Re: MD When is a metaphysics not a metaphysics?

From: MATTHEW PAUL KUNDERT (mpkundert@students.wisc.edu)
Date: Tue Dec 02 2003 - 23:05:23 GMT

  • Next message: MATTHEW PAUL KUNDERT: "Re: MD The Matt-Paul _Discussion_"

    Wim,

    Wim said:
    How are intellectual patterns of value maintained, the body of beliefs and ways of experiencing life that connects people and constitutes (the intellectual aspect of) cultures, that has (been) developed over centuries? IF the answer is (as I suggested): "by some people at some points in time asking those questions and reformulating the common-sensical answers to them", THEN these questions are NOT ONLY important as a way of organizing MY personal beliefs and experience.

    Matt:
    I see. I agree with your general idea, but pragmatists are too historical for simply taking up the old questions and re-answering them. Good historical narratives like Bernard Yack's The Longing for Total Revolution and Jeffery Stout's The Flight from Authority show how some of these old philosophical questions (and answers) arose out of their historical context and how, with the march of time and context, these old philosophical questions have lost relevancy. Historicists don't think there are any natural order of questions or any natural questions to be asked. Unlike Susan Haack (who Platt brought up in a strange call of authority), pragmatists don't think epistemology, or anything else for that matter, is a natural activity to engage in.

    It is good to rehearse these narratives that show how we've gotten to where we are. _That's_ how we maintain our intellectual patterns. However, I don't think all the old questions need to be answered because many of them have lost their relevancy and answering them again might help us fall, for instance, into Cartesian epistemology again. Its taken us 400 years to try and break free, I'd hate to start the process all over again. To think that there are a list of questions that we have to keep answering every so often is a bit too ahistorical for the pragmatist, a bit too removed from context.

    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 : Tue Dec 02 2003 - 23:07:29 GMT