[MD] Relativism

[Steven Peterson]

Hi DMB,

> dmb said:
> I doubt that Rorty denies that there is an objective reality. He just thinks we can't have access to it.
>
> Steve replied:
> First of all, the relationship of pragmatism and the MOQ to objective reality should not be simple denial. . Nowhere does Pirsig say "objective reality does not exist." On the contrary, Pirsig says in the LC annotations, "The MOQ does not deny the traditional scientific view of reality as composed of material substance and independent of us. It says it is an extremely high quality idea. We should follow it whenever it is practical to do so."
>
>
> dmb replies:
...Anyway, I think you're quite mistaken. Pirsig and Rorty can both be
seen rejecting correspondence theory of truth and the possibility of
objective knowledge but they do so for different reasons. For Pirsig
and James, it follows from their rejection of SOM but for Rorty it
follows from the inability to get outside of our concepts and compare
them with an unconceptualized external reality. He doesn't deny SOM so
much as he denies that S can have access to O.

Steve:
What Rorty says is that objective reality as metaphysics is something
that he can't make sense of as anything more than a useful tool. You
won't find him saying "the objective reality does not exist!" because
to do so would amount to saying that it is objectively true that there
is nothing to this objectivity business. You shouldn't be looking for
him to say that. Even Pirsig denies denying that objective reality
exists. So should you or you will face some uncomfortable questions
like, is this truth that objective reality does not exist found or
made? If it is found, you affirm objectivity. If it is "MADE true in
experience," as you like to say, how is that done? How do we VERIFY
(in James's sense of making true) that objective reality does not
exist?

Rorty accepts the assertion "Most of the world is as it is whatever we
think about it (that is, our beliefs have very limited causal
efficacy)." He accepts it in the same way Pirsig accepts it "not as an
article of metaphysical faith but simply as a belief that we have
never had any reason to doubt." He would agree with the MOQ which
"does not deny the traditional scientific view of reality as composed
of material substance and independent of us. It says it is an
extremely high quality idea. We should follow it whenever it is
practical to do so."

Along similar lines, when someone asserts, "There is something out
there in addition to the world called 'the truth about the world'"
Rorty says he can't make any sense of it let alone affirm it or deny
it. For all this "objective reality" business, Rorty just says that it
is part of a Platonic vocabulary that he won't say is either
objectively true or false. Asking what you are asking is begging the
question in favor of the Platonist vocabulary. Rorty just says that
that vocabulary used to be useful but is no longer useful. That is how
you should answer unless you are prepared to say how it is "MADE true
in experience" that objective reality does not exist. (This is
Harris's objection to pragmatism by the way.) Alternatively, following
James, you could say that the assertion that objective reality exists
is true to whatever extent believing in it leads to successful action.
But I don't see how a pragmatist can coherently claim what you are
looking for Rorty to say.


DMB quotes Rorty:
> "There is no way to hold the world in one hand and our descriptions of it in the other and compare the two." (Rorty, 1981:180)

Steve:
I think you ought to see this as a nice attack on correspondence
theory. He is saying why it is incoherent to talk about comparing a
bit of language to a bit of reality. He is accepting the SOM picture
for the sake of argument to do a rudectio ad adsurdum just as James
did with “this tertium quid intermediate between the facts per se, on
the one hand, and all knowledge of them, actual or potential, on the
other”


DMB quotes Rorty:
> "There is no point in raising questions of truth ...because between ourselves and the thing judged there always intervenes mind, language, a perspective chosen among dozens, on description chosen out thousands." (Rorty, 1976:67)


Steve:
That sounds pretty damning but it also isn't Rorty's philosophy. You'd
have scored a big hit on Rorty as a Kantian if Rorty had been talking
about himself in this sentence, but he was not. He was talking about
Santayana's study of transcendentalism which he traced back to Kant.
(Next time could you save me the trouble of looking up the context
yourself?)


DMB quotes Rorty:
> "The notion of a 'theory of knowledge' will not make sense unless we have confused causation with justification in the manner of Locke." (Rorty, 1979:152)

DMB comments:
That last one is the most interesting. As I read it, Rorty thinks we
can only have a casual relationship with the world, a brute physical
relationship with the world, but we can never use that world to
justify our beliefs because there is no way to get outside our
language. And of course this is how he lands on the view that there
can be no restraints on justification except conversational
constraints.

Steve:
I'm not sure what this means, but if he is saying Locke is confused,
this is certainly NOT an example of accepting Locke's metaphysical
realms of mental substance and material substance.

As for the ability or inability to "use the world to justify beliefs,"
this is a big can of worms. I think your question relies on the
subject-object picture that you accuse Rorty of maintaining. There is
never "the world" on one hand and linguistic justifications of beliefs
on the other. You are right that Rorty doesn't see any value in the
notion of getting outside language. Nor do I, but I do recognize that
Pirsig clearly does. I agree with Rorty, pace Pirsig, that the notion
is incoherent once we drop the subject-object picture. While Pirsig
sees the mystic as saying that the fundamental nature of reality is
outside of language, Rorty is saying that that notion is incoherent
unless you imagine reality in one hand, you on the other, and language
as what James sarcastically called a tertium quid intermediate between
the two. Since, as Wittgenstein said, "It is only in language that one
can mean something by something," how could it mean anything to talk
about a fundamental nature of reality that is outside of language?

Language is a part of reality, and so are you. How could you ever talk
about which bits of reality are infused with language and which ones
are "pure" without using language to do it and spoiling the whole
endeavor? This isn't a *failure* of language to be adequate to reality
unless your view of language is one of correspondence. Dewey offered
an alternative view of language as a tool where this question about
comparing language to the fundamental nature of reality simply never
comes up. In the Deweyan view, language doesn't fail to adequately
represent (this is your misread of Rorty as a dissapointed positivist)
when it is not seen as representation of something else at all.

Language for Dewey is a tool like a hammer about which we would never
think to ask "does it adequately correspond?" For Rorty it is even
more like an extention of yourself than a tool that can be separated
from yourself.  A person is not something distinct from her thoughts.
"One can use language," says Rorty, "to criticise and enlarge itself,
as one can exercise one’s body to develop and strengthen and enlarge
it." Trying to compare language to something else that is outside of
language is in this analogy an attempt to step out of your own skin.
Why would anyone who has already dropped the correspondence notion
even think of trying to do that?

Best,
Steve