From: John Beasley (beasley@austarnet.com.au)
Date: Sun Oct 06 2002 - 12:03:33 BST
Hi Matt,
I've read a little Rorty, just the introduction to "Consequences of
Pragmatism" that Platt also read, just because it's available on the net. I
found it quite interesting, and certainly not without value.
I also read with interest an essay more critical of Rorty, titled "How Not
to Read Rorty", by Dave LeBoeuf, also on the net. I found it sane and
balanced in its critique.
He argues that genuine knowledge requires some form of empirical
verification, otherwise it becomes no more than faith. Putnam, for example,
talks of 'reason' rather than 'truth', but Rorty fails to see a problem with
taking language to be just social practice. LeBoeuf argues that this can
only go so far, though, before language ceases to function. We end up with
assertions, untestable in theory or practice.
Rorty asserts that "In a post-Philosophical culture, some other hope would
drive us to read through the libraries, and to add new volumes to the ones
we found. Presumably it would be the hope of offering our descendants a way
of describing the ways of describing we had come across-a description of the
descriptions which the race has come up with so far. if one takes "our time"
to be "our view of previous times," so that, in Hegelian fashion) each age
of the world recapitulates all the earlier ones, then a post-Philosophical
culture would agree with Hegel that philosophy is "its own time apprehended
in thoughts."
This seems like a commentary on commentary. Fun if you enjoy it, but it
leaves me rather cold.
Dave LeBoeuf quotes Pierce on a way of seeing reasoning which I warm to. To
Pierce, "Reasoning should not form a chain which is no stronger that its
weakest link, but a cable whose fibres may be ever so slender, provided they
are sufficiently numerous and intimately connected." It's a great metaphor,
and better than the one I invented in one of my essays where I talked about
the 'Jesus bird', the Jacana, which appears to walk on water but is actually
supported on a number of lily pads. I argued that a complete metaphysics,
fully self supporting, was no longer possible, but that we must isolate
different aspects which taken together are adequate to support our belief
system. Pierce's fibres makes the point more fully.
Rorty fails to escape the long term consequences of relativism and
irrationalism if he really believes that language is just social practice.
His value for me is in his critique of the outcomes of much of past
Philosophy, and the interesting insight he has on the limitations of
argument.
Regards,
John B
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