From: MATTHEW PAUL KUNDERT (mpkundert@students.wisc.edu)
Date: Fri Nov 28 2003 - 20:39:59 GMT
David,
David said:
I suggest that Rorty is pretty averse to grand narratives but I see this as a form of pessimism. You seem to disagree with him here.
Matt:
If we take "grand narrative" to be equated with "philosophy" in Sellars' sense ('the attempt to see how things, in the widest possible sense, fit together, in the widest possible sense'), then Rorty has no theoretical problem with grand narratives, though personally he may not find much use for them. Even on this though, I think Rorty does have a personal use for a grand narrative, but its only in his private sphere that it is applicable. I think at most we should say that Rorty distrusts public grand narratives.
However, I don't see the connection between pessimism/optimism and narratives, grand or otherwise. The only reason I can think of that you'd attribute pessimism or optimism to the trust or distrust of grand narratives is that you place intrinsic higher value on bigger, more grandiose narratives. Pragmatists don't buy this, though. They value each narrative, grand or small, based on its utility, or to put it the other way around, they utilize each narrative based on its value.
David said:
I think you have avoided considering my bucket/rock/fitting problem. What is the status of 'fitting' in a truth is agreement approach to knowledge? We do not decide the answer without trying the rock in the bhucket. We certainly agree to the bucket test before hand, but then we have to do the test to divide the rocks into useful and non-useful ones.
Matt:
Still don't see how I've avoided your "problem". You are right, we do not decide the answer without trying the rock in the bucket. The pragmatist rendering of the experiment is, you start with the hypothesis "the rock will fit in the red bucket" and you do the experiment. The experiment causes you to believe either "the bucket fits the rock" or "the bucket does not fit the rock", and depending on which it is, the new belief will either cohere with the hypothesis or contradict the hypothesis. Coherence means a good hypothesis, contradiction means you throw it out.
Matt
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archives:
Aug '98 - Oct '02 - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
Nov '02 Onward - http://www.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/summary.html
MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 28 2003 - 20:41:07 GMT