Kevin
Question from way back when.
> My problem with pragmatism remains that anti-foundationalism can never provide any
> meaning to life, the universe, and everything. I cannot act if such action has no
> meaning, reason, or morality.
To which I responded that the MoQ put a foundation under pragmatism and you
said all of philosophy. But on further reading I'm not so sure I understood
the meaning of anti-foundationalism. Here is a blurb on it from an essay by
Richard Bernstein.
" Anti-fondationalism" is not an expression that the pragmatists used [ Here
he is not talking about the neopragmatists like Rorty but Peirce,James,Dewey
etc.] They certainly did not mean what is sometimes meant today when "
anti-foundationalism" is polemically used to attack the very idea of
philosophy. Yet I do not think there is an important argument in the
anti-foundational arsenal that was not anticipated by...Peirce in 1868. Peirce
presents a battery of arguments directed against the idea that knowledge rests
upon fixed foundations, and that we possess a special faculty on insight or
intuition by which we can know these foundations....Peirce advocated that we
displace the "foundation" metaphor with the metaphor of a "cable". In
philosophy, ..we ought to... trust rather to the multitude and variety of its
arguments than to the conclusiveness of one" Its reasoning should not form a
chain which is not stronger that its weakest link, but a "cable" whose fibers
may be ever so slender, provided they are sufficiently numerous and intimately
connected"
Pirsig used the foundation metaphor by saying that the Western Philosophy was
built on quicksand referring of course to SOM. But while he claims to have
constructed a metaphysical foundation which includes those things you desire
as a base to act on i.e. meaning to life, morality etc. Is not his base just a
multivalent, contingent, and cable like as what Peirce contemplated?
Dave Thomas
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