From: MATTHEW PAUL KUNDERT (mpkundert@students.wisc.edu)
Date: Sat Jun 28 2003 - 20:06:45 BST
Ian, Platt,
Ian, don't take Platt's bait. Platt's attempting the old strategy of scaring historicists with the spectare of the skeptic such as when he says, "I'm not certain I should believe what you say or even that you said it." But the skeptic is a strawman that only ahistoricists have to answer, a scary bed-time story that Cartesians and Kantians tell their children to put the fear of contingency in them.
But that's a vocabulary that we shouldn't even answer in. For pragmatists like you and I, it is simply sufficient to have a given context supply certainty. When you take the contingent turn, you no longer worry about transcendental arguments or knowledge or facts. They are simply incoherent, it being impossible to escape from history to something eternal.
The only reason I jump in is because I've been over this metaphilosophical terrain many times with Platt and everyone else here before and I'd hate to see someone trying to be a pragmatist get ambushed by concerns that only apply to outdated epistemologists and metaphysicians.
Matt
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