RE: SUO: RE: RE: Re: Missing Ingredients
Hi Murray:
I do think realism/nominalism is the basic issue. For example, Richard Rorty
(whose work Brandom continues) characterizes himself as a pragmatist, but
what has analytic philosophers so angry at him is his "relativism". So is
the issue objectivism vs. relativism? Pragmatism vs picture theories?
The terminological contrasting pairs proliferate, and make discussion
difficult. Rorty's "relativism" is nominalism, in its linguistic philosophy
manifestation of a realization that the correct naming relationship between
language and reality cannot be the right account of what makes true
statements true because we can never get outside our language to see if our
statements do or do not correctly name chunks of reality. If we deny that,
we are realists. Pragmatists are those who finesse the issue; as Rorty puts
it, those who claim that "truth is not an object of inquiry".
-----Original Message-----
From: Murray Altheim [mailto:m.altheim@open.ac.uk]
Sent: Thursday, October 23, 2003 4:15 PM
To: Tom Johnston
Cc: Richard Cooper; Jay Halcomb; Chris Angus; Joshua Allen; Jon Awbrey;
SUO
Subject: Re: SUO: RE: RE: Re: Missing Ingredients
Tom Johnston wrote:
> Murray said of nominalism that it is: In a nutshell, the
oversimplification
> of the world, the idea that by putting a name on something you somehow
> understand it.
>
> In nutshells, as I said earlier today, realism will always come out
looking
> better than nominalism. Johnson refuted Berkeley by kicking a rock.
Realism
> is solid, common-sense, linked up to the world stuff. Nominalism is
> airy-fairy sophistical word play. If the best soundbite wins, I don't want
> to play.
[...]
> With apologies to my realist friend, Murray.
Actually, the polarity isn't nominalism-realism (Nominalism-Realism).
I don't consider myself a Realist, if you mean that school of thought.
As I stated recently, the closest nominalistic label :-) I could put
on my views would be either Taoist and/or Pragmatist. I'm still
learning what the latter means. I've also been reading Robert Brandom
recently, and agree with his approach, noting that hard core Peirceans
are angry with Brandom for "stealing" from him. Regardless of the
truth of that, there's enough alignment that I find myself in whatever
camp one might find a Taoist/Pragmatist/Brandomite/Peircean, statements
from Groucho Marx notwithstanding...
Murray
PS. I'd not attempt to answer what Brandom is about, suffice it to
say that it's not representation but expression that is at the
heart of ontology. Social-linguistic, not atomic. That I agree with.
......................................................................
Murray Altheim http://kmi.open.ac.uk/people/murray/
Knowledge Media Institute
The Open University, Milton Keynes, Bucks, MK7 6AA, UK .
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