RE: MD Rorty and Darwin

From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Sun Aug 17 2003 - 00:38:11 BST

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    Andy, Steve or anyone willing to help:

    Steve Peterson said:
    In explaining that there is no truth with a Truth Tribunal to judge, only
    justification he said (p38, 'philosophy and social hope'):

    "But, given a Darwinian picture of the world, there can be no such tribunal.
    For such a tribunal would have to envisage all the alternatives to a given
    belief, and know everything that was relevant to criticism of every such
    alternative. Such a tribunal would have to have what Putnam calls a 'God's
    eye view'...If Darwin is right, we can no more make sense of the idea of
    such a tribunal than we can make sense of the idea that biological evolution
    has an aim. Biological evolution produces ever new species, and cultural
    evolution produces ever new audiences, but there is no such thing as the
    species which evolution has in view, nor any such thing as the 'aim of
    inquiry.'"

    dmb says:
    I've asked a question about Rorty several times and have never recieved
    anything but the big brush off. Whenever I ask Matt for specifics, he simply
    refers me to all major philosophers. I'd like to know what Rorty is talking
    about specifically. Who is he criticizing here? Who asserts that there is
    such a "truth tribunal" I took lots of philosophy classes (Not quite enough
    to call it my major, but pretty damn close.) I've been reading philosophy
    off and on for twenty years since graduation and in all that time I have
    never heard of such a thing. Who says there is such a thing as a truth
    tribunal. This is not a joke. I honestly don't know of any such creatures.
    In my experience, preachers and idiots assert such things, not philosophers.
    HELP!?

    Thanks,
    dmb

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