From: Valence (valence10@hotmail.com)
Date: Sun Feb 09 2003 - 01:59:33 GMT
Hey DMB,
DMB
...I was just asking
the pragmatist how they would answer the question he posed and trying to
make the question clear. And I still don't see anything close to a
satisfactory response. All I can see in the attempted answers is more
evidence that Pirsig's criticism is a very powerful one. All I see is more
proof that pragmatism doesn't have a moral pot to piss in. Morally speaking,
it seems to live in abject poverty.
RICK
I don't believe Pirsig's criticism was "very powerful". On the contrary, I
thought it was pretty much irrelevant. As I tried to point out to you in
the last post, objecting to pragmatism because it is morally bankrupt is as
nonsensical as objecting to a pencil because it is morally bankrupt....
Saying the pencil is morally bankrupt because Hitler used it to write Mein
Kampf would be just plain silly.
DMB
...For example, the assertion that pragmatism is only a method and not a
position needs more explanation.
WILLIAM JAMES (from 'Pragmatism', 1907, chap.2)
[Pragmatism] is a method only.... ...it stands for no particular results.
It has no dogmas, and no doctrines save its method.
RICK
According to James, practicing this method simply means weighing
seemingly opposed positions by comparing the consequences of holding each
respective position. Pragmatism doesn't favor any particular result any
more than a scale favors any particular weight. In this sense, pragmatism is
like a syllogism (If A, then B. - A. - Therefore, B.). The syllogism
doesn't stand for any particular conclusion. It doesn't care what "B" or
"A" is. No matter what "B" or "A" are defined as, the syllogism is always
the same method. It's force comes from its form. Pragmatism is the same
way.
DMB
Also, Matt recently asserted that pragmatists don't
> believe in methods. So you'll please forgive me for being confused about
> such flatly contradictory claims.
RICK
I'm not sure what Matt meant when he said pragmatists don't believe in
methods. James pretty clearly believed in methods. Maybe Matt will
elaborate for us?
DMB
> Another thing, I know enough about pragmatism to see that there are
> different kinds. For Peirce, it was all about scientific certainty. For
> James it was largely personal and psychological. For Dewey is was about
> politics, education and the public good. Matt seems to be focused on none
of
> these, but rather on Rorty's brand, which seems to be tied up with the
> techniques of post-modern literary criticism. So I'd ask you to be
specific.
> Pirsig's criticism is of James in particular.
RICK
10-4 good buddy. My analysis has been and will continue to be
James-specific. You'll have noticed that I try to back up all my assertions
about pragmatism with quotes from James himself.
DMB
I'd even go so far as to say that James' pragmatism failed
> for the same reason all these other things have suffered, namely the
> inability to make the distinction between the 3rd and 4th levels and the
> inability to see the diffference between static and Dynamic Quality,
because
> "in his Victorian lifetime they were monstorously confused." And I think
it
> his claritfication of these things that saves Pirsig's brand of pragmatism
> from these moral nightmares.
RICK
Yes. This is precisely Pirsig's argument. I disagree with it because I
believe Pirsig has completely misunderstood James and confused James's
pragmatism with something which it is not. I'll try to show you how this
occurs. To begin, let's look at Pirsig's and James's respective tellings of
the squirrel story....
PIRSIG (Lila ch26 p374)
James and a group of friends were on an outing somewhere and one of them
chased the squirrel around a tree. The squirrel instinctively clung to the
opposite side of the tree and moved so that as the man circled the tree the
squirrel also circled it on the opposite side.
After observing this, James and his friends engaged in a philosophical
discussion of the question: Did the man go around the squirrel or didn't he?
The group broke into two philosophical camps and Phaedrus didn't remember
how the argument was resolved.
Did the man go around the squirrel or didn't he? He was north, south,
east and west of the squirrel, so he must have gone around it. Yet at no
time had he ever gone to the back or to the side of the squirrel. The
squirrel could say with absolute scientific certitude, "That man never got
around me."
JAMES ('Pragmatism', 1907, chap.2)
Some years ago, being with a camping party in the mountains, I returned
from a solitary ramble to find every one engaged in a ferocious metaphysical
dispute. The corpus of the dispute was a squirrel - a live squirrel
supposed to be clinging to one side of a tree-trunk; while over against the
tree's opposite side a human being was imagined to stand. This human
witness tries to get sight of the squirrel by moving rapidly around the
tree, but no matter how fast he goes, the squirrel moves as fast in the
opposite direction, and always keeps the tree between himself and the man,
so that never a glimpse of him is caught. The resultant metaphysical
problem is now this: *Does the man go around the squirrel or not?* He goes
around the tree, sure enough, and the squirrel is on the tree; but does he
go round the squirrel? In the unlimited leisure of the wilderness,
discussion had been worn threadbare. Everyone had taken sides, and was
obstinate; and the numbers on both sides were even. Each side, when I
appeared therefore appealed to me to make it a majority.
RICK
Immediately we can see some discrepancies in the two versions.
Phaedrus's version has James and friends witnessing a man chasing a squirrel
around a tree and then breaking into a philosophical debate about whether
the man goes "around" the squirrel. James's own version presents himself as
the deciding judge over a hypothetical, metaphysical dispute in which his
friends were engaged when he arrived. This discrepancy may seem minor now,
but it's actually quite important. Phaedrus's poor memory of "how the
argument was decided" will cause him to miss the whole point of it....
PIRSIG CONTINUED (Lila ch26 p374)
Who is right? Is there more than one meaning of the word "around"?
.... It seems as though the squirrel is using the term "around" in a way
that is relative to itself but the man is using it in a way that is relative
to an absolute point in space outside of the squirrel and himself......
What emerges is that the word "around," which seems like one of the most
clear and absolute and fixed terms in the universe suddenly turns out to be
relative and subjective.
RICK
From the preceding it is evident that Phaedrus believes the squirrel
anecdote was intended to make a point about relativism. But James meant
nothing of the sort! Here's the point James was actually trying to make...
JAMES CONTINUED ('Pragmatism', 1907, chap.2)
Mindful of the scholastic adage that whenever you meet a contradiction
you must make a distinction, I immediately sought and found one, as follows:
"Which party is right," I said, "depends on what you practically mean by
'going around' the squirrel. If you mean passing from the north of him to
the east, then to the south, then to the west, and then to the north of him
again, obviously the man does go round him, for he occupies those successive
positions. But if on the contrary you mean being first in front of him,
then on the right of him, then behind him, then on his left and finally in
front again, it is quite as obvious that the man fails to go round him, for
by the compensating movements the squirrel makes, he keeps his belly turned
towards the man all the time, and his back turned away. Make the
distinction, and there is no occasion for farther dispute.
RICK
Those details Phaedrus forgot were of paramount importance to interpreting
James's story. James had cast himself as the judge of a metaphysical
dispute precisely because the point of the story was about how pragmatism is
a method of settling metaphysical disputes!
JAMES CONTINUED ('Pragmatism', 1907, chap.2)
I tell this trivial anecdote because it is a peculiarly simple example
of what I wish now to speak of as *the pragmatic method*. The pragmatic
method is primarily a method of settling metaphysical disputes that
otherwise might be interminable.... The pragmatic method in such cases is to
try to interpret each notion by tracing its respective practical
consequences. What difference would it practically make to any one if this
notion rather than that notion were true? If no practical difference
whatever can be traced, the alternatives mean practically the same thing and
all dispute is idle. Whenever a dispute is serious, we ought to be able to
show some practical difference that must follow from one side or the other's
being right.
RICK
But Phaedrus has missed all of this. He has followed his own thoughts to
the conclusion that James was making an argument for some sort of
relativism....
PIRSIG (Lila ch29 p416)
From a pragmatic viewpoint the squirrel's definition of "around" was a true
one because it was useful. Pragmatically speaking, that man never got
around the squirrel.
RICK
Of course, the point of the story had absolutely nothing to do with 'the
squirrel's definition of "around"'. The "pragmatic viewpoint" that James
was trying to illustrate was that the disagreement over whether the man had
gone "around" the squirrel was an illusion created by the fact that "around"
has more than one meaning; and that no disagreement actually existed.
But Phaedrus has misread the whole thing as an endorsement of some brand
of relativism. Of course, we know that's impossible since James's
pragmatism doesn't stand for any particular results or dogmas. It was the
*method* James was illustrating in the squirrel story, not the stuff about
the squirrels. Unfortunately, the rest of Phaedrus's thoughts on pragmatism
are derived from this initial misunderstanding....
PIRSIG (Lila ch29 417)
James would probably have been horrified to find Nazis could use his
pragmatism just as freely as anyone else, but Phaedrus didn't see anything
that prevented it.
RICK
On the contrary, I think James would have been horrified to find that
his thoughts on pragmatism have been so badly confounded and misunderstood
that anyone might believe this criticism to be relevant in any sense.
James knew that people like the Nazi's could use his pragmatism as
easily as they could a syllogism. But he also knew that like the syllogism,
pragmatism was merely a method of thinking and not a belief system that
stood for any particular result or dogma. It can't be made to "support"
Nazism anymore than a syllogism or a pencil can be made to "support" Nazism.
Enough for now.
take care,
rick
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