The Death Of The Philosopher (Richard Rorty 1)

[koganbot]

Richard Rorty was an unbelievably openhearted and decent fellow who wished for openheartedness and kindness to spread. And this has something but I don't know how much to do with why I read so much of his writing. The paradox is that his great talent was for demolishing philosophy. He thought of himself as synthesizing other people's ideas, and indeed he did, but what he pulled together were arguments for an endgame here and an endgame there. He also wanted to understand and explain why people ever felt the need for the game in the first place, and, to the extent that their reasons still matter to us, ask if we can take care of the reasons instead of getting entangled in the game. I find this inspiring but I don't think his own answers were all that good. What he was best at was arguing against the game itself; so for me the crucial Rorty is chapters 1, 3, and 4 of Philosophy And The Mirror Of Nature.

Rorty adamantly insisted that he wasn't a Death Of Philosophy philosopher, but I never thought he came up with a compelling project for what philosophers should do next, given that they've killed off epistemology; or anyway never came up with a reason why philosophers would be more adept than anyone else (social critics, sociologists, anthropologists, teenpop stars, market researchers, diplomats, political commentators) at what Rorty thought was worth doing.

What I've just written is all very vague, and I'm simply dashing this off. An example of my own version of the Death Of Philosophy is this sentence from my book:

As a proponent of a [pragmatic, relativist] position, I can say "Nothing exists in isolation," and two hours later say, "I grew up in an isolated village," without contradicting myself, since the standards for isolation are different in the two sentences.

In other words, philosophy has nothing to say to villages. To elaborate slightly: "Nothing exists in isolation" is another way of saying, "I can't conceive of what it would even mean to say that the grounds for a social practice are absolutely independent of the practice that's being grounded, philosophy's standard of independence being that if the thing being grounded ceased to exist, the ground for it would remain unchanged." But I'm adding, in effect, "But that doesn't matter, that such absolute independence is inconceivable, given that villages - unlike philosophy - have never demanded this of grounds, that they be absolutely independent." So not only doesn't foundationalist philosophy have anything to say to the village, neither does the critique of foundationalist philosophy. So pragmatism and relativism don't matter. I read Rorty as urging philosophers to rejoin the village, but it seems to me that they rejoin the village as simple human beings, as no more than villagers, not as philosophers.

Of course, if I want to support what I've just said (I'll post my arguments someday, maybe), I'd have to (1) explain what "Nothing exists in isolation" means in the context of philosophy; (2) say why I think it's correct in the context of philosophy; (3) say why I don't think it's correct in the context of villages; so, for instance, say why I don't think villages make the demands on grounds that philosophy had made; (4) say why I don't think you can take the conversation from philosophy to the village; and (5) explain what's going on when villagers make philosophy-like noises with their mouths, uttering words like "relativism" and "mediated" and so forth.

But for now I'll quote a couple passages from Rorty which explain why he helped make me a nonphilosopher, or a philosophy-killing philosopher, even if he insists he didn't do the same for himself. The first passage is from the end of the first subsection of the first chapter of Philosophy And The Mirror Of Nature.

I hope that I have said enough to show that we are not entitled to begin talking about the mind-body problem, or about the possible identity or necessary non-identity of mental and physical states, without first asking what we mean by "mental." I would hope further to have incited the suspicion that our so-called intuition about what is mental may be merely our readiness to fall in with a specifically philosophical language-game. This is, in fact, the view that I want to defend. I think that this so-called intuition is no more than the ability to command a certain technical vocabulary - one which has no use outside of philosophy books and which links up with no issues in daily life, empirical science, morals, or religion.
--p. 22

Then, from the second-to-the-last paragraph in that first chapter:

Contemporary philosophers, having updated Descartes, can be dualists without their dualism making the slightest difference to any human interest or concern, without interfering with science or lending any support to religion. For insofar as dualism reduces to the bare insistence that pains and thoughts have no places, nothing whatever hangs on the distinction between mind and body.
--p. 68

Now, he's only dealing with a set of particular philosophical issues here, but to my mind he's giving very good criteria for saying when philosophical issues need to be put to rest. And if dualism makes no difference to any human interest or concern, the same goes for attacks on dualism, though of course we do have to explain why people think something is at issue.

My guess is that my Rorty isn't a lot of other people's Rorty.

Comments

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

But your Rorty reminds me of the conversations I had this weekend with my friend Shawn about morality, philosophy, aesthetics, teenpop, religion, bad relationships, movies, and "the unique historical moment in which we, as a culture, no longer feel that there is necessarily any guiding force justifying our moral actions, yet now need to understand why we tell the stories that we still do tell ourselves -- recognizing them as stories and, at some level, as arbitrary stories based on semi-arbitrary impulses, needs, desires -- while simultaneously believing these stories enough to act upon them."

And his answer? We like the story and live by it anyway, so why not tell it while we try to figure it out some more?

I'm grossly paraphrasing, and maybe misrepresenting, but it was really exciting to see our intellectual paths intertwine again after he kinda went off the political philosophy deep end and I went off...uh, a different deep end.

One problem with philosophy is that it's asking us to take a step back and see Issues where the Issue itself is not really an issue unless we call it one. If we think of "dualism" or "morality" or "free will" as a Primary Issue and "the shit that happens as a result of what we're calling dualism etc." the Secondary Issue, what we've REALLY done is created a false "primary" issue because we assume there must be a discernible reason for this shit to happen. But we don't NEED a reason most of the time; we just do it because it's what we do, and philosophy is the only place where this becomes a "problem."

Ditto Leo Strauss and morality -- Strauss is suggesting the amoral role of the philosopher to act morally not because he's moral (according to some God Story), but because it is a prerequisite to "acting philosophically" (or something). But what Strauss is describing is impossible, and what he really seems to be arguing (according to Shawn) is "there is something about us [philosophers] that draws us to philosophy, to asking these questions, now let's forget about THAT 'something' compelling us and answer these questions, because this is what we, the philosophers, do. Everyone else can use God cuz they don't get it anyway and why make 'em try when it'll just get 'em all agitated?"

So now your problem (if you're Shawn and very attracted to Strauss's brain -- "I understand how he thinks!") is that this simply doesn't make any sense, no matter how much you can relate to it. It just doesn't work. One cannot act "amorally," one is moral according to how he/she acts -- we act because we're moral, we're moral because we act (sounds like a Lil' Mama lyric). We're interested in the first place because we notice that we act and that this acting is moral (duh), but "being interested" is also the ACT of being interested, hence is a moral action. It's inescapable -- but more importantly it's a moot point. OK, fine, there's some morality, now what the hell do we DO with it?

"We tell the story because we LIKE it." Well, yes. And we also have to. Because we just do, and there's nothing philosophy can do to describe or define this LIKE, all that STUFF. (Someone should write a book called STUFF.) We describe it ourselves. In part we describe it simply by doing it.

I hope this is even somewhat coherent, I've been thinking about it a lot but haven't been able to articulate my thoughts. Will reread your post and maybe actually respond to stuff you and Rorty wrote if I haven't already.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

the person writing to challenge the book called "stuff" could call their book "stuff stuff!"

i wonder if there's a value learning to argue logically -- and to think about arguments -- when discussing matters which have no real-life consequence (or anyway none to you) (this could easily include pure mathematics but there there's also the algebra barrier, where you have to argue in a code which is very non-obvious)

[koganbot]

I would say of course there's value (1) in discussing matters that have no real-life consequence (this thread might be an example), and (2) discussing them logically. But - of course - saying "of course" is not an argument. It's just that I don't think I need to persuade you or Dave on this point. But what prompted your question? Millions - and presumably billions - of people who've never taken a philosophy course can argue logically, at times.

The thing is, the idea of discussing - logically or otherwise - ethical or epistemological issues that have no real-life consequences doesn't make sense, since if an issue has no real-life consequences it's not ethical or epistemological.

But let's approach your question this way: Is there value in, e.g., learning the rules of baseball so that you can enjoy watching a baseball game, even though you doubt that the outcome of the game, and baseball in general, is ever going to be a big deal to you? (As opposed to, say, if you know a lot of people who love baseball and want to understand them and do things with them - in which case learning the rules of baseball would have real-life consequences.)

Or, since I'm an atheist, I don't think there's a hell of a lot at stake for me in an argument between a unitarian and a trinitarian (though who knows what I might learn?). But observing the argument and getting to know it - getting to understand what's going on just as one understands various events that take place on a baseball diamond - is a prerequisite for appreciating it on any but the vaguest level, and a prerequisite for getting to understand why these people think something is at stake - though observing them and learning the rules of their game may not answer the question why they think something is at stake, and "Why do you think something is at stake?" is a question that participants in these arguments are very poor at asking with any tenacity ("these arguments" being any theological and philosophical arguments).

And there's value in, say, reading Hume, even though I'm never going to make his assumptions about the mind; broadens one to know what issues someone once cared about, maybe especially if they're not issues I care about now. Helps if they write as well as Hume, however. (And I've not read much Hume, yet.)

But the people I'm likely to run into who argue about, say, "relativism" do think that there's something at stake, and they're wrong - they've sidestepped their issues while thinking they're dealing with them - and this does have real-life consequences, that people argue issues and take sides and maybe even form into groups and create friendships and enmities around this supposed question of "relativism" (one's position being something of a social marker).

[koganbot]

Mark, I've been rereading this thread in anticipation of starting to post my "Relativism: So What?" spiels. I'm curious if you have any reaction to what I wrote below, particularly:

The thing is, the idea of discussing - logically or otherwise - ethical or epistemological issues that have no real-life consequences doesn't make sense, since if an issue has no real-life consequences it's not ethical or epistemological.

(This as opposed to the discussion of other issues with non-real-life consequences, the discussion of which I'm not against in principle. But ethics (at least in the context of philosophy) and epistemology get their raison d'être from their supposedly guiding and grounding actual social practices.)

[koganbot]

I'm looking back at this thread in anticipation of maybe trying to pull together thoughts on the subject "Relativism: So What?"

As for stuff, here's the ilX thread I started on the subject:

What about stuff in general? Does stuff matter anymore? Is stuff over?

[koganbot]

I never got around to replying to this, was probably too busy and anyway I've never read Strauss. But anyway,

But your Rorty reminds me of the conversations I had this weekend with my friend Shawn about morality, philosophy, aesthetics, teenpop, religion, bad relationships, movies, and "the unique historical moment in which we, as a culture, no longer feel that there is necessarily any guiding force justifying our moral actions, yet now need to understand why we tell the stories that we still do tell ourselves -- recognizing them as stories and, at some level, as arbitrary stories based on semi-arbitrary impulses, needs, desires -- while simultaneously believing these stories enough to act upon them."

But this sounds so world-important: "we, as a culture, no longer feel that there is necessarily any guiding force justifying our moral actions." This is vague - "guiding force" and all that - but to cast Shawn's sentence into my terms, it would be "we, as a culture, no longer feel that a guiding force that justifies our moral actions must be 100% independent of the thing being guided." Except I'd say that "we, as a culture," never thought in the first place that a guiding force had to be 100% independent of the thing being guided. The only people who ever thought otherwise were philosophers and philosophically inclined theologians, and they only thought this when doing philosophy and theology, dropping this attitude when it came to the rest of their lives. So we aren't in some new epoch here, and the absence of such a "guiding force" is irrelevant, since it was never that sort of force that people were calling on for guidance anyway. It doesn't follow that there are or were no guiding forces. Just that philosophy has nothing interesting to say about the presence or absence of guiding forces.

I could be majorly wrong here, of course, knowing so little of history and cultures. But I don't see why we're supposed to think of our "stories" as just stories - especially when the stories seem to be right (e.g., genetics and natural selection) - or why they'd be "arbitrary stories based on semi-arbitrary impulses, needs, desires." I don't see how our ideas and social practices are any more arbitrary than our brain size and our having legs and arms. They all evolved in specific circumstances. That they weren't guided by something 100% independent of those circumstances hardly makes them arbitrary. E.g., if you pose a question and I answer it, the fact that my answer was influenced by your question rather than basing itself on principles 100% independent of you and your question doesn't make my answer arbitrary. In fact I'd say just the opposite. (See what's going on here? You or Shawn seem to be willing to call something arbitrary because it's not guided by something that itself is arbitrary, not guided by something that guides us while not being at all guided by us.)

[koganbot]

The only people who ever thought otherwise

By "the people who thought otherwise" I mean the people who thought that the thing doing the guiding had to be 100% independent of the thing being guided.

(Btw, it isn't that most people would say they don't think the guide needs to be 100% independent of thing being guided; rather, they don't give the issue any thought, and in their everyday lives don't demand that something guiding them be 100% independent of them. I'd say that this is true even when people think they're trying to take direction from God, though this is a whole complicated issue I'm not going to get into right now.)

[koganbot]

If we think of "dualism" or "morality" or "free will" as a Primary Issue and "the shit that happens as a result of what we're calling dualism etc." the Secondary Issue, what we've REALLY done is created a false "primary" issue because we assume there must be a discernible reason for this shit to happen. But we don't NEED a reason most of the time; we just do it because it's what we do, and philosophy is the only place where this becomes a "problem."

It seems to me that one is perfectly justified in calling some issues "primary" and others "derivative" or "secondary," so long as you're not claiming that the primary is 100% independent of the secondary - that is, you're willing to allow for feedback so that the derivative issue can affect that from which it's mostly derived. The primary issue is relatively more important than the derivative, but doesn't have to be of such absolute importance that the derivative gets its importance entirely from the primary.

"Morality" and "free will" are issues anyway, regardless of philosophy. This is because morality tries to get people to do what they might not do without the morality (so morality will always be contested, as people try to come up with good reasons to do things that their neighbors think are bad) and because power, hence the ability to impose or the freedom to act on one's own will, is unevenly distributed. What philosophy adds, though, is another issue, in that philosophy finds it problematic when the justification for something isn't 100% independent of the thing being justified and when the free act isn't 100% independent of the thing being acted upon. But if you yourself don't adhere to this criterion of 100% independence, I don't see where philosophy would have anything useful to say to you or why the absence of such super-extreme independence would have any implications one way or another. Of course, lots and lots of people will have moments where they'll say that the absence of such 100% independence is a big deal, either promises liberation or threatens order, and this is why "relativism" is an issue, and these moments and this issue need to be understood: I would say that the issue is a stand-in issue, just as "The Backstreet Boys didn't write their own songs" is a stand-in issue, which is to say that the people who raise the issue feel that they're addressing or taking care of something when they do so, but actually their miring themselves in the issue prevents them from working through to an understanding of what really is or should be at stake.