[MD] DMB and Rorty

[david buchanan]

Steve said to dmb:
Pretty much what I wrote about was that there is no single "THEE question of truth" and that we should agree as pragmatists that there are a lot of questions that we would both like to drop. Dropping those questions doesn't mean that we can't ask new ones or are forced to "abandon truth" as you claim Rorty has done. He hasn't.

dmb says:
I'm a bit stunned by your denial. It defies belief. Like I said twice already, Rorty is famous for his refusal to do epistemology and he's famous for saying we should stop talking about truth theories. It not just MY claim. This fact is probably THEE central feature of the Stanford article on Rorty.

"The broad scope of Rorty's metaphilosophical deconstruction, together with a penchant for uncashed metaphor and swift, broad-stroke historical narrative, has gained Rorty a sturdy reputation as an anti-philosopher's philosopher. While his writing enjoys an unusual degree of popularity beyond the confines of the profession, Rorty's work is often regarded with suspicion and scepticism within academic philosophy.  ... it is particularly Rorty's treatment of truth and knowledge that has drawn fire from philosophers. While a great variety of philosophers have criticized Rorty on this general score in a great variety of ways, it is not very difficult to discern a common concern; Rorty's conversationalist view of truth and knowledge leaves us entirely unable to account for the notion that a reasonable view of how things are is a view suitably constrained by how the world actually is. This criticism is levelled against Rorty not only from the standpoint of metaphysical and scientific realist views of the sort that Rorty hopes will soon be extinct. It is expressed also by thinkers who have some sympathy with Rorty's historicist view of intellectual progress, and his critique of Kantian and Platonist features of modern philosophy.  ... However, critics are concerned not only with what they see as a misguided view of belief, truth, and knowledge, whether relativist, subjectivist, or idealist in nature. An important reason for the high temperature of much of the debate that Rorty has inspired is that he appears to some to reject the very values that are the basis for any articulation of a philosophical view of truth and knowledge at all. Rorty is critical of the role of argument in intellectual progress, and dismissive of the very idea of theories of truth, knowledge, rationality, and the like. Philosophers such as Hilary Putnam and Susan Haack have increasingly focussed on this aspect of Rorty's views. Haack, in particular, frames criticism of Rorty along these lines in moral terms; to her mind, Rorty's efforts to abandon the basic concepts of traditional epistemology are symptoms of a vulgar cynicism, which contributes to the decline of reason and intellectual integrity that Haack and others find to be characteristic of much contemporary thought. The charge of intellectual irresponsibility is sometimes raised, or at last implied, in connection with Rorty's use of historical figures. ..."


For the third time, this is what it means to say that Rorty has abandoned truth. In another section of the same article you can see this abandonment in Rorty's own words.

Stanford:
"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) 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. 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)"

dmb continuesThis is just a more formal version of what Fish was saying in the New York Times. See, we might agree that there are certain questions that should be dropped, questions about thee objective truth or the essence of truth for example. But Rorty thinks that dropping those particular questions means dropping epistemology in general. James and Pirsig don't take that approach. Instead of rejecting empiricism, they improve and expand it. In a very real sense, they go in the exact opposite direction from Rorty. 


Rorty's conversationalist view of truth and knowledge is one of those metaphysical positions that doesn't know it's a metaphysical position. Please notice that the author of the article says "this is a central part of Rorty's position", that he repeats it and elaborates it in his writings. As I see it, this part of my argument is not even debatable. 


And yet you deny it outright? Sigh. Please tell that's not what you meant. 









 		 	   		  
_________________________________________________________________
Hotmail: Trusted email with powerful SPAM protection.
http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/210850553/direct/01/