[MD] Pragmatic Fruits Indeed

[david buchanan]

For some reason, "[Bulk] Re: [Bulk] Re: Is this the inadequacy of, , the,	MOQ?" didn't strike me as a very catchy thread title, so I changed it.


Andre said to Tim:


... let me share with you my understanding of the philosophy of pragmatism to which the MOQ adheres. Firstly, the MOQ is a static intellectual pattern of value. It is an idea...a thought. For William James, pragmatism is a philosophy of action. I also believe that the MOQ is a philosophy of action. James believed that 'the meaning of thought is 'the production of belief' and that 'beliefs...are really rules for action'. He argues that we can evaluate actions better by their results than by their intentions or by their origins. 'To develop a thought's meaning' he wrote 'we need to determine what conduct it is fitted to produce: that conduct is for us its sole significance'. James' argument is 'fruits not roots'. ... He wanted to avoid verbal quibbles. 'There can BE no difference which doesn't MAKE a difference'. (The Heart of William James' edited by Robert Richardson, p183). ... No wonder James rejected the 'In the beginning was the Word' and replaced it with 'in the beginning was the deed'(!)...  As Phaedrus says, if a metaphysics doesn't improve the world a little, then don't bother.

dmb says:
Right. That's an important point and it's well said too. This notion of truth is very different from observational science and yet it is profoundly empirical. An idea is true when it successfully guides your experience, when it works in practice. And I think it's also important to see how ideas work WITH the leading edge of experience. As you rightly pointed out, "Phaedrus suggests that 'The leading edge is where absolutely all the action is. The leading edge contains all the infinite possibilities of the future. It contains all the history of the past'." (ZMM,p277) The idea used to guide experience will inevitably be derived the the past and aimed at the future. The present moment is where all the action is but this is going to be aimless without the patterns of the past. To describe the nature of experience, James uses images like riding the crest of a wave (cue the surf music) or a line of flame moving across a dry autumnal field. The idea, i think, is that the nature and quality of the present moment is intertwined with where it's been and where its going. And I think this is a good picture of how DQ and sq are constantly working together. Intellectualization is not OPPOSED to pure experience. They are not mutually exclusive. The distinction is simply that. DQ is different from sq for the same reason that the present is different from the past and the future. To use yet another of James's images, the stream of experience is different from the conceptual buckets we take from it.