Re: MD When is an interpretation not an interpretation?

From: MATTHEW PAUL KUNDERT (mpkundert@students.wisc.edu)
Date: Wed Dec 03 2003 - 00:12:04 GMT

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    David,

    David said:
    Sorry Matt, the rock fits the bucket is not a belief it is a fact, a critical realist accepts that facts only exist within a conceptual framework, but when we test our theories we are dealing with the sort of factual stuff that has made science the success it is.

    Matt:
    Hmm, strange that a Heideggerian and anti-SOMist should erect the fact/opinion dichotomy. From the pragmatist viewpoint, Quine rid us of that, and what we have left is a continuum of intersubjective agreement: facts on one side (which lots of people agree with) and opinions on the other (which perhaps only one person agrees with). The pragmatist point is that the "fact" only exists as a belief (which Pirsig agrees with as in his Ghost Speech on gravity in ZMM), which you try and go with, but I have no idea why you would need to add "we are dealing with the sort of factual stuff that has made science the success it is." It's pretty redundant to say that after you've said that "facts" only exist within a conceptual framework, which as far as I can tell is the same as saying it only exists as a belief. The only way we can determine what the belief is dealing with, either "factual" stuff or "opinion" stuff, is by consensus because we are always dealing with "stuff" in "conce
    ptual frameworks", i.e. beliefs.

    I wouldn't normally agree to a dichotomy between "stuff" and "conceptual frameworks" for Davidsonian reasons See his "On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme" and Rorty's first interpretation of it in his "The World Well Lost". To the point, though, is that I think it is because you make a dichotomy between "stuff" and "conceptual frameworks" that is causing our differences. If that is the only difference between critical realists and pragmatists, then I can only suggest reading the above essays which will try and convince you that the scheme/content distinction (and vicariously the fact/opinion distinction) is just as Platonically and SOMically tainted as the subject/object distinction.

    Matt

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