Re: MD When is an interpretation not an interpretation?

From: MATTHEW PAUL KUNDERT (mpkundert@students.wisc.edu)
Date: Sat Nov 01 2003 - 22:48:59 GMT

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    Hey Paul, David,

    Paul said:
    Does this create a reality/Reality distinction?

    Matt:
    Sure, but this distinction is between two kinds of books with Plato to Kant to Husserl and Russell on one side and Protagoras to Hume to Nietzsche and James on the other.

    Paul said:
    Does this create a description/reality distinction or is "a description," for all intents and purposes, what pragmatists mean by reality? If so, does it follow that describing produces reality?

    Matt:
    No, there is no description/reality distinction because pragmatists don't think we can pull off our descriptions of reality and look at reality bare and naked. But neither is "a description" what we mean by "reality". That would be idealism. Pragmatists agree with realists that there is a world "out there," we just think that it affects us causally. We don't represent it, it just pushes us around. Realists would claim that pragmatists are the same as idealists and that we are both saying that we are, in essence, blind to reality. This is only what idealists like Kantians are saying. Pragmatists repudiate the idea of representations and the metaphor of sight. We are neither clear-sighted or blind. Sight is a bad way of framing things.

    David said:
    If you are going to say anything it is a description. Quite happy to talk about a description/experience distinction.

    Matt:
    I'm not sure why pragmatists would countenance a "description/experience" distinction. To me it sounds like you are trying to pull our descriptions off of our experiences, unless you are simply distinguishing between the world we are causally in touch with and our knowledge of the world.

    Matt

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