From: Wim Nusselder (wim.nusselder@antenna.nl)
Date: Tue Dec 09 2003 - 07:51:55 GMT
Dear Matt K.,
Your questions (8 Dec 2003 15:01:48 -0600) of whether or not
- metaphysics and epistemology are optional,
- skeptics must be answered,
- neo-pragmatist philosophy should found other disciplines,
- sketching the boundaries of possibility is necessary,
- ahistorical Truth should be sought and
- Knowledge, Truth, Morality should be objects of inquiry
are a good start to found a narrative that prevents falling back on the
latches of Platonism, Cartesianism, Kantianism etc. and that shows how
neo-pragmatists have gotten to where you are.
By phrasing these questions into 'yes/no' questions, you suggest that
neo-pragmatists suddenly 'saw the light' and said something completely
different from their predecessors (even pragmatists). May I suggest you to
rephrase these questions enabling them to build a more convincing narrative?
The last of your questions makes me wonder whether neo-pragmatism can still
be understood as some form of 'inquiry'. If so, into what? History,
apparently, but what (structure/objects) do you search in history? What
kinds of distinctions justify speaking about 'a significant turn of events',
a kind of 'jump' in history?
Having read your 7 Dec 2003 13:34:00 -0600 post: what distinguishes past and
future, if not 'what is' from 'what is not (yet)'? If 'neopragmatists like
Rorty dissolve the old metaphysical distinctions and replace many of them
with a distinction between the past and future', as you wrote, aren't they
putting up an ontological distinction in disguise?
May I also suggest that (scientific) sketches of the boundaries of
possibility were (historically) useful to limit superstition, belief in
magic and all kinds of unrealistic hopes and ambitions? And that formulating
founding questions for other disciplines for them (instead of leaving it to
themselves) may help to integrate them, make them 'hang together' or at
least 'show how we have gotten to where we are' (different disciplines) from
where we were (one integrated world view per culture)?
As you see I am skeptic, but not unsympathetic towards neo-pragmatism. Do
you think I should be answered? (-;
With friendly greetings,
Wim
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