From: Paul Turner (paulj.turner@ntlworld.com)
Date: Fri Oct 31 2003 - 10:53:06 GMT
Hi Matt
More questions!
Matt:
Pragmatists capitalize the "R" in "Reality" to differentiate it from
"reality," that general stuff we experience, what's all around us. You
get a big R Reality by making the appearance/reality split. What the
split means is that some of the stuff we experience is "appearance" and
some of it "Reality." When we don't make the distinction, none of our
experience is either closer or farther away from Reality--its all just
reality. Distance becomes a poor metaphor (so does "mediation" for that
matter).
So, pragmatists make assumptions about reality, not Reality.
Paul:
Does this create a reality/Reality distinction?
Matt:
It may seem to be splitting hairs, but I think its quite the opposite.
When we drop the dichotomy that gives us Platonic metaphysics, we drop
the entire tradition of trying to get our descriptions of reality closer
and closer to the Correct Description of Reality. Pragmatists don't
like this tradition because, for one reason, they have no idea how we
would decide when we have a Correct Description of Reality. Locke
pointed that out a long time ago and philosophers skeptical about the
idea of metaphysics have been playing on that same theme ever since.
Instead, pragmatists simply forward description of reality and whichever
ones work better, we use.
Paul:
Does this create a description/reality distinction or is "a
description," for all intents and purposes, what pragmatists mean by
reality? If so, does it follow that describing produces reality?
Cheers
Paul
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