[MD] The Relativist's journey

[david buchanan]

Steve said to dmb:
...we ought to be able to agree that Rorty is no more of a relativist than you or I for denying that philosophy can do that.


SEP says otherwise:

"Rorty provides this view with a label: "Explaining rationality and epistemic authority by reference to what society lets us say, rather than the latter by the former, is the essence of what I shall call ‘epistemological behaviorism,’ an attitude common to Dewey and Wittgenstein." (PMN 174)
Epistemological behaviorism leaves no room for the kind of practice-transcending legitimation that Rorty identifies as the defining aspiration of modern epistemology. Assuming that epistemic practices do, or at least can, diverge, it is not surprising that Rorty's commitment to epistemological behaviorism should lead to charges of RELATIVISM or subjectivism. Indeed, many who share Rorty's historicist scepticism toward the transcending ambitions of epistemology—friendly critics like Hilary Putnam, John McDowell and Daniel Dennett—balk at the idea that there are NO CONSTRAINTS ON KNOWLEDGE SAVE CONVERSATIONAL ONES. Yet this is a central part of Rorty's position, repeated and elaborated as recently as in TP and PCP. Indeed, in TP he invokes it precisely in order to deflect this sort of criticism. In "Hilary Putnam and the RELATIVIST Menace," Rorty says:
In short, my strategy for escaping the self-referential difficulties into which "THE RELATIVIST" keeps getting himself is to move everything over from epistemology and metaphysics into cultural politics, from claims to knowledge and appeals to self-evidence to suggestions about what we should try." (TP 57)


Steve said:
In The Mirror of Nature, Rorty was showing how the two main branches of the Western philosophical tradition were doing similar things and making similar moves in moving away from foundationalism and converging on a sort of pragmatism.


dmb says:
The Mirror of Nature is the work quoted above, the one where "epistemic authority" is explained in terms of "what society lets us say". This is what what it looks like to reject empiricism or any kind of epistemology in favor of "intersubjective agreement". 

Apparently, I have to provide all the evidence on both sides of this debate. I mean, there is scholarly evidence on my side. When it come to what Rorty does and does not think, you (and Matt) have a lot more attitude than reasons or evidence. If there are good reasons, you're doing a fine job keeping them secret. I can show you what Pirsig says about relativism and I can quote Rorty on the topic too. Have you brought anything comparable to the table? And isn't it ironic that Rortyists are so unpersuasive. Rortyism says conversational constraints are the only kind and agreement is the main goal but I only ever see naked assertions and denials that are not only based on nothing, they're contradicted by basic, solid evidence (from SEP). It's so very unconvincing, Steve, and this is not just me being picky or setting some impossibly high standard. 

A post or two ago, for example, you said it was just ignorant and insulting to suggest that Rorty is a relativist. According to those ignorant hacks over at Stanford University, Putnam, Dennett and McDowell must be just as rude and ignorant as me. I guess I can live with that. 



Steve said:
Again, I am still amazed that an MOQer like yourself would still think that absolute/relative which is just one more version of subjective/objective is salient.


dmb says:
There is more than one way to be a relativist. Rorty's position shows quite clearly that the issue does not simply evaporate when we reject SOM. His epistemological behaviorism is criticized for being a form of relativism and that doesn't necessarily entail any such metaphysical dualism. Again, your claim is not only unsupported by evidence, it is contradicted by the evidence. 



Steve said:
...You are saying that Rorty's denial of the power of philosophical foundations amounts to saying we are left with nothing. Rorty also didin't think that the alternative to relative was anything fixed, eternal, or absolute.   ...The alternative is to make good arguments about what is good and to occasionally hold our assumptions for such arguments in question. The only bad news that Rorty had was that there is no way to hold all of your assumptions in question at once. That doesn't leave us with nothing. Though we can't step outside of history and culture, but we can still think critically about our own tradition.



dmb says:

Right, since we can't have any objective or absolute truths the alternative is to make good arguments about what is good. That's what I mean by "all-or-nothingism" and that's what the author of the SEP article is pointing to when it mentions the friendly critics who "balk at the idea that there are no constraints on knowledge save conversational ones". The article says, "THIS IS A CENTRAL PART OF RORTY'S POSITION".


Hasn't it ever occurred to you that Rorty's emphasis on conversation and language is very much at odds with the MOQ, which is centered around the pre-verbal primary empirical reality? This is one of the reasons I keep saying that the difference between Pirsig and Rorty is like the difference between radical empiricism and no empiricism. Don't you think THAT difference would have some impact on the issue of relativism? Of course it would. How is that even debatable?