[MD] Know-how

[david buchanan]

Steve said:
How do we know that all these "many commentators" don't also think that James is a relativist? 



dmb says:

Some of them do think James is a relativist. As the followers of Peirce see it, there are two kinds of pragmatists, Peirce's kind and James's kind. Susan Haack, Cheryl Misak and H.O. Mounce take this view, for example. As they see it, Dewey and Rorty are just Jamesians. Of all Rorty's critics within pragmatism, these Peircers are the harshest critics. (One of the reasons your use of Peirce to defend Rortyism is so ill-concieved.)

But the followers of James and Dewey tend to think it makes a lot more sense to distinguish them from Rorty because of Rorty's dismissal of their reconstruction of epistemology. As you probably know, Rorty adopts their demolition of the correspondence theory and their rejection of objectivity but he misreads radical empiricism as bad faith attempt to reestablish "direct perceptual realism". (Rorty in Brandom, page 90) 		 	   		  
_________________________________________________________________
The New Busy is not the too busy. Combine all your e-mail accounts with Hotmail.
http://www.windowslive.com/campaign/thenewbusy?tile=multiaccount&ocid=PID28326::T:WLMTAGL:ON:WL:en-US:WM_HMP:042010_4