Frank Kogan

Sorry if I misread you. What I read in that Rorty quote (and my reaction was that I should read the rest of that episode) is that you can’t start arguing about what “mental” implies, if you couldn’t explain or prove that such thing exist, so you should stop because what you are really doing is just engage with some philosophical language or dynamic (let’s say: structuralism) and just playing that game, not really working your issue (that should be proving first what “mental” really means, or is). Ok, until here I agree with him. Then is when he tells you, that you should stop, and in some way, end all possibilities to try to explain a thing if is not based on religion, morals, or the scientific method, or things that are evident in life (my baby is burning, should I stop those flames with water or sand or should I ask myself if those flames are real?). The problem here should be the implications that reality will give to our lives. Why should I listen to music, if is not moral, or religious, or based in empirical facts (let’s say: using frequencies under the ear listening spectrum and altering your biorhythms)? Or why questioning “politics”, if they doesn’t make any sense anymore? The system should be just an institution that manages problems on daily life (taxes, giving educational books, repairing the streets), or help science or defend a place for morals. No left, no right. Even if there is a new problem, e.g. people would like that systems like “second life” or the rest of the lot should be a public issue to give everybody a chance to start there a new life, how could the system, or well the State, try to solve it? That would be some kind of inference on the relations between a company giving a service and their users. Probably, this is just an elaboration of thoughts and doesn’t seem very real. But the question is: what is under or what implies or who wins with that dead of philosophy the way we know it?
Anyway, until that point, he is certainly OTM, but, well I’m not an expert on philosophy by no means, but that is the reason why philosophy used to such an extent linguistics, and is the centre of polemics (Foucault and all continental philosophy are wrong because they are using concepts based on Saussure, says Chomsky based on his developments on the field). So philosophy seems solipsistic because are working in that issue (and knowing them they would never resolve it).
About “relativism”, I remember some different people talking about that term. One of them is the actual Pope, so disdaining aspects of the ritual or some moral issue as a problem based on society from centuries ago, just seems like attacks to a believe system. The other one are philosophers and is referred to people that just try to avoid the problems they are facing. Let’s say, in a conversation:
- Imagine that is raining.
- I see no rain.
- Well, somewhere in the world should be raining.
- But I have no information about the weather on the rest of the globe, so I refuse to believe what it seems to me just a lie.
The problem here is not so much that the philosopher would like to beat his interlocutor, nor that he refuses to approach an imaginary fact to start a discussion, but the fact that he is not addressing all the consequences of his mode of questioning reality. I was going to quote Ian Penman, talking about how reading Derrida, understanding him and applying that thought mode to your life, means that you should start to revise all the things you take for granted. Or, in the last conversation, the problem is not the fact that is not raining, is why he should believe his senses, why he accept that what he get from them is “reality”, why he uses the word “lie” and what is attached to that word, or why he uses logic inside a system based in the duality truth/lie, or what is logic. Don’t know if I asked your question, probably not, but giving an opinion about what is at stake with “relativism” from that side.

anhh