty was after in his slogans (and, partly, on real shifts in his thinking).  As I suggested, to figure out whether Rorty has given up on "truth theories" depends on your definition, likewise for epistemology.  I've struggled to see the point behind your oscillation between "Rorty gives up on truth theories" and "why don't we give up his _definition_, like James and Pirsig do." ...
>
>
> dmb says:
>
> I really don't understand this denial. I mean, doesn't Rorty explicitly say that we to ought to give up on epistemology and truth theories? Haven't you quoted him many times saying that? Isn't that what Ramberg's article for the SEP says about Rorty? I find your denials on this point to be pretty incredible. In that article Ramberg says that Rorty view is married to a certain picture of the mind. He says, "it is not surprising that Rorty's commitment to epistemological behaviorism should lead to charges of relativism or subjectivism. Indeed, many ...balk at the idea that there are no constraints on knowledge save conversational ones. Yet this is a central part of Rorty's position".


Steve:
This was from an encyclopedia article. Obviously much of the same
could be said about James since his pragmatic theory of truth in many
philosopher's view "should lead to charges of relativism or
subjectivism."


DMB:
> Here's a little of the surrounding context of those remarks:
> "Epistemology, in Rorty's account, is wedded to a picture of mind's structure working on empirical content to produce in itself items—thoughts, representations—which, when things go well, correctly mirror reality.  ... The upshot of Quine's and Sellars' criticisms of the myths and dogmas of epistemology is, Rorty suggests, that "we see knowledge as a matter of conversation and of social practice, rather than as an attempt to mirror nature." (PMN 171)

Steve:
And you disagree? You think that knowledge _is_ an attempt to mirror nature???

DMB:
Rorty provides this view with a label: "Explaining rationality and
epistemic authority by reference to what society lets us say, rather
than the latter by the former, is the essence of what I shall call
‘epistemological behaviorism,’ an attitude common to Dewey and
Wittgenstein." (PMN 174)
> Epistemological behaviorism leaves no room for the kind of practice-transcending legitimation that Rorty identifies as the defining aspiration of modern epistemology. Assuming that epistemic practices do, or at least can, diverge, it is not surprising that Rorty's commitment to epistemological behaviorism should lead to charges of relativism or subjectivism. Indeed, many who share Rorty's historicist scepticism toward the transcending ambitions of epistemology—friendly critics like Hilary Putnam, John McDowell and Daniel Dennett—balk at the idea that there are no constraints on knowledge save conversational ones. Yet this is a central part of Rorty's position, repeated and elaborated as recently as in TP and PCP. Indeed, in TP he invokes it precisely in order to deflect this sort of criticism.

Steve:
Can you give me an example of a constraint on knowledge claims that is
"practice-transcending"--one that isn't merely conversational?

I asked you before, do you actually think that Rorty's position rules
out saying things like, "how do I know that I have $4 in my pocket?
Well look right here in my pocket. It's the $4!"

What sorts of justificatory practices do you see Rorty as having
outlawed? Where do you think justificatory practices come from if
other than the practice of justifying our beliefs to one another?


DMB:
In "Hilary Putnam and the Relativist Menace," Rorty says:
> In short, my strategy for escaping the self-referential difficulties into which "the Relativist" keeps getting himself is to move everything over from epistemology and metaphysics into cultural politics, from claims to knowledge and appeals to self-evidence to suggestions about what we should try. (TP 57)


Steve:
Since we know (or we should know by now) that what Rorty means by
epistemology is the notion of the mirror of nature, then I can't see
what you could object to here.

Best,
Steve