From: Kevin (kevin@xap.com)
Date: Thu Oct 03 2002 - 17:44:05 BST
Platt quoting Rorty?
"It is the impossible attempt to step outside our skins-the traditions,
linguistic and other, within which we do our thinking and
self-criticism- and compare ourselves with something absolute. This
Platonic urge to
escape from the finitude of one's time and place, the "merely
conventional" and contingent aspects of one's life, is responsible for
the
original Platonic distinction between two kinds of true sentence. By
attacking this latter distinction, the holistic "pragmaticising" strain
in
analytic philosophy has helped us see how the metaphysical urge - common
to fuzzy Whiteheadians and razor-sharp "scientific realists"- works. It
has helped us be skeptical about the idea that some particular
science (say physics) or some particular literary genre (say Romantic
poetry, or transcendental philosophy) gives us that species of true
sentence which is not just a true sentence, but rather a piece of Truth
itself. Such sentences may be very useful indeed, but there is not going
to be a Philosophical explanation of this utility. That explanation,
like
the original justification of the assertion of the sentence, will be a
parochial matter-a comparison of the sentence with alternative
sentences formulated in the same or in other vocabularies. But such
comparisons are the business of, for example, the physicist or the poet,
or perhaps of the philosopher - not of the Philosopher, the outside
expert on the utility, or function, or metaphysical status of Language
or
of Thought."
Platt:
I submit to you that very few would be able to play back what the hell
he's talking about. But, if your point is that he is less quirky and
murky
than, say, Kant, I would agree.
Kevin:
Perhaps this is the heart of the debate. I find that quote from Rorty
(I've never read Rorty before) to be eloquent, clear, concise and quite
insightful. I guess I know what is to be next on my reading list.
-Kevin
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