From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Sun Oct 19 2003 - 14:06:41 BST
Scott,
> Platt,
> > Scruton also said, "A man who tells you truth doesn't exist is asking
> > you not to believe him. So don't."
> >
> > Good advice don't you think? :-)
Scott,
> I have read a lot of Rorty, and I haven't come across anything like a
> claim that "truth doesn't exist", and nothing indicating that nothing is
> better than anything else. Yet that seems to be your complaint against
> Rorty. How come?
A quote from an article by Simon Blackburn entitled "Richard Rorty"
answers your inquiry: (Simon Blackburn is a professor of philosophy at
University of Cambridge.)
"Non-philosophers who dip into his (Rorty's) writings may come away
intoxicated by the scale, but also astonished by the message. How could
anyone, for example, seriously hold, as Rorty has, that 'truth is what
your contemporaries let you get away with,' or that 'no area of
culture, and no period of history, gets Reality more right than any
other.'? Is it really possible to hold that only 'old-fashioned
metaphysical prigs' talk unblushingly of truth any more?"
Incidentally, as a collector of bon mots from the MD I find the
following from you posted last Jan 15 to be a gem:
"What I find disingenuous is when you (Matt) say you don't want to be
led back to metaphysics. What you and Rorty are doing is assuming a
metaphysical stance as given and making points from it, and then
claiming 'we don't do metaphysics.'"
Likewise, what I find so ludicrous in Rorty's and the postmodernists'
position is their determination to advance their own concepts of truth
while simultaneously denying there is such a thing. They assert general
truths while claiming in the same breath that general truths don't
exist. Example: "We know it to be absolutely true that truth is
provisional."
I consider Rorty and his fellow travelers dangerous to a free society
because without confidence in the concept of truth (and it's companion,
logic), the public is disarmed against lies. ("I did not have sex with
that woman . . ." is still being defended by many as a statement of
fact.)
Rorty wants to rid society of the idea of objective truth independent
of our wishes and whims, substituting the idea of communal
justification for belief, i.e., if everybody (defined as the power
elite in charge at the moment) says diversity is good, then it must be
true that diversity is good. Naturally the individual voice that's
raised against such "conventional wisdom" is pilloried. It's no mystery
why college campuses today have strict, politically correct speech
codes. It's the predictable consequence of Rorty's "intersubjective
agreement" which is a simply a not-so-subtle disguise for raw, power
politics.
To put it simply, Rorty's views are abhorrent to anyone who puts a high
premium on intellectual freedom and integrity.
Platt
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