[MD] The Relativist's journey

[david buchanan]

> Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2011 08:53:46 -0500
> From: peterson.steve at gmail.com
> To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
> Subject: Re: [MD] The Relativist's journey
> 
> Hi dmb,
> 
> > 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:
> > 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. Pr
>  agmatic truths are static and intellectual while the mystic reality is neither of those things.
> 

Steve said to dmb:
My understanding was that empiricism prevents James from being a relativist while the fact that Rorty does not claim to be an empiricist makes him a relativist. You insisted in the past that empiricism makes a big difference when it comes to the issue of relativism. Now you seem to be saying that it makes no difference since you agree with me that "pure experience can't settle any ethical or factual truth claims." What gives?

dmb says:
I'm still saying that empiricism makes a big difference. But I'm also saying that you are confused about the differences and relations between pragmatism, radical empiricism and pure experience. You're blurring and conflating these things as if they were just different terms for the same thing. They're not. Is there is something about the explanation I've just given that you'd like me to clarify? Pure experience can't settle claims because it has nothing to do with the pragmatic theory of truth. James never said it was supposed to play that kind of role. I don't even see how it's possible but, like I said, you're confusing pragmatism with mysticism. Everybody jumps off the stove regardless of the reasons they later assign. It's those later reasons that can be pragmatically true or not. The negative value that prompted the jump isn't true or false. It's experienced and known acted upon and real in that sense but it's not a belief or a sentence such that it can be right or wrong. The radical empiricist cannot rightly dismiss this pure experience as unreal or as something that we can dismiss or ignore but it's not the sort of thing that settles arguments. Pragmatic truths are tested in experience, yes, but not pure experience. Pragmatic truths are concepts that are deliberately put to work in ordinary conscious experience, in the science labs, say, or in your own daily life. Pure experience, as everyone knows by now, is pre-intellectual and pre-conceptual. The pragmatic theory of truth - by contrast - is about the value and quality of intellectual concepts. Your reading crosses the line that James and Pirsig draw between concepts and reality, between static and dynamic. That is very, very confused, Mr. Peterson. Crazy bad and super mixed up.




Steve said:
...You can say truth is "what works," but that does not in itself give us any standards for what counts as adequate justification. As I quoted Rorty previously, "The way in which the properly-programmed speaker cannot help believing that the patch before him is red has no analogy for the more interesting and controversial  beliefs which which provoke epistemological reflection." The distinction between "works" and "doesn't work" is not a given for any non-trivial questions. It is something worked out among a community of inquirers who seek to justify their beliefs to one another.


dmb says:
Once again you are using Rortyism to combat an enemy who isn't here. James offered pragmatism as a way of mediating the differences between the classic and romantic thinkers, between rationalism and empiricism, between idealism and materialism. To suggest that this is even remotely related to trivial beliefs like the redness of patches is totally silly and implausible. You're confusing James's empiricism with the far more narrow empiricism that James rejects. James presented his pragmatism as a way to settle metaphysical disputes, to moderate between rival world views and rival philosophical visions. The distinction between what works and doesn't work pragmatically was invented to handle questions that are anything but trivial. Like I said, Pirsig and James are the type to worry about cats on matts or the whiteness of snow. That is the formally rigorous and conceptually empty style of analytic philosophers. Once again, you are barking up the wrong tree. 

I'm beginning to wonder if you've ever said anything about James or the pragmatic theory of truth that didn't confuse and distort things. Seriously. It makes no sense to treat James or Pirsig as if they were one of Rorty's Platonic enemies. His argument is about the limits of logical empiricism and it's a good one but it just don't make any sense to use that against pragmatists like James and Pirsig. 



Steve said:
By offering "what works" as not just a description of what beliefs will be held as true but as a "theory of truth," you haven't given us anything we didn't already have before adopting any theory of truth. 



dmb says:

By offering a theory of truth I haven't given you anything you didn't already have? So what you're saying, after all these explanations, is that the pragmatic theory of truth just isn't anything. Wow. You've shown nothing but confusion about that theory and yet you're willing to declare dismiss it as nothing. Seigfried calls James's work "a radical reconstruction of philosophy", Whitehead said James effected a copernican revolution, Richardson said pragmatism and radical empiricism were fused in "an explosion of creativity" and Pirsig says that James had not only nailed "truth" as a species of the good and rightly identified subjects and objects as secondary, he also hit upon exactly the same terms of the MOQ, namely static and dynamic. 

But you just go ahead and think what you want. The pragmatistic theory of truth couldn't possibly mean anything because "truth" and "empiricism" can only ever mean what Rorty's Positivistic and Platonic enemies meant by it, right? It's all or nothing, right? There couldn't be any chance that you're missing some nuance or subtlety, right. And all these explanations will just prompt you to repeat the same questions and objections as if they were nothing too. 

Seriously, dude. To use Rorty's arguments against James or Pirsig is to confuse entire schools of philosophy, separate camps in philosophy. To think of pure experience as if it were somehow comparable to objective reality, for example, is to confuse James with James's enemies, is to confuse the solution with the problem being solved. The idea here is not to merely insult you. It's just that I can see that you're very confused despite my efforts to explain and untangle. It's frustrating because I'd like to believe that this stuff is not all that hard to explain. One of things I like about it is that it's fairly simple. Naturally, since I'm the greatest teacher that ever lived on any planet (to infinity and beyond), I blame 100% of this confusion on you.