Hi Matt:
Again, your response provokes challenges to your and Rorty's views.
> But, to make this clear, I am saying that, following Rorty and the
> pragmatists (who range from Dewey and James to (early) Wittgenstein and
> Nietzsche), the notion that there is Truth or that there is a Reality that
> must have Truth correspond to it is not a profitable topic of discussion.
Is it true that a discussion of truth cannot be profitable? Again, the
sweet smell of self-contradiction arises.
> So, to ask your question (even if you would pull of it now), as Rorty says,
> "whether the pragmatist view of truth ... is itself true is thus a question
> about whether a post-Philosophical culture is a good thing to try for."
> (Intoduction to Consequences of Pragmatism)
Rather, the question is whether a post-Philosophical culture will duck
questions of truth or falsity and instead celebrate irrationality.
> A post-Philosophical culture is one in which we no longer care about
> whether we are corresponding to Reality, whether we are impinging on
> someone's natural God-given rights, or whether we are following our
> ahistorical, true-for-all-time duty to humankind. What is cared about is
> the liberal goal of the minimization of cruelty, the proliferation of
> vocabularies to find new tools to cope with reality.
Of the two things "cared about," the first sounds like the old-fashioned
socialist agenda, and the second a Tower of Babel. What's truly frightening
is knowing that the culture you would like to see in place will freely impinge
on human "natural" rights, presumably for the greater good. Where have
we heard this before?
Platt
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