From: MATTHEW PAUL KUNDERT (mpkundert@students.wisc.edu)
Date: Sun Nov 09 2003 - 22:31:14 GMT
Hey Paul,
Paul said:
Is it fair to say that pragmatists replace metaphysical distinctions with philosophological distinctions? For example, reality is only "ideal" and "material" because there are idealists and materialists and there is no way of deciding which is correct. Does this therefore extend outside of metaphysical writing and into other types of literature? For example, is Tolkien's middle-earth as "real" as Plato's forms, Kant's noumena and James' flux?
Matt:
Sure, metaphysics is replaced by philosophology, but realize that philosophology is not contrasted with philosophy. I've never known what to make of that distinction and long ago criticized it (in a post called "The Populist Persuasion"). And the only reason we can never decide whether idealists or materialists are correct is because we've never been able to agree on what standard by which to judge them. Every standard that has been constructed can be quite easily shown to beg the question in the correct answer's favor.
Matt said:
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.
Paul said:
I'm not convinced. If you believe that there is a world out there (reality) that descriptions don't represent, then the two (reality and descriptions) are not the same and surely you have made a description/reality distinction?
Matt:
Well, no, because the distinction is between books and rocks, sound waves and light waves. Everything is part of reality, its just that we can split reality up in different ways, like between "rocks" and "talking about rocks". Davidson helps us out in this regard because he makes a distinction between reasons and causes. The world (rocks and trees) can cause us to hold certain beliefs, but it cannot supply reasons for our beliefs because reasons are discursive. However, reasons can explain our beliefs and they can also cause us to have beliefs.
What realists think is that the world "out there" can give us reasons for our beliefs, that it can explain our beliefs by saying that our beliefs correspond with the world. Pragmatists don't want to say that. They say simply that the world causes us to have certain beliefs and that our descriptions can explain themselves.
Matt
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