From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Tue Nov 25 2003 - 16:52:01 GMT
Hi Matt, Paul:
I thoroughly enjoyed your numerous discussions over the past couple of
months. I see now that by mutual agreement you've decided to suspend
them for awhile. In reviewing the debates, I found two that were
particularly interesting
From Paul's post of 29 Oct. under the subject of "When is an
interpretation not an interpretation" comes this exchange:
"Paul said:
And if intersubjective agreement is the pragmatist measure of "right,"
doesn't "right" equally belong to the "many [who] have interpreted
Rorty as saying this" as to those, like yourself, who haven't?
"Matt:
No, right doesn't belong equally to anybody. Otherwise, there wouldn't
be a difference between right and wrong.
"Paul:
My objection precisely. Does this mean that e.g. there is such a thing
as a wrong [and by virtue of that, a right] reading of Pirsig?
Furthermore, if you can be right or wrong about something, what
decides?
"Matt:
What happens, though, is that I am trying to persuade people that I'm
right and these others are wrong.
"Paul:
That sounds more like the pragmatist stance I have been hearing. In
accord with the statement above, I would have guessed that a pragmatist
would say that "right" is only ever a compliment one pays one's own
understanding or interpretation.
"However, it looks like there is a real difference between "thinking
you are right" and "being right," a difference I had thought
pragmatists had denied."
The context was the question of how does one decide who has a "right
interpretation" of a text. Up to this point it was my understanding,
and Paul's, that the criteria for pragmatists in evaluating the "right"
of any subject was "intersubjective agreement." But in the above
exchange, Matt denies this, saying "Right doesn't belong equally to
everybody. Otherwise, there wouldn't be a difference between right or
wrong." So when Paul asks, "Who decides?" Matt doesn't answer. He says
he tries to persuade people he is right, but how many people he needs
to persuade to establish his interpretation as right is left up in the
air. So in effect, Matt renounces "intersubjective agreement" as the
standard for right or wrong. Carried to its logical conclusion it means
he also renounces "intersubjective agreement" for establishing truth or
falsehood. (Substitute "truth" in Matt's words above: "Truth doesn't
belong equally to everybody. Otherwise, there wouldn't be a difference
between true and false.")
On 14 Nov. in a post from Paul with the subject "Two theories of truth"
Rorty's notion of "intersubjective agreement" was further shown to be
questionable as a meaningful proposition.
"Paul said:
I think intersubjective agreement has to be classified as static social
patterns of authority and the static intellectual patterns they
approve. Therefore, as Quality (or morality) *creates* static patterns
(including intersubjective agreement), I don't think they are
interchangeable. In addition, to borrow some words from Pirsig - when
an American Indian goes into isolation and fasts in order to achieve a
vision, the vision he seeks is not one of intersubjective agreement.
"Matt:
I think you are making the same mistake Platt makes by thinking that by
'intersubjective agreement' I mean that one has to follow what the
group thinks. This isn't true. 'Intersubjective agreement' represents
the continuum from idiosyncratic beliefs to common sense.
"Paul:
I didn't think that it meant mindless flock behaviour as you assume.
However, given your added definition, and my understanding of the
English language, I think it is poor terminology to use
"intersubjective" when it might only refer to one person and
"agreement" when there is potentially none and no requirement for any.
Therefore, if you take away the necessity for "inter" and "agreement"
you are left with "subjective," which seems to be a better term for
what pragmatists are referring to.
"Following your clarification, I would say that intersubjective
agreement can simply be described as static intellectual patterns."
I'm glad intersubjective agreement can no longer be labelled
"groupthink" because, as Paul points out, there is no longer any
"inter" or "agreement" under Matt's definition of what the phrase
really means -- a continuum that includes you or me alone all the way
up to and including the whole universe. How a continuum of arbitrary
opinions, ranging from a disturbed individual to a mindless collective,
could ever be considered to be a criteria for truth boggles the mind. I
guess it stems from the desire to defy authority, the hope for equality
and the wish never to be judged negatively.
I'm led to the conclusion, thanks to Paul's probing questions and
Matt's answers that not only is Rorty right when he said, "Truth is
what your contemporaries let you get away with," but that to him and
his followers, "Morality is what your contemporaries let you get away
with." The other day I happened to run across a similar quote
attributed to Andy Warhol: "Art is what you can get away with."
Considering the lack of aesthetic value of Warhol's art, I'm not
surprised to see him echoing the postmodernist refrain. :-)
Be that as it may, thanks to Matt's clarifications, it looks to me like
"intersubjective agreement" has seen better days.
Platt
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