From: abahn@comcast.net
Date: Sun Aug 17 2003 - 01:15:11 BST
Hi David,
I honestly cannot tell sometimes if you are really serious, obstinant, humorous,
or just plain silly. I have not had much traditional philosophy education and I
obviously have less than you, but come on. You are not familair with Putnam'
"Gods eye view?" The basic arguments in epistemology? Sorry to give you the
brush off here, but I can't believe you have no idea about such arguments. The
tribunal is the idea that we can know with certainty what is Truth. THat it can
be determined. Or if it can't be determined, at least we can know that there is
a "God's eye view" that does know what Truth is. The majority of all western
philosophy asserts there is such a tribunal. And Rorty is asserting this is not
true. As simple as that. The tribunal is a metaphor Rorty employs for
Philosophy in general and epistemology specifically.
Andy
> 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
>
>
> MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
> Mail Archives:
> Aug '98 - Oct '02 - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
> Nov '02 Onward - http://www.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/summary.html
> MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
>
> To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
> http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
>
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archives:
Aug '98 - Oct '02 - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
Nov '02 Onward - http://www.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/summary.html
MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sun Aug 17 2003 - 01:15:35 BST