[MD] No non-conversational constraints on justification

[Steven Peterson]

Hi DMB, Matt, all

DMB has long seemed to me to be confused about what Rorty means by
intersubjectivity and conversational constraints on knowledge as if
there is something dangerously relativistic about his notion of
justification.  I'll try to clear up the issue.

Just as Pirsig's calling inorganic and biological patterns "objective"
and social and intellectual patterns "subjective" was an attempt by
Pirsig to continue to get some mileage out of the terms after dropping
the subject-object picture, "intersubjectivity" is Rorty's attempt to
make some pragmatic sense of objectivity.

For Rorty, "what guarantees the objectivity of the world in which we
live is that this world is common to us with other thinking beings.
Through the communications that we have with other men we receive from
them ready-made harmonious reasonings. We know that these reasonings
do not come from us and at the same time we recognize in them, because
of their harmony, the work of reasonable beings like ourselves. And as
these reasonings appear to fit the world of our sensations, we think
we may infer that these reasonable beings have seen the same thing as
we; thus it is that we know we haven't been dreaming. It is this
harmony, this quality if you will, that is the sole basis for the only
reality we can ever know."

Of course we know that this is also how Pirsig sees the situation as
well since he wrote that bit in ZAMM. Apparently Pirsig didn't see any
non-conversation constraints on knowledge either.

Best,
Steve











In ZAMM Pirsig talks about the conversational constraints on
knowledge, intersubjectivity, as the only basis for making pragmatic
sense of objectivity--"the sole basis for the only reality we can ever
know":
"What guarantees the objectivity of the world in which we live is that
this world is common to us with other thinking beings. Through the
communications that we have with other men we receive from them
ready-made harmonious reasonings. We know that these reasonings do not
come from us and at the same time we recognize in them, because of
their harmony, the work of reasonable beings like ourselves. And as
these reasonings appear to fit the world of our sensations, we think
we may infer that these reasonable beings have seen the same thing as
we; thus it is that we know we haven't been dreaming. It is this
harmony, this quality if you will, that is the sole basis for the only
reality we can ever know.