From: Matt Kundert (pirsigaffliction@hotmail.com)
Date: Tue Feb 15 2005 - 19:13:12 GMT
Hey Ian,
Ian said:
Philosophy / Physics, Meta or not - the question is the same, "how does that
work ?" - the answer ought to be the same the closer we get to agreement,
the only difference being the language used IMHO. This "great convergence"
is often pooh-poohed by expert / specialists, but I think it is real in
these days of mass communication.
Matt:
Maybe, but I doubt there is any reason to say think that, _in general_,
there will be a "great convergence." Pragmatists eschew such
Peircian/Habermasian-like claims. For instance, I doubt we will ever reach
convergence on whether or not "Seinfeld" was a good show or not. Or whether
blonds are more fun. When agreement happens, it happens. If it doesn't, it
doesn't. There are no general reasons to think that any line of inquiry
will end in absolute agreement. So might, others might not. In academics,
we've found over the years that fields called "scientific" tend to converge
and fields called "literary" or "humanisitic" don't, but that's still not a
reason to think that all scientific theories will converge in the end and
literary theories won't.
Ian said:
I'm reading Searle's "Mind - A Brief Introduction" - I impatiently crticised
him in some earlier blog posts, but I have to say he talks about as much
common sense as I've seen in a long time. I don't think he'd disagree with
the synthesis above, even if you feel I may be stretching it.
Matt:
Eew, Searle. Yeah, he may agree with you above on the whole "great
convergence" thing, but that's because, as far as I know, Searle's still a
realist, as opposed to a pragmatist. I think he dovetails on a number of
topics in the philosophy of language and mind with pragmatist renderings of
those fields, but he's still a hold out on a few positions.
Matt
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