[MD] Pragmatic truth is neither nor

[Ian Glendinning]

DMB inserted below :

> dmb says:
> Matt has invoked it several times and otherwise defended the analytical approach.

[IG] I honestly doubt it. (But there is a massive irony in your
statement anyway, which we can come back to if and when Matt
re-appears.)

> dmb says:
> Matt and Steve seem to think these strawmen and windmils can be pressed against James.

[IG] I honestly doubt it. I see them as pressing it against the
significance of a distinction you wish to make about James (and
various more or less pragmatic understandings of truth), and your
reasons for doing so.

> 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.

[IG] Hmmm OK. Linguistic (internally / mental conversation) yes may be
seen as "part of" sensory experience, (but I doubt you are saying
that's a radical empirical view). You said in the previous post that
this was the item you took issue with, in defending your understanding
of it.

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.

[IG] Again I doubt that too. I'd say, PoMo's (if we're generalizing)
are saying that it is true enough for pragmatic use in the world as we
know it, for all practical purposes of discourse, other than actual
experience. Matt's point (not sure about Steve) was to make a
distinction between discourse and living life.

> 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.

[IG] You say undermine and blur and not-helping. Your choice. Feel
free to revert to ignorance of my inputs.
Ian