From: Matt Kundert (pirsigaffliction@hotmail.com)
Date: Tue Feb 08 2005 - 20:50:57 GMT
Hey Scott,
Scott said:
Perhaps "motivation" is too strong. But there are occasions where he says
that he sees pragmatism as a continuation of the Enlightenment project of
doing away with religious baggage. On getting off the see-saw between
materialism and idealism, I again see cases where he has gotten off on the
materialist side, and seems to assume that all of his audience has as well.
…
Now here he is arguing against the Nagel's and Searles's, who also happen to
be materialists. So within this context, Rorty makes sense. But if the
reader (me) is not a materialist, then I can agree with Rorty that it is
good to get rid of the intuition that "truth is more than assertability" but
it is bad to get rid of the intuition that "there is more to pains than
brain-states". So overall, I consider this passage only makes sense if
wherever it says "pragmatist" it is understood that he is saying "pragmatist
who happens to be a materialist".
…
Now I also want to remove the captivity of the Cartesian-Lockean picture of
the mind, and the Cartesian Theater, but I also want to remove Darwinism as
an account of the origin of consciousness and language (I hold that
consciousness and language do not have a temporal origin. Rather, time is a
product of consciousness). So, again, Rorty is speaking as a pragmatist who
is also a materialist. So the big question in my mind is whether it is
possible to be an immaterialist pragmatist, since it seems that whenever I
want to state a disagreement I have with Rorty, I am saying something about
the ultimate nature of reality. Which, on the other hand, is why I would
claim that Rorty is himself saying something about the ultimate nature of
reality, for example, in his adoption of Darwinism. To steal from his
vocabulary, I fail to see how Darwinism makes any difference in how one
deals with any environment other than the philosophical one -- seeing it,
that is, as a reason to deny immaterialism.
Matt:
Its true, there aren’t many live idealists or immaterialists or
panpsychists. And its true, as Rorty is certainly willing to admit in his
older age, there are some passages in his earlier writings that are a little
too gung-ho about a kind of militant atheism and/or materialism. But I
think you are still missing the main thrust of these passages (the same
thrust that is even in his earliest writings on mind/brain identity), the
thrust of which comes out better in relation to religion in his later, more
recent works (I’m particularly thinking of “Pragmatism as Romantic
Polytheism” and “Pragmatism as Antiauthoritarianism”).
Rorty wants us to ditch the intuition that “there is more to pain than
brain-states” because in its rendering in the philosophical tradition it has
led to epistemological controversy. He sees “truth is more than
assertability” and “pain is more than a brain-state” as part of the
constellation of problems that Plato bequethed us. Now, you are saying that
there is a difference. You want to say that while “truth is more than
assertability” is hopelessly Platonic, “pain is more than a brain-state” is
not. While Rorty thinks that a physicalist explanation of pain is all we
need, you think there is more to pain that needs explaining. The question
at hand is what that is. The crux, I think though, is that if there is
something more we need about pain, why do we need a vocabulary that
supplants the one we use for predicting and controlling physical pain, the
one that treats pain as a brain-state and nothing more. Why can’t we have
more than one vocabulary for dealing with pain, based on whatever purposes
we need them for? Rorty himself uses two different vocabularies. In PMN,
he uses the vocabularly of mind/brain identity to dissolve the apparent
epistemological difficulty with pain. In CIS, though, he uses a moral
vocabulary to capture the important interest we have in pain (specifically
cruelty and humiliation).
I keep bucking against your formulation of the controversy between us
because I don’t think any of it is hinged on me being a materialist and you
not. _Materialism_ as an ontological thesis only makes sense if you are
doing Cartesian metaphysics. The see-saw between materialism and idealism
isn’t dropped because, hey guess what, materialism wins. Materialism can’t
win and neither can idealism, at least not as long as the philosophical
tradition continues, because there is no criteria to determine the victor.
Rorty is trying to show us the way off that see-saw by showing epistemology
to the door. What is left is not materialism-as-an-ontological-thesis, but
commonsense-materialism, the kind that says that physics is good at
predicting stuff and the kitchen table will be there even if we aren’t.
Non-reductive physicalists don’t need physics for anything more than that,
just as we don’t need kitchen tables for anything more than holding things
up while we’re gone.
For me, this all revolves around the idea of _reductionism_. Reductionists
want to reduce _everything_ to a certain, priveleged vocabulary. Rorty
doesn’t want to do that anymore. His struggles against other materialists
is the struggle to show them that there really isn't anything that
interesting about materialism, that they should stop being reductionists.
Vocabularies are useful for some things and not for other things. We try
them out and if they don’t work, if there are too many problems, you can try
another vocabulary. The idea of pragmatism that Rorty adheres to is that
there is no sense in priveleging any vocabulary over any other because there
is no sense in priveleging one set of purposes and goals over another, at
least not in any universal, general sense. Sometimes we want to predict,
sometimes we want to interpret a poem, sometimes we want to figure out why
we eat dirt. Physics is good for one, a Bloomian theory of genius for
another, and a Freudian notion of the uncounscious for the other. But there
are many more purposes than those, and so many more vocabularies. If
Darwinism’s only consequence is in the philosophical community, than that’s
the only consequence we need for Darwinism to be useful, the only purpose
for which we need Darwinism. (I don’t think that’s Darwinism’s only
consequence, but then I’m not really sure what you’re getting at there.)
The idea is that you can be an immaterialist in Rorty’s world _as long as
you don’t propound metaphysical theses_. You see to want to, but only in
the sense, it would seem, that nobody can help but to. Two things, though:
If metaphysics is that ubiquitous, we have a question-begging problem
because the pragmatist doesn’t think she has to propound metaphysical
theses, she thinks they are optional. (I’ll talk more about the relation
between metaphilosophy, philosophy, and metaphysics in my next response to
your other post.) And two: Why don’t you think metaphysical theses lead to
epistemology? This ties to my claim at the beginning of my latest series of
interloctions: “To deny the need to do epistemology, and maintain an
appearance/reality distinction, is to regress to a pre-Cartesian
‘metaphysical dogmatism’ where we simply assert our correct interpretations
of the True Reality without any criteria for success.” How is this not bad?
I guess the gist of what I don’t get is what we get from an immaterialist
account. How does it supersede, and on what counts, physicalism?
Presumably you think physics works for some things, so on those counts you’d
be a physicalist. Where does it end? I’m guessing “at the point of
consciousness,” but why can’t we have a Darwinian account of consciousness?
You invert the cycle (“time [and presumably creation in general] is a
product of consciousness”), but where does that really leave us? We’ve
learned from many different philosophers that we can call reality “God” or
“Good” or “Quality” or “Spirit” or “Being” or “Idea,” but the thing we keep
learning is that often it doesn’t take us any place different, at least any
place we can get to without epistemology. Spinoza’s God and Berkeley’s Idea
didn’t leave us any place different and neither does Pirsig’s Quality. They
were creative redescriptions for very distinct purposes (make room for God
in a mechanistic universe, show how bound up our minds are with the world,
show how bound up the act of valuing is with our encounter with the world).
So what is your purpose? If we can accept physicalism on certain counts,
what counts does it fail and what alternative are you proposing?
Scott said:
Given the history of what happens when religion is argued on the public
stage, e.g., the Thirty Years War, burning heretics, etc., one has to be
grateful to the Enlightenment for putting an end to it, or trying to. So on
a practical level, I agree with this. But on a philosophical level, I don't.
…
Moreover, in part thanks to the Enlightenment, the question of intellectual
responsibility very much does arise in religion. I happen to think that
religion and reason are entirely compatible, that a religious outlook is
more reasonable than a secular one, and though it will take a long time, the
One, True religion -- whatever it turns out to be -- is something that
should be a goal to work out publicly, as a matter of intellectual
responsibility. Our current pluralist state of many religions living side by
side is a temporary stage of human development, that can be overcome through
intellectual endeavor. Now I consider it extremely unlikely that I can
convince you or Rorty of this, so he is right that it is a case of
"intentional states which can rarely be justified, to our peers". But this
leaves open whether this is because of the nature of religion or the state
of our intellectual development.
Matt:
Rorty doesn’t want anything more than the practical level most times. Rorty
works on two levels, too. The most important level is the practical level,
which is the point of his claiming the “priority of democracy to
philosophy.” On the philosophical level, Rorty would more often than not
stigmatize a lot of religious beliefs (ala Nietzsche) as “metaphysical
comfort.” But that doesn’t mean there aren’t more purposes than that. One
purpose that Rorty has had a hard time coming to terms with is the idea of
religion being a social movement, ala MLK’s movement and the Christian
Coalition. Martin Luther King was undoubtedly good and religion played a
strong (if not primary) role in the American Civil Rights movement. (Look
at Ghandi, too.) But on the other hand, the Christian Coalition is a bunch
of thuggish, cultural reactionaries trying to use politics to make everyone
more like them. (Look at the Taliban, too.) So what are we supposed to do?
Rorty’s not entirely sure. In PSH you have a copy of “Religion as a
Conversation-Stopper,” which I still see as essentially right. Recently
though, Rorty has rescinded on some of his views in that short paper (can’t
remember what it was called, but I think its on the internet someplace),
mostly through conversations, I have a feeling, with his past Princeton
colleagues Cornel West (who’s trying to revive a liberal tradition rooted in
Christianity) and Jeffery Stout (who recently published a greatly received
book, Democracy and Tradition).
But I guess the real question is, if you agree with our current situation
even as you disagree both in predicting and hoping for the future, what
would you have us do on a political level? For if cultural progress is as
Rorty models it, as a conversation, it is entirely possible that the
conversation, in the full extent of time, will swing to your favor. We may
end up all religious in a sense you are predicting and hoping for. But this
type of Peircian/Habermasian thesis that the True will be reached at the end
of Conversation plays no part in the actual conversation working out better
and better descriptions. We just keep having the conversation, and
intellectually evolving, until it stops. Our intellectual responsibility is
Miltonian: if we keep “free and open encounters” and keep the conversation
going by not letting it stop by, say, political fiat, then truth will work
itself out.
Matt
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