From: Scott R (jse885@spinn.net)
Date: Tue Apr 08 2003 - 05:32:21 BST
Matt,
[Matt said to DMB]
> He [Rorty] despises reductionism just as much as Pirsig did in
> ZMM when he excised the word "just." Rorty's position is more like,
> "sometimes it is helpful to talk about G-15 quivers, sometimes it is
> helpful to talk about wonder."
Ironically, I was mindful of Pirsig's excision when I came across the
following passage from Rorty (PMN, p. 25-26), which I took as evidence of
Rorty's espousal of mind-brain identity, and not just [sic] a matter of two
vocabularies being useful:
"It seems perfectly clear, at least since Wittgenstein and Sellars, that the
"meaning" of typographical inscriptions is not an extra "immaterial"
property they have, but just their place in a context of surrounding events
in a language-game, in a form of life."
What is ignored by that use of "just" is that being able to "place in a
context" is the mystery of language (and perception in general) that my
argument about spatio-temporality attempts to point out. What connects one
word with its preceding and following words? What brings one's language-game
expertise to bear in interpreting a particular language event? That ability
to connect implies a continuity that is impossible in a fundamentally
spatio-temporal universe.
Rorty goes on:
"This goes for brain inscriptions as well. To say that we cannot observe
intentional properties by looking at the brain is like saying that we cannot
see a proposition when we look at a Mayan codex -- we simply do not know
what to look for, because we do not yet know how to relate what we see to a
symbol system. The relation between an inscription -- on paper or, given the
hypothesized concomitance, in the brain -- and what it means is no more
mysterious than the relation between a functional state of a person, such as
his beauty or his health, and the parts of his body. It is just those parts
seen in a given context."
This sounds pretty reductionist to me. Suppose one rewrites it without the
"just" and similar rhetorical devices, and change one less than or equal to
greater than or equal (I've marked with '*' where I made changes):
"This goes for brain inscriptions as well. To say that we cannot observe
intentional properties by looking at the brain is like saying that we cannot
see a proposition when we look at a Mayan codex -- we do not know what to
look for, because we do not * know how to relate what we see to a symbol
system. The relation between an inscription -- on paper or, given the
hypothesized concomitance, in the brain -- and what it means is *as
mysterious as* the relation between a functional state of a person, such as
his beauty or his health, and the the parts of his body. It is * those parts
seen in a given context."
Rorty's use of that "yet" (the first asterisk) implies that he thinks it is
theoretically possible for us to learn how to read off a mental experience
from a brain inscription, which is a reductionist position. In any case, it
is the ability to read at all that is mysterious. And, again, "It is just
those parts seen in a given context" is an attempt to hide the mystery.
(Note, I'm not trying to reopen the "is Rorty a metaphysician" argument:
just [sic, again] to argue against Rorty's, and I presume your,
assumptions.)
- Scott
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