[MD] What does Pirsig mean by metaphysics?

[david buchanan]

Steve said to dmb:
 
Your concern that Rorty was unable to claim that, say, liberalism is superior to fascism is unwarranted. He would argue that this is not merely a personal preference like favoring chocolate to vanilla ice cream but rather that there is good reason to support liberalism. He is just not going to argue that the universe is configured in such a way that liberalism is demanded by reality. Since you also do not see it that way I don't understand your big problem with Rorty.

dmb says:

Really? You still don't understand why I have a problem with Rorty? So the quotes from Hickman, Hildebrand, Pirsig and the Stanford Encyclopedia haven't been helpful? I've used them all to explain why I have a problem with Rorty, just in the last week or so. Hmmm. How about some help from Hilary Putnam, then? (By way of Hildebrand) Putnam writes,
"It may be that we will behave better if we become Rortians ...But a fascist could well agree with Rorty at a very abstract level - Mussolini, let us recall, supported pragmatism, claiming that it sanctioned unthinking activism." (RHF 24-25)
"Putnam is disturbed by the fact that though THIS messenger may exemplify our values, the message itself does not. And the Rortian message, 'No more Metaphysics', seems a rather ineffective way of promoting positive values. 'Would it not be better', Putnam writes, 'to argue for those directly, rather than to hope that these will come as a byproduct of a change in our metaphysical picture?'"
And 

"For Rorty, nothing precontextual or prelinguistic can be appealed to as a justification for assertions - talk is all we've got.The first reason Putnam rejects this view is that it is unpersuasive and self-refuting. It is unpersuasive because it is not explicated in a way that distinguishes it from simplistic and (possibly) fascistic relativisms of the kind 'majority might makes right'. To set it apart from THAT, Rorty must do more than appeal to his OPINION that enthnocentrism just SEEMS CLEARLY BETTER. Without a more substantive reason, why would anyone become an ethnocentrist?Rorty must attach his appeal to some THING - e.g., the fact that ethnocentrism actually IS better - if he ever intends to convince anyone. But this is what Putnam thinks relativists are ACTUALLY doing. Rortyans, Putnam says, 'know very well that the majority of their cultural peers are not convinced by Relativistic arguments, but they keep on arguing because they think they are JUSTIFIED (warranted) in doing so, and the SHARE THE PICTURE OF WARRANT AS INDEPENDENT OF MAJORITY OPINION (RHF 22, latter emphasis is Hildebrand's)
...Finally, Rorty's anti-metaphysical conclusion infers the wrong lesson from classical pragmatism. 'Pragmatism', Putnam writes, 'goes with the criticism of A CERTAIN STYLE in metaphysics; but the criticism does NOT consist in wielding some exclusionary principle to GET RID OF metaphysics once and for all'". (Again, emphasis is Hildebrand's)


And just so you know, Hildebrand's subheading within this chapter are "PUTNAM ON RORTY; A MENACING RELATIVISM" and "THE ETHICAL DANGER OF EPISTEMOLOGICAL RELATIVISM"


STEVE CONTINUED:...The difference only seems to me to be about whether you can get any mileage out of the idea of "middle ground." But as I see things, asserting pragmatism as middle ground between foundationalism and relativism is akin to saying that the MOQ is middle ground between saying that Quality is in the subject and saying that Quality is in the object. The answer isn't "a little of each" or "half and half" but "mu." Both answers stem from premises that MOQers and pragmatists do not accept.

dmb says:

I understand what you're trying to do with this analogy but it doesn't hold up. It begs the question. All these quotes I keep feeding you are supporting evidence that the answer to the question of a middle ground is definitely not "mu". Hildebrand and Putnam agree that leaping over this middle ground is precisely Rorty's mistake. And, apparently, your inability to distinguish classical pragmatism from what Rorty is saying is predicated on the same mistake. Hildebrand says that Rorty makes, 
"an illegitimate inference from the unintelligibility of metaphysical realism (especially the idea that words have meaning by virtue of a fixed totality of things OUTSIDE them) to a total skepticism toward any representation relation at all. This conclusion is not warranted. ...Putnam speculates that Rorty's unwitting shortcut back to metaphysical realism (at least at the metaphilosophical level) is due to his inability to shed the ideological vestiges of positivism, his philosophical roots. While he no longer shares the positivists' view that all meaningful statements can be reduced to patterns of sensation, Rorty nevertheless is so desirous of SOME explanation (of how words hook up with something outside themselves) that when he cannot get one he feels compelled to conclude that words don't represent ANYTHING. To avoid the charge of linguistic idealism, Rorty is spurred on to claim that we are connected to the world 'causally but not semantically', but for Putnam this only indicates that Rorty is 'in the grip of the picture that Eliminative Materialism is true of the Noumenal World, even if he is debarred by the very logic of his own position from stating that belief." (169)
This is what I meant so long ago in calling Rorty a broken-hearted positivist. These guys are basically saying that Rorty never really gave up the objective reality as thing-in-itself but rather simply gave up on ever being able to gain access. I think that on some level he never escaped the grip of what we call SOM. By contrast, Dewey was explicit about this. 
I'm sure the following quotes from Hildebrand will cause Bo to humbly apologize for ever suggesting that no intellectual ever rejected SOM and it's relevant here too.
"An empirical approach to metaphysics need not presuppose a subject/object dualism - indeed, if experience is perspicuously attended to, it should not. ..Since Dewey will not begin metaphysical inquiries by presupposing a subject/object dualism, he does not need to ward off the same skeptical demons that plagued Descartes. ..Dewey hoped that through examples and empirical observations his distinction between primary and secondary experience would be patent and its adoption might economize intellectual effort"

Notice that he is not only rejecting SOM here but taking up those two categories of experience that I like to talk about so often. Primary and secondary are dynamic and static or preconceptual and reflective. He also calls them Had and Known. I learned recently that Jose Ortega y Gasset has a name for this primary empirical reality or pure experience. He calls it "radical reality". Looks like we can add another name to the list of Pragmatic radical empiricists. But Rorty is not one of these.
"Rorty is convinced that attempts to systematically describe the world in general terms are either banal statements of the obvious or the thinly disguised religious dogma of self-appointed priests. But Dewey showed another alternative was possible; metaphysics could investigate the world empirically and hypothetically."
"To understand why Rorty is wrong", Hildebrand writes, "requires that we briefly revisit and defend the underlying distinction between primary and secondary experience, a distinction Rorty also rejects as 'bad faith'. (116-7)

I hope you'll ponder this, Steve. These guys are making strong points and I think they're about as clear as can be expected. At the very least, doesn't it show that there are reasons to have a problem with Rorty and reasons to distinguish him from the classical pragmatists. 

I mean, the suggestion that all this is just "rhetoric" on my part is a bit preposterous, don't you think? These critics are peer reviewed pragmatists. What better textual evidence could there be? Seriously? You're free to disagree and you can dispute it but no reasonable person could dismiss it as rhetoric.

Besides, in the MOQ, rhetoric is just about the finest thing there ever was. It's intellectual quality raised to the level of an art form. If that's what you meant, then I'll apologize for doubting your level of reasonableness and thank you for huge compliment.


Thanks.

dmb



 		 	   		  
_________________________________________________________________
Hotmail: Free, trusted and rich email service.
http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/201469228/direct/01/