From: Matt the Enraged Endorphin (mpkundert@students.wisc.edu)
Date: Tue Oct 08 2002 - 05:32:00 BST
Hi John,
Very thoughtful as per usual, John.
The first thing that came to mind as I was reading, was that you were
redescribing the Davidsonian "passing theory" position back into a
representationalist position i.e. when you say, "Language forms a
metaworld, at one remove from immediate experience," you are presupposing
your position that language is between me and reality. Rorty and the
pragmatists are betting that to continue to conceive of langauge as a
mediator will not be as profitable as conceiving of language as a tool.
This is an empirical claim. There is not an argument between the
positions, each begs the question of the other. The reason Rorty feels
justified in suggesting that we switch is that he thinks the tradition of
conceiving of language as a medium has caused more problems that it is worth.
This brings me to the notion that language is somehow infinitely malleable,
a claim I have been fighting for a while now, and my detractors have
latched onto with a death grip (perhaps rightly). I shall offer another
formulation of my response. When I read how justified beliefs were at the
bottom of how "the way things are," I nodded my head in agreement on this
definition of truth, though not at the addendum. Justified belief is what
truth is for a pragmatist. A representationalist will go beyond justified
belief to say that what is true about the way things are needs to be
'justified true belief.' How that is reached beats the hell out of me,
Rorty, and the pragmatists, but that's what they argue.
So, when you moved to your example of the science teacher using fertilizer
experiments to change belief structures, I could only nod my head in
agreement. The villagers were certainly justified to have their new
beliefs about the benefit of fertilizer over magical spells. The way I've
just formulated the example emphasizes the relational quality of truth. As
antiessentialists, we don't think that using fertilizer is somehow closer
to an ahistorical, essential truth, we just think it seems justified
believing that fertilizer is better than spells, given that the fertilizer
helped stuff to grow and the spells didn't.
When, from there, you moved to Rorty "endors[ing] a naive hedonism, that
suits the consumer culture we live in, and those who prosper from it, but
serves to disempower individuals within it," I still couldn't see how you
were justified in making this move (granted, though, that you weren't sure
whether you were justified). Particularly since the move seemed to hinge
on the implied claim that Rorty doesn't "test our beliefs and fantasies
through experiment." But I'm continuing to maintain that this is just not
so. The utility of language in helping me cope with my environment would
be severely impaired if I were justified in, against all experience to the
contrary, believing that Erin's fist were not swinging towards my face
(considering I just hit her in the other thread). Essentially, I don't
find myself or Rorty claiming that "language is more real than what it
seeks to communicate." Language is a tool, not something that is more or
less real than us or the environment.
So, when you say, "The essence of science is to play off theories,
constructed in language, with experiments which, (while mediated by
language), are operating in a different realm. It is the to and fro motion
between these two realms that gives science its incredible success and
robustness," I agree insofar as we don't understand theory and experience
as two different worlds. This invokes a Kantian distinction that
pragmatists do not wish to make. You are supposing that languange
mediates. The pragmatist supposes that there is simply a playing of theory
and experiment off each other. In terms of language and our coping with
reality, we having "passing theories" that we play off the "experiments" of
these theories i.e. we use a passing theory to make a prediction about
what's going to happen, and then we look and see what happens, and then
adjust accordingly.
So, I think I followed your argument, but I'm not sure if there was
anything subtly different between this formulation and your last one. And
I doubt I could prove you wrong. As I've said, we are both begging the
question for the other by differing on our conceptions of language.
However, I simply don't think anything sinister occurs when we accept this
view of language. We still move on, behaving as normal, constructing
passing theories of our neighbors, accounting for our environment.
Matt
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