Rorty - No Mind-Independent Reality

[Skepdick]

How about just getting to what he said first?

Given all the possible hermeneutics, which hermeneutic do you think we should use towards "getting to what he said" ?

Retyping (or copy-pasting if possible) quotes would work.

The fact that we can predict a noise without knowing
what it means is just the fact that the necessary and sufficient
microstructural conditions for the production of a noise
will rarely be paralleled by a material equivalence between
a statement in the language used for describing the microstructure and the statement expressed by the noise. This is
not because anything is in principle unpredictable, much
less because of an ontological divide between nature and
spirit, but simply because of the difference between a Ian·
guage suitable for coping with neurons and one suitable for
coping with people.

[Skepdick]

How about just getting to what he said first?

Given all the possible hermeneutics, which hermeneutic do you think we should use towards "getting to what he said" ?

Retyping (or copy-pasting if possible) quotes would work.

I share Nabokov's suspicion of general ideas when it comes to philosophers' attempts to squeeze our moral sentiments into rules for deciding
moral dilemmas. But I take the lesson of our failure to find such rules to
be that we should stop talking in a quasi-metaphysical style about the
"task of the writer" or "what ultimately matters," or the "highest emotion"; stop working at the level of abstraction populated by such pallid
ghosts as "human life," "art," and "morality"; and stay in a middle range.
We should stick to questions about what works for particular purposes.
So as a first stage in reconciling Orwell and Nabokov I would urge that
Orwell shares some important purposes with Dickens (producing shudders of indignation, arousing revulsion and shame), and Nabokov shares
others (producing tingles, aesthetic bliss).

[Skepdick]

How about just getting to what he said first?

Given all the possible hermeneutics, which hermeneutic do you think we should use towards "getting to what he said" ?

Retyping (or copy-pasting if possible) quotes would work.

The phrase "constitutive action of the mind" is the tip-off
to Green's own view of the matter, which is summed up in
the slogan of the British Idealists: Only Thought Relates.
They viewed this doctrine as an abbreviation of Kant's
slogan that "intuitions without concepts are blind." Kant's
discovery was supposed to have been that there are no
"qualified things"-no objects-prior to "the constitutive
action of the mind." An object-something of which
several predicates are true-is thus always a result of
synthesis.

[Terrapin Station]

Given all the possible hermeneutics, which hermeneutic do you think we should use towards "getting to what he said" ?

Retyping (or copy-pasting if possible) quotes would work.

Oh. OK.

The drama of an individual human life, or of the history of humanity as
a whole, is not one in which a preexistent goal is triumphantly reached or
tragically not reached. Neither a constant external reality nor an unfailing interior source' of inspiration forms a background for such dramas.
Instead, to see one's life, or the life of one's community, as a dramatic
narrative is to see it as a process of Nietzschean self-overcoming. The
paradigm of such a narrative is the life of the genius who can say of the
relevant portion {)f the past, "Thus I willed it," because she has found a
way to describe that past which the past never knew, and thereby found a
self to be which her precursors never knew was possible.

Again, "in the context of what I'm asking." So would you say that re what I'm asking, to your knowledge/memory, at least, he never addressed this issue?

[Skepdick]

Again, "in the context of what I'm asking." So would you say that re what I'm asking, to your knowledge/memory, at least, he never addressed this issue?

What do you think "this issue" is? In asking the question you are already bring all of your pre-suppositions to the table.

You are bringing your own hermeneutic/context, which you haven't stated or expressed.

Do you think your question is even meaningful free from the context of your pre-suppositions?

[Terrapin Station]

Again, "in the context of what I'm asking." So would you say that re what I'm asking, to your knowledge/memory, at least, he never addressed this issue?

What do you think "this issue" is?

What I typed earlier.

Do you think your question is even meaningful free from the context of your pre-suppositions?

That would depend entirely on whether an individual assigns meanings to the terms/phrases/sentences or not.

[Skepdick]

That would depend entirely on whether an individual assigns meanings to the terms/phrases/sentences or not.

Great!

Would you say that given your own understanding of your own question/phrases/sentences (and the way you assign meaning to them), Rorty answers your concerns (whatever they are) in this video? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nTRunosX8w

[Terrapin Station]

That would depend entirely on whether an individual assigns meanings to the terms/phrases/sentences or not.

Great!

Would you say that given your own understanding of your own question/phrases/sentences (and the way you assign meaning to them), Rorty answers your concerns (whatever they are) in this video? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nTRunosX8w

No, he doesn't address the question there, really.

I'd have to search for a quote from Rorty to this effect, as offhand I can't recall something about it either way, but what I'm talking about is stuff like this (which is from secondary literature about Rorty--this is from James A. Steib's "Rorty on Realism and Constructivism"):

"(2) 'The very idea of a mind-independent reality is untenable' . . . Rorty, for example, clearly believes the second assertion"

Which he attributes to Rorty's Objectivism, Reality and Truth (1991), though he doesn't specify a particular page or quote Rorty in this. That's one of the couple Rorty books I read, but it's been awhile and I don't recall where a particular quote to that effect would be.

[Skepdick]

No, he doesn't address the question there, really.

How unfortunate.

Then I guess only you understand your question.

[Terrapin Station]

No, he doesn't address the question there, really.

How unfortunate.

Then I guess only you understand your question.

Were you thinking that the video would address what I was asking about?

[Skepdick]

Were you thinking that the video would address what I was asking about?

Indeed, I was. Given my (mis)understanding of your question.

So... are you going to us which hermeneutic we should be using towards understanding your question?

[Terrapin Station]

No, he doesn't address the question there, really.

How unfortunate.

Then I guess only you understand your question.

Another example from secondary literature--this is from Teed Rockwell's "Rorty, Putnam, and the Pragmatist View of Epistemology and Metaphysics":

"Putnam differentiates himself from Rorty by saying that he, unlike Rorty, believes that there is a reality which exists independently of our beliefs about it."

[Terrapin Station]

Were you thinking that the video would address what I was asking about?

Indeed, I was. Given my (mis)understanding of your question.

So... are you going to us which hermeneutic we should be using towards understanding your question?

Hermeneutics as a list of items on a menu?

[Skepdick]

Another example from secondary literature--this is from Teed Rockwell's "Rorty, Putnam, and the Pragmatist View of Epistemology and Metaphysics":

"Putnam differentiates himself from Rorty by saying that he, unlike Rorty, believes that there is a reality which exists independently of our beliefs about it."

None of this has any practical significance.

I can believe that there's an external reality.
I can also believe that there's no external reality.

I have absolutely no problem holding two "contradictory" beliefs. Because ... here I am - holding them.

I can also believe that I am not holding either of those beliefs.

And nothing happens. Words, words, words. Empty words.

[Terrapin Station]

Another example from secondary literature--this is from Teed Rockwell's "Rorty, Putnam, and the Pragmatist View of Epistemology and Metaphysics":

"Putnam differentiates himself from Rorty by saying that he, unlike Rorty, believes that there is a reality which exists independently of our beliefs about it."

None of this has any practical significance.

I can believe that there's an external reality.
I can also believe that there's no external reality.

I have absolutely no problem holding two "contradictory" beliefs. Because ... here I am - holding them.

I can also believe that I am not holding either of those beliefs.

And nothing happens. Words, words, words. Empty words.

And I don't think it's very interesting that someone holds contradictory beliefs. It's uninteresting enough to make that person not worth bothering conversing with in my opinion. <shrugs>