[MD] Pragmatic truth is neither nor

[david buchanan]

Ian asked:
Yet who (here, Matt or Steve say) is arguing for the for "the deflationary view" you describe in your concluding para ?

dmb says:
Matt has invoked it several times and otherwise defended the analytical approach. Also, the deflationary view and the hermeneutical view both rely on the truth/justification distinction that Steve has been pushing. I was talking to Matt and Steve about the issues THEY raised in their defense of Rorty.

Ian said:
You seem to be disagreeing with straw-men, or tilting at windmills.

dmb says:
Matt and Steve seem to think these strawmen and windmils can be pressed against James. If memory serves, this part of the debate began when Matt suggested that James's view didn't have the benefits of these 20th century developments. Like what, I asked, Tarski sentences? Now I'm explaining why today's defenders of the James are unimpressed with those developments. As Weed and others frame it, the analytic and the hermeneutical are still the two main rivals to James's pragmatism. Like others I've cited, Weed thinks that Rortyism differs enough that it ought not be called pragmatism, that he is usurper of pragmatism. He is of the hermeneutical stripe but comes out of the analytic tradition and aims his criticism at their projects. That's why I thought Weed's paper was exceedingly relevant to our debate.

You're welcome.

 Ian said:
... clearly experience IS excluded from conversation (unless we dramatically expand our understanding of conversation to include participatory experience as well as the reporting and imagining of it.) I doubt that's what Steve actually meant.



dmb says:
I think that conversation IS expanded to include sensory experience as well as the reporting and imagining it. That's what Sellars was getting at in saying that all awareness is a linguistic affair, even seeing patches of red. When postmodern folks says it's text all the way down, they mean that the world as we know it is a text, that reality is fundamentally interpretive. I hope that's what Steve and Matt are saying, because otherwise we've been talking about two different things. 

Sorry Ian, but you're really not helping. You're free to join the conversation but if you're just going to undermine the key conceptual distinctions and otherwise blur the lines, please find somebody else to talk to.