[MD] The Relativist's journey

[david buchanan]

Steve said:
I still think radical empiricism can be a good tool for addressing sense-data empiricism, but unless dmb can demonstrate how an ethical or factual matter can be settled by appeal to pure experience without tacitly smuggling in a whole bunch of "impure" thoughts and other "impure" static patterns, then I can't see how Rorty or any of us who don't get all excited about radical empiricism can be thought of as somehow lacking (relativists!) for not claiming a basis in "pure experience" for our moral and factual claims. His "I have something you don't have" claims fall flat. Radical empiricism doesn't sound like anything of epistemological value.

dmb says:

Oh man. That is so mixed up I barely know where to begin.

First of all, pure experience can't settle any ethical or factual truth claims. Radical empiricism says that philosophers shouldn't talk about anything that can't be experienced and they should make room in their accounts of everything that is experienced. Pure experience, then, would be among the things that should be taken into account. This is an attack on old fashioned sense-data empiricism, which couldn't or wouldn't include such experience, and it is an attack on metaphysical entities like the Hegel's Absolute or Kant's things-in-themselves. The pragmatic theory of truth fits within the parameters of radical empiricism but it is more specific. Pragmatism is like a special chapter on truth within a larger book about reality in general. "Pure experience" doesn't really figure into that special chapter or the pragmatic theory of truth. The MOQ let's us have philosophical pragmatism and philosophical mysticism at the same time, but they certainly aren't the same thing. Pragmatic truths are static and intellectual while the mystic reality is neither of those things.


Steve said:
Apparently for dmb, it is not enough to say that a belief is well-justified. In order not to be relativists we also need to think that beliefs are "made true" by reality or else we are left with free-floating beliefs that are entirely unconstrained. His fear is that if knowledge is merely what our interlocutors will let us get away with claiming then some of us will get away with murder. ...dmb thinks he is still being a good pragmatist in rejecting correspondence theory since the reality he is appealing to is not the objective reality of SOM but the "pure experience" of radical empiricism. But if the "pure experience" is the reality that is supposed to make our ideas true, then I can't see how it functions differently from a correspondence idea of truth, and it has all the same problems as correspondence theory.


dmb says:

You can't see how it functions differently than the correspondence theory of truth? Well, I'm sure that has everything to do with your general confusion. As I'm sure you know by now, the MOQ rejects that theory quite explicitly and Pirsig joins James in saying that subject and objects - the elements that are supposed to correspond to each other - are secondary products of experience, not the pre-existing realities that make experience possible.
But it is true that the pragmatic truth is one that agrees with experience, one that works when it is put into actual practice. It is an empirical theory in that sense. True ideas are the ones that make sense of past experience and successfully guide present experience. The pragmatic truth is wedge and controlled by two main elements, the conceptual order and the empirical flux. In other words, it has to fit with standards like coherence and logically consistency and it has to agree with actual experience. This is meant to prevent people from getting away with murder so much as it is designed keep us honest and otherwise screen out the bullshit. It's also a form of humanism because the empirical test of truths is expanded way beyond disinterested observations and instead allows us to reckon with the consequences of beliefs and ideas in our own personal lives. Pirsig urges us to reject those attitudes of scientific objectivity for many reasons, but not least of all because of their isolating, alienating, effects on people. If you really believe that physical reality is the only real and objective reality, then you might tend to get the gumption sucked out of you by the thought that morals and values are just comforting fictions. I mean, his complaint about SOM painting a picture of a meaningless and purposeless and spiritually empty world is not just window dressing for his "real" objections. We shudder or kindle at such visions, James says, and that has everything to do with the philosophies we're willing to adopt or not. To put it a bit too clearly, James and Pirsig do NOT make me shudder but Rorty does. I think he puts us right back in that same soup of meaninglessness. 


Steve said:
It's like this: I have a sentence in one hand and pure experience in the other. How do I compare them to see if they are in the proper relation?


dmb says:
Again, that's very mixed up. An idea that is in "agreement with experience" is simply one that works when you act on it. "Pure Experience" is not comparable to "objective reality" AND it doesn't play a role in the pragmatic theory of truth anyway, as I explained above. And the whole business about comparing sentences to reality has nothing to do with the pragmatic theory of truth either. That's the kind of truth pushed by logical positivism and by those who like to talk about cats on matts and the whiteness of snow. That's the kind of thing that analytic philosophers get all excited about, but you're definitely barking up the wrong tree if you think I'm coming from there. Rorty has these anti-Platonic guns aimed at them, at his own tradition and his former self. But it gets no traction at all as a criticism of pragmatism.

Steve continued:
...Pragmatists think such a comparison is nonsensical. Pierce taught us to think of meaning in terms of utility to avoid such nonsense, so understanding the meaning of "truth" is simply the matter of saying how the word "truth" is used. James pointed out that "truth" is used to say that beliefs are well-justified and that that is all there is to it. ...



dmb says:
Well, no. This is your Rortyism re-framing everything in terms of words again. Pierce's most famous example of pragmatic meaning was "hardly" about words at all, pun intended. He said we can clarify the meaning of a word like "hard" when we can provide some kind of actual demonstration of what "hard" means in something OTHER than a sentence. Let's say I make a claim, I compose a sentence about how hard my diamond is. Let's say you turn to me and ask, "what do you mean by 'hard'?" I don't have say a word. All I have to do scratch some glass or hit it with a sledge hammer. When it doesn't break, then you'll know what I mean by "hard". I mean, Pierce's examples about the meaning and clarity of our ideas were about bringing concepts to bear in concrete actions, in actual experience. 

I'm pretty sure you're expressing Rorty's spin on it rather than the original idea. Funny thing is, he differs so radically from the originals that many thinkers are convinced that "pragmatist" is simply the wrong label for Rorty. I think it was Putnam who suggested "Rortyism" was a better term and so I adopted it too. It's seems about as clear and fair as a label can get.