From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Sun Feb 08 2004 - 22:50:05 GMT
Matt, Anthony and all MOQers:
Professor Ronald Pine wrote:
In my opinion there was a lot of tightrope walking and weaseling in the
criticism of my rendering of Rorty. In fact, many statements just seem
plain contradictory. ...But let's take some concrete Rorty conclusions and
see if my critic can tightrope his way out of the relativism these
conclusions imply.
dmb says:
Yep. Weaseling. That's exactly the right word for it. Webster's says the
meaning of "weasel words" comes from "the weasel's reputed habit of sucking
the contents out of an egg while leaving the shell superficially intact" and
says they are "used to evade or retreat from a direct or forthright
statement or position." Thanks to the good Dr. Pine, we now have a word and
a phrase that accurately describes his critic's style. Here's just one
example of such weaseling....
Professor Ronald Pine wrote:
I claim that Rorty leaves us with no rational constraining process for
paths of propositions-brought-forward-in-defense-of-other-propositions,
and my critic claims this is just plain wrong. That Rorty is not saying
that the old notion of convergence of belief is being rejected, only that
we have no reason to believe that convergence will be successful.
(Nothing but tightrope walking here in my opinion.) This not only
contradicts the claim about the ease of achieving commensuration in
science (if we can achieve commensuration, our beliefs must be
converging), but the history of science provides us with much hope that
for rational human beings that our old-fashioned quaint nostalgic notion
of convergence in both metaphysics and morality is basically sound.
dmb says:
Rorty is not rejecting it, he only thinks there's no reason to think it will
ever work? That's an emtpy egg shell if ever there was one. The difference
between rejecting something and not accepting something is like the
difference between dropping it and letting it go. There is no real
difference. Weasel. Weasel. Weasel. It reminds me of the claim that Rorty is
not a materialist, he's a physicalist or that his atheism does not preclude
his acceptance of mysticism. Weasel. Weasel. Weasel.
----end----
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