From: Matt the Enraged Endorphin (mpkundert@students.wisc.edu)
Date: Wed Feb 19 2003 - 00:55:56 GMT
Platt,
Platt said:
But Pirsig--like Rorty, like you,
like me-- could be wrong. He's admitted as much. I'd like to see Rorty
do the same.
Matt:
Is that all you want? Well, hell, I coulda' produced that ages ago.
Unfortunately, I can't find the best places where he says outright,
roughly, "History may show that pragmatism is one more stepping stone on
the way towards something else," but this is kinda' close:
"It [following Hegel in describing "our own community and our own
philosophical views in terms of parochial, temporary, contingent needs"]
would lead one, for example, to put forward an account of truth not as
something that clears up all difficulties or removes all obscurities
connected with the topic, but as something useful in clearing up _our_
difficulties and removing _our_ obscurities. If one claims that a theory
of truth is what works better than any competing theory, one is saying that
it works better by reference to _our_ purposes, _our_ particular situation
in intellectual history. One is not claiming that that was how it would
have paid, always and everywhere, to have thought of truth. It is simply
what it would be best for _us_ to believe about truth. Taken as part of an
overall philosophical outlook, such a theory would be part of an attempt to
hold _our_ age in thought." ("Dewey Between Hegel and Darwin")
Rorty's hope and prediction is that pragmatism is our age held in thought.
He does recognize, though, that we will have to let go of certain things
from the past, particularly those things that Nietzsche characterized as
"metaphysical comforts."
"John Dewey once quoted G. K. Chesterton's remark that '[p]ragmatism is a
matter of human needs and one of the first of human needs is to be
something more than a pragmatist.' Chesterton had a point, and Dewey
granted it. Dewey was quite aware of what he called 'a supposed necessity
of the "human mind" to believe in certain absolute truths.' But he thought
that this necessity had existed only in an earlier stage of human history,
a stage we might now move beyond. He thought that we had reached a point
at which it might be possible, and helpful, to wrench ourselves free of it.
He recognized that his suggestion was counterintuitive and would meet the
kind of opposition Searle mounts. But he thought that the long-run good
done by getting rid of outdated needs would outweigh the temporary
disturbance caused by attempts to change our philosophical intuitions."
("John Searle on Realism and Relativism")
So it's not the case that Rorty thinks he's penetrated past appearances and
figured out how things really are by saying that there are no "things as
they really are". He's providing one more philosophical picture just as
other philosophers like Pirsig do. The difference between pragmatist
philosophers and realist philosophers is that realist philosophers believe
there is one True and Correct picture of things. Pragmatists think that
there are an infinite number of pictures. On the realist view, the
philosopher's job is to figure out what the True and Correct picture of
things is. On the pragmatist view, it is the job of the philosopher to try
and provide the picture that would best fit our needs. I've been pushing a
pragmatist reading of Pirsig because I believe Pirsig shows both
tendencies. We should just read out his realist tendencies and promote the
pragmatist ones.
Matt
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