[MD] Rorty, Pirsig and the Sophists

[david buchanan]

Ian said:
 you lose me on the Rorty agenda again. For example, where is it that Rorty " blatantly privileges discourse" - actual Rorty quotes, rather than his critics?

dmb says:

If I run across something maybe I'll post a quote or ten. But I don't think the idea is controversial in the least. His most famous slogans refer to it; solidarity, intersubjective agreement, linguistic turn, enthnocentrism. Rorty "critics" by the way, aren't just a guy of guys who have negative things to say. "Criticism" is a neutral word in academia, like "analysis" or "inspection". negative assessments are often part of it, but his "critics" are top notch pros who are in a position to analyze and inspect. I mean, as far as things like this go, Rorty's critics just as good as Rorty himself. In fact, Rorty offers a reply to every essay in "Rorty and His Critics". Even more, the source I cited was a response to Matt's post the other day. He made me aware of that particular critic. Or was it Steve? In any case, I object to you objection.
My evidence is sound, relevant and not objectionable in any way.

But if you're really just not sure that it is true, read the Standford encyclopedia article. Matt recommended that to me a while back and it is considered a decent scholarly source. Rorty's "discursive bias" should be pretty obvious from that. 


Ian said:
I would say (guess) his position is more likely that when doing discourse - philosopher to philosopher - the discourse is all we've got, but does he actually say / suggest that outside discourse there is less value in experiencing life?

dmb says:
There is less value in life than in discourse? Nobody is attributing that view to Rorty. Well, I'm not anyway. The bias toward language is within philosophy. That's true with analytic philosophy, for sure, and he worked in that for 30 years, I think. Then his post analytic phase he's talking about new vocabularies, new ways of talking, intersubjective agreement, etc, so that everything changes except the focus on language.  


Ian said:
It might help if I understood the phrase "retains the old bias of epistemology" ? (Personally, when I think epistemology, I'm thinking the meaning of life, not the meaning of words.)

dmb says:

Allen was just saying that Rorty's discursive bias goes all way back. It's an old bias that Rorty retains even though he was so adamant about avoiding epistemology. He is very keen on getting rid of the idea that our truths are answerable to something other than us. For Rorty, submitting our beliefs to the demands of "objective reality" is the secular version of submission to God. He thinks both are childish and it's time to grow up. While I think he has a good point there, he takes this aversion to drastic, and I'd say absurd, extremes. 

ALL awareness is a linguistic affair? Is it really text ALL the way down? Is there really NOTHING outside the text?

It is a very important insight. Don't get me wrong. Pirsig goes along with this idea. Our world is built of ghosts and analogies, as he'd paint it. But in the MOQ these analogies were built in response to the lived Quality and when they operate well in experience they stick around. There is a primary empirical reality, a kind of awareness that is not linguistic or conceptual. That's the Zen spin on this language business. You could say the linguistic turn gets a further mystic turn. I mean, the mystics saw this about language long ago. Maya means "illusion" and "measure". 

"The difference was that Plato's Good was a fixed and eternal and unmoving Idea, whereas for the rhetoricians it was not an Idea at all. The Good was not a FORM of reality. It was reality itself, ever-changing, ultimately unknowable in any sort of fixed, rigid way." (ZAMM:379)

Thanks,





 		 	   		  
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