“I read Dewey as saying that it suits such a society to have no views about truth save that it is more likely to be obtained in Milton’s “free and open encounter” of opinions than in any other way….
“I argue that an antirepresentationalist view of inquiry leaves one without a skyhook with which to escape from the ethnocentrism produced by acculturation, but that the liberal culture of recent times has found a strategy for avoiding the disadvantage of ethnocentrism. This is to be open to encounters with other actual and possible cultures, and to make this openness central to its self-image.” -Rorty, Richard (1990-11-30). Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth: Volume 1: Philosophical Papers (p. 2). Cambridge University Press. Kindle Edition.
While we can share the spirit of these two points, I think we have to be wary of the paradox we race towards here. While open discourse is always the goal, there are always discourses that seek to shutdown open discourses for the sake of some chosen method, discourses that cannot be tolerated in order to maintain that open discourse. This is where Deleuze (especially in his work with Guatarri (may have the upperhand on the pragmatism of Rorty in that it tends to focus on the ways in which those discourses do so: overcoding, territorialization, the paranoid/fascist center. And we can see it as well in Marcuse’s concept of operationalism as we see in extreme forms of scientism and materialism: the claim that free will and consciousness is an illusion simply because it sounds scientific to say so, that is when if we cannot trust the basic experience we have every day of free will and consciousness, then how can we trust any other experience we might have through the empirical methods of science. Through this kind of operationalism, the champion of such positions gets to cherry pick which observations get to be considered the result of empirical observation and experiences that are not the product of some kind of illusion. And as our cyber-circles have shown repeatedly, those who engage in these kinds of discourses have no problem with utilizing any tactic available to them to shut out the discourses of those who don’t agree with them. We who work the boards know all too well the very real manifestations of Foucault’s power discourses.
This leaves us no choice but to distinguish between productive and unproductive discourses, a distinction that is all over the writings of Rorty, and would expose us to accusations of hypocrisy. And perhaps this because even pragmatism is not meant to be a grand narrative but, rather, one tool among others. And I think Rorty sees this and, as a solution, approaches the nihilistic perspective. This becomes evident in a quote from Davidson:
“Beliefs are true or false, but they represent nothing. It is good to be rid of representations, and with them the correspondence theory of truth, for it is thinking that there are representations that engenders thoughts of relativism.” -Rorty, Richard (1990-11-30). Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth: Volume 1: Philosophical Papers (p. 9). Cambridge University Press. Kindle Edition.
When I finally got it, this quote offered one of those little tweaks in one’s understanding that can warrant the status of epiphany: that which constitutes a step forward in one’s process. Up until this, I had generally understood Rorty’s downplaying of relativism as a defensive gesture in the face of accusations by anti-pragmatists. But this indicates that the problem is not so much that pragmatists are being accused of relativism; it is, rather, an indictment of relativism in that it doesn’t go far enough. It fails to escape the clutches of representationalism by choosing to give validity to all representations.
It is in this approach towards the nihilistic perspective that I see pragmatism’s escape from the paradox described above: that which just does what it does and lets the rest come out in the wash while denying participation to any discourse that seeks to sabotage that process.
pragmatic Studies:
Re: pragmatic Studies:
“The suggestion that truth, as well as the world, is out there is a legacy of an age in which the world was seen as the creation of a being who had a language of his own.” -Richard Rorty. Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (Kindle Locations 137-138). Kindle Edition.
I mainly throw this out to my worthy (as in useful (jam-mate, David, who crystallized this point for me which applies to both of my main influences: Deleuze and Rorty (:I’m drawn to French concepts while being equally drawn to the Anglo-American style of exposition . Unfortunately, I cannot track his actual quote and will have to paraphrase it. He basically pointed out that in the old days, the objects that occupy our space were considered to be the language of God. It therefore followed that anyone capable of interpreting that language more accurately than anyone else had to be higher up the ladder: the hierarchy. And we can see, based on this, how that dynamic has managed to evolve into the hierarchies and secular religions of today –something I hope to go into later.
That said, for today’s rhizome, I want to go into the dynamic that I have been seeing throughout Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, Pragmatism in general, and has haunted our cultural history in its capacity to undermine the hierarchal belief systems that are always re-emerging: the nihilistic perspective: that which comes from the often unconscious recognition that we are (when we could easily not be (as we are as compared to infinite number of others we could be, that which recognizes, eventually, that any argument we can make about our world ultimately breaks down to assumptions that, ultimately, float on thin air. Note, for instance, Rorty’s recognition of the limits of his pragmatism:
“The difficulty faced by a philosopher who, like myself, is sympathetic to this suggestion - one who thinks of himself as auxiliary to the poet rather than to the physicist - is to avoid hinting that this suggestion gets something right, that my sort of philosophy corresponds to the way things really are. For this talk of correspondence brings back just the idea my sort of philosopher wants to get rid of, the idea that the world or the self has an intrinsic nature.”
What Rorty is up against (and pre-empting (is the very argument that the nihilistic perspective is always confronting: the skeptic’s paradox. And his approach, as I will try to demonstrate, is closer to the nihilistic perspective than that of the skeptic.
Say you walk up to a skeptic and the nihilistic perspective and say:
“You cannot say that there are no absolutes, since to do so is to try to establish an absolute.”
The skeptic will do what they usually do, scrutinize, until they come to the realization that there is a big difference between saying we live in a world in which there are no absolutes and actually living in one, and just go about the business of being skeptics. This is because they recognize in the argument a failure to make the leap from the semantic to the existential. The nihilistic perspective, on the other hand, picks this up and takes it further. They cross their arms, glare at you impatiently, and snort:
“Right! Nothing is engraved in stone…. not even that nothing is engraved in stone. So what’s your fucking point?”
Once again, Rorty:
“The difficulty faced by a philosopher who, like myself, is sympathetic to this suggestion - one who thinks of himself as auxiliary to the poet rather than to the physicist - is to avoid hinting that this suggestion gets something right, that my sort of philosophy corresponds to the way things really are. For this talk of correspondence brings back just the idea my sort of philosopher wants to get rid of, the idea that the world or the self has an intrinsic nature.”
Rorty, like the nihilistic perspective (that which he shares with Deleuze, embraces the idea of his assumptions floating on thin air, considers it an open field in which he (and we (can create.
(And I would note here a notion that has been associated with Deleuze: the idea that the primary domain of philosophy is paradox.)
That said, I want to commit tomorrow’s rhizome to noting (and quoting (some of the sociopathic implications (that is in terms of Rorty recognizing it, not practicing it (involved in the book.
I mainly throw this out to my worthy (as in useful (jam-mate, David, who crystallized this point for me which applies to both of my main influences: Deleuze and Rorty (:I’m drawn to French concepts while being equally drawn to the Anglo-American style of exposition . Unfortunately, I cannot track his actual quote and will have to paraphrase it. He basically pointed out that in the old days, the objects that occupy our space were considered to be the language of God. It therefore followed that anyone capable of interpreting that language more accurately than anyone else had to be higher up the ladder: the hierarchy. And we can see, based on this, how that dynamic has managed to evolve into the hierarchies and secular religions of today –something I hope to go into later.
That said, for today’s rhizome, I want to go into the dynamic that I have been seeing throughout Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, Pragmatism in general, and has haunted our cultural history in its capacity to undermine the hierarchal belief systems that are always re-emerging: the nihilistic perspective: that which comes from the often unconscious recognition that we are (when we could easily not be (as we are as compared to infinite number of others we could be, that which recognizes, eventually, that any argument we can make about our world ultimately breaks down to assumptions that, ultimately, float on thin air. Note, for instance, Rorty’s recognition of the limits of his pragmatism:
“The difficulty faced by a philosopher who, like myself, is sympathetic to this suggestion - one who thinks of himself as auxiliary to the poet rather than to the physicist - is to avoid hinting that this suggestion gets something right, that my sort of philosophy corresponds to the way things really are. For this talk of correspondence brings back just the idea my sort of philosopher wants to get rid of, the idea that the world or the self has an intrinsic nature.”
What Rorty is up against (and pre-empting (is the very argument that the nihilistic perspective is always confronting: the skeptic’s paradox. And his approach, as I will try to demonstrate, is closer to the nihilistic perspective than that of the skeptic.
Say you walk up to a skeptic and the nihilistic perspective and say:
“You cannot say that there are no absolutes, since to do so is to try to establish an absolute.”
The skeptic will do what they usually do, scrutinize, until they come to the realization that there is a big difference between saying we live in a world in which there are no absolutes and actually living in one, and just go about the business of being skeptics. This is because they recognize in the argument a failure to make the leap from the semantic to the existential. The nihilistic perspective, on the other hand, picks this up and takes it further. They cross their arms, glare at you impatiently, and snort:
“Right! Nothing is engraved in stone…. not even that nothing is engraved in stone. So what’s your fucking point?”
Once again, Rorty:
“The difficulty faced by a philosopher who, like myself, is sympathetic to this suggestion - one who thinks of himself as auxiliary to the poet rather than to the physicist - is to avoid hinting that this suggestion gets something right, that my sort of philosophy corresponds to the way things really are. For this talk of correspondence brings back just the idea my sort of philosopher wants to get rid of, the idea that the world or the self has an intrinsic nature.”
Rorty, like the nihilistic perspective (that which he shares with Deleuze, embraces the idea of his assumptions floating on thin air, considers it an open field in which he (and we (can create.
(And I would note here a notion that has been associated with Deleuze: the idea that the primary domain of philosophy is paradox.)
That said, I want to commit tomorrow’s rhizome to noting (and quoting (some of the sociopathic implications (that is in terms of Rorty recognizing it, not practicing it (involved in the book.
Re: pragmatic Studies:
“And I think this has application to Nicolae and Tom’s proposal that it should be about social justice as well as my proposal concerning the import of Play. Basically, Rorty starts the book by pointing towards the historical conflict between private and public approaches towards philosophy and culture in general: the private being about self creation and the public being about social justice, both of which must use language games that are incommensurable. And his solution is to simply accept the incommensurability while looking at the various language games as tools designed for various tasks:”
“To say that Freud's vocabulary gets at the truth about human nature, or Newton's at the truth about the heavens, is not an explanation of anything. It is just an empty compliment - one traditionally paid to writers whose novel jargon we have found useful.” -Richard Rorty. Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (Kindle Locations 182-184). Kindle Edition.
And use value is what it is all about. As T.S. Eliot said of poetry:
“Mediocre poets imitate. Great poets steal.”
And if we think about what makes the great works we look at, read, or listen to important to us, it basically comes down to what we can use to further our own processes. It comes down to what we can use in either a positive way (what can make our process better (or a negative one: what we would choose to avoid to make our processes better. All other criteria are merely a means to that end: that of resonance and seduction through which Play works.
This is why it makes no sense to come on these boards and start flashing around words like “objectivity” or “rationality” or “the scientific method” like badges of authority (which are basically attempts to control the rules of the language game –think: Layotard (when one would be far better off just showing us the results of their methods and let the results speak for those methods. To not do so, as Rorty points out, is to act like language is somehow out in the world waiting for us to find the right way to say or write it. But as Spinoza would say: this is absurd. And it’s not just the boards we see this at work in, but professional scientists as well such as Hawking and de Gras Tyson who turn the whole thing into a pissing contest like a couple schoolyard punks when they argue that science will displace philosophy. The irony of it, though, is their failure to see the extent that the validation of Capitalism is propping up their hubris.
Once again, like the trolls flashing the badge of scientific and objective authority on these boards, they would have been far better off shutting their fucking mouths, showing their results, and letting their results speak for their methods. And if you think about it, what they’re basically engaging in is a form of censorship which, as has been pointed out, shows a lack of faith in one’s own belief system. And I would also add that it suggests that they have completely lost the sense of Play that got them where they are in the first place. And it is likely due to the fact that the success of their Play has gotten them far too immersed in the system that makes it pay. Somewhere along the line, it got too serious.
In this sense, Rorty and the Pragmatic method shows way more integrity, is willing to show rather than tell:
“Conforming to my own precepts, I am not going to offer arguments against the vocabulary I want to replace. Instead, I am going to try to make the vocabulary I favor look attractive by showing how it may be used to describe a variety of topics.”
Once again: the value of Play as a method, as well as resonance and seduction as a means; that which many of those of a scientific slant are in complete denial about.
“To say that Freud's vocabulary gets at the truth about human nature, or Newton's at the truth about the heavens, is not an explanation of anything. It is just an empty compliment - one traditionally paid to writers whose novel jargon we have found useful.” -Richard Rorty. Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (Kindle Locations 182-184). Kindle Edition.
And use value is what it is all about. As T.S. Eliot said of poetry:
“Mediocre poets imitate. Great poets steal.”
And if we think about what makes the great works we look at, read, or listen to important to us, it basically comes down to what we can use to further our own processes. It comes down to what we can use in either a positive way (what can make our process better (or a negative one: what we would choose to avoid to make our processes better. All other criteria are merely a means to that end: that of resonance and seduction through which Play works.
This is why it makes no sense to come on these boards and start flashing around words like “objectivity” or “rationality” or “the scientific method” like badges of authority (which are basically attempts to control the rules of the language game –think: Layotard (when one would be far better off just showing us the results of their methods and let the results speak for those methods. To not do so, as Rorty points out, is to act like language is somehow out in the world waiting for us to find the right way to say or write it. But as Spinoza would say: this is absurd. And it’s not just the boards we see this at work in, but professional scientists as well such as Hawking and de Gras Tyson who turn the whole thing into a pissing contest like a couple schoolyard punks when they argue that science will displace philosophy. The irony of it, though, is their failure to see the extent that the validation of Capitalism is propping up their hubris.
Once again, like the trolls flashing the badge of scientific and objective authority on these boards, they would have been far better off shutting their fucking mouths, showing their results, and letting their results speak for their methods. And if you think about it, what they’re basically engaging in is a form of censorship which, as has been pointed out, shows a lack of faith in one’s own belief system. And I would also add that it suggests that they have completely lost the sense of Play that got them where they are in the first place. And it is likely due to the fact that the success of their Play has gotten them far too immersed in the system that makes it pay. Somewhere along the line, it got too serious.
In this sense, Rorty and the Pragmatic method shows way more integrity, is willing to show rather than tell:
“Conforming to my own precepts, I am not going to offer arguments against the vocabulary I want to replace. Instead, I am going to try to make the vocabulary I favor look attractive by showing how it may be used to describe a variety of topics.”
Once again: the value of Play as a method, as well as resonance and seduction as a means; that which many of those of a scientific slant are in complete denial about.
Re: pragmatic Studies:
“On my reading of them, then, these two great philosophers passed each other in mid-career, going in opposite directions. Wittgenstein, in the Tractatus, started from a point from a point which, to a pragmatist like myself, seems much less enlightened than that of Being and Time. But, as Wittgenstein advanced in the direction of pragmatism, he met Heidegger coming the other way –retreating from pragmatism into the same escapist mood in which the Tractatus had been written, attempting to regain in “thought” the sort of sublimity which the young Wittgenstein had found in logic.” –From Rorty’s Essays on Heidegger and Others
And I post this in the context of an earlier quote I had noted in my notes:
“What Gustav Bergmann christened “the linguistic turn” was a rather desperate attempt to keep philosophy to keep philosophy an armchair discipline. The idea was to mark off a space for a priori knowledge into which neither sociology nor art nor natural science could intrude. It was an attempt to find a substitute for Kant’s “transcendental standpoint.”
I would also note that elsewhere in the book, Rorty describes the linguistic turn as resulting (via Frege and early Wittgenstein (from the mystical view of language –the mystical being that which Heidegger was moving towards as Wittgenstein was retreating to the pragmatic.
First of all, I am working in new territory here (writing at the edge of what I know as Deleuze encourages me to do (so bare with me. But at previous points in my process, this would have been lost on me in that I had always thought of the analytic approach as the more down to earth approach to intellectual inquiry. But I’m starting to get the “mystical” aspect of it in that the early analytics saw in language the basic structures by which humans could precisely interpret reality –that is if they cut out superfluous aspects of language. And it was this sense of language that led to logic.
And this makes sense given that language was an evolutionary adaption that aided us in dealing with our environment. The thing is that the analytics fell under the same spell that primal man did when they first discovered fire and decided to contain it to their own ends –that is by shaving off its superfluous excesses. But as Wittgenstein discovered, those superfluous aspects of language were as essential to its utility as an adaptive technology as whatever basic functions the analytics could find. This is why he turned to the concept of language games. He realized that there was a utility in talking about things that could not be established directly such as metaphysics. It was just a form of Play by which humans evolve.
And I post this in the context of an earlier quote I had noted in my notes:
“What Gustav Bergmann christened “the linguistic turn” was a rather desperate attempt to keep philosophy to keep philosophy an armchair discipline. The idea was to mark off a space for a priori knowledge into which neither sociology nor art nor natural science could intrude. It was an attempt to find a substitute for Kant’s “transcendental standpoint.”
I would also note that elsewhere in the book, Rorty describes the linguistic turn as resulting (via Frege and early Wittgenstein (from the mystical view of language –the mystical being that which Heidegger was moving towards as Wittgenstein was retreating to the pragmatic.
First of all, I am working in new territory here (writing at the edge of what I know as Deleuze encourages me to do (so bare with me. But at previous points in my process, this would have been lost on me in that I had always thought of the analytic approach as the more down to earth approach to intellectual inquiry. But I’m starting to get the “mystical” aspect of it in that the early analytics saw in language the basic structures by which humans could precisely interpret reality –that is if they cut out superfluous aspects of language. And it was this sense of language that led to logic.
And this makes sense given that language was an evolutionary adaption that aided us in dealing with our environment. The thing is that the analytics fell under the same spell that primal man did when they first discovered fire and decided to contain it to their own ends –that is by shaving off its superfluous excesses. But as Wittgenstein discovered, those superfluous aspects of language were as essential to its utility as an adaptive technology as whatever basic functions the analytics could find. This is why he turned to the concept of language games. He realized that there was a utility in talking about things that could not be established directly such as metaphysics. It was just a form of Play by which humans evolve.
Re: pragmatic Studies:
"Insofar as a left becomes spectatorial and retrospective, it ceases to be a Left. I shall be claiming in these lectures that the American Left, once the old alliance between the intellectuals and the unions broke-down in the course of the Sixties, began to sink into an attitude like Henry Adams'. Leftists in the academy have permitted cultural politics to supplant real politics, and have collaborated with the Right in making cultural issues central to public debate... The academic Left has no projects to propose to America, no vision of a country to be achieved by building a consensus on the need for specific reforms." –a quote from Rorty’s Achieving Our Country via Eduardo Mendieta’s intro to Take Care of Freedom and Truth Will Take Care of Itself: a collection of Rorty interviews….
Mendieta then goes on to say:
“For this reason, Rorty calls for a “moratorium” on theory. Rorty admonishes that the academic and cultural left “kick its philosophy habit.” Just as importantly, Rorty urges the left to abandon its apocalyptic self-loathing and to become emotionally engaged in the nation by feeling, at the very least, shame.”
I have other thoughts. But I have, in the process of writing out the quotes, noticed a connection between the issues taken with Rorty and those taken with Bernie Sanders in their northeastern provincial and bourgeoisie liberalism. Being something like that myself, I have noted that the main thing that cock-blocked Bernie was his tendency to assume that if he addressed the issue of neo-liberalism, the problems addressed by multi-culturalism would take care of themselves. And Rorty has been attacked on this very issue. This is not to say that either Rorty or Sanders are indifferent to the plight of minorities. I would argue that (as I would for myself since I am a lot like them (that they are perfectly sympathetic to the plights of the less fortunate.
But that’s not why I quoted this. What I mainly want to address here is that while I am perfectly sympathetic with Rorty’s recognition of the disconnect between theory and day to day practice, I’m not sure that is cause for demanding that those engaged in theory stop doing so. But then I’m not sure Rorty demanded that either –that is given his admiration for Derrida. I’m perfectly on board with his desire to take philosophy to the streets. But I don’t see that as justification to condemn those who prefer to work in their scholastic ivory towers. They are basically engaged in a form of Play. And the only problem occurs when they act like it is anything more than that: such as the only way to describe reality as is.
The thing is, it is going to take a lot of different people doing a lot of different things to fix this. And no one of us (no matter how clever our technologies (is going to do it alone. But when we do fix it, it will be a matter of a lot of different people engaged in different acts and doing so at the right time.
Mendieta then goes on to say:
“For this reason, Rorty calls for a “moratorium” on theory. Rorty admonishes that the academic and cultural left “kick its philosophy habit.” Just as importantly, Rorty urges the left to abandon its apocalyptic self-loathing and to become emotionally engaged in the nation by feeling, at the very least, shame.”
I have other thoughts. But I have, in the process of writing out the quotes, noticed a connection between the issues taken with Rorty and those taken with Bernie Sanders in their northeastern provincial and bourgeoisie liberalism. Being something like that myself, I have noted that the main thing that cock-blocked Bernie was his tendency to assume that if he addressed the issue of neo-liberalism, the problems addressed by multi-culturalism would take care of themselves. And Rorty has been attacked on this very issue. This is not to say that either Rorty or Sanders are indifferent to the plight of minorities. I would argue that (as I would for myself since I am a lot like them (that they are perfectly sympathetic to the plights of the less fortunate.
But that’s not why I quoted this. What I mainly want to address here is that while I am perfectly sympathetic with Rorty’s recognition of the disconnect between theory and day to day practice, I’m not sure that is cause for demanding that those engaged in theory stop doing so. But then I’m not sure Rorty demanded that either –that is given his admiration for Derrida. I’m perfectly on board with his desire to take philosophy to the streets. But I don’t see that as justification to condemn those who prefer to work in their scholastic ivory towers. They are basically engaged in a form of Play. And the only problem occurs when they act like it is anything more than that: such as the only way to describe reality as is.
The thing is, it is going to take a lot of different people doing a lot of different things to fix this. And no one of us (no matter how clever our technologies (is going to do it alone. But when we do fix it, it will be a matter of a lot of different people engaged in different acts and doing so at the right time.