[MD] DMB and Me

[david buchanan]

dmb said to Steve and Matt:

...I tried to show how the assumptions of subject-object metaphysics could be seen in Rorty's position, even as he was denying the possibility of objective knowledge. [Stanley Fish's idea of pragmatism]

"They believe with Richard Rorty that 'things in space and time are the effects of causes which do not include mental states' - the world, in short, is 'out there' - but they also believe that the knowledge we have of the world is not give by it [the world], but by men and women who are hazarding descriptions within the vocabularies and paradigms that are in place and in force in their cultures. Those descriptions are judged to be true or false, accurate and inaccurate, according to measures and procedures that currently have epistemic authority, and not according to their fit with the world as it exists independently of any description." "While there surely is such a world, our only access to it, Rorty and Margolis say, is through our own efforts to apprehend it. Margolis: 'The real world ... is not a construction of mind or Mind ... but the paradigm of knowledge or science is certainly confined to the discursive power of the human.'" (Stanley Fish quoting Rorty and Margolis and explaining their neopragmatic position.)

Steve responded to the quote:
That "the world is out there" bit doesn't sound like Rorty. I've only read him to use "out there" to poke fun at Platonists. ... Do you oppose the common sense notion that you are in the world? I think we can keep that notion without falling back into SOM so long as this notion isn't used as metaphysics. If it is a tool for using reality rather than a way of getting at what reality really is there is nothing wrong with saying the above as a denial of idealism as well as scientific realism. ... I'm asking you if you disagree with what Rorty said. Do you disagree with Rorty that you, DMB, are in the world? ... I don't think Rorty is playing metaphysics here anymore than you will be when you finally admit that you agree with the common sense notion that you exist in the world.  ... if doing philosophy is a linguistic practice, then broadening this practice to include the nonverbal can't be done. That's probably not what you mean doing nonverbal philosophy. You mean that philosophy is not just a linguistic practice. It is words *about* things that are not words and things that are not things. It is words about experience, whereas the linguistic folks like Rorty are fine with the common sense notion that words are about experience, they don't want to make a big metaphysical deal about that common sense notion.


Matt responded to the Fish, Rorty, Margolis quotes too:
 
What Rorty was trying to wipe off was this idea of him as a "linguistic idealist," which is how you frame him half the time, as a solipsist. "It seems [Rorty's] not just giving us a reason to be comfortable with subjectivity. He’s saying that it’s all we can have." (paragraph 8 of Buchanan's "Clash of the Pragmatists")  But now he's trying to articulate that there is a world out there. He just can't win with you, can he Dave? ... It might be more profitable for you, Dave, to articulate the specific reasons of why Rorty seems like he's working with SOM assumptions, the things he says you wouldn't say, because anybody can look at a block of text, pick out the use of words like "subject, object, mind, world, in there, out there, etc." and claim the person's a SOMist.  We can do it to Pirsig.  I hope that's not what you thought I've been doing all these years.  I hope I've been a little more articulate and forthcoming about what the difference is between the external manifestation of linguistic tokenings (i.e. "the words  one uses") and what the words mean (i.e. "the assumptions undergirding theoretical positions").


dmb says:

Well, I certainly am trying to articulate the specific reasons and the present argument I'm making based on these Fish quotes from the New York Times is just one example of this specificity. I'm certainly trying to bring this case to you in your terms, using your guys. But the argument isn't that Rorty is a SOMer. Not exactly, anyway. It's a little more subtle than that. In fact, the accusation of linguistic idealism is very much connected to the accusation that he's assuming a world "out there", a world of "causes that do not include mental states". As the Fish article explains, this kind of pragmatism maintains that we can't have access to this world, that our knowledge is limited to the vocabularies and paradigms of our culture. Hildebrand explains this about as clearly as it can be explained.

"His urge toward dismissal of 'antecedent objects' is complicated by the same contradictions attending his discussions of 'causality'. Rorty asserts that 'aboutness is not a matter of pointing outside the web' yet insists that 'the objects are there before minds come along and remain what they were while being known.' Rorty applauds Nietzsche for his perspectivism and yet somehow manages to occupy a sufficiently elevated standpoint to judge that 'Aristotle and Galileo and Darwin were presented with EXACTLY THE SAME objects.I do not think these are slips of the tongue or cases of 'irony' meant to stir the complacent reader. Rather, they are consistent with his anti-realism, which needs to give a nod to the reality of objective things so that it may then argue that access to them is not just impracticable, but IMPOSSIBLE. Realizing that we are always confined to SOME language game, a Rortian pragmatist is relieved of the fruitless and timeworn task of inquiry into the 'real' character of objects and can just talk about HOW WE TALK and what else WE MIGHT TALK ABOUT." (Beyond Realism and Anti-Realism, p111, emphasis is Hildebrand's.) 

dmb continues:
Here Hildebrand explains what it means to call Rorty a broken-hearted positivist. Rorty's linguistic stance is a direct result of DENYING the claims and goals of positivism. Once you conclude that there is no way to get at the objective world independently of our culture's paradigms, talking about how we talk is all that's left. This is what's behind the distaste for talk about "experience". The positivists thought they could use sensory experience to get at the objective world if it was undertaken carefully enough and this is exactly what the post-positivist analytic philosophers are denying. But I think this denial takes place within the same basic metaphysical assumptions of the positivists, namely SOM. Notice what Steve's response was, for example. He seems to be doing the same thing even as he was denying that any metaphysical claims were being made. For example, Steve said,...

"Do you oppose the common sense notion that you are in the world? I think we can keep that notion without falling back into SOM so long as this notion isn't used as metaphysics. If it is a tool for using reality rather than a way of getting at what reality really is there is nothing wrong... Do you disagree with Rorty that you, DMB, are in the world? ... admit that you agree with the common sense notion that you exist in the world."

The thing is, the world of pure experience is nothing like the world of objects. So, yes, at this level of analysis I oppose the common sense notion that I'm in the world. See, the radical empiricist does not claim that access to this common sense world of objects is impossible. She's says the whole idea that there is some epistemic gap to be crossed is itself a fake philosophical problem. Radical empiricism begins by rejecting that premise in the first place. A lot of the quotes from Pirsig and James that I posted yesterday were about this attack on these assumptions. As you know, attacking SOM is central to Pirsig's work in general but here it's crucial. Notice how radical empiricism asserts "experience" as the way to eliminate SOM as "an artificial conception of the relations" between "discontinuous entities". When you get rid of that, there is no epistemic gap between subject and object and experience is no longer conceived in terms of subjective experience in an objective reality. Or rather you take that SOM picture as secondary to the lived experience from which that conception, and all such conceptions, are derived. 

"The first great pitfall from which such a radical standing by experience will save us is an artificial conception of the relations between knower and known. Throughout the history of philosophy the subject and its object have been treated as absolutely discontinuous entities; and thereupon the presence of the latter to the former, or the 'apprehension' by the former of the latter, has assumed a paradoxical character which all sorts of theories had to be invented to overcome. All the while, in the very bosom of the finite experience, every conjunction required to make the relation intelligible is given in full." (James, WPE, p27)


Matt said to dmb:
It's perfectly reasonable to be suspicious of Rorty for backsliding, even for vague reasons like "he learned philosophy during the years positivism dominated academic philosophy."  Though, I can promise you, my vague reasons are a little more specific then the corresponding shadow you keep attributing to me, something like "because James calls it 'radical empiricism' Matt thinks it is just like traditional empiricism."


dmb says:


Hopefully you can see that my case is not all that vague. It doesn't just hinge on his background influences because I'm talking about how he comes to the conclusions he does, how he comes to be a neopragmatist as it's described in the Fish article and as it's represented here by you and Steve. It doesn't even hinge on whether or not Rorty retains the assumptions of SOM, although a case could be made for that too. I'm only interested to show that SOM is the framework in which he denies the possibility of objectivity, in which he levels his critique of traditional empiricism. As Hildebrand put it above, Rorty "needs to give a nod to the reality of objective things so that it may then argue that access to them is not just impracticable, but IMPOSSIBLE."

And the problem as I see it is not exactly that you think radical empiricism is just like traditional empiricism. The problem is that you repeatedly use the neopragmatist's critique of traditional empiricism to justify your dismissal of radical empiricism. So I'm trying to explain exactly how and why that critique is not even relevant to radical empiricism. SOM has to be addressed in the making of this case because that's the framework in which the positivists were making claims, it's the framework in which Rorty and friends are denying the positivists' claims and it is the framework which James and Pirsig identify as a problematic and artificial metaphysical arrangement. 

"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 positivist's 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." (Emphasis and parenthetical remarks are Hildebrand's, p169)

By contrast, radical empiricism maintains that experience and reality are the same thing and so there is no noumenal world only the phenomenal world, a world of pure experience. There are no things in themselves and there is no world in itself and so there is no epistemic gap between us and what's "out there". The "the world" and "out there" and "in here" are part of a huge pile of analogies derived from experience. So when radical empiricists talk about "experience" in the "world" it's just a whole different deal.









 		 	   		  
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