From: Scott R (jse885@spinn.net)
Date: Tue Oct 01 2002 - 23:49:49 BST
Platt,
Platt Holden wrote:
> Before answering your post in greater detail, please help me
> understand.
>
>
>>You are forcing your contingent vocabulary of absolutes, universals, and
>>self-evident truths (which didn't exist until Philosophers created it) on
>>Rorty, and then calling him inconsistent because he declines to adopt it.
>>
>
> Does Rorty decline to adopt logic as a universal pattern of correct
> reasoning?
Not that I can see. That is, I haven't read anything in his work that I
would regard as illogical, or no more than any other writer.
But what I am assuming is that you think he is saying "There are no
absolutes", while what he is actually saying is more like "I find no
value in looking for absolutes". Yet even the former statement is not
self-contradictory *unless* you force a particular meaning on it,
namely, as shorthand for "it is absolutely true that there are no
absolutely true propositions". If you can find a case where Rorty says
this, I would be amazed.
There is another sense of the phrase "there are no absolutes", and that
is where "absolute" is taken in the traditional philosophical sense of
an entity that it unchanging, eternal, etc., such as the traditional
concept of God, or God's law, as opposed to entities that come into and
out of existence. In this case, the statement "there are no absolutes"
is of course, a statement of the belief that there are no such entities.
It is false if there is one, true if there are none. In any case it is
not self-contradictory. But, again, Rorty doesn't even say that. He is
more likely to say "I haven't seen any evidence or convincing argument
for the existence of an absolute, and I think it is a waste of time
looking for one".
- Scott
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