The Richard Rorty Exchange Part XI

This is my response to the philosopher's post (Exchange Part X). My comments follow the **. His comments are un-starred.


** Ok let’s not fly off the handle here, it’s only reality that’s at stake. I'm sorry for the length of this, but I get anxious to defend my view.

** Two approaches at answering. The first is something new, an attempt to avoid the thrust and parry. The second is the blow-by-blow responses which I think continues the back and forth.

** First Approach:

** I wonder if there is a different way to approach this difference. After all, Rorty has engaged and parried the best philosophers on this, especially in Rorty and His Critics. So I doubt we will come to a resolution. The thrust, lunge and parry could go on and on. Now we would learn things about our beliefs and maybe modify them so I think that can be beneficial. But I wonder if there is another approach. Maybe to just clarify what the difference is and see if we can agree on the nature of that difference.

** We both think science is extraordinary and a wildly successful way to gain knowledge. We both think that talking about “discovering reality” and making a distinction between “all the evidence points to it and it seems wholly justified, but is it true?” are useful ways to think and talk. But there is a difference (and this is where we have to see if this characterizes the difference accurately) between how we regard the nature and importance of the concept/realness of “reality” or “the real.” You say we’ve got to have a robust understanding of “the real” and give reasons that argue for its robustness and, dare I say it, its reality. Otherwise we can’t understand why science and any other avenue to truth and the real works. We bang into a world out there, if you drop that notion then we lose touch with it and you (Rortians) are making believe that there is no world we bang into.

** I say, channeling Rorty, philosophers have made a valiant effort to know reality through metaphysics and ontology, debates about realism vs. anti-realism, but they’ve been unsuccessful. Let’s stop those debates about this entity that always seems to be on the other side of knowing and just continue with our inquiries and understand them as the result of social practices that produce useful or un-useful results. Scientists will still talk about discovering reality, but there isn’t much for philosophers to add to our knowledge of reality. Let's do a Wittgensteinian therapy on the need for an extra-pragmatic understanding of reality.

** Does that describe the difference?

** I’d go on to ask:

** Is there anything more to know about reality than that it stands as kind of absolute but ever unattainable goal which may or may not be correcting inquiry so that inquiry can approach it? Is there anything for philosophers to say about it – reality – beyond the various knowings of it in science, mysticism, religion, poetry, literature, history? Do the natural sciences tell us about physical reality as it is in itself and so help us with our metaphysical investigations or does science give us one extraordinarily powerful, elegant, useful, dangerous, predictively successful view of physical reality? Is there anything else for philosophers to do with reality? Can they tell us something more about It?

** You’re saying, “Hey Rorty, don’t be so fixated on the rigid, absolutistic, Platonic, Kantian-noumenal, reality. Rorty, you betray your beholdeness to absolutism in your fixation on rejecting it. Instead let’s set aside that Absolute Reality and the attempt to dismiss any discussion of Reality and talk about "reality." There is something for philosophers to contribute, that we don’t get from scientists, about that non-Absolutist reality.

** Second Approach: And here are your assertions and my response interspersed:

I'm not "satisfied that working toward agreement with my fellows" is all that science is doing and I'd venture to guess that most scientists don't see their work that way either. Most scientists view their work (at least the biologists and physicists I've read) as a kind of exploration, an adventure of discovery.

** But we’re asking philosophical questions. Scientists are usually poor philosophers. Rorty has a reply to the Nobel physicist Steven Weinberg, (in “Thomas Kuhn, Rocks and the Laws of Physics”) the only time I’ve sensed irritation in his tone, and, ironically, he defends philosophy from that scientist’s crude defense of a crude realism.

They almost expect to be surprised by the real. They wonder, ponder and nature often surprises them. It's not just playing with human models that have no ultimate reference or can't "arrive" at any reference beyond itself. I mean, do you think it makes sense to say that germ theory, gravitational theory, cell theory and any other well verified theory in science has no reference to the way things really are?

** What’s the difference between the way things are and the way things really are? I think philosophers think there is a “really are” beyond “are.” Is that “really” the too severe Reality that Rorty is hooked on or the more moderate real that you are advocating as a more reasonable view? And what is that real like? We have no idea how things “really” are but we have been successful in wondering if our current understanding fits all the evidence and, as a shorthand, saying “but is it true?”.

Of course, scientific theories don't disclose reality in any final, once and for all sense, but surely they are more correct than theories of infection that appeal to demon spirits. If Rorty were right there'd be no more sense in saying that astronomy is preferable to astrology or evolution to creationism so long as we can secure agreement that that's what reality is like from our fellows, or enough of our fellows.

** But what is the criterion for determining greater correctness? If it’s explanatory power then demon spirits could be as good within its overall weltanschauung as the theory of infection, depending on the needs of the person to retain their culture. If it’s what cures better I’d say the theory of infection. But I don’t see the use of “gets reality better” or “more like the way things are” except for rhetorical and practical purposes. But astrology is preferable to astronomy if you are trying to understand yourself and guide your life. Does astronomy do that? But if you want to predict the next eclipse or know the extent of the cosmos, I say, do astronomy. If your criterion for knowing the origin of species originates in the absolute faith in the literal words of God in the Bible then creationism is superior. My God! what better authority is there than God? I think that’s wrong, but how do I convince the believer? Steven Hales argues that we have to accept a relativism when it comes to deciding between the rational worldview, the Christian worldview and the tribal hallucinogenic spirituality worldview in Relativism and the Foundations of Philosophy. Also Rorty is a Kuhnian and there is a different conception of science derived from Kuhn and the sociology of science which does not see science as a gradually more accurate representing of the real.

But the history of science is and has been a testing of models, falsification of models and re-testing against the benchmark of the real.

** Is there any more to say about the real beyond the ways we have of identifying it? Is it matter, spirit, consciousness, God, some substance, the Tao? How do we know which it is? Is it fruitful to pursue it philosophically? It’s certainly fruitful to continue describing and explaining physical reality using science. Is there a difference between what science currently tells us physical reality is like and what reality is really like?

Often, it has been the individual against the community in this regard. Scientists often don't want to see reality in a certain way, they have their own pet theories of the way things are, but if the theory unifies the disparate data in a powerful and elegant way, they can or often do come around.

** Rorty is fine with criteria such as “powerful” and “elegant.” Powerful meaning predictive, consistent with the evidence, cohering with what else we know. Those are fine criteria of science. The coming around can be explained by the adherence to certain criteria and the arising of the younger generations overturning of the older generations conceptions. The creative individual, on the margins, Einstein let's say, takes the anomalies and evidence and the applied standards of arguing and does something new. This causes a crisis for the established figures. They have to wrestle with it, to the degree that there is a democratic structure in their institution. A debate ensues, younger people (usually younger) are excited by this new approach and enter the fray. A struggle ensues. One side wins. We can say the winners have a better explanation, more of the evidence fits, old conundrums are solved (and new ones created) the old theory’s limitations are seen and it is incorporated into a better, more coherent whole. We can do more things – build atom bombs, yea! Is the world remade in the new conceptions image or do we know better what the world is really like?

Scientific theories and their verification are not at all as arbitrary and socially constructed as Rorty makes out. Rorty wants a guarantee and behind his pragmatism there may be this rhetoric of regret, fueled by his Cartesian anxiety. Knowing is taking a look for him and if he can't be supplied with the super look that will bridge the gap between theory and reality, then we're supposed to give up on knowing reality and settle for playing with models and garnering votes from our peers. But knowing is not taking a look, at least not for Aristotle. It may be for Plato. I'm not sure.

** So you’re saying that Rorty is too hung up on a crudely dichotomous, black-and-white division between Reality with a capital “r” versus not talking about Reality except as is useful in given situations which is too pale and makes no sense of science’s successes. And he misses that there is another small “r” real that is neither of those. Is there a philosophical debate about the character of that moderate real? Maybe I’ve gotten too much of my understanding of philosophy from Rorty. Who are the thinkers talking about it and what do they say it’s like? Do they distinguish old-fashioned, Reality, the noumena, what’s seen from the God’s-eye-view from this other thing called “the real” which scientists are very good at knowing and telling us about? And is this real quarks or sub-quarks or something else according to these debates?

Whew!

The Richard Rorty Exchange Part X

The Philosopher writes:

I'm not "satisfied that working toward agreement with my fellows" is all that science is doing and I'd venture to guess that most scientists don't see their work that way either. Most scientists view their work (at least the biologists and physicists I've read) as a kind of exploration, an adventure of discovery. They almost expect to be surprised by the real. They wonder, ponder and nature often surprises them. It 's not just playing with human models that have no ultimate reference or can't "arrive" at any reference beyond itself. I mean, do you think it makes sense to say that germ theory, gravitational theory, cell theory and any other well verified theory in science has no reference to the way things really are? Of course, scientific theories don't disclose reality in any final, once and for all sense, but surely they are more correct than theories of infection that appeal to demon spirits. If Rorty were right there'd be no more sense in saying that astronomy is preferable to astrology or evolution to creationism so long as we can secure agreement that that's what reality is like from our fellows, or enough of our fellows. But the history of science is and has been a testing of models, falsification of models and re-testing against the benchmark of the real. Often, it has been the individual against the community in this regard. Scientists often don't want to see reality in a certain way, they have their own pet theories of the way things are, but if the theory unifies the disparate data in a powerful and elegant way, they can or often do come around. Scientific theories and their verification are not at all as arbitrary and socially constructed as Rorty makes out. Rorty wants a guarantee and behind his pragmatism there may be this rhetoric of regret, fueled by his Cartesian anxiety. Knowing is taking a look for him and if he can't be supplied with the super look that will bridge the gap between theory and reality, then we're supposed to give up on knowing reality and settle for playing with models and garnering votes from our peers. But knowing is not taking a look, at least not for Aristotle. It may be for Plato. I'm not sure.

The Richard Rorty Exchange Part IX

The Philosopher responds.

My responses to him are inserted and always follow an asterisk *:


I like your spirited reply!

I guess I'm going to just have to read that damn book [Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature] and hope to God I don't lose my "illusions."

* This, for me, raises the question of what makes us attach to the ideas, conceptions, beliefs that we are attached to that "seem right" even when (or if) the argumentation and evidence don't prove them or when the relevant community doesn't agree on an answer? We could say that some of us have an intuitive connection to the way things are, but that begs the question of whether there is a "way in which things are." And what's the nature of the "intuitive" connection? There is an interesting, bypassed world hidden in words like: assumption, intuition, conversion.

That having been said, sometimes it seems to me that Rorty is too absolute. (Ha!). Either the Real is self-present to us in some absolute way, a la Descartes, "clear and distinct" and all that or we must simply give up any hope of knowing the real and turn our attention to more "useful" topics. But isn't that attitude overdrawn? I mean, why can't we, in Aristotelian fashion, move toward the real, make models, test them, listen to what nature is telling us she's like, try to correct for bias, and "slouch toward verisimilitude" (with apologies to Yeats). We don't have to be the (Rortian) victims of his Cartesian anxiety. Rorty seems to couch things in this "all or I want no part of it" way. I believe science is one very good way, perhaps our best and only way, of getting out of our way, and letting nature tell us what she's like. How, for example, can we explain its pragmatic success if it doesn't bear some semblance to the real (note small r)? Anyway, I suspect Rorty's model of knowledge is too Platonic. He'd have done good for a good dose of the Stagirite. But, hell, I haven't done my homework.

* Rorty would be fine with making models, testing them, correcting for bias, even using colloquially the phrases "listening to nature" and "seems right but is it true?" as long as some ambitious philosopher doesn't say "Is nature really telling us things?, What is the 'real'?" Being a pragmatist he'd support all scientific inquiry. He just recommends not getting fooled by metaphors - here the aural metaphor of "listening" rather than the visual metaphor of a "mirror of nature" - like nature telling us what she's like. He suggests that we be satisfied with working towards agreement with our fellows and not taking the Peircian step of "The real, then, is that which, sooner or later, information and reasoning would finally result in".

* Now how does Rorty explain why science works so well if it's not telling us what nature is like? But does poetry work less well? Does it tell us what nature is like?

* Here's Rorty: "[The pragmatist] drops the notion of truth as correspondence with reality altogether, and says that modern science does not enable us to cope because it corresponds, it just plain enables us to cope. His argument for the view is that several hundred years of effort have failed to make interesting sense of the notion of 'correspondence' (either of thought to things or of words to things). The pragmatist takes the moral of this discouraging history to be that 'true sentences work because they correspond to the way things are' is no more illuminating than 'it is right because it fulfills the Moral Law.' Both remarks, in the pragmatist's eyes, are empty metaphysical compliments - harmless as rhetorical pats on the back to the successful inquirer or agent, but troublesome if taken seriously and 'clarified' philosophically." Consequences of Pragmatism, p. xvii.

* So you and Rorty agree on the doing of science, he would just caution against letting the sometimes useful concept "real" slide into the historically unsuccessful investigation of the "Real."


Thank you for your interesting reply.

* And thank you.

The Richard Rorty Exchange Part VIII

The Philosopher was wondering:

I've been thinking about this question regarding Rorty: Is there
anything natural in Rorty's philosophy, anything, as he would put it, "found"? Or, is everything, "made?"


I thought:

Rorty's a big champion of the natural sciences and we certainly use the designation "natural" usefully. Humans are understood to be natural beings causally tied up in the whole causal unfolding of the physical world. And of course there are our everyday uses of "found" and "made".

But if you or someone else wants the distinction between "found" and "made" to do some epistemological work, like be a reliable distinction between ontologically distinct things one of which - the found - is simply there in the same way for all of us and so serves as a universal touchstone or referrent for reality and so creates an epistemological task of how we know when and who has the perspicuous representing of it beyond all "made" or human-createdness, then they will be disappointed as we see by a review of the history of philosophical attempts to find such a referrent and they should really talk about other, more useful, topics.

By telling a particular story of the history of philosophy Rorty wants to convince people that a distinction - the eternal and the contingent, the phenomena and the noumena, how things are in and of themselves and how they are because we see them that way - has led us astray and been ultimately unproductive, and so other topics are better to be discussed.

But maybe I'm not understanding your question. I assumed that you were saying that natural was connected to found as artificial or artificed would be connected to made.

This is one of the main themes of "Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature." I'm reading it again twenty years later and poring over it like its a sacred text. I want to be converted and inducted into the cult! Yet aren't I already a true believer? It seems some small part won't let go. Maybe that's the attachment to the absolute, the transcendent, the Truth. And is that a sane connection to what's real or is it the last vestige of the illusion?

Ah philosophy!

The Richard Rorty Exchange Part VII

I respond to the philosopher. My responses follow the ***


*** Good to hear your questions and criticisms.

I don't know. You do argue well and forcefully. I am not convinced and I can see you are not convinced by me.

*** Yes, that’s why there is the flourishing area of philosophy examining "rational disagreements."

Let me ask a few more questions about something Rorty says in this text book I have. He says: "A liberal society is one which is content to call 'true' (or 'right' or 'just'). . . whatever view wins in a free and open encounter."

Some of my questions are these:

1) Who decides who wins in this "free and open encounter?"

*** The participants and the institutional structures that deem these things. If the participants agree – let’s say the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says that we agree there is a 90% chance of man-made climate change – then that’s a powerful, but not conclusive, “win”. That doesn’t mean others won’t disagree – Bjorn Lomborg – and continue to speak against it. Or, science journals decide what gets published. That’s an institutionalized way for someone to “win.” And the winners have to be contended with either as what you must cite in your article or as what you must criticize in order to change a prevailing view you think is wrong. Rorty used the word “content” in that quote to emphasize that that’s all we’ve got, we have to settle for that level of surety.

Who decides what the criteria of "winning" are?

*** The institutional norms in science are decided or maintained by those in power. The criteria that they use have a history dating back to the origins of modern science. But even those criteria have to be struggled over with different criterion gaining and losing power depending on trends in argumentation. The logician Graham Priest has written about the lack of argumentation for the law of non-contradiction and argued that there are true contradictions at the limits of thought. He calls this view "dialetheism." I'm not saying it's right (although I think it is), it just seems like an example of criteria being examined and modified.

2) Hasn't Rorty smuggled in an implicit notion of good into this definition by having the encounter be free and open? If he has, then he has begged the question regarding what is true, right and just. I think this may be true since the reason that he wants the encounter to be "free and open" is presumably, because he thinks that, in this way, it will be more fair, more just and well, right. But isn't this just to assume the truth of the position you should justify?

*** But doesn’t everyone argue as best they can for their view and then if pushed to the limit say: “Well, I just assume, that cruelty is the worst thing we do to each other.” Rorty isn’t saying he doesn’t have beliefs about what is just and right and best justified (true) he’s saying that we can have discussions about our differing moral and political views but let’s drop the Philosophical discussion about what is The Right Moral View, the absolutely right moral view. That conversation looked like it would be helpful centuries ago, but now its gotten so dry and specialized that philosophers no longer play a role in public intellectual life.

3) Following on 2), I want to ask, Why should the encounter be free and open? If the object is winning and if winning determines what is true and right and just, then why not win by any means necessary?

*** If we watch a sports race or political election and are focused on who won, it doesn’t mean we don’t care how they won. Why? Because in the sports race we’re interested in finding the currently best at that sport according to the current rules, or politically we’ve established a majority rule procedure to settle disputes and called it democracy. So winning by the rules is important because we think we get better outcomes and so solve our differences and problems better. Rorty could say that “free and open” allows more people to flourish, feel dignity, offer more varied views and so makes for a better discussion and that these are good things because they make for a better society, which is one that is more inkeeping with the image that he and his allies have for society.


4) If what is true and just and right is determined by who wins, then what happens to minority voices? If winning means simply whichever side gets the most votes (at least that's what I would assume he means) then does that mean that the minority position must be wrong? I assume that this is not what he means, but I wonder what his position on minority views would be since they are not on the "winning" side and so, at least by his definition, they can't be on the side of what is true, right and just.

I'm aware that he advocates cultivating a stance of "irony" toward our "final vocabulary" and so he probably wouldn't want even those who "win" to take themselves too seriously since they could "lose" next year, next month or next week!

*** I don’t think we have to press the use of “winning” in that sentence too far. Rorty can say that winning in intellectual forums is almost never a 100% win. The laws of physics are as close to 100% as you get perhaps, but, short of that, so much is revisable as new generations and other societal changes occur. I can see him elaborating a view in which there are current relative winners and losers and that each individual will, depending on their view, assign differing valuations to the differing sides: a current winner is considered by person A as a should-be-a-loser and person B as a rightful winner.

*** So Rorty writes several lines after the sentence you quote: ‘Habermas] still insists on seeing the process of undistorted communication as convergent, and seeing that convergence as a guarantee of the “rationality” of such communication. The residual difference I have with Habermas is that his universalism makes him substitute such convergence for ahistorical grounding, whereas my insistence on the contingency of language makes me suspicious of the very idea of the “universal validity” which such convergence is supposed to underwrite. Habermas wants to preserve the traditional story (common to Hegel and to Peirce) of asymptotic approach to foci imaginarii [certainties, I believe]. I want to replace this with a story of increasing willingness to live with plurality and to stop asking for universal validity. I want to see freely arrived at agreement as agreement on how to accomplish common purposes (e.g., prediction and control of the behavior of atoms or people, equalizing life-chances, decreasing cruelty)…” Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, p.67.

Something else I wrote a couple nights ago but didn't send is this:

Here's a pragmatic argument from Socrates against postmodern pragmatism. It's in Plato's Meno:

"I wouldn't swear to other things on behalf of the argument [immortality of the soul, knowledge as recollection] but for this, if I were able, I would fight in word and in deed: that we would be better and more courageous and less idle, if we thought that we ought to seek for what we don't know than if we thought that what we don't know it isn't possible to seek nor ought we to seek."

(My stilted translation of Meno 86b)

I'd say that if you think that truth and good are just human constructions, then there is no real reason to defend them since we're only fighting, in the end, for our right to use our "final vocabulary." But what is that? Is that worth fighting for? Dying for? I don't think there are many things that I would kill for, but I do think there ought to be some things worth dying for. Rorty's postmodern pragmatism gives us nothing to live for or die for and to that extent it is potentially corrupting in just the way that Socrates worries about in the passage above.

If Rorty is right, then we can't be wrong since there's only your perspective and my perspective and his and hers. But no perspective is really any better than any other since they're all perspectives that are made not found.

Socrates' position is just right--between relativism and dogmatism. He rejects both the position that there is no Truth (only truths) and the position that whatever that Truth is, he knows it. He believes that we can and must advance toward the truth. Progress entails vigorous self-examination and examination of others, but if there is nothing to advance toward, nothing to strive for, this can lead to the sort of intellectual and moral complacency he's talking about. So, in the end, I side with Socrates on the grounds of what effects Rorty's philosophy could have on our character. Take care, gentlemen.

*** When and how do we know that we know the Truth? If we can’t know then how does it guide inquiry? It’s true that Rorty does not give us something to live and die for. But who lives or dies for the concept of absolute truth?

*** And is our choice only between striving for Truth and nothing to strive for? This sounds like the either personal taste or an independent standard dichotomy from a previous exchange. We can be motivated to vigorous self-examination and examination of others so that we can learn more, interpret more creatively, create a better world, make our ideas cohere better, or solve problems together. None of those are the Truth but neither are they “nothing”.

*** Why the “just” in “just human constructions”, what’s wrong with human constructions? And what’s the difference between a “real reason” and a “reason”? If “final vocabulary” seems too thin or flip we could say we would fight for our “deeply held beliefs.” They are connected to and gain their meaning from many things like our attachment to family, land, society, way of life, future generations, etc. Those things and others are worth fighting for even if we can’t show that or don’t know if they correspond to the independent standard of truth and the good.

*** Whew! Now you must be convinced! It seems we don’t give up our deeply held beliefs so easily whether we think they have or could have the backing of absoluteness or not.

The Richard Rorty Exchange Part VI

The philosopher writes:

I don't know. You do argue well and forcefully. I am not convinced and I can see you are not convinced by me. Let me ask a few more questions about something Rorty says in this text book I have. He says: "A liberal society is one which is content to call 'true' (or 'right' or 'just'). . . whatever view wins in a free and open encounter."

Some of my questions are these:

1) Who decides who wins in this "free and open encounter?" Who decides what the criteria of "winning" are?

2) Hasn't Rorty smuggled in an implicit notion of good into this definition by having the encounter be free and open? If he has, then he has begged the question regarding what is true, right and just. I think this may be true since the reason that he wants the encounter to be "free and open" is presumably, because he thinks that, in this way, it will be more fair, more just and well, right. But isn't this just to assume the truth of the position you should justify?

3) Following on 2), I want to ask, Why should the encounter be free and open? If the object is winning and if winning determines what is true and right and just, then why not win by any means necessary?

4) If what is true and just and right is determined by who wins, then what happens to minority voices? If winning means simply whichever side gets the most votes (at least that's what I would assume he means) then does that mean that the minority position must be wrong? I assume that this is not what he means, but I wonder what his position on minority views would be since they are not on the "winning" side and so, at least by his definition, they can't be on the side of what is true, right and just.

I'm aware that he advocates cultivating a stance of "irony" toward our "final vocabulary" and so he probably wouldn't want even those who "win" to take themselves too seriously since they could "lose" next year, next month or next week!

Something else I wrote a couple nights ago but didn't send is this:

Here's a pragmatic argument from Socrates against postmodern pragmatism. It's in Plato's Meno:

"I wouldn't swear to other things on behalf of the argument [immortality of the soul, knowledge as recollection] but for this, if I were able, I would fight in word and in deed: that we would be better and more courageous and less idle, if we thought that we ought to seek for what we don't know than if we thought that what we don't know it isn't possible to seek nor ought we to seek."
(My stilted translation of Meno 86b)

I'd say that if you think that truth and good are just human constructions, then there is no real reason to defend them since we're only fighting, in the end, for our right to use our "final vocabulary." But what is that? Is that worth fighting for? Dying for? I don't think there are many things that I would kill for, but I do think there ought to be some things worth dying for. Rorty's postmodern pragmatism gives us nothing to live for or die for and to that extent it is potentially corrupting in just the way that Socrates worries about in the passage above.

If Rorty is right, then we can't be wrong since there's only your perspective and my perspective and his and hers. But no perspective is really any better than any other since they're all perspectives that are made not found.

Socrates' position is just right--between relativism and dogmatism. He rejects both the position that there is no Truth (only truths) and the position that whatever that Truth is, he knows it. He believes that we can and must advance toward the truth. Progress entails vigorous self-examination and examination of others, but if there is nothing to advance toward, nothing to strive for, this can lead to the sort of intellectual and moral complacency he's talking about. So, in the end, I side with Socrates on the grounds of what effects Rorty's philosophy could have on our character.

The Richard Rorty Exchange Part V

My responses following the *** to the social worker's comments:


I don't know if I'm responding a la Rorty, but it was Rorty who more or less convinced me that yes, the way reality functions is that the true and the good does amount to our ability to convince another.

*** But a caveat here. I hold my Chomskyan radical critique of US foreign policy for the last thirty years even though it is a minority view.

We can believe our position has some independent status, but there's nowhere to find it. You can do a study, for example a recent one that showed that more competitive societies with higher income disparities are less dynamic, show less creativity, and have lower scores of overall well being, and I can marshal that as evidence, but a committed free marketer will tear apart the study and so it goes. 1984 is what happens when the forces of justice and right (my side) don't fight hard enough against fascism, McCarthyism or whateverism. You can appeal to tradition, but traditons change. As we discussed, there's no standard meter anywhere to point to (and even a standard meter is an agreement). We're not so much inviting a person to sign onto a truth that transcends them, but one that they can agree with.

I guess I also have trouble with you using "only" in front of "individual" or "socially/cultural." Why do those standards have to be demeaned or demoted. I want to live and work in a place that shows toleration, that's free of sexism and homophobia. To me those are truly durable principles to live by, that are worth fighting for (but not fighting with violence, yet force may have to be used, like the force of law, federal marshals etc.). My reason tells me that. I don't value any social or cultural practices that go against those principles and I do think those principles transcend cultures who don't embrace such, yet I'm aware that my principles are a culture, too. Yet, no one could convince me that these principles are only true in certain cultures. So I could say, yes I value your culture in where ever, but I think practices or laws that don't allow everyone to be fully enfranchised are wrong. I love the principle of the rule of law, but I hate unjust laws.

*** And your culture transcending value of anti-sexism could be not acted upon because of another value of national sovereignty and the wrongness of military intervention in another country's affairs. So yes the Taliban's sexism is wrong, but no we shouldn't justify our invasion and occupation by using it because it violates another value: national self-determination.

I do think it's worth giving our reasons, because I do think there's something worthwhile in being reasonable, but I'd have a hard time convincing a romantic of that who values passion over thought. I wouldn't devote my time giving my reasons for my ice cream preference (though I might wax poetical about them) nor would I try to convince or even discuss with someone I felt just loved to argue (unless I was in the mood) or didn't really listen to my point of view.

I know that this position can devolve into might makes right, but that's a principle I don't agree with (unless of course when the MA Supreme Court say the state has to recognize gay marriage-- that's a might I like). But then again, I agree to abide by the country's choice in a president, even if I fight against his/her policies.

*** It may be that in the last instance might makes right. Max Weber said that the state is that entity that has a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence. A certain regime of truth is in place because secular forces overthrew religious and monarchical forces and now we all know that liberal pluralist tolerant democracy is the best system even though for most of its history "democracy" had a negative connotation.

The Richard Rorty Exchange Part V

The Social Worker asserts:


I don't know if I'm responding a la Rorty, but it was Rorty who more or less convinced me that yes, the way reality functions is that the true and the good does amount to our ability to convince another. We can believe our position has some independent status, but there's nowhere to find it. You can do a study, for example a recent one that showed that more competitive societies with higher income disparities are less dynamic, show less creativity, and have lower scores of overall well being, and I can marshal that as evidence, but a committed free marketer will tear apart the study and so it goes. 1984 is what happens when the forces of justice and right (my side) don't fight hard enough against fascism, McCarthyism or whateverism. You can appeal to tradition, but traditons change. As we discussed, there's no standard meter anywhere to point to (and even a standard meter is an agreement). We're not so much inviting a person to sign onto a truth that transcends them, but one that they can agree with.

I guess I also have trouble with you using "only" in front of "individual" or "socially/cultural." Why do those standards have to be demeaned or demoted. I want to live and work in a place that shows toleration, that's free of sexism and homophobia. To me those are truly durable principles to live by, that are worth fighting for (but not fighting with violence, yet force may have to be used, like the force of law, federal marshals etc.). My reason tells me that. I don't value any social or cultural practices that go against those principles and I do think those principles transcend cultures who don't embrace such, yet I'm aware that my principles are a culture, too. Yet, no one could convince me that these principles are only true in certain cultures. So I could say, yes I value your culture in where ever, but I think practices or laws that don't allow everyone to be fully enfranchised are wrong. I love the principle of the rule of law, but I hate unjust laws.

I do think it's worth giving our reasons, because I do think there's something worthwhile in being reasonable, but I'd have a hard time convincing a romantic of that who values passion over thought. I wouldn't devote my time giving my reasons for my ice cream preference (though I might wax poetical about them) nor would I try to convince or even discuss with someone I felt just loved to argue (unless I was in the mood) or didn't really listen to my point of view.

I know that this position can devolve into might makes right, but that's a principle I don't agree with (unless of course when the MA Supreme Court say the state has to recognize gay marriage-- that's a might I like). But then again, I agree to abide by the country's choice in a president, even if I fight against his/her policies.

The Richard Rorty Exchange Part IV

The Philosopher replies:

Sorry it has been so long since I've replied. I've been mulling over what you wrote. I guess one thing I question is why you think that what is good or true is determined only by whether one can convince someone else of what you think. Is true or good determined only by whether we can persuade another that it is so? You may say that that's the pragmatic upshot of it. I guess I would have to agree that convincing another of what is true or good is important but should those things be reduced to solely my ability or inability to convince you of it? Surely the true and the good (however they are defined) shouldn't amount to simply my ability to convince you of whatever position I happen to hold? Surely those things have some sort of existence, meaning and status independent of whatever individuals happen to believe? Again, I want to say that if you claim that there is no such independent standard then I think that is dangerous in terms of opposing those who wish to ignore such (what I take to be) standards in the interests of defining them for their own political or social purposes. I've just finished listening to 1984 and what Rorty believes is just the sort of philosophy that Oceania and O'Brien thrives on.


The other thing is that you think that we can or should give reasons for what we believe is true or good. But why bother? If the good and the true is just a matter of contingency and is made up why should we bother giving reasons for what we believe? Isn't that like arguing that vanilla is superior to pistachio? Aren't we doing something more than expressing private or cultural preferences by giving reasons? I think so. We're appealing to another person's reason and inviting them to open themselves to a truth that transcends them. Anyway, I don't see any point to argue for my position if what I'm expressing is only my individual or socially/ culturally situated perspective.

The Richard Rorty Exchange Part III

The philosopher writes:

I may be thinking of this whole thing in more Kantian terms than Aristotelian, which I'm not too happy about. But, maybe not.

I think, for starters, we have to define that Protean term, "useful." It's so easy for that term to be used in a myriad number of ways. Useful for what? Useful to whom--and for what purposes? It was, useful, for whites to regard blacks as property for centuries. It was useful for males to regard females as inferior. The list goes on. Once you ask these sorts of questions, it seems to me that the question of some sort of supra-cultural norm becomes inevitable.

If one denies the existence of such a norm, then culture becomes the default court of appeal--and, as the old sociologist (whose name I have forgotten!) once said, "In the folkways, whatever is, is right." The "folkways" then call the moral shots and slavery and male superiority are "true" because they have been deemed "useful" to those in power.

In the absence of any supra-cultural, transcultural norm(s) for deciding what is "useful" Rorty's philosophy sanctifies the status quo, however that is defined by the majority or the dominant cultural voice. This is what I find so dangerous about Rorty. In his own way, he's not so radical or liberal but really rather depressingly conservative.

How are we to critique unjust social or political or moral practices in the absence of any normative notion of truth or the good? If he does offer such a critique, from where can he possibly stand?

Rorty may reply that it's just his claim that this or that is wrong or unjust, but why should we take his perspective seriously since he's just articulating his individual or cultural preference?

Well, I wrote more than I thought I would! Anway, I'm not sure I'm thinking about this correctly or adequately. I may have to come back at this from a more Aristotelian perspective, arguing more for the adequacy or inclusiveness of a moral tradition than the search for a transcultural moral norm, but for now I do think that if there is no transcultural good there can be no theoretical grounds for critiquing injustice--other than, of course, individual assertion--which I take to be inadequate because there are no rational grounds for distinguishing justice from injustice. Rorty may think he needs no rational grounds for his assertion, but then there is no ground for me to take what he is saying seriously.

And I reply:

I hope I have some good replies. Otherwise I'd have to change my mind and I'm very attached to my beliefs. Interestingly, we use rational argumentation to decide what is right in the secular, rational, Enlightenment tradition and so we shouldn't really care if we have to change our minds as long as the view we adopt is the better argued. Yet we are attached to our views for extra-rational reasons and these, I think, are the foundations of our moral views and it is why we cannot make a rational argument to convince all inquirers that one view is most correct, or is the objectively best moral view. Beyond the reasons that we give for believing as we do are also the other reasons we believe: because it feels right, our heart tells us it's true, it would violate our being to believe the opposite, it just seems right, we get choked up when we see certain norms enacted, etc.

Yes, "useful" is only useful if we have some goal in mind. If one of my goals is the flourishing of human beings and one norm is that they must be treated equally when it comes to certain basics such as justice and having the material necessities and if I apply this norm to all human beings then I am applying my norm to all. It's being held, by me, supra-culturally, but can I ground or prove it with rational argumentation to convince those who differ - white supremacists, religious fundamentalists, American-firsters, libertarians - that mine is the objective right, supra-cultural norm? I think not, because our norms, ultimately, are not held for rational reasons. So I tend to use my norms as if they are supra-cultural (even though I can't prove that they are).

What is the difference between the person who believes there are supra-cultural norms or objectively right norms and the one who may apply their norms supra-culturally but doesn't think they can be convincingly demonstrated using reason to be the objectively superior supra-cultural norm? That is, between you and me. You can't, and no moral philosopher can, demonstrate to the satisfaction of his colleagues that he has the best norms and yet believes such an objectively best norm exists. I hold norms that I apply supra-culturally, but don't think that ultimate rational demonstration of them will occur and see no need to cling to the belief in their objective rightness. We all still have our array of moral beliefs of varying degrees of coherence and incoherence which we apply in consert and conflict with others using reason, action and force.

Perhaps the difference here is between the belief that norms are wholly human made and the belief that there is some other origin for norms. Or, perhaps that is how I've interpreted the issue when you had something more like universal norms vs. ethnocentrism in mind.

The Richard Rorty Exchange Part II

Here are my responses to the philosopher's comments about Rorty's views. My responses follow the **** (four asterisks):



Here is a quote from a guy I rather like on the topic of relativism, which I take Rorty to be, me and lots of others. HIs name is Roger Trigg and he's emeritus Prof. of Philosophy, U. of Warwick. He was (and still may be, not sure, Chairman of the United Kingdom National Committee for Philosophy, representing all British philosophy departments--so says the back jacket of this book). This is from his book, Philosophy Matters:
"Richard Rorty is quite happy to demolish the distinctions which he sees built into the vocabulary we inherited from Plato and Aristotle. He says (speaking as an 'anti-Platonist' accused of relativism: 'Our opponents like to suggest that to abandon their vocabulary is to abandon rationality--that to be rational consists precisely in respecting the distinctions between the absolute and the relative, the found and the made, object and subject, nature and convention, reality and appearance.'

**** For Rorty these are fine distinctions if they serve a pragmatic purpose. But if they become reified into eternal objects or essences that limn the nature of reality then they are going to lead to abstruse arguments and philosophical nitpicking that have been exhausted by Western philosophy.

His (philosophical) argument is that these distinctions are not essential to philosophy, any more presumably than are such binary opponents as the self and the other, or even truth and falsity.

**** These distinctions may be essential to capital "p" Philosophy because that's how it has defined itself. But there are many everyday uses of these distinctions that Rorty would endorse. But we don't need get a "theory of truth" or to finally define the self. This isn't going to happen and it's more productive to talk about other things or to create new conceptions of the self. Novelists do this and Nietzsche and Heidegger were creative self creators.

The danger in all this is that of losing grip altogether on the idea of rationality, the idea that there are norms for belief, so that we ought to believe some things and reject others. It is all too easy to settle for what people do believe, and, if they disagree, to resort to a relativism that suggests that differences in belief do not matter. Indeed, 'pluralism' becomes something to be welcomed. Philosophy never ceases to be a matter of rational criticism. It is hard to see how it can then have any function at all. It must become absorbed into the general cultural stream. Philosophers can then articulate the assumptions of one cultural tradition in a way that is irrelevant to the members of another.

**** Or, philosophers could articulate, mediate, integrate, distinguish differing cultural traditions with the goal of creating greater understanding. Rorty would probably like philosophy to become part of the "general cultural stream" instead of falsely assuming a position above the cultural stream. We still have norms of belief, we just don't make believe they are grounded in The Objecitve Norms or God's Norms.

Rorty explicitly allies himself with American pragmatism, an important philosophical tradition, but one which has clearly come from a specific cultural background. Genuine philosophy must aspire to universality. American pragmatism must stand on its merits, and not on the fact that it is American. Relativism cannot allow this, and there is nowhere for Rorty to stand to allow him to recommend his views to those beyond his own tradition. It is not enough to be an American speaking to Americans or, in an even more restricted way, an American East Coast liberal speaking to American East Coast liberals.

**** Rorty embraces an ethnocentrism but that doesn't mean that different vocabularies or cultures are incommensurable. We make sense with others all the time, there's just no supra-sense that we can prove to all others is The Supra-Sense to end all questions of Supra-Sense.

Philosophical justification has to demonstrate why the views of such people are relevant to those with different backgrounds. By attacking traditional conceptions of rationality, Rorty can narrow the scope and impact of philosophy, so that any distinction from the rest of culture is removed. Just as an unremitting, literally mindless, materialism can dissolve reason into a series of physical events, so relativism dissolves philosophy into a series of cultural stances. The one makes philosophy cede its position to science, and the other to sociology or cultural studies. Philosophy becomes impotent, without any distinction between what seems to us to be so and what is so, or might be. What is the point of criticisms or questions if we cannot be wrong? There is no point in examining the basis of our beliefs if the most important fact is merely that we have them, and not whether they are true." (137-138)

**** Yes, the appearance/reality distinction is not useful if it is absolutized. But it can be useful as what we thought was the case (appearance) but now see was not the case (colloquially, reality), perhaps because we now have more evidence. And the thing we are so sure of because it is so justified in the present we may say may not be the truth, using "truth" as a marker for "finding out in the future that what seemed so justified turned out not to be the case." So we have a use for the expression, and so the concept, "Yes, it's justified, but is it the truth?" This is the "cautionary" use of "truth." It makes us hold open the possibility that what presently seems justified may not be.

I think Trigg gets to the heart of the matter with Rorty, here. His relativism undercuts, undermines the very possibility of rationality and philosophy itself--and with that gone, what can philosophy be but "a series of cultural stances?"

The Richard Rorty Exchange Part I

Here's the first in an exchange with a couple of friends on Richard Rorty's philosophy and other issues. The philosopher writes:


Here is a quote from a guy I rather like on the topic of relativism, which I take Rorty to be, me and lots of others. HIs name is Roger Trigg and he's emeritus Prof. of Philosophy, U. of Warwick. He was (and still may be, not sure, Chairman of the United Kingdom National Committee for Philosophy, representing all British philosophy departments--so says the back jacket of this book). This is from his book, Philosophy Matters:

"Richard Rorty is quite happy to demolish the distinctions which he sees built into the vocabulary we inherited from Plato and Aristotle. He says (speaking as an 'anti-Platonist' accused of relativism: 'Our opponents like to suggest that to abandon their vocabulary is to abandon rationality--that to be rational consists precisely in respecting the distinctions between the absolute and the relative, the found and the made, object and subject, nature and convention, reality and appearance.'

His (philosophical) argument is that these distinctions are not essential to philosophy, any more presumably than are such binary opponents as the self and the other, or even truth and falsity. The danger in all this is that of losing grip altogether on the idea of rationality, the idea that there are norms for belief, so that we ought to believe some things and reject others. It is all too easy to settle for what people do believe, and, if they disagree, to resort to a relativism that suggests that differences in belief do not matter. Indeed, 'pluralism' becomes something to be welcomed. Philosophy never ceases to be a matter of rational criticism. It is hard to see how it can then have any function at all. It must become absorbed into the general cultural stream. Philosophers can then articulate the assumptions of one cultural tradition in a way that is irrelevant to the members of another.

Rorty explicitly allies himself with American pragmatism, an important philosophical tradition, but one which has clearly come from a specific cultural background. Genuine philosophy must aspire to universality. American pragmatism must stand on its merits, and not on the fact that it is American. Relativism cannot allow this, and there is nowhere for Rorty to stand to allow him to recommend his views to those beyond his own tradition. It is not enough to be an American speaking to Americans or, in an even more restricted way, an American East Coast liberal speaking to American East Coast liberals.

Philosophical justification has to demonstrate why the views of such people are relevant to those with different backgrounds. By attacking traditional conceptions of rationality, Rorty can narrow the scope and impact of philosophy, so that any distinction from the rest of culture is removed. Just as an unremitting, literally mindless, materialism can dissolve reason into a series of physical events, so relativism dissolves philosophy into a series of cultural stances. The one makes philosophy cede its position to science, and the other to sociology or cultural studies. Philosophy becomes impotent, without any distinction between what seems to us to be so and what is so, or might be. What is the point of criticisms or questions if we cannot be wrong? There is no point in examining the basis of our beliefs if the most important fact is merely that we have them, and not whether they are true." (137-138)

I think Trigg gets to the heart of the matter with Rorty, here. His relativism undercuts, undermines the very possibility of rationality and philosophy itself--and with that gone, what can philosophy be but "a series of cultural stances?"

Life Experience Affects Criterion Affects Belief

In a reading group I attend a discussion broke out over whether there is a pre- or sub- linguistic connection to the world where we contact pure experience, a “felt sense” outside of language, or whether language infuses everything so that we cannot say when we are contacting something sub- or supra- or extra- linguistic such as “the way the world is,” reality, raw or felt experience, and when we’re not. So I was defending the Rortyan view that we can’t know when we’re in touch with that which is beyond language because language can always be argued to be already there. Whereas the other guy was saying that no, in his experience, he can mindfully or self-consciously feel into or gain awareness of what’s there which of course includes language but can go beyond it.

I said you can’t know which view – language infuses all access or we have access to experience - to choose because there are compelling arguments on both sides. He appealed to his phenomenological experience: he looks into his experience and experiences things like sensations, urges, emotions, etc. I was thinking that the criterion you choose to decide the question will be a determining factor in whether you see it one way or the other. I have chosen rational argumentation as the ultimate determiner. I know this issue, and lots of other philosophical issues, have not been decided and probably never will. So I lean towards the pervasiveness of language since language, in the form of rational inquiry, seems to generate more debate, as the alleged eternal problems of philosophy indicate. He uses experience as his primary criterion and finds by using that criterion and method that experience is experienced as having both linguistic and extralinguistic contact.

So which criterion to choose? I realized that my choice of primary criterion was influenced by my life experience. I was in graduate school studying for a Ph.D. and doing abstract intellectual work. I discovered Buddhist practice which can be radically experiential and left school and did that. I later became frustrated with and doubtful of it and stopped doing it formally and went back to intellectual work. Experience, in a sense, betrayed me and I adopted argumentation as the way to go. Now there are those who use argumentation and have the view that you can contact reality. So it can’t only be that choice that makes me defend the undecidability of the issue. But this life experience moved me to adopt one view over another and be a person who argues this way rather than that.

The Personal is Philosophical

In hearing a friend recount an argument she had with another friend I thought about how ethics and ethical norms play a role even in intimate encounters. We tend to think of the fights we have with intimates (friends, lovers or family) as purely personal or interpersonal and having to do with feelings. But there is that aspect of arguments in which people say things like: “You should’ve called.” “That’s an overreaction.” “How could you do that to me.” Each has a charged emotional component but they also assume and assert a belief in what is right and wrong. Is it right or expected to call in this or that situation? When is an emotional reaction an overreaction; how do we judge the proper level of emotion for a given perceived offense? Was the wrong committed a wrong? Each of these presupposes and asserts a view of how to behave properly and improperly. Part of the understanding of propriety is based on what we think is right and wrong behavior given our society and culture. In some cultures there could be great offense in not accepting an offer of food or drink upon entering a person’s home. Is that an overreaction? It depends on one’s belief in the social norm being violated. One’s position on that norm is part of the argument in an interpersonal conflict.

When is a reaction to another’s actions an over or under or proper reaction? It is whether the reaction is appropriate to the behavior that caused it? How is that determined if the two people disagree about the norm violated?

A: How could you do this to me?
B: What are you talking about? It’s not that big a deal.
A: It’s a big deal to me!
B: You’re overreacting.
A: No I’m not. I’m hurt by what you did.
B: Well, you’re too sensitive.
A: I’m not too sensitive. You’re insensitive if you can’t see that what you did was wrong.

The emotional element is intertwined with a normative or ethical element and both have to be sorted out. The ethical element brings into play one’s philosophy of right and wrong.

I wonder if some philosophers have thought and written about this. A quick search of the philosopher’s index didn’t reveal anything, but it does seem like the kind of thing others have thought of already, maybe feminist philosophers.

Bruno Latour and Rorty

Reading Bruno Latour’s Pandora’s Hope word by word, page by page unlike most books where I jump around and get what I want and then leave it. I see him as doing the practical work not elaborated by Richard Rorty’s anti-essentialism. Rorty suggests we stop looking at things as entities with a nature or essence that we are groping to finally represent correctly. That essentialist mentality leads to tough “What is …?” questions like: “What is the nature of mind?” “What is money?,” etc. Rorty suggests there will be many descriptions of things depending on our needs and goals.

Latour who is describing “science studies” is taking that anti-essentialism seriously and showing how to describe and understand changes in science. Instead of the dominant picture of the world as being one particular way and as always having been that way and that we gradually describe more and more correctly, he describes the many associations and connections that occur in order for a scientific object to become what we take it to be. So the development of atomic energy was an interaction between many actors: scientists, colleagues, funding sources, the military, mineral suppliers, opponents, the public, the media. What “atomic energy” is arises through the interactions of that collective and its character is determined by that array of, what he calls, “articulations” that changes over time. Articulations that last and become well-entrenched achieve the social category of “reality” by becoming an “institution.” The “reality” of the things comes later after the struggle for dominance is won, but it can be reversed since it is an historical and social process. Latour, like Rorty, advocates moving away from the standard modern epistemological view of a reality “out there” which is veiled with a variety of appearances and which we gradually mirror better and better. This way of conceptualizing things leads to a gap between the world as it is in itself and our representations of it and to the irresolvable epistemological and other problems of Western philosophy.

Latour’s view sees all actors or participants – humans and nonhumans – as relationally engaged in creating themselves and each other through the particular way they interact through history. And as history itself moves on there is an ongoing reinterpretation of what happened in the past.

What’s nice about Latour is that he keeps coming back to the central philosophical conflict between the standard, modern, philosophical essentialism and his alternative anti-essentialism instead of leaving the questions hovering in the background.

Gordon Wood in the Radical Middle

Watching the historian Gordon Wood on Book TV’s “In Depth” program on C-Span 2 where they spend three hours interviewing a noted author. He’s a popular historian of revolutionary America. What struck me was his complete ignorance of questions regarding the philosophy of history writing and the value-laden character of all history writing. He was asked about Howard Zinn’s “People’s History of the United States” and saw it as emphasizing only a “dark” view of American history and implied that it doesn’t tell the whole story, which presumably Wood does. Wood says nothing about Zinn’s book being a counter-history to conventional history and that it chooses a different perspective from which to write history, that of the poorer, disempowered people who are generally overlooked in conventional history writing. Wood shows no awareness that there is even a question regarding the perspectival character of history writing. Even on a show for the general public this could be acknowledged.

Then Wood was asked about how he reacts to histories written that are to the political right and to the political left of him. He used the hoary defense of thinking he’s doing something right (correct) because he’s criticized by both sides. This is a ridiculous defense I’ve heard many times since you could also conclude that you are doubly wrong because you’re being criticized twice. But the point of the defense is to portray the two sides criticizing you as having an agenda so Wood can say that he transcends that partisanship but occupying the neutral middle. This is the myth of the neutral observer which people who hew to the reigning values use to make it appear as if they are disinterested truth tellers. Wood can’t see that he has a perspective like everyone else and everyone has to choose the values that will inform their history-telling. This doesn’t mean that there aren’t agreed upon (and debated) criteria for determining facts and good arguments, it means that any history writer who is telling the story of the past must have a value system in order to organize their narrative. This is the argument of Hayden White. What’s striking about Wood is that he indicates no awareness of this perspective and blithely believes that his position in the center, away from the agenda-biased extremes, allows him to simply get at the truth better.

Philosophy's Perennial Problems

Western philosophy’s perennial problems – mind/body, free will/determinism, objective truth, ethics, etc. - are generally thought to be persisting problems because they capture an essential mystery or conundrum about existence. But here’s a different way of looking at them. The perennial problems of Western philosophy - its recurring problems – can be seen as repetition compulsions. That is, as a pathological repeating on a superficial level of some unresolved issue deeply buried in philosophy’s social-psychology. And if they should be seen as a pathology what is the issue that Western philosophy is trying to work out?

The Meyerhoffian Solution (A personal favorite) - One possibility is that the underlying pathology is a split between the psychology of the thinker and the thinker’s beliefs. Since the major philosophical problems have not been rationally resolved and can be criticized by those opposed to any view, believers in a solution to the problems cannot have their belief in their solution by the reasons of their arguments alone. Their belief in their view and their adoption of their side of the argument has to have some of its origin in their personal psychologies since their reasons do not hold sway. On the foundational level of our beliefs we can’t have our allegiance to the answer to a philosophical problem without our non-rational attachment to a particular way of looking at things. This is fundamental and unresolved, and mostly unrecognized split, in the contemporary rational inquirer, but I’m not sure that resolving the split would lead to a resolution of the philosophical problems. More likely we would know why a given person adopts their side of the philosophical argument.

The Frankfurt School Solution - That perspective would interpret the cause of the persisting dualities of Western philosophy as a result of the persistent socio-economic divisions of contemporary capitalist society. We are socially and economically divided and in conflict with each other through class and power inequalities. There is no inherent betterness in one person rather than another or more reason for one person to have the necessities of life rather than another yet we must live in a society that distributes the means of existence based on a skewed view of achievement rather than human need. This socio-economic condition creates existential, personal and interpersonal divisions and is reproduced on the cultural level in the persisting contradictions and conflicts that philosophers encounter.

The Neo-Wittgensteinian-by-Way-of-Rortyan Solution - A third explanation I take from Richard Rorty. Western philosophy’s enchantment with the assumption or concept that there is “a way in which things are” leads to arguments about what that “way in which things are” is. If we don’t assume there is a way in which things objectively are (or is not knowable) then everyone is presuming and using a representationalist vocabulary, assuming that our words are representations of the world, and an objectivist or realist assumption that cannot be redeemed. There is no way the world is in and of itself which some of us have a superior insight into. There is the way we hash out our differing views of the world and for the differing purposes we have for doing so. The philosophical assumption – here thought to be false or of little use – is that there exists an entity – the actually existing state of affairs – which is what one side of each argument is matching or getting right but which cannot be shown to exist. By ceasing to assume that we are trying to “get reality right” the attempt to solve the perennial problems of philosophy would not have to be repetitiously enacted and inevitably failed at.

The Mystical-Transcending solution – Here the practitioner of a mystical practice is understood to cultivate the ability to have a direct experience of the nature of reality, bypassing or transcending discursive thought in order to dissolve the boundary between self and other or subjective and objective. The perennial problems of philosophy are resolved in practice and in the transformed being of the practitioner. The duality of thinking is resolved through the non-duality of being.

The Nietzscean-Foucauldian-Rortyan Genealogical Solution – Demonstrate through a historical analysis that what are thought to be the perennial problems of philosophy are not perennial problems, but historically contingent problems. Contemporary problematizing tendentiously interprets past dilemmas as the same as present day dilemmas when they aren’t the same dilemmas. The words used and the social contexts in which they were used changes. Rorty cites works like Wallace Matson’s “Why Isn’t the Mind-Body Problem Ancient?” Foucault describes the practice of genealogy as distinguished from conventional history in “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History.”

Bald Ambition in Hardcover

My book Bald Ambition is now out in a non-virtual form. It has a cool cover. And it already has a negative review! Today it ranked 44th in Books>Nonfiction>Philosophy>Criticism.

You can get it at amazon.

The Metaphysical and the Pragmatic

The discussion I participated in on talkingblog.com asked which is more real: dreams or waking life. Presented in this way it sounds like a metaphysical question.

But I suggested that determining what is really real is dependent upon the approach or stance or perspective we adopt in order to determine what is most real. So if you are doing psychoanalysis then you could think that dreams are the gateway to the real because one’s real motivations, the real determiners of one’s life, are found by interpreting the dreams and gaining access to one’s unconscious. One could also adopt a commonsensical, intuitive perspective and say that our waking life seems realer than the dream and maybe argue that we think about the dream in waking life but rarely think about waking life while in the dream. As a third alternative, we can adopt and do a Buddhist practice and eventually see that what we regard as normal, waking life is really a dream or a form of being asleep compared to the superior wakefulness of a Buddhist mindfulness practice and eventually enlightenment.

So it seems the practice adopted trumps or comes before the determination of the real. We tend to think that by asking questions like: What’s real? Or what’s more real? We are neutrally inquiring into the nature of things. But this way of inquiring presupposes that this particular method tells us how things are. There are other methods for determining how things are, such as a Buddhist practice or psychoanalysis or appealing to common sense or intuition or faith rather than reason.

But, in another twist, the practice adopted comes with presuppositions about the way things are: which is a metaphysics. In Buddhism they say meditate and see for yourself the nature of experience as it arises and passes away in each moment. That by doing this you will see things are they are. But this presupposes that that method of looking or inquiring is the superior method as well as presupposing other things, such as that the present moment is the true reality, that past and future only exist as experiences in the present moment, that in examining our subjective experience we learn about all existing things, etc.

Likewise psychoanalysis has metaphysical presuppositions that one assumes or adopts by inquiring in that way.

Rational inquiry is an approach to determining the real which hides its assumption that it is the best method of inquiry. The various practices which shape what will be seen as real presuppose a metaphysics or beliefs about how things are which leads one to see things in a particular way.

In answering the pragmatic question of which inquiring practice to choose we presuppose the metaphysical and in choosing the metaphysical – i.e. unquestioningly inquiring using our chosen way – we presuppose the pragmatic superiority of that mode of inquiring.

Is Life a Dream?

I replied to a post at the Philosopher's Magazine: http://blog.talkingphilosophy.com/?p=1767

Here's my reply:

The phrase “Life is a dream” can have a deeper meaning if there is another state beyond the two states of existence: waking life and dreaming. In Buddhism and other mysticisms it is claimed that there is another way of living and relating to reality that makes what we call waking life seem like a dream in comparison to it. In Buddhism the story goes that when a man passing the Buddha on the road and noticing something special about him asked if he were a god or magician or demon, he replied, “I’m awake.” A strange reply (since obviously he was awake) unless there is a state of being that makes our normal waking life seem like a dream in comparison to its superior wakefulness. This is what Buddhism asserts but not only as an intellectual assertion; it recommends a practice that must be done so that one sees or experiences that this is the case. You write as if it is a purely intellectual claim to be considered philosophically or in thought. But Buddhism and most mysticisms are about the person’s decision to pursue a daily practice which involves some sort of method of inquiry that either does or does not wake them up by showing them how what we call waking life is actually like a dream in comparison to a superior wakefulness. The Buddhist practice is mindfulness meditation. The moment to moment practice of witnessing the contents of consciousness – thoughts, feelings and sensations - as they arise and pass away. The claim is that you will see that everything is impermanent, changing. You don’t just think it is impermanent, you experience it immediately and that experiencing alters one’s being.

In psychoanalysis of a Freudian or Lacanian kind you do the practice of therapy in such a way (and with the assumptions and practice) that regard the dream as conveying more reality – the really real – in comparison to our illusory waking life.

I think the crucial question is: what method of inquiry do you choose? If you choose a mystical path and do the practice and see what they say you see then do you then believe that that is the way things are? If you choose to use philosophical reflection and see things in a certain way is that the way things are? So, which mystical practice or philosophical tradition should one choose? Phenomenologists “see,” or talk in terms of different things, than do analytic philosophers. If we ask philosophical questions about the way things are we think that we are just neutrally inquiring, but we’ve really unconsciously adopted a method and approach to investigating that comes with certain presuppositions about how we will know what’s real.

Which method of inquiry is the right one to choose to investigate whether “life is a dream”?