I recently began reading The Future of Religion by Rorty and Vattimo. The following quote was lifted from the intro, written by the translator, Santiago Zabala:

“The only truth that the Bible reveals to us is the practical appeal to love, to charity. The truth of Christianity is the dissolution of the metaphysical concept of truth itself” (14).

Any interesting thoughts???

Richard Rorty

(source)

Richard Rorty has an interesting take on human rights. If we want universal acceptance of and respect for human rights, we shouldn’t try to argue about it. We shouldn’t attempt to work out rational justifications of human rights, or arguments that will convince people that human rights are a good thing. Instead, according to Rorty, we would achieve better results if we try to influence people’s feelings instead of their minds. And the best way to do that is by telling sentimental stories like “Uncle Tom’s cabin” or “Roots” etc., or by making political art. Such stories and art make the reader sympathize with persons whose rights are violated because they invite the audience or the reader to imagine what it is like to be in the victim’s position. The victim, who may be of another class, race or nationality and who seems so very different that he or she initially isn’t even considered to be of the same species and therefore cannot possibly claim to enjoy the same rights, is transformed by the story into a living human being. The sympathy engendered by the story gives the victim a human face. This person also grieves for the loss of children, also has an opinion and a moral sense. He’s or she not a barbarian. As a consequence, the victim can be given human rights.

This approach to human rights doesn’t justifying human rights in an abstract and philosophical way – something which according to Rorty isn’t possible anyway (Rorty’s a post-modern anti-foundationalist highly sceptical of the power of reason or rationality). Instead it motivates specific individuals to respect the rights of other specific individuals. So motivation instead of justification. And the focus isn’t so much on human rights themselves, but on humanity. When human rights are violated, it’s often not because people object to human rights, but because they consider the targets of rights violations as somehow outside the realm of humanity. Thomas Jefferson, for example, was very eloquent about human rights, but was a slave holder at the same time. Undoubtedly because he had convinced himself that negroes were more akin to animals than humans.

The big advantage of the sentimental approach is that is can convince people to accept others into the realm of humanity. Sympathy means after all the recognition that someone else’s suffering is akin to your own. Rorty harked back to David Hume for this insight:

Hume held that corrected (sometimes rule-corrected) sympathy, not law-discerning reason, is the fundamental moral capacity. Richard Rorty (source)

David Hume

Hence the importance of a “right to belong to humanity” in the words of Hannah Arendt (see here and here) and of the equal rights provision in the system of human rights.

This approach, or “sentimental education” as Rorty called it, can indeed be very useful, and I regularly use it on this blog (for example, there’s a blog series called “human rights stories“, and there’s also a lot of imagery used here). However, I think we should and can use both strategies, the emotional and the rational one. (I outlined the latter one here. In the field of morality, Immanuel Kant is of course the main exponent of the rational approach).

Thomas Pogge

The emotional approach isn’t without a downside. Human rights violations do not always occur because of a lack of sympathy or because of dehumanization. They are often the result of power structures, cultural practices, legal rules, institutions, international relations etc. Just engendering sympathy won’t do much good there. (Thomas Pogge is known for his work in this field). Moreover, sentimental education implies a willingness to listen – not a notable characteristic of many of the worst human rights violators, i.e. Taliban c.s. – and a certain standard of living that allows people to relax long enough to be able to listen. These are problems which Rorty recognized (source) and which indicate that his approach cannot be exclusive.

The three most important philosophers of the second half of the twentieth century were Bernard Williams, Michel Foucault, and Richard Rorty. The importance of each can in large part be attributed to the profound challenges they posed to entrenched assumptions about philosophy, its role in our lives, and its place midst our liberal democratic cultures. I insist on referring to the challenges posted by these three thinkers as profound—for their challenges, when taken seriously, run very deep indeed. By the time that Williams, Foucault, and Rorty had each finished laying out the intellectual projects characteristic of their mature work, it was clear that they had overturned many of the working assumptions of the philosophical tradition in which they had been reared. In this way, each of these thinkers challenged their respective traditions to move on to more ambitious and cunning conceptions of philosophy. Each exhibited inspiring levels of intellectual rigor and critical courage in provoking their respective traditions of thought to adopt a new self-image.

The above is the opening paragraph of a paper I have been working on over the past few weeks (the title of which is “Challenging Philosophy”).  I will happily send this out to anyone who is interested but it’s not quite ready for SSRN.  The paper itself continues:

… Of the three philosophers whose metaphilosophical challenges I am trumpeting, Rorty’s case is perhaps the most complex, and as such it will be the one on which I will focus my attention in what follows.  The particular complexity of Rorty’s case may be due to the fact that he was probably the most unabashed anti-philosophical philosopher of the second half of the twentieth century.  In this he resembled David Hume, who was the most unabashed critic of philosophy back in the second half of the eighteenth century…

…I proceed as follows: in the following section I will provide some initial motivation for the thought that Rorty is in fact a philosopher who moreover offers a metaphilosophical vision that helps make sense of much of what is best in certain new conceptions of philosophical practice to have arrived on the scene in the past few decades; I will then turn in the subsequent section to formulating a contrast between two different uses of the word “philosophy” that can be found in Rorty’s writings; on this basis I will then develop readings of some of Rorty’s texts in which this distinction helps us sort out what Rorty found of value in contemporary philosophy; I shall lastly conclude by offering a few summary remarks about what a valuable Rortyan conception of philosophy might amount to today…

And then from the conclusion:

Rorty’s distinctive achievement for philosophy need not be located in his having carved out this image for philosophy—James and Dewey beat him to this; indeed they showed him the way.  Rorty’s achievement should, rather, be understood in terms of challenging a highly-professionalized tradition of philosophical experts to transform themselves into the kind of cultural critics for which James and Dewey remain our best representatives—Rorty’s legacy for philosophy consists in his having appropriately challenged philosophy.  This is why the single best image of Rorty amongst all those that circulate is that of the persistent gadfly who out of caring concern provokes us to serious forms of irony about ourselves.  Rorty was not alone amongst late twentieth century philosophers in offering these provocations.  And it is for this reason that we might yet hold out hope for a better philosophy of the future.

Wydano właśnie czwarty – o ile dobrze liczę – tom esejów Michała Pawła Markowskiego, zatytułowany Życie na miarę literatury. Pierwszą, bardziej teoretyczną część książki, omawiam krótko poniżej; do drugiej, w której występują m.in. Marek Bieńczyk, Witold Gombrowicz, Franz Kafka, Fernando Pessoa, Marcel Proust i Witkacy – po prostu odsyłam, bo zapewniać o klasie esejów chyba nie muszę.

Jak oznajmia autor, książka jest swego rodzaju manifestem. Markowski tłumaczy, czym jest według niego (i dla niego) literatura i jaką spełnia rolę w codziennym życiu. Nie jest  bowiem tak, że nie pełni ona żadnej roli, albo istnieje tylko na marginesie. Markowski twierdzi, że życie bez literatury po prostu nie ma sensu. Ów sens „nie rośnie na polu, nie spoczywa w głębi oceanu i nie buja się na chmurach”, lecz jest mozolnie budowany w trakcie lektury, rozmowy z Innym. Obcowanie z literaturą jest takim sposobem egzystencji, któremu najbliżej do odnalezienia zagubionego sensu. Wejdźmy zatem, wraz z autorem, na grunt hermeneutyki.

Na początek, dla rozgrzewki, Markowski przypomina o dwóch modelach postrzegania literatury – klasycznym i awangardowym. Ten pierwszy zasadza się na micie i poczuciu wspólnoty, drugi zaś wręcz przeciwnie: na demitologizacji i emancypacji; model klasyczny zakłada, że „literatura to nasze wspólne dziedzictwo, wspólny dom” w którym chcielibyśmy zamieszkać, model awangardowy odwrotnie – chce zerwać z tym, co wspólne, z językiem ogółu i jego przyzwyczajeniami. Następstwem tego podziału jest wytworzenie się przeciwstawnych ujęć poezji: hermetyczne i hermeneutyczne.

Poezja hermetyczna, „czysta”, stara się oderwać od rzeczywistości i zakotwiczyć wyłącznie w języku; „wiersz powinien nie znaczyć, lecz być”.  Model hermeneutyczny z kolei próbuje „uczynić swoim własnym” to, co wcześniej było „obce”; jest to „poezja przyswojenia”. Mamy zatem, kontynuuje Markowski, dwie postawy wobec świata – eskapistyczną, kiedy uciekamy od niego na zawsze, oraz taką, która zakłada jednak powrót, i podobnie sztuka nowoczesna ma dwie drogi ku artystycznemu spełnieniu – hermetyczną i hermeneutyczną.

Drogę „hermetyczną” przetarł św. Augustyn, który dzięki lekturze ksiąg oderwał się od rzeczywistości, zmienił swoje życie i zwrócił ku Bogu. Markowski podkreśla, że w nawróceniu Augustyna najważniejszy był moment, kiedy święty oddał się bezgłośnej lekturze – tym sposobem odciął się od świata zewnętrznego, rozdzielił ciało i umysł. Bezpośrednim kontynuatorem poczynań Augustyna jest, zdaniem Markowskiego, S. Mallarmé, który pokazał, że „poezja jest wielką pracą nad negacją – transpozycją, transfiguracją – codziennego doświadczenia”.  Kolejną przywoływaną postacią jest T. S. Eliot, ale nie miejsce tutaj na referowanie całej książki krok po kroku; wspomnę więc tylko, że druga ścieżka to zadziwienie światem i próba jego wytłumaczenia; to poezja metafizyczna, np. Miłosza, która stara się świat tłumaczyć.

Markowski nie decyduje się na żadną z omawianych dróg, wybiera coś pomiędzy:

„Moja wizja literatury (…) polega na uznaniu egzystencjalnego wahania za najważniejszy i najciekawszy motyw literacki, który wszelako nie jest żadnym <<motywem>>, lecz mechanizmem napędzającym pisanie i czytanie”.

W wizji tej niezwykle ważna jest kategoria „rozumienia”, pożyczona od Gadamera; równie istotną rolę odgrywa uczuciowa, erotyczna perspektywa Barthesa i pragnienie zaprzyjaźnienia się z tekstem; ostatnim patronem jest wreszcie Richard Rorty, który pisał: „powieści sprawiają, że wiemy, jak ludzie, którzy się od nas całkiem różnią, myślą o sobie samych, jak obmyślają swoje działania, by wypaść w dobrym świetle, jak nadają sens własnemu życiu (…) Być człowiekiem bardziej wykształconym, rozwiniętym i wyrafinowanym to umieć uchwycić większość  z tych potrzeb i rozumieć większość z tych opisów”.

Lubię czytać Markowskiego, pewnie dlatego, że i mnie bliskie jest hermeneutyczne czytanie spod znaku Gadamera czy Ricoeura, przyjemność, którą przywrócił lekturze Barthes i pragmatyczne szturchańce Rorty’ego. Lubię swobodę, z jaką żegluje po morzu tekstów. Najcenniejsze z tej lektury wydaje się jednak przeświadczenie, że literaturę można kochać i nie można się tego wstydzić.

This post is a follow-up to the discussion that occurred between Daniel and Ross in Daniel’s post, “Pragmatism, The Evil Demon, and Inquiry-Limiting Hypotheses”

In this post, I want to explore Ross’ claim that “I don’t think there’s such a thing as a justification for pragmatism, and in fact I think the notion of a “justification” presumes a correspondence theory of truth.”

I think that is a brilliant point, Ross.  Let me explain what I mean.

I don’t know if it is possible, and I don’t know what it would mean, to have a conversation before one has “accepted pragmatism,” or “accepted a correspondence theory of truth (CTT)”  I am not sure what this would entail.

This reminds me of when someone asks me my religious beliefs, and I answer “I don’t have any religious beliefs.”  They respond, “Oh, so you are agnostic?” Then, they label me as an agnostic, as if it is comparable to Atheism, or Christianity.  They automatically place me in a field and want me to be able to justify my agnosticism on rational grounds, when it is merely the skeptical, unsure position.

Now let me return to pragmatism and the CTT.  I don’t think it is coherent or useful to compare the justifications for pragmatism and CTT.

Let us take a deep breathe, concentrate and compare Daniel and Ross’ views on the issue of which position has more explanatory power: pragmatism or CTT

Daniel: “You can explain pragmatism in terms of the correspondence theory of truth. You could just say that it is true that in all actual cases of language, we use words pragmatically. However, you cannot explain the correspondence theory of truth in terms of pragmatism. “

Ross: “As a pragmatist, I’ll readily concede that the correspondence theory of truth is a useful way to approach many problems. If you subscribe to the correspondence theory of truth, however, I think you are bound to assert that the correspondence theory of truth is TRUE (and if you don’t, I think our differences are primarily semantic) and thus that the pragmatist notion of truth ought to be excluded.”

You too are both very smart people, but yet, have divergent views.  I could definitely be wrong, but I think that these differences are more manifestations of your preconceived positions on the issue, rather than accurate reflections of the way things “really are.”  I think that you both are failing to approach the issue objectively, or at least are failing to convince me that you are approaching the issue objectively.

So, let me try to find a different solution.  I will take a page out of Rorty’s book, and attempt to evade this problem entirely through re-description.

For me, agnosticism is the a skeptical, unsure approach to any understanding God.  Similarly, my view of language is skeptical of truth or correspondence to reality.  I think that before you form a belief about an issue (I am not really sure what a belief actually is, though), you shouldn’t be held intellectually responsible for your belief.  You shouldn’t have to defend your position.  Perhaps you should be prepared to give reasons why you are skeptical of other positions.  Also, I think people can be pragmatically responsible for their beliefs, and I think that people can be criticized on other grounds, but not on intellectual grounds.  So, I want to redescribe Pragmatism in such a way that it falls into this awkward area of intellectual invulnerability.

I want to replace the word Pragmatism with Skrapticism.  I want to provide a rough idea of what I mean.  I haven’t yet fully figured out what I want Skrapticism to explain, but here are my first thoughts.

I am unsure what theory of truth is coherent.  I am open to the idea of a correspondence theory of truth, irrelevant to its “usefulness” (though, I am not sure how one would convince me to accept it, when as Ross pointed out, one can redefine usefulness as nearly any particular metric).  The reason why I do not currently subscribe to a correspondence theory of truth is two-fold.  First, I do not know how to ground it in reason, and second, I don’t think its necessary or useful for anything that I do in my life.  I also don’t have any passionate urge to subscribe to it.  I can see why someone would disagree with me, I am just trying to explain my intellectual and psychological reasons for holding this belief so that you might better understand why I am a Skraptic.

I don’t know how you feel about this issue, but I do not intentionally choose to use words that I do not understand the meaning of.  This might sound obvious, but the implication for me is that I do not use the word “know” or “true” outside of a pragmatic sense.  It is true that tomorrow is Friday (from my perspective) and I know that CMC will have hummus tonight.  I don’t really care what conditions must be fulfilled for either of these claims to be “true.”  [I don’t think redefining knowledge as “true, justified belief” explains anything.  Now I have three words I don’t understand instead of one.]

I would like to Let Rorty shed some light on this issue.  Rather than asking what truth is, Rorty talks about what “truth” as a term does. I think this is very important.  Until we have accepted a correspondence theory of language, or some other linguistic conception that justifies a non-pragmatic use of truth, I think it makes sense to limit our use truth to instances in which we understand what it, as a term, does.

A Skraptic wouldn’t claim that truth doesn’t exist, or claim that we cannot find truth, or claim that truth is incoherent.  But rather, the Skraptic is unsure as to what truth can offer us.

After reading about Kripke, Dennett, and Rorty, a Skraptic might enjoy parts of Pragmatism, and might find the Pragmatic literature to be useful and fascinating, but the Skraptic wouldn’t choose to fully embrace Pragmatism for fear of being tied down to a philosophy of language that they endorse.

The Skraptic is merely sampling at Yogurtland.  She has yet to choose her delicacy.

If one, like me, chooses to label oneself as a Skraptic rather than a Pragmatist, one has effectively chosen Agnosticism over Atheism.  The Skraptic doesn’t think that Truth doesn’t exist, and he doesn’t think that it is necessarily illogical to believe in truth, but rather that she doesn’t have enough information either way.

I would like to offer another metaphor to illustrate possible implications of Skrapticism.

In Daniel Dennett’s criticism of Dawkins’ The God Delusion, Dennett writes that

“We agree about most matters, and have learned a lot from each other, but on one central issue we are not (yet) of one mind: Dawkins is quite sure that the world would be a better place if religion were hastened to extinction and I am still agnostic about that. I don’t know what could be put in religion’s place–or what would arise unbidden–so I am still eager to explore the prospect of reforming religion, a task that cries out for a better understanding of the phenomena, and hence a lot more research than has yet been attempted.”

To explain my metaphor, I want to reconstruct Dennett’s criticism, replacing “Dawkins” with Rorty/Pragmatists.  Dennett with Skraptic.  Religious with “objective truth,” or “correspondence theory.”

I am not convinced that the world would be a better place if everyone was a pragmatist.  Instead, I agree with Rorty and Gordon’s argument that philosophy is a therapeutic method for helping people with certain ideas.  Not everyone is a Skraptic, and many Skraptics would love to vehemently believe in Christianity (if only they could).

Now, I want to look at the implications of Skrapticism on Philosophical Quietism.

Quietists believe that “Philosophy has no distinctive methods and philosophy can solve no problems; philosophy becomes a kind of therapy, dissolving philosophical problems rather than solving them.”

I do not necessarily think that all problems need to be dissolved, but I also don’t think all problems are fruitful.  Instead, I think it is up to the individual to investigate whatever she feels like investigating.  I don’t think this is problematic, profound, or anything in particular, but rather a reminder of the problem of labeling ourselves with certain beliefs.  It might force us to take too active of a stance towards a certain problem and lead to negative impacts like what Daniel described.

Finally, I want to revisit the original impetus for this post.

Ross said that he doesn’t think there’s such a thing as a justification for pragmatism” and that “the notion of a “justification” presumes a correspondence theory of truth.”

I think that it is more useful to think like a Skraptic, because it is not only unnecessary to justify Skrapticism, but definitionally impossible.

The second question that was heavily debated was whether pragmatism or CTT has greater explanatory power.  Now, it seems clear that Skrapticism must clearly have the greatest explanatory power imaginable, because it can conceive what it is like to view the world from everyone’s perspectives.  Because Skraptics want to explore and expand their understanding, and have no limitations as to what assumptions they can uphold, Skrapticism has the potential for limitless explanatory power.

But, I don’t think this matters.  I am not advocating Skrapticism for anyone who does not want to willingly take on the banner.  Skrapticism requires a primary interest in looking at things from different perspectives, and the true Skraptic wants to constantly expand her final vocabulary.

There are many interesting arguments on each side of the issue, and I don’t think it is necessary for any Pragmatists to become Skraptics.  I’m not positive that there is a difference, but I think that there is, and I think that the difference is nearly synonymous to the difference between Atheism and Agnosticism.

Through dropping the harsh, anti-propositional stance, Skrapticism seems to resolve a major philosophical dispute.  It seems like this is pragmatically in a Pragmatists best interests.  That is, unless she is a Pragmatist only for the sake of argument.

Mi objetivo es presentar algunas consideraciones sobre la relación entre el tipo de naturalismo que elijamos y el lugar que, en consecuencia, ocupan las creencias en la naturaleza o en nuestras vidas, respectivamente. Decir que estamos en condiciones de elegir entre tipos de naturalismo puede sonar extraño, pero no lo será para un oído fino, entrenado en las distinciones que a este respecto introdujeron, por ejemplo, P. Strawson (entre naturalismo estricto o reduccionista y naturalismo liberal o no reduccionista) o, más recientemente, J. McDowell (entre naturalismo puro y platonismo naturalizado, o naturalismo basado en una segunda naturaleza). Mi marco de referencia es, sin embargo, la distinción introducida por H. Price entre naturalismo centrado en el objeto (o naturalismo del objeto) y naturalismo centrado en el sujeto (o naturalismo del sujeto), principalmente en su artículo “Naturalism Without Representationalism” (2004): artículo comentado por R. Rorty en “Naturalismo y quietismo” (2006). Una cuestión tiene que ver con el rol de un enfoque evolucionista sobre el origen y función de las creencias en la elección entre naturalismos. Sin embargo, en esto la perspectiva evolucionista no está libre de responsabilidad: dependiendo de cuál sea nuestra elección sobre el protagonista de la evolución (los individuos y las especies, o los genes), seremos conducidos a uno u otro tipo de naturalismo.

Naturalismo del objeto es el naturalismo reduccionista que está más extendido entre los filósofos naturalistas. La idea es que el conocimiento científico más elaborado, que es el único camino seguro a la realidad, nos presenta una imagen de la naturaleza como una sopa de partículas físicas o, en el mejor de los casos, una sopa de partículas biológicas, que son los genes. La imagen científica del mundo no contiene, pues, más que una ontología de partículas (en palabras de Rorty) o, por decirlo en los términos que me interesa resaltar, una ontología sin sujetos: una ontología de entidades sin representaciones, metas ni valores. De manera que si un naturalista del objeto trata de encontrarle un espacio, por ejemplo, a los hechos morales, tiene que situarlos en el mundo moralmente indiferente de las partículas (es el problema de encontrarle un lugar a las no partículas en un mundo de partículas, según Rorty). Lo que habrá llevado a cabo es, por tanto, la reducción de una ontología de propiedades y valores morales a una ontología sin sujetos de atribución ni evaluación moral. Naturalismo del sujeto es una actitud completamente diferente ante, por ejemplo, el problema de la naturalización de la moral. Al enfrentarse a ese problema, el naturalista no reduccionista empieza con lo que la ciencia dice sobre los seres humanos, como una parte de la naturaleza que somos, más que empezar, como hace el naturalista del objeto, con lo que la ciencia dice sobre una naturaleza concebida como si no hubiera producido seres humanos (es decir, una naturaleza meramente no humana). El naturalismo del sujeto trata, entonces, de explicar en qué consisten las conductas lingüísticas y no lingüísticas de los seres humanos como sujetos morales, contando probablemente una historia acerca de la ventaja evolutiva de tener ciertas creencias y así comportarse de cierta manera. La diferencia de enfoque es evidente: mientras que el naturalismo del sujeto estudia un sujeto moral en relación con su entorno, el naturalismo del objeto estudia un entorno sin sujeto moral. Más específicamente, para el naturalista del sujeto la naturalización de la moral no consiste en reducir una ontología de propiedades y valores morales a una ontología de partículas sino en explicar la función en la vida humana de las creencias morales, que son la mediación entre el sujeto moral y su entorno, y hacerlo de modo que esa explicación no recurra a la idea misma de una representación de propiedades y valores morales.

Así que mientras la forma de una característica reducción es:

(O) El hecho moral de que p no consiste más que en X (en el mundo de las partículas),

donde la clave es que “X” no hace uso del vocabulario moral sino de un vocabulario básicamente físico, en cambio, la forma de una característica explicación no reduccionista es:

(S) La creencia moral con el contenido <p> tiene una función F (en la vida humana),

donde la clave es que “F” no introduce la idea de una representación de hechos morales. Es dado pensar, por ejemplo, que las creencias morales son estados motivacionales cuya función es comprometer firmemente al sujeto con un curso de acción. Está claro, entonces, que el naturalista no reduccionista ha desplazado las cuestiones ontológicas al terreno del mundo de la vida, por así decirlo: el mundo de la vida subjetiva.

Pero, aún hay más contrastes bajo la superficie que son relevantes para lo que quiero discutir. Primero, si el naturalista del objeto está en la labor de reducir una ontología de propiedades y valores morales a una ontología de partículas, tiene que partir de la idea de que la función propia de las creencias morales es representar hechos morales. De otro modo no dispondría del punto de partida consistente en los hechos morales con los que estarían ontológicamente comprometidas las creencias morales cuya función fuera representacional, para poder después, obviamente, llevar a cabo una reducción (o incluso una eliminación) ontológica. En otras palabras: no habría ninguna extraña ontología moral que encajar en un mundo científicamente respetable si las creencias morales no estuvieran en el negocio de representar cómo son las cosas. La consecuencia es muy relevante: resulta que el naturalismo del sujeto (S) y el naturalismo del objeto (O) son incompatibles en este punto y no, como alguien podría pensar ingenuamente, dos aspectos complementarios de un mismo proyecto naturalista, pues el naturalismo reduccionista tiene que dar por supuesto el carácter representacional de las creencias morales, que es lo que niega una explicación naturalista de la función de las creencias morales en la vida humana. En segundo lugar, el naturalista del objeto no solo tiene que resituar los extraños hechos representados por distintos tipos de creencia: a través de un bucle constitutivo de su planteamiento, también tiene que localizar las mismas creencias (que, desde su punto de vista, son representaciones) de todo tipo en el mundo de las partículas, que es precisamente un mundo sin sujetos portadores tanto de valores morales como de creencias y representaciones. A este respecto, el naturalista del sujeto ya estaba tratando desde el principio con la naturalización de ciertos tipos de creencia, más que con la naturalización de ciertos tipos de hecho, pero en el sentido de tratar de localizar, por ejemplo, las creencias morales en el nada reducido espacio de la vida humana. Es cierto que quizá no haya necesariamente incompatibilidad sobre este punto entre ambos naturalismos: es posible que encontremos un lugar para las creencias en el reducido espacio de una ontología sin sujetos a la vez que hallamos sus coordenadas en el vasto espacio de la vida subjetiva. El problema es, como argumentaré en breve, que la realización de ambos proyectos no solo subordina el naturalismo del objeto al naturalismo del sujeto sino que, más relevantemente, acaba con la relevancia filosófica del proyecto reduccionista.

Antes de seguir adelante, veamos cuál es la relación entre la perspectiva evolucionista o darwinista y la elección entre naturalismos. En primera instancia, parecería que el darwinista es más un antropólogo que un metafísico, en el sentido de que está más interesado por la función de las creencias en el proceso adaptativo del sujeto biológico (los seres humanos, aunque también los animales inferiores de cierta complejidad) a su entorno natural, que en el lugar de las creencias en una ontología de partículas. De manera que el darwinismo, sobre la cuestión de la naturalización de las creencias, iría de la mano con el naturalismo del sujeto. De hecho, Rorty sostiene exactamente eso, pues un naturalista del objeto y un naturalista del sujeto usan la palabra “naturaleza” de distinta forma, el primero pensando en partículas y el segundo pensando en organismos haciéndole frente a su medio ambiente y mejorándolo: “El naturalista del objeto manifiesta su miedo a los fantasmas al insistir en que todo concuerde, de alguna manera, con el movimiento de los átomos a través del vacío. El naturalista del sujeto manifiesta su miedo a los fantasmas al insistir en que nuestras historias acerca de cómo la evolución condujo de los protozoarios al Renacimiento no deben contener ninguna discontinuidad repentina; que sea una historia de complejidad gradualmente creciente de la estructura fisiológica que facilita una conducta cada vez más compleja” (pp. 11-12).

Sin embargo, señalé al comienzo que la elección entre naturalismos está condicionada por una elección previa entre los protagonistas del proceso evolutivo. Si en la línea de R. Dawkins (en El gen egoísta) el darwinista sostiene que la presión selectiva es ejercida primariamente para el beneficio de los genes más aptos, a cuya supervivencia estaría sometida la existencia de los individuos y de las especies que los portan, entonces la perspectiva evolucionista no estudia propiamente la función de las creencias en el proceso adaptativo de los seres humanos (y otros animales con creencias) a su entorno natural. Es cierto que, metodológicamente, este tipo de neo-darwinista tiene que empezar estudiando la ventaja adaptativa de, por ejemplo, las creencias morales para el animal humano, pues el animal humano es el medio que los genes tienen para perpetuarse en la historia de la vida. Pero, en último caso (y por raro que pueda sonar) está tratando de descubrir cuál es la ventaja adaptativa de las creencias morales para los genes de los que el animal humano es portador. Así que, en este sentido, el neo-darwinista no estudia la relación del sujeto moral con su entorno (que sería lo característico de un naturalismo no reduccionista) sino que, más bien, estudia la relación de los genes con un entorno del que forma parte el animal humano que los porta, que, en consecuencia, ya no es un sujeto que guía autónomamente sus acciones en términos de sus propias creencias morales. O, por decirlo con otras palabras: esta perspectiva evolucionista estudia, como es característico del naturalismo reduccionista, un entorno sin sujeto moral. La conclusión es que solo un darwinista clásico, para quien la selección natural actúa primariamente sobre los individuos o las especies, está del lado del enfoque antropológico que, ante cuestiones como la naturalización de la moral, es definitorio del naturalismo del sujeto.

The great disciplinary bias of the political theorist is a tendency to overestimate the role of ideas in history. Because the great political theorists explain and justify some of history’s greatest and most awful political events, we often like to think of them as being culpable – the French Revolution becomes a “Rousseauan” phenomenon, a “Lockean” hand animates the American Revolution and the rise of liberal capitalism, and so forth. A good way to humble a political theorists is to ask why, with hundreds of controversial political arguments being advanced in the pages of journals and academic presses every year, so few works of political theory occasion even the slightest bit of popular controversy.

Consider: Excepting the unfortunates who still get upset every time a philosophical argument inclines too heavily toward “relativism,” political theory is somewhat short on scandals,  perhaps because we’re the type of eggheads who would rather speculate about the public than mingle with it. In that context, I’ve always wondered how the Heidegger controversy appears to non-specialists. It’s bound to look a bit odd that some of the canonical texts of 20th century thought were penned by a Nazi; I’ve often assumed that, for those outside the field, any argument to the utility of continued Heidegger scholarship would end there. After all, many American see it as an esoteric perversity that academics still debate over finer points of Marx’s thought in the wake of Soviet totalitarianism.

As to Heidegger, the recent round of public debate has been spurred by the pending translation into English of Emmanuel Faye’s “Heidegger: The Introduction of Nazism into Philosophy.”  There is a common sense position, I think, which holds that any appropriation of Heidegger for political theory must square itself with the question of Heidegger’s Nazism, assuring that the premises employed do not necessarily entail a fascistic conclusion. One cannot cite Heidegger innocently. But Faye’s book goes well beyond an ethical and prudential cautiousness and plunges into they hysterical: he “calls on philosophy professors to treat Heidegger’s writings like hate speech. Libraries, too, should stop classifying Heidegger’s collected works (which have been sanitized and abridged by his family) as philosophy and instead include them under the history of Nazism. These measures would function as a warning label, like a skull-and-crossbones on a bottle of poison, to prevent the careless spread of his most odious ideas, which Mr. Faye lists as the exaltation of the state over the individual, the impossibility of morality, anti-humanism and racial purity.”

To assert that all Heideggerean philosophies must be “poisoned” with the man’s own politics is utterly assinine. A wide variety of political theorists, from deep ecologists to the cosmopolitan Jacques Derrida to the manifestly moderate Charles Taylor, are, in some sense, Heideggereans, and only a paranoiac would come to their works in search of Nazi traces.  The fact is that Heidegger’s work rarely addresses politics in concrete terms; his most important insights relate to ontology , language, metaphysics, and technology. If a scholar wanted to do the leg-work in arguing that one cannot consistently reconcile any politics other than Nazism with a Heideggerean view of ontology, that would be one thing, but the existence of writers like Derrida and Taylor (not to mention Hans Gadamer or Richard Rorty) seems, preemprorily, to put the lie to such a conclusion. Many Heidegger scholars, including my own professor, argue that Heidegger’s Nazism had to do with his personal ethical and political convictions which were only accidental to his philosophical system. An analogy to Marx and socialism is wholly inappropriate; Faye’s hypothesis is akin to suggesting that anyone too heavily influenced by David Hume is bound to end up defending Toryism.

Aside: Last time I blogged on an NYT story it was also in response to a piece by Patty Cohen. I guess she landed the academia beat, though I’m unsure why the Times flatters us with inclusion in the “Arts” section. Works for me, though, as I’ll admit that I read more from the Arts than any other section of the paper… even if that’s only on my way to the crossword puzzle.

I am, at this moment, experiencing a profound change in thought. Well, it is not so much profound, since my beliefs really aren’t being questioned, but I am experiencing thoughts and beliefs that are changing the way I view my life, my beliefs, and my reasons to exist.

The ultimate cause for this is unquestionably my reading of the book “Philosophy and Social Hope” by Richard Rorty. It is a collection of his writings as a pragmatist philosopher taken from various lectures, essays, articles, etc. that is divided into 5 sections: I Autobiographical; II Hope in Place of Knowledge A Version of Pragmatism; III Some Applications of Pragmatism; IV Politics; and V Contemparary America. I am currently on section III. I haven’t been affected by another author’s writings like this since I read a similar collection of another Philosopher’s writings; that Philosopher being Peter Singer, who is to a large extent the reason I am against, what I see as, the unnecessary suffering of animals (current practices used to raise and slaughter animals for food, for example).

What Rorty has to say about beliefs, and how that relates to science, religion, philosophy, politics, etc. is what is causing me to convulse with intellectual bliss. Specifically, I no longer believe that science is ‘discovering the objective truth of the universe’, but instead is the greatest practical tool we have to understand, predict, and control the universe we all inhabit.

When Rorty talks about education, he writes about how pre-university learning should focus on training and teaching students the beliefs that we currently hold to be true, and why we believe them. When students get to university, however, besides continuing this process of teaching them more and more, there should be the specific goal of getting them to question everything they’ve learned in the past. The purpose being that by questioning what we currently believe, it may be possible to come up with better ways for society to think/behave that would lead to, perhaps, greater democracy, justice, equality, happiness, etc.

I feel like Rorty is Nietzsche if Nietzsche was humanitarian.

Rorty also comments on religion. I feel like his discussion of religion helps me to make sense and respect the thoughts of Kierkegaard and Tillich.

Anyways, the thing that really strikes me about Rorty’s beliefs is how it always comes down to the betterment of humanity, and I find it to be absolutely stunning and deeply meaningful.

Richard Rorty, a contemporary and recently deceased philosopher I admire, once quipped that philosophical debates are won by whomever is best able to come up with clever distinctions. The essence of his point is that philosophical debates are won and lost in the battle over the definitions employed to define the debate. Whomever sets, controls, and defines the terms of debate will win the debate. To see this observation in action, one need look no further than politics.

Along similar lines, he also suggests that people generally discuss and debate issues within certain taken-for-granted assumptions. Ultimately, he suggests, it is these fundamental assumptions that determine a person’s point of view in any particular discussion or debate.

I’ve realized, in the course of our discussions on this blog, I have some very specific assumptions that pretty much inform all my claims about human social behavior (like, sex, love, and friendship). I’d like to hear what you think about these assumptions.

They are:

1. A resource is anything a person values.
2. Any person can identify, create, and control resources (although, due to coercion, some do not, practically-speaking).
3. We organize ourselves into distinct social groups which collectively identify, create, and control resources.
4. We identify, create, and exchange resources with others in our group (cooperatively and / or competitively).
5. We identify, create, and exchange our resources with the members of other groups (cooperatively or competitively).
6. In principle, the total set of all resources is not finite, even if some particular resources are finite.
7. At roots, all our disputes concern the control and exchange of resources.

First impressions? Thoughts? Do you agree / disagree? Am I overlooking something?

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It’s been awhile since I’ve updated anything here.  That’s a sign of business not laziness, of course.  (It’s also a function of the increasingly-useful way in which status updates are handled on facebook.)

Two main pieces of news.

First, I am now living up in Eugene, Oregon where I have a one-year appointment as a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Philosophy Department at the University of Oregon.  I am (if it’s not obvious) quite pleased to be up here: great colleagues, great graduate students, great program, and a great place to live.

Hunkering down for a solid year of solid work in Eugene should give me the opportunity to update the blog more often.  So I plan to start on that.

Second, it now appears as if my book Pragmatism as Transition: Historicity and Hope in James, Dewey, and Rorty will be out with Columbia University Press very soon (sometime next month, apparently).  I was quite pleased that Columbia was able to get the rights to an image of the painting that I have long hoped would grace the cover of the book, Ducham’s Nude Descending a Staircase, no.2.  You can read a little more about the book on Columbia UP’s website.

So, more soon I hope.  I’m investing lots of time in lots of projects right now.  Some of them will be bloggable in short order.

Chapter 52 ~ “Anti Anticonstructivism or Laying the Fears of Langdon Winner to Rest” by Mark Elam, with Langdon Winner’s Reply (1994)

The first part of this piece is a write-up by Elam in which he discusses Winner’s anticonstructivist stance. Looking at Geertz and his thoughts on the “harmful pattern of intellectual dread” found in antirelativism, Elam picks up the gauntlet “to encourage a commitment to anti anticonstructivism” (612).

To try to define anti anticonstructivism, Elam states that “an anti antiposition entails a concerted effort to counter a view without thereby committing oneself to what it opposes (612).

To counter Winner’s view on constructivism, Elam examines one facet of Winner’s argument (makes sense) which that constructivists are hardly ever “prepared to take a stand ‘on the larger questions about technology and the human condition that matter most in modern history’” (613).

In his argument, Winner heavily critiques Woolgar for side-stepping “questions that require moral and political argument” (613); however, what Elam illustrates is Woolgar and Winner actually share many traits, thus the issues that Winner seems to have with Woolgar he could easily place upon himself.

At the end of his piece, Elam brings forth Rorty and the idea that not be illiberal we must separate private and public lives. It seems we have as much chance of doing that as we do in living in a utopian world where we and technology are so in harmony we forget what the “bad” life we used to have been technology dominated our existence. It’s just not going to happen. Not just because of technology, though that’s certainly a big reason, but because people aren’t wired that way. We connect to things, and when we do, our thoughts and opinions are often one of the first things to be displayed, for good or bad. To many, private and public lives are one and the same.

Winner’s response is quick and to the point, albeit a bit cheeky at times. He takes on most of Elam’s concerns and cuts them. For Winner, he’s not about being cruel or inflicting any kind of pain to anyone. He wants people to question technology and its existence in their world. He wants more than dissertations written and academic discourse on issues. He wants to be entrenched in the lives of people who are being affected to understand how this technological affliction occurred and how it can be remedied.

A number of wide-ranging interviews with Richard Rorty can be found here:

‘A Talent For Bricolage’
‘Realists—Grow Up’
‘The Next Left’
‘North Atlantic Thinking’
‘Without illusion, but with conviction’

Rorty is laconic throughout, with my favourite example being when Joshua Knobe asks him why Putnam thinks he is a relativist: “Beats me. I wrote an article about it, but that was as far as I got.”