[lit-ideas] Re: On linguistic and genetic uncertainty
- From: "Walter C. Okshevsky" <wokshevs@xxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, cblists@xxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 26 Jun 2014 09:16:57 -0230
Now how could I possibly disagree with a fellow-Canadian? (Ethnocentrism
vindicated.) Thanks for sharing, Chris.
Preparing for Germany vs USA.
Opa Walter
P.S. Ever notice entropy isn't what it used to be?
Quoting cblists@xxxxxxxx:
>
> On 22 Jun 2014, at 19:14, Walter C. Okshevsky <wokshevs@xxxxxx> wrote:
>
> > The agreement Rorty seeks on the justifiability of his ethnocentrism must
> be intended as agreement by a universal audience. ... Rorty's espousal of
> ethnocentrism displays performative self-contradiction, for what it
> explicitly says is contradicted by what it shows in the saying (and *must*
> show in the saying for the saying to say what it's saying). Any position that
> cannot be expressed without contradicting itself, performatively or
> logically, is not a rational position to maintain ...
>
> Did Rorty seek a universal audience, or was he merely wishing to convince
> believers in (what I will, I hope unproblematically, call) the Enlightenment
> Project that their faith is not grounded in rational argument, but merely
> intellectual 'hand-waving' which in the end says nothing more than 'that's
> the way we do things around here'?
>
> If Rorty imagined that he accomplished this by rational argument, then he was
> indeed guilty of the contradiction which Walter points out above. By his own
> account, he should only have been able to indulge in that same 'intellectual
> handwaving'. And that begs the question.
>
> Will Kymlicka, in his "Liberalism and Communitarianism", argues that Rorty's
> position was dogmatic. Rorty was not predicting that we will be unable to
> find universal, rational grounds and means of persuasion for our moral
> positions, he was claiming from the outset that he knew 'in advance of the
> arguments' that such 'universal' rational grounds and means of persuasion
> will only be compelling to particular historical communities. In Kymlicka's
> words, "Rorty ... simply presuppose[s] ... that Kantian liberal theories
> won't work. ... Rorty has decided he doesn't even have to examine the
> theories - and that is just dogmatism."
>
> Chris Bruce
> Kiel, Germany
>
> Will Kymlicka, "Liberalism and Communitarianism", in the Canadian Journal of
> Philosophy, Vol. 18, No. 2 (June 1988), pp. 181-204; reprinted in several
> philosophical collections, including Andrew Bailey, ed., FIRST
> PHILOSOPHY:
> FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEMS AND READINGS IN PHILOSOPHY, Broadview Press
> (Peterborough, Canada), 2004; Vol 1: VALUES AND SOCIETY, pp. 324-338.
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