From: Sam Norton (elizaphanian@kohath.wanadoo.co.uk)
Date: Tue Jul 19 2005 - 14:08:49 BST
Hi Paul,
> Good to hear from you and may I say that I was disappointed that you could
> not make it to Liverpool.
Not as disappointed as I was. Perhaps I'll have to save up my pennies to get
to Kyoto next year, now that I've developed a taste for Far Eastern
civilisation....
> Paul: I am suggesting that "generalised propositional truths" organise
> the
> intellectual level by maintaining central justificatory relationships
> within
> (or between) webs of beliefs, by means of e.g. logical inference. In ZMM,
> Pirsig talks about concepts being organised into hierarchies of thought
> with
> philosophy being in the most general, highest echelon.
I like the Rorty quote a lot, and I suspect we have a fair bit of common
ground. But there is still what seems to me to be a huge explanatory gap in
what you're saying (I may have missed something). Let me spell it out with
an analogy.
Take a stone - a particular static pattern of materials and chemicals which
can be described in inorganic terms. Now take a house - a particular pattern
of stones (or bricks or whatever) - which has been organised and structured
by human preference. (In other words, a human response to Quality drives the
shaping and agglomeration of the stones). It seems to me that we can take
'idea' (or manipulable symbol etc) in the same way as a stone, and that for
the ideas or stones to actually do anything (eg be taken up into a
geometrical proof) there needs to be some reference to a human response to
quality. Equations don't solve themselves, human beings (or computers) do
the solving. So it is the human being or computer which responds to Quality,
and which therefore constitutes an essential part of the description of the
symbol or idea. It is the human being which turns the stones into a house,
it is the human being which turns ideas into propositional truths.
When you say that 'generalised propositional truths' do some organising, I
am wondering: how? In what way can a proposition organise anything? Are the
sentences in the books on my shelves secretly plotting together for that
glorious day when the tyranny of human beings is overcome and the
propositions can leap free from their imprisonment on the printed page?
It seems to me that the response to Quality, the organising, comes through
the human being. Which brings us to Rorty, which I thought was great. I
would say that the 'web of beliefs' - quibbling a bit with 'belief' but let
that slide for a moment - might correspond to the mind which is responding
to Quality, and which is organising various other beliefs in the light of
that response. In other words, there is an agglomeration of ideas which then
assesses other ideas in terms of how they fit with what is already present
(and which might over time completely replace what is already present) but
in either case there is a particular pattern which is responsible for the
accepting or rejecting of ideas. There is no self separate from the
self-reweaving web (in Rorty's language) - but there is still precisely that
self-reweaving web which can do the work of responding to Quality (and which
is distinguishable from the 'generalised propositional truths' which are the
equivalent of the stones, not the house, let alone the architect or
builder).
In your explanation so far, it's precisely that self-reweaving web which I
can't see a place for. Hence my question.
~~~
On a related point, your reference to Quinean material reminded me of
Wittgenstein's On Certainty:
"I prefer the (Quinean?) term "web of beliefs" because it seems less
inflexible but says pretty much the same thing. In these webs, the
generalised propositional truths are "central" and the slowest to change
whilst the beliefs at the "edge" of the web may change quickly and often."
Some beliefs are part of our forms of life, they are not intellectually
derived or driven. " The child learns to believe a host of things. I.e. it
learns to act according to these beliefs. Bit by bit there forms a system of
what is believed, and in that system some things stand unshakeably fast and
some are more or less liable to shift. What stands fast does so, not because
it is intrinsically obvious or convincing; it is rather held fast by what
lies around it." (§144)
In Wittgenstein's conception the generalised propositional truths are those
which are superficial (ie less rooted in self and world) and come later
(they are *abstracted* from the life), it is the natural forms of life
(animal life) in which our language is embedded which are substantial (which
have 'depth').
"I did not get my picture of the world by satisfying myself of its
correctness; nor do I have it because I am satisfied of its correctness. No:
it is the inherited background against which I distinguish between true and
false" (§94)
Where I probably differ from Rorty is that I see the 'self-weaving web' as
necessarily containing elements (representations) derived from the other
levels, which root the web in the physical world and which constitute very
large elements of its character. I don't see it as autonomous.
Regards
Sam
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