From: MATTHEW PAUL KUNDERT (mpkundert@students.wisc.edu)
Date: Wed Sep 17 2003 - 12:36:45 BST
Hey David
That's why I said "either you're begging the question or using a different definition".
If you are using a different definition than the traditional one, the one that pragmatists find dispensable, then you should produce some reasons for wanting to rehabilitate it. I probably won't be convinced for the same reason I wasn't convinced by the attempts to rehabilitate metaphysics, though.
Matt
----- Original Message -----
From: David MOREY <us@divadeus.freeserve.co.uk>
Date: Tuesday, September 16, 2003 4:19 pm
Subject: Re: MD A metaphysics
> Hey pragmatist
> The way a word works depends on how we use it,
> e.g. epistemology, no law that epistemology has to
> worry about truth, mind you I would never say that
> to a non-pragnmatist. As I read Rorty 15 years ago
> I am more interested in pushing past him than establishing
> what he's got right.
>
> Ha ha
> David M
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "MATTHEW PAUL KUNDERT" <mpkundert@students.wisc.edu>
> To: <moq_discuss@moq.org>
> Sent: Tuesday, September 16, 2003 8:43 PM
> Subject: Re: MD A metaphysics
>
>
> > David,
> >
> > David said:
> > Sure pragmatism has an epistemology, you do some creative
> language and you
> say 'it works' test rather than 'its truth' test.
> >
> > Matt:
> > Well, either you are begging the question or you're using a
> differentdefinition of epistemology. I think begging.
> Epistemology as some
> traditional variant of "What is knowledge"" would ask the question
> "How do
> we know you have knowledge?" As David says, the epistemologist
> says "Its
> true" whereas the pragmatist says, "it works". However, I think
> that saying
> that pragmatism has a metaphysics or epistemology is to pick
> pragmatism up
> by the entirely wrong handle. The answer "it works" never
> satisfies the
> epistemologist because "it works" amounts to "I don't know" or a
> shrug.That's the effect the pragmatist wants, but the pragmatist
> acknowledges,with the epistemologist, that its a non-answer.
> Saying the pragmatist has a
> metaphysics or epistemology puts the pragmatist in an awkward
> position, a
> position he doesn't want to be in. You want to read the
> pragmatist as
> continuing the epistemological conversation, but the pragmatist
> wants to end
> it. And I have no idea how epis
> > temology would continue with an answer like "it works". "It
> works" isn't
> a test on our praxis to see if we are doing it right, its just our
> praxis,its just what we do.
> >
> > As for nature being non-human, pragmatists think the only
> philosophicallyinteresting notion of non-human isn't tenable
> because we don't think it
> possible to unwind the human from the nonhuman and hold the two
> apart, which
> is what both Foucaultian social constructionism and Sellarsian
> psychologicalnominalism stand for.
> >
> > Matt
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