Re: SUO: RE: Re: On To Ontological Relativity
On Thu, 7 Aug 2003, Pierluigi Miraglia wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 06, 2003 at 01:13:00PM -0400, Tom Johnston wrote:
> .......
> > -----
> >
> > A man pre-eminently qualified to comment on both communities is Richard
> > Rorty, the undisputed foremost
> > figure in contemporary American pragmatism. As author of the influential
> > anthology "The Linguistic Turn" (a good
> > place to begin looking for where analytic philosophy went wrong, to allude
> > to a comment of yours yesterday), and
> > former head of the American Philosophical Association, his analytic
> > philosophy credentials are also unchallenged.
> > But nowhere in his published work, absolutely nowhere (and I speak as one
> > who has studied all of it) is there
> > the slightest intimation that "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" is just a rehashing
> > of what Peirce had already fully
> > developed. Nowhere. You can even drop the "fully" if you care to!
>
> A curiosity: when I first read "Two dogmas," my reaction was that the
> 2nd-dogma portion (contra verificationism) was indeed a rehash of Pierre
> Duhem's much more carefully articulated argument in "AIm and structure
> of physical theory." In fact, I think many others (Putnam himself,
> perhaps? Van Fraassen? I forget) have referred to the jingle version
> of "Two dogmas" as the "Duhem-Quine thesis."
Interesting. I haven't read Duhem.
> Is there really anything in Peirce as closely recalling Quine's theses
> as one can find in Duhem?
Maybe not as closely related, but a strong theme in early Peirce is the
rejection of "intuitions" in the Kantian sense which means something like
"direct experience" (like sense-data except that one could have it
introspectively of one's own mind and self as well).
From this rejection of intuitions he draws the following conclusions:
1. We have no power of Introspection, but all knowledge of the internal
world is derived by hypothetical reasoning from our knowledge of external
facts.
2. We have no power of Intuition, but every cognition is determined
logically by previous cognitions.
3. We have no power of thinking without signs.
4. We have no conception of the absolutely incognizable.
In a paper called "Questions Concerning Certain Faculties Claimed for
Man" (http://www.peirce.org/writings/p26.html) he argues for these claims.
In two further papers he draws out their consequences for (amongst other
things) logic and philosophy of mind:
"Some Consequences of Four Incapacities"
http://www.peirce.org/writings/p27.html
"Grounds of Validity of the Laws of Logic: Further Consequences of Four
Incapacities"
http://www.peirce.org/writings/p41.html
Anyway, seems to me that there is a lot of overlap here with Robert
Brandom's recent explorations of "inferentialism" (in his book
_Articulating Reasons_) - except that where Brandom stops short of
claiming all mental 'content' to be inferential (for cases such as
recognising colours and other qualia) - Peirce bites the bullet, ending up
with a more elegant view.
In fact I'm writing a paper on just this at the moment :-)
Cheers,
Cathy.
> > -----
> >
> > On another topic: if you believe, as it appears you might, that where
> > American philosophy went wrong was where it turned away
> > from classical American Pragmatism (Peirce, James, Dewey), here is Rorty's
> > analysis:
>
> Rorty is kind of a bad advocate for his own view, as he has grown
> increasingly cavalier about serious philos. explanation. Just by
> repeating in guru-like fashion that truth is what we are "prepared to
> defend against all comers" not a lot of philosophical
> progress is made. Robert Brandom, in my opinion, fleshes out many of
> Rorty's imaginings much more effectively.
>
>
--
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