From: Wim Nusselder (wim.nusselder@antenna.nl)
Date: Wed Jan 28 2004 - 22:06:11 GMT
Dear Matt,
I didn't mean 'defining pragmatism as self-denying philosophy/vocabulary'
(for your peace of mind I'll forget about metaphysics) in the sense of
'denying that it IS a philosophy/vocabulary' but in the sense of denying
it's own (social) relevance. Judging from your (24 Jan 2004 12:48:55 -0600)
quotes form Locke, Hegel, Wittgenstein and Stanley Fish I was wrong:
pragmatism can't be defined by it, as self-denying is shared more widely
among philosophers. You're sure they didn't happen to be in a modest mood
and said (or implied) something different at other times?
To the extent that you define pragmatism by its 'not leaping out of
experience', I'm fine with being called a pragmatist. Please let me know if
I do seem to leap out of experience, so I can correct myself.
Asking the questions 'how' and 'what can we know' doesn't imply a leap out
of experience yet. Only answers other than 'experience' resp. 'the patterns
in experience' do. So I disagree about calling those questions in themselves
'metaphysical'.
I'm glad that according to you pragmatism is a specimen of philosophy. That
implies that it at least seeks wisdom. Doesn't 'wisdom' imply recognition as
such by (and relevance for) other people than the wise themselves?
You wrote:
'philosophy isn't a very good instrument of change'
AND (in response to the last part of what I wrote)
'I'm not sure that we disagree on all that much.'
To what extent DO you agree with (that last part of what I wrote):
'Sure, re-organizing beliefs, creating shared vocabularies, answering
abstract questions for the sake of practising and thereby maintaining those
shared vocabularies etc. don't revolutionize society in the same speed as
[that of] intellectual evolution. They are relatively marginal and trivial
from a social perspective. But they DO enable a slow migration of social
patterns of value towards ... whatever.
They enable social progression.'
Social change IS slow anyway. There may not be a better instrument of real
(not superficial) social change than philosophy.
If you're not content any more with "vocabulary" defined as a "systematic
arrangement or organization of your beliefs", please provide another one if
it is different from what I find in my dictionary ("whole set of words used
by someone").
I'm obviously not fine with being called a pragmatist if it is defined
merely by using certain words. That's another sure way of defining it into
irrelevance.
You wrote:
'What really is at issue is ... the language we use, the metaphors that
drive the conversation.'
That suggests defining 'vocabulary' as 'whole set of metaphors used by
someone'. Shouldn't the reasoning behind eschewing/preferring certain
metaphors be part of the definition?
My main problem is with your distinction between public and private and the
way you use it to marginalize what we are doing on this list:
- 'Philosophy, like religion, should be privatized because of the tenets of
liberalism: we want a flowering diversity, not state-mandated
commensuration.'
- 'when Pirsig's supporters go on to suggest ... that his own beautifully
idiosyncratic idiom, his own project of self-creation and perfection, will
have profound public consequences if we would all just accept it,
pragmatists pull back.'
- 'In political conversations, its irrelevant where our belief in "democracy
and the desire to minimize cruelty in the world" came from ... You keep
talking about trying to create a shared vocabulary, when as far as I can
tell, we already predominantly have the relevant shared vocabulary at our
disposal.'
- 'as I've been utilizing the terms, this isn't a public forum, its a
private forum. In this sense of the two terms, a public forum would be one
devoted to politics and other public things.'
You make the distinction less absolute in:
- 'Pirsig and Rorty's ideas ... can be extraordinarily useful for our own
personal, private obsessions, for dispelling our inner demons and, in the
long run, for giving us a language that will less problematically allow us
to realize our public and private hopes and dreams.'
- 'I've never disagreed that intellectuals have a responsibility in trying
to convince the public of the good of certain public policy ideas.'
To what extent is this distinction and it's moral usage (some things
'should' stay at one side of the divide) typical for pragmatism, for
Rortyism or for general American political correct thinking, I wonder?
I see no dividing line between public and private. There's a continuum from
things that are mine and completely inaccessible for others and things I
identify with which I share with others. There's a continuum from
discussions in my own head to discussions in which the whole world is
involved. Defined in this way I don't see much reason to say that some
things should 'belong' at the private side of the continuum. True, as a rule
the state shouldn't try to access the things that I want to be relatively
inaccessible for others (crime being the exception to the rule) and politics
is an activity which we share by definition ('politics' is for me 'shaping
the future of a society as a whole'). Equating 'public versus private' with
'state versus (free) citizens' or with 'politics versus philosophy and
religion' doesn't seem right to me, however.
A democratic state is maintained by free citizens and CAN be right to put
some relatively private affairs in order IF its citizens democratically
decide so. There's a lot of public things (things shared among citizens,
even some politics) going on in which the state doesn't and shouldn't meddle
(or maybe should meddle, but doesn't). For instance art, religion and
science are all fields of shared human activity that are or should be free
from state intervention (not necessarily always from state support) AND that
are or should be to a large extent public to have a positive role in
society. Large scale economic activities may need to be supported or
stimulated by the state when they are weak when a country is underdeveloped.
Citizens may have to be protected from some of their adverse effects
(monopoly pricing, environmental damage, aggressive marketing of harmful,
wasteful or otherwise undesirable goods and services etc.) by the state when
power gets concentrated in too few (entrepreneurial and managerial) hands.
In other situations large scale economic activities organized by the state
should be handed over to other types of association of citizens. (This is
often wrongly termed 'privatization', because as long as they stay
large-scale, a lot of people participate and should have a say in them. They
have to stay relatively 'public'.) Even though politics should not be
dictated by a SPECIFIC philosophy or religion, the shape of a society as a
whole is unavoidably shaped and even should be shaped by people's highest
goals, which they develop (also collectively) by means of philosophy and
religion. Politics should contain philosophical and religious discussion on
pain of degenerating into sterile counting, weighing and compromising
between incomparable 'private' views that are on principle equivalent.
You wrote:
'the whole idea of "formulating for others what they want" is worded scarily
and should be caveated heavily'.
Why? What if you just consider it as a factual description of society? Most
of our behaviour is not consciously wanted in advance. If challenged (which
we constantly are when living together), we have to rely on rationalizations
from others, because it would cost us a lifetime to develop the
rationalizations needed to account for all the things we do in a single day.
Sure, it is desirable that people gradually formulate more of what they want
for themselves, but we simply don't have the brain-capacity to achieve a
100% goal. My 'economics of want and greed' can be read as a tool for
developing a strategy to help humanity gradually increase that percentage:
step by step, changing the mix of different types of economy, identifying
wants that are suboptimally satisfied by types of leadership that are
becoming superfluous.
With friendly greetings,
Wim
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