From: MATTHEW PAUL KUNDERT (mpkundert@students.wisc.edu)
Date: Sat Aug 16 2003 - 23:27:09 BST
Platt said:
Since when have I endorsed "common sense." That is your mantra, your label for the Rorty's worldview. "Why, to believe truth is a matter of intersubjective agreement is just common sense," you say. On the contrary. To believe you have to check with your neighbor to know if something is true is not only nonsensical, but a threat to individual responsibility and liberty. Rorty's social constructions of reality are neo-Marxist in tone if not in fact..
Matt:
Uh, did I really say, "Why, to believe truth is a matter of intersubjective agreement is just common sense"? I know it was a paraphrase and not a direct quote, but I'm hoping the deletion of the context is what is makeing pause. But to the point, I don't uphold common sense as some sort of God. I'm actually at a loss for words because I have no idea where one would get that idea. Common sense is just the starting point we use in deliberation. Its generally a disputed phrase by whoever is using it. As Stanley Fish would say, its the prize you get when you win in intellectual warfare. And I did say recently that I hope pragmatism wins in its war.
And then to say that "intersubjective agreement" is "checking with you neighbor to know if something is true" is just an asanine misconstrual, a demagogic trick to put people off my path. I usually say what I mean, and if I had meant, "Hey, if you want to know if it is true that a tiger is about to eat you, you had better go check with somebody," I would have said it. But that's not what intersubjective agreement cashes out to mean.
Ugh, I feel like I've regressed. I'm done discussing this (i.e. I'm bored going over this over and over and over .... )
Matt
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