From: MATTHEW PAUL KUNDERT (mpkundert@students.wisc.edu)
Date: Wed Jan 07 2004 - 00:08:31 GMT
David,
Matt said:
The whole idea of metaphysics is to get a foundation.
David said:
who says? or who says it has got to stay that way. Maybe we've dug to the bottom and decided to proclaim that the foundation=nothing, well that's a very different kind of thing to the metaphysics of substance.
Matt:
Nobody says that it has to stay that way. Pragmatists stick to Wittgensteinianism. However, as I've been saying for a while (and imply directly after this statement), if you change the usage of metaphysics away from what the Greeks and Moderns used it as, away from foundationalism, away from epistemology, away from the distinction between episteme and opinio, then you aren't doing what the Greeks and Cartesians thought they were doing. If you change the definition to something like "foundation = nothing," then A) pragmatists agree with you and B) you've deprived the pragmatists (and yourself) of a handy label for your foundationalist opponents.
Its no big deal to me if any particular philosopher wants to attempt to rehabilitate the word "metaphysics". The problem is that most who do A) hold some pretension to being able to solve the same problem Plato and Descartes invented and/or B) criticize antimetaphysicians for wanting to drop the whole thing. The problem with A) is that if you stray to far, you don't solve anything. The problem with B) is that it is likely that you are already in the antimetaphysical camp by virtue of your changed definition.
Since words attain meaning by use, metaphysics, in my usage, will retain foundationalist status. For a good treatment of the evolution of metaphysics and epistemology, I recommend Jeffery Stout's The Flight From Authority.
David said:
So, say we are uncomfortable with our mix of vocabularies, there are anomolies, we think there may be some words that work better, in respect to what, why the discomfort? why any sense of anomaly? there is a yearning in this for coherence, there is an acceptance of the value of the 'workings' ("works the best") contained in the given vocabularies, this needs unpacking, I think lurking in it is a sense of the on going conversation with nature.
Matt:
Human beings have found, over time, that their beliefs work better when there is some sense of coherence between their beliefs.
I'm not quite sure what your getting at above. An anomaly occurs when you have a belief that doesn't jive with another belief. Resolving the tension sometimes involves what could be called a shift in vocabulary. Sometimes it doesn't, it depends on the tension and what the most expedient way of relieving it is. If you have a new belief that is in tension with a host of other beliefs, it might be best to get rid of the new belief. If you pile up a whole bunch of beliefs, you might find it better to just revise a whole nest of them, revise the way in which they all interact.
And as far as this whole "critical realist" thing, this "conversation with nature," this is a prime example of falling into the rehabilitation problem I mentioned earlier. You want to rehabilitate "realism" and its notion of being in a "conversation with nature." Pragmatists have claimed that it is the metaphor of being in a conversation with nature that has led to many of the problems of realism. The problem is that, in your rehabilitation of realism, of the "conversation with nature" metaphor, you've made yourself indistinguishable from the pragmatist, except for the pragmatists continued reticence in saying that scientists talk to rocks.
To realists and all representationalists everywhere: No, we are not in conversation with nature.
To critical realists and all careful rehabilitators of the conversation metaphor: Sure, in your sense we are in conversation with nature.
Matt
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