From: Scott R (jse885@spinn.net)
Date: Sun Nov 23 2003 - 05:07:58 GMT
Matt, David,
[Matt said:]> I don't think we need to forever keep asking the question,
"What is real?" to our children. The only reason to ask that question is if
you are trying to bite the person with the philosophy bug, do a bit of
intellectual history by reenacting the series of footnotes stretching out
from under Plato, get them to _understand_ why pragmatism rose to the top of
the philosophical heap. Pragmatists agree with Hegel that philosophy is the
attempt to "hold your time in thought," and to do that you have to do a
little history.
[David M remarks:] I respect pragmatisms logic and assumptions but then
the language used is all too friendly with the materialist metaphysics and
ideology that is today's common sense and dominant scientistic world-view.
Don't you realise this?
[Scott agrees with DM, pointing out:] Another reason to ask "what is real"
is because one thinks (as I do) that the view that only the material is real
is predominant among intellectuals in our culture, and I think that that is
a bad thing. And so, when the pragmatist also happens to be a materialist
(even a non-reductive one), and says "The only reason to ask that question
is if you are trying to bite the person with the philosophy bug" then I see
that as an attempt to uphold a particular ontological viewpoint, and not as
pragmatism simpliciter.
If nothing else, I would think that quantum physics alone should lead us to
re-ask the question "what is real", to question common sense more deeply.
- Scott
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