[lit-ideas] Re: Transcendental and otherwise

  • From: wokshevs@xxxxxx
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, wokshevs@xxxxxx
  • Date: Tue, 8 Jan 2008 18:45:24 -0330

Addendum:

I should also mention that for Rorty, coming to understand a vocabulary other
than the one one has been trained/socialized into requires a form of conversion
that remains unaccountable for on strictly epistemic grounds. In other words, it
is not on the basis of reasons that one switches from one vocabulary to another.
Nor does one come to inhabit a vocabulary simply on the basis of reasons. It is
this irrationailsm that has motivated most of the criticisms of his pragmatism
over the past years.

Walter O.
MUN





Quoting wokshevs@xxxxxx:

> Some remarks on Eric D's thoughtful and probing views on transcendental
> arguments, performative contradictions and divorce court.
> ------------------>
> 
> 
> 
> Quoting Eric Dean <ecdean99@xxxxxxxxxxx>:
> 
> > Walter characterizes a passage John McCreery quoted from Rorty thus:
> > 
> > "...Rorty's claim...is a transcendental claim: it attempts to identity the
> > limits and possibilities of a specific kind of discourse."
> > 
> > I'm not sure that Walter's characterization, on which he bases a dismissal
> of
> > Rorty, is accurate.  
> 
> ------------------------> Lest Eric's statement mislead our readers, I
> should
> say that my dismissal of certain aspects of Rorty's writings is based on
> more
> than that one small passage quoted by John McC and to which Eric refers. I
> have
> studied the entire extant corpus of Rorty's published writings - even his
> educational works in opposition to Bloom. I'm just no longer clear on why I
> did
> that. Clearly, those biographical facts are irrelevant to the correctness of
> my
> reading and critique of Rorty's positions. 
> 
> > The quote from Rorty was:
> 
> > "...The controversy between those who see both our species and our society
> as
> > a lucky accident, and those who find an immanent teleology in both, is too
> > radical to permit of being judged from some neutral standpoint."
> > 
> > That need not be a transcendental claim at all.  Instead, it could just be
> a
> > description of the disputes which arise between two roughly identifiable
> > groups of people.  
> 
> ---------------> Eric's dichotomy here is a false one: descriptions of the
> nature, limits and posssibilities of discourses and disputes between
> discourses
> may take transcendental form. When Habermas describes the epistemic
> conditions
> of discourse that are universally and necessarily presupposed within
> justification of validity claims to moral rightness, he provides the
> description as part of a transcendental account, as he himself recognizes
> and
> repeatedly states.
> 
> > My wife was a divorce mediator in Rockford, Illinois,
> > where there is a large population of Swedes and another large population
> of
> > Italians.  She says that the most bitter divorces she saw were those in
> which
> > a Swede had been married to an Italian.  
> 
> ----------> Such bitterness pales in comparison to divorces between
> Ukrainians
> and Russians.
> 
> > The Swede in his or her bitterly
> > cold rage would contemptuously characterize the Italian as crazy, and the
> > Italian, in his or her voluble rage, would contemptuously characterize the
> > Swede as a soulless lump of ice.  
> 
> -----------> Note that both descriptions may indeed be correct. (They are
> not
> logically contradictory.)
> 
> > If one takes Rorty's "permit of being
> > judged from some neutral standpoint" as meaning "being judged in a way the
> > disputants might both accept", then the Swede and Italian divorces can be
> > understood as controversies that are "too radical to permit of being
> judged
> > from some neutral standpoint."
> 
> ---------> Such cultural differences do not constitute the
> differences in "vocabularies" that Rorty claims (transcendentally) cannot be
> assessed for truth or rightness from a neutral, non-circular perspective.
> Other
> Italians may attribute craziness to the Italian filing for divorce and other
> Swedes may concur that the Swede in question possesses the soul of a
> toiletseat. But no Darwinian could agree with a metaphysical teleologist and
> the converse is also true.
> 
> 
> > My wife wasn't trying to say that no Italian/Swede divorce could ever work
> > out.  She wasn't setting limits or defining possibilities for such
> divorces,
> > but rather trying to describe a rough class of human situations in a way
> that
> > could be useful.  Trying to help a divorcing Italian/Swede couple to
> > understand one another might be largely futile; better, perhaps, to help
> them
> > figure out the minimum they had to do together to get through their
> divorce.
> > 
> > Similarly, I read Rorty, in this passage, as saying that as a practical
> > matter, trying to find a neutral ground on which the Darwinists and
> > fundamentalists might some day come to an understanding is probably a
> waste
> > of time.  Life's too short, I hear him saying; we should move on.
> 
> 
> ----------> No, Rorty makes no probability claim in the passage under
> discussion. (Or in his pragmatist account of justification.) 
> 
> To claim that vocabularies are incommensurable, which he ultimately does
> claim,
> is not to make a probability claim. It is to make a claim regarding the
> conceptual limits and possibilities of a vocabulary and its relations to
> other
> vocabularies. 
> 
> It is one thing to claim that it is not possible for the fascist and the
> Socratic, Rawlsian liberal to overcome their disagreements given the
> respective
> premises involved and quite another to claim that probably no such agreement
> is
> forthcoming. The reason why we can only "hope" for a better future is
> because
> the enemy cannot be convinced (i.e. via appeal to epistemically relevant
> reasons) of the rightness of our conceptions of the nature of humankind or
> the
> legitimacy of performative self-contradictions. The enemy can, however, be
> persuaded to come along through the recitation of stories and biographies,
> Rorty believes. Yet one more case of his begging the moral question.
> 
> > Lots of problems with that sketch come to mind as I write it.  For one,
> > there's a formally established neutral position from which a divorce
> mediator
> > observes people in conflict.  Rorty, however, is one of those involved in
> the
> > conflict.  It's one thing for a third party, whom both combatants have
> > accepted as neutral, to say "you guys aren't going to resolve this"; it's
> > another thing altogether for one of the combatants to say "we're not going
> to
> > resolve this," especially if it's followed with a "because" that's based
> on
> > the combatant's position, like, say "because you're too narrow minded to
> > accept the evidence of your senses" or "your soul is too corrupted to hear
> > the word of God".
> 
> --------> It shopuld be said that Rorty's account of vocabularies does not
> have
> their inhabitants engage in reciprocal name-calling. Not even Rorty is
> guilty
> of that kind of psychologizing. The point is that i.e., "phlogiston" or
> "sin"
> are meaningless terms in some vocabularies and no resources exist to
> assimilate
> meaningless concepts into the extant semantics and inference-relations
> defining
> those vocabularies. The kind of response Rorty has the athiest give the
> believer
> is not a derogatory or impolite one. In response to "What you did was
> sinful"
> the athiest simply responds with a blank stare. For Rorty, there is neither
> moral nor epistemic culpability in such a look.
> 
> 
> > Walter's complaint that Rorty's guilty of a performative contradiction
> sounds
> > to me more like the retort of the other combatant than it does a serious
> > consideration of the question of whether the conflict could ever be
> resolved.
> >  Rorty may not be able to occupy the neutral ground, but he seems to me
> just
> > to be saying no one can occupy the neutral ground anyway, so where's the
> > contradiction?
> 
> ----------> That is a more accurate rendering of Rorty's transcendental
> position: he claims not simply the empirical truth that people inhabiting
> different vocabularies *don't* occupy neutral ground of adjudication but
> that,
> as you now say, "no one *can* occupy ... [emph mine]" 
> 
> Let's put it this way. Suppose Rorty were to make the claim above
> regarding the impossibility of neutral assessment of the two
> vocabulary-specific beliefs, but then also say that this claim itself
> assumes
> norms, principles and standards of a particular vocabulary that does not
> permit
> the possibility of impartial and objective judgement. Thus he claims that
> his
> view is partial, biased and prejudiced by the values of his own vocabulary -
> a
> vocabulary that has nothing to learn from other vocabularies. Transcendental
> epistemic norms governing the possibility of intelligible belief and
> justification render invalid such a view. We might as well ground epistemic
> authority in the bible or the colour of a chicken's blood upon decapitation.
> 
> 
> > Walter goes on to say:
> > 
> > "...biography has no epistemic relevance to philosophical argument, as far
> as
> > I can see.  It may help to explain how one comes to hold a set of beliefs,
> > but no justification of judgment or action is possible via such
> > description/recitation."
> > 
> > This is more about the definition of the boundaries of philosophy as
> Walter
> > believes they should be set than it is about truth per se.  
> 
> --------> I am not innocent of other understandings of philosophy. For all
> of
> the latter, as far as I am aware, we have other terms to describe the form
> of
> inquiry and practice being referred to within such conceptions.
> Understanding
> philosophy as a transcendental form of inquiry is intelligible and
> justifiable,
> in my mind, since no other form of inquiry can be said to be unique to the
> discipline of philosophy. Only philosophy can do transcendental analysis,
> and
> all transcendental analysis is philosophical. (I hasten to add that claims
> made
> by philosophy understood in these terms are not by that fact equivalent to
> assertions of "the Truth." The latter is a religious concept that has been
> illegitimately grafted onto philosophy.
> 
> 
> > Biography may
> > have no epistemic relevance to that which Walter sees as philosophical
> > argument, but surely there are judgments and actions which are entirely
> > justified based on biographies -- judgments about whether such and so
> > happened to someone can only be justified by knowing that someone's
> > biography; 
> 
> 
> ---------> Consider this: "Some people believe that truth is not relative to
> time. And yet, it is both true that Guy Lafleur played centre for the
> Canadiens
> and it is false that he played centre for the Canadiens. This proves that
> the
> first statement above is false." The same applies to Eric's claim about the
> relvance of biography. It is not biography qua biography that is relevant to
> justification; rather, it is biography in its epistemic relevance to the
> truth
> of a claim that defines its significance. (The role of the epistemic is
> easily
> confused with the empirical and the moral.)
> 
> 
> > and certainly there are biographical questions that go into
> > deciding whether or not scarce resources should be given to someone who
> > appears needy but may be scamming the giver, if only because it may limit
> the
> > giver's ability to help the truly needy.
> > 
> > It seems to me that Walter wants to assert that philosophy bears a similar
> > relationship to life that mathematics bears to the construction of bridges.
> 
> > I'm willing to acknowledge that there are worthy questions about things
> one
> > might call philosophical that bear something like that relationship to
> life
> > -- call them 'transcendental' if you will.  I'm uncomfortable, however,
> with
> > the idea that the word 'philosophy' clearly and unequivocally refers only
> to
> > such things.
> 
> ---------> I've made an effort to explain above.
> 
> > Etymologically philosophy is about loving wisdom.  Isn't wisdom, in the
> end,
> > about how to live?  How can one be wise about how to live without
> > understanding a lot about living, i.e. about the material of biographies?
> 
> -------> Many other forms of inquiry are concerned with such subject matter.
> In
> some ways, literature does a better job of conveying the nature and practice
> of
> wisdom than philosophy can. What is distinctive about, unique to philosophy
> is
> its pursuit of knowledge and understanding of transcendental truth. 
> 
> 
> > I can accept that a mathematical theorem is true or false irrespective of
> the
> > biographical details of its propounder; whether an assertion about how one
> > should judge a practical matter in life is true or false may, however, be
> > much more closely tied to the biographical details of its propounder.  The
> > real challenge is in recognizing which things are of the former sort and
> > which of the latter.
> 
> ------> An endearing Aristotelian sentiment. But your use of it begs the
> question here, I believe.
> 
> Thanks to Eric for some truly interesting and challenging observations. 
> 
> Walter O.
> MUN
> 
> > 
> > Regards to one and all.
> > Eric Dean
> > Washington, DC
> > 
> 
> 
> 
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