[MD] Relativism

[Steven Peterson]

> Steve said to dmb:
> ... 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?
>
>
> dmb says:
> The same way we verify that santa doesn't exist. Just kidding. Everybody knows it's impossible to prove a negative.

Steve:
Well this is a big problem for anyone who doesn't keep justification
and truth as separate notions, isn't it. If what is true is MADE true
in experience, how is any negative MADE true? How is it MADE true that
objective reality does not exist?


DMB:
But yes, of course, the radical empiricist is saying that objective
reality was made, not discovered. In his essays, James says that the
idea of things-in-themselves is one of the transexperiential entities,
one of those metaphysical fictions, invented to deal with SOM. He sets
the parameters of his empiricism so that such fictions are only ever
taken as such. They can be acceptable on pragmatic grounds, if they're
useful. But as a general rule, if it can't be known in experience, we
should just keep it out of our philosophies and call it what it is;
pure speculation about something that, by definition, we can never
know. If it's outside of experience, it is outside of reality. There
is a nice symmetry here too. If it is known in experience, you better
have a place for it in your philosophy. That side of the doctrine
opens up a whole range of experiences that had been marginalized,
ignored and actively avoided by the traditional empiricists.

Steve:
If your pragmatism is merely MADE, why should anyone take it
seriously? If the idea that objective reality exists is made, then so
is the idea that objective reality does not exist. You said, "if it
can't be known in experience, we should just keep it out of our
philosophies and call it what it is; pure speculation about something
that." Doesn't that apply just as well to the idea that objective
reality does NOT exist as well as it does to the notion that objective
reality DOES exist? What I'm saying is that you should keep the notion
that objective reality does not exist out of your philosophy. the
whole question of "objective reality" ought not be part of the
pragmatist's vocabulary. That is why you won't find Rorty denying it
and why we found Pirsig denying that the MOQ denies it.

DMB:
> I'm just stunned by this. I thought you were one of the people who understood the MOQ but it looks like you've got no use for the central ideas and you don't mind taking sides with SOM, its central enemy. It's no wonder this conversation has been so frustrating.

Steve:
Well then, I guess the list of people who understand that MOQ is down
to just you and Bo.

DMB:
The rest of your reply made even less sense to me. You seem to be
offering a wildly incoherent view of truth wherein Rortyism and
realism are mixed in with a rejection of everything except SOM.

Steve:
I wasn't even talking about truth. I was talking about the issue of
language as something that ought to be transcended--whether a
pragmatist ought to agree or disagree with the mystic who says that
the fundamental nature of reality is out side of language. I was
helping you with your misunderstanding of Rorty as saying "we can
never use that world to
justify our beliefs because there is no way to get outside our language."

Perhaps you could try reading it again and tell me where I get all SOM
on you. I don't see how since I was criticizing the Pirsigian notion
of getting outside language as being an SOM idea about language
intervening between a subject and an object as he did in his lens
metaphor: "The culture in which we live hands us a set of intellectual
glasses to interpret experience with, and the concept of the primacy
of subjects and objects is built right into these glasses.  If someone
sees things through a somewhat different set of glasses or, God help
him, takes his glasses off, the natural tendency of those who still
have their glasses on is to regard his statements as somewhat weird,
if not actually crazy." I think he is using an SOM metaphor to attack
SOM. What the heck could it mean to take the glasses off? No he sees
the world as it actually is instead of with SOM blinders?

I said:
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