[MD] Pragmatic truth is neither nor

[John Carl]

John chimes in on  Steve and dmb,

On Thu, Dec 30, 2010 at 2:12 PM, david buchanan <dmbuchanan at hotmail.com>
wrote:

Steve asked dmb:
Can you give me an example of a constraint on knowledge claims that is
"practice-transcending"--one that isn't merely conversational?

dmb replied:
No, Steve. That's the false dilemma again and that's the point of Rockwell's
analogy. James's pragmatic theory of truth is NEITHER practice-transcending
NOR merely conversational.


John:

It begs a lot of questions, is what it does.  It's takes practice as its
praxis and refuses to engage further, is what it does.  Sorta
philosophically useless, if you ask me.  But mostly, it's a lot of negation
you offer, dmb and James, and not much positive direction, imio. (in my
idealistic opinion)



Steve asked dmb:
If there is a false dilemma here (an excluded middle?), then you must be
able to provide an example of a justificatory practice that is NEITHER
conversational NOR practice-transcending.

dmb says:
Can I provide an example? James's pragmatic theory of truth does not count
as an example?

John:

No, it does not.  Because, as I've said, it begs the question.  It takes
"what future experience would deem as true" as its criterion, and that
assumes a realization of a pre-existing "future truth" without really
delving in any deeper and thus remains sorta circular and non-meaningful.

dmb:

For the purposes of our discussion, I'd say it is THEE example. Against the
merely conversational approach, I'm asserting pragmatic truth as a form of
empiricism wherein our truths are tested by their performance in experience.


John:

Ok, let's just unpeel that a bit and see what it means in plainspeak.  Well,
"philo-plain-sophical"-speak, perhaps.  John-Carl-Speak, is what I really
mean.

First, all truths are tested by their performance in experience.  That's a
duh.  'Performance in experience translates' to "how true they turn out to
be in the long run".  The use of "true" in this formulation is what makes
the pragmatic turn, turn out to be a long circular driveway.  We're begging
the question then, we're rejecting the question on the grounds it doesn't
get us anywhere, while choosing this circular route, so that it won't get us
anywhere.  Why don't pragmatists want to get anywhere?  Because wherever you
go, there you are.


It just seems ridiculous to me.   Some people would actually like to get
somewhere, to progress.  To realize the true in future experience, that is
in tune with the true that is present to us now.    Which does not take
evasion and refusal to engage, but enthusiasm - en-theos-gasms - delving
into these questions, over and over.  As a process, as a means of getting
somewhere.
The urge to evade this process, continually fascinates me.
As a psychologist, W. James was a pretty good philosopher, but as a
philosopher?  Well, he was a pretty keen psychologist.   He's got a lot of
attraction to those of a certain neurotic obsession.  Each to his own, no
doubt.  Here's to a variety of religious experience.  I'll drink to that.


dmb:

Conversation is not excluded from experience, of course, but it's important
to understand that language is only half of the equation, the static half.

John:

Well, there's where you go so, so wrong.  Language is the dynamic half.
Language is probably the closest analogy I can imagine for what the MoQ
terms "DQ".  For it is out of a narrative of meaning (language) which
reality is born.  Without a story to guide one's selection of the myriad of
your "empirical facts" there is no realization or "reality".  Language is as
good a term for the complex interrelationship of meaning underlying what we
mean by "reality".  Quality is synonomous.  Bits come from Bytes.  Have you
been dozing in class again dave?


I know you'd be greatly aided by Ellul, actually, Human cognition is of two
different aspects.  We use words to understand truth, we use images to see
reality.  Of the two, the image-reality is static, fixed, communally agreed
upon and rarely argued.  Words-truth are of the  dynamic,  open to
interpretation and ongoing creative re-interpretation.  Language is the
ultimate dynamic and the pen, mightier than the sword, in the end.

dmb:

As Seigfried points out, Rorty understands language to be free-floating and
he ascribes this view to James. Seigfreid thinks he's wrong on both counts
and so does Weed:

"Rorty writes as if his position were close to that of William James, but
both James's appeal to the stream of conscious experience as a source of
recalcitrant psychological truth, and his appeal to processes of
verification as collaborators for theoretical and learned truth are missing
from Rorty's approach to the subject.

John:

Good thing, too!  A true philosopher knows how to slip solipsism.

dmb (quoting Weed or on it):

..Rorty collapses all of the terms used by pragmatists into a very
Foucault-like social category as his analysis of James's pragmatic
conception of truth in praxis works...  I think that Rorty has elided
'empirical' and 'sociohistorical' to ignore the empirical stress in James's
conception of truth and replaced it with a far more Foucault-like
sociohistorical concept, for which he then usurps the 'pragmatist' label.
...I don't think Rorty is entitled to call himself a pragmatist on the issue
of truth, at least not of a Jamesian stripe." (Laura E. Weed in "The Concept
of Truth that Matters", pages 8-9. Published online by Harvard's William
James Society.)

John:

Well, Weed is probably smarter than me, but I'm with Rorty on that one.  It
sounds like he's filling in the parts of pragmatism that James was missing -
the "socio-historical" is the cultural narrative that I mean by "language"
and "DQ".  I think "Pragmatist" is a tool/stance used by
philosophers of various bent.  Pragmatism as a way of doing philosophy,
rather than a philosophy in itself.   That's a recurring idea of mine, but I
don't think I came up with it.  I seem to recall it from somewhere.

dmb:

Basically, she's saying that Rorty has taken the empiricism out of James's
theory of truth and replaced it with mere conversation.

John:

"Mere" conversation.  Like the pejorative "only" as it's all "only" in your
head.  Well, imio, it is all conversation and it's all in our heads - AS
mere conversation.  What else could be more fundamentally "true" than
that?   Pragmatically speaking (!)

dmb:

As the Stanford article points out, the notion that there are no constraints
on truth outside of language is a bit shocking even to Rorty's friendliest
critics and they can't follow him quite that far.

John:

Well maybe it's cuz all his mates are academics.  (Holly to Lister: Wasn't
it Jean Paul Sartre who said "Hell is other people." Lister to Holly:  Yeah,
but all his mates were French.)

dmb:

I think this is worth mentioning because there seems to be some confusion
about what is and is not the pragmatic theory of truth. I cite Seigfried,
Weed and others because I think they're right to call Rorty a usurper of the
label. And so a lot of what I've been doing in trying to explain how very
different they actually are. And as I've said before, I think it basically
comes down to a battle between experience and language, between an empirical
theory of truth and a free-floating conversation.

John:

Well, I agree.  There is "a battle" and lines are drawn and there are two
sides, duking it out, philosophically speaking... and dave?  I call that -
"free-floating conversation" and I call that - a Good thing.

Nay, I call that, THEE Good Thing.


dmb:

"Beliefs at any time are so much experience FUNDED. But the beliefs are
themselves parts of the sum total of the world's experience, and become
matter, therefore, for the next day's funding operations. So far as reality
means experienceable reality, both it and the truths men gain about it are
everlastingly in process of mutation - mutations toward a definite goal, it
may be, - but still a mutation." (Emphasis is James's)

John:

All true.  "A definite goal, it may be" - indeed.  But an idea, most of
all.  A positive idea.

dmb:

"True ideas are those that we can assimilate, validate, corroborate and
verify. False ideas are those that we cannot. That is the practical
difference it makes to us to have true ideas; that, therefore is the meaning
of truth, for it is all that truth can be known-as."

John:

Here's where he goes wrong.  He ties truth only to assimilation, validation,
corroboration and verification whereas we all know that there are "truths"
which have been all those things, yet still FALSE.

dmb quoting James:

"The truth of an idea is not a stagnant property inherent in it. Truth
HAPPENS to an idea. It BECOMES true, is MADE true by events.

John:

Ok, let's do a little metaphysics here.  What's an "event", hmmm??  All he's
really saying is that truth is a judgement.  Because what "event" could we
be talking about except for the event of a subjective judgement of perceived
objects- mental or otherwise?  That's the only "event" that we ever
"experience".

James:

 Its verity IS in fact an event, a process, the process namely of its
verifying itself, its veri-FICATION. Its validity is the process of its
valid-ATION" (emphasis is James's)

John:

Right.  And what is a good name for this "process", this "event" this
"entanglement between".  I then "free-floating conversation" sounds like as
good a label as any, for that is what it is. - a conversation - a narrative
construction of call and response.  Maybe Rorty is in cahoots with James
after all.  And his critics and your friends are way, way off base after
all.  Hmmm.... wouldn't that be interesting if proved true by "future
experience"... eh?  But the nice thing about the future, is you get to
ignore it forever!  It's always off in the future, and thus you can just
stick with whatever truth you please.  Something to put your own shiny self
in it's best light, no doubt.   I get it.  I really do.

dmb:

This is what I mean by saying that pragmatic truth is not something over and
above a justified belief. I think James is saying that justified beliefs are
all we mean by the word truth. As a practical matter, that's all you're
going to get. To say that truth can never mean anything more than that is to
give up on the Platonic ideal of Truth altogether and instead present a
human-sized theory about the kind of actual truths we can and do have.

John:

There is nothing wrong with the human ideals of truth, love and quality.
Keeping them as ideals, does more good than harm.  Any real pragmatist would
agree.

Thanks for the conversation tho.  Tardy as it might be.

John