Relativism: So What? (Part Seven): Beats me; I wrote an article about it but that's as far as I got

[koganbot]

Int: In Philosophy And The Mirror of Nature, you attacked Putnam's early philosophy. What do you think of his more recent work?

Rorty: I think our views are practically indistinguishable, but he doesn't. He thinks I'm a relativist and he isn't. And I think: if I'm a relativist, then he's one too.

Int: Why do you think Putnam sees you as a relativist?

Rorty: Beats me. I wrote an article about it, but that was as far as I got.

. . .

Int: Do you disagree with any of Davidson's views?

Rorty: I can't think of anything we really disagree about that doesn't seem to me a verbal issue, but Davidson may have a different view of the matter. Well, one thing is that he keeps saying truth is an absolutely central concept, and I can't see what makes it central or basic. I take Davidson to be saying that truth, belief, meaning, intention, rationality, cognitivity - all these notions are parts of a seamless web, and that seems to me a useful point to make, that you can't have any of these notions without all the others. It's just that he then wants to say, "And truth is in the middle." I can't see why you have to have a middle.

Int: Putnam has also criticized you for deemphasizing truth.

Rorty: Putnam keeps saying that you have to have what he calls "substantive truth." I take Davidson to be saying: there's not much pointing in saying truth is substantive. I don't think Davidson has any better idea than I do what Putnam means by that. Nonetheless, he somehow attaches a weight to the notion that I can't seem to attach to it.
--Interview with Richard Rorty in January 1995 by Joshua Knobe

I'm intending to resume my "Relativism: So what?" series but want to relate it to some other bubbling thoughts, e.g., (1) Given that alienation is my addiction, my default mode, my heroin, am I capitulating to my addiction by avoiding the current rockwrite/musicwrite convo about (e.g.) Vampire Weekend and social class? Or would I be capitulating to that addiction way more if I dove into that conversation? I mean, I've only been thinking about the class thing and the no-success-like-failure thing for forty-two years, but my experience tells me that the convo will be nothing more than pretend, that other than Dave and Tom no one involved in it even wants to start thinking about social class, or knows how, even if class is what they think they're thinking about (and I can talk to Dave or Tom any old time). But since I haven't explored the convo, or Vampire Weekend, I don't know this. I really have little hope. It's like (metaphor I heard the other day) going to starving Ethiopians and asking for food. (2) This generalizes to the two Deaths I was talking about at the end of Microwaving A Tragedy: you're dead if it's all about the other dude, about her/his response, what s/he's gonna do next; but you're just as dead if you don't make the effort to understand the other dude. It rains when you're here and it rains when you're gone, but maybe I just need different dudes. (3) For my own sake I'd like to be less harsh, without being less smart; this involves finding my way to go "Hmmm, what can I learn here? Can I open myself up to its surprise?" without overlooking the basic dysfunction of the conversation. Or do we need to rip up the conversation, forget the dead we've left, find a new world not to be so harsh in, so that I'm no longer the guy who wrote points 1 and 2? (4) I've been calling "relativism" a stand-in issue, a substitute for facing the interpersonal, cross-cultural, intergalactic whatever. So these bubbles will be the deep background of that "relativism."

Comments

[koganbot]

Look, are you trying to draw me into this conversation? I mean, I could be off colonizing Faye Wong speculating about the relationship between country music and the theme-song to a Japanese videogame that's sung in English by a Chinese woman who was born in Beijing but originally rose to fame singing in Cantonese rather than Mandarin.

I've heard maybe three songs by Vampire Weekend. I've read fewer pieces by Jessica Hopper than that, as far as I know, and haven't read the one you refer to. I've read only one of the posts by Abebe that address the issue, and I take it that he's made a whole bunch more. In that post he said that Hopper was playing a game of one-upmanship, but he didn't address why or how that particular game of one-upmanship came to be. Maybe he addressed the why and the how in some other post, but to leave it at "it's one-upmanship" and "it's posturing" and "people are suspicious of being bourgeois" doesn't get us very far. If he's correct, and what's going on is one-upmanship, this quotation would be useful:

Heroin is the most popular addictive drug used by Negroes because, it seems to me, the drug itself transforms the Negro's normal separation from the mainstream of society into an advantage (which, I have been saying, I think it is anyway). It is one-upmanship of the highest order... The terms of value change radically, and no one can tell the "nodding junkie" that employment or success are of any value at all.
--LeRoi Jones, Blues People, 1963

And as Nitsuh points out, this sort of anti-success one-upmanship is part of middle-class culture too, and mainstream American culture, obv., or we wouldn't be engaging in it. So how did it get here? (Not to be self-involved and all, but this is the question that huge hunks of my book wrestle with, starting from the preface and the entire first section and going onward from there. But a particularly relevant after–Real Punks piece of mine on the subject (if it is the subject) is "The Rules Of The Game #14: The Death Of The Cool." (I assume the title of Nitsuh's post is coincidental; that he never knew of my column, but he, like me, does know the Jean Renoir film.))

You shouldn't come in deciding that the band is really about being bourgeois or whatever. You should come in and as the evidence moves you, maybe the kind of argument you're making changes too.

Well, who would argue with this? But this obvious procedure breaks down all over the place, in writing, thinking, reading, listening. And from what I can tell, lotsa readers, writers, and editors are fine with the breakdown.

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

I hope you aren't big-upping too much in my own comments, which weren't more than "people don't seem to know what they want to be talking about here" -- my sense is that Vampire Weekend are stuck in some kind of feedback loop in which various empty (w/o context) signifiers like "privilege" and "whiteness" are getting thrown around because...uh, because they wear boat shoes on stage? Anyway, my commentary is limited by the fact that (1) I haven't listened to much Vampire Weekend and (2) I couldn't give two shits about them based on what I've heard. I can't remember a single VW lyric for the life of me! Where's my ammo? I used the phrase "cascade" and pointed people toward your Backstreet Boys column (claiming that they were being very "they don't write their own songs!" ad hoc in their justification of visceral dislike) but other than that don't think I offered a particularly enlightened take.

My sense is that this particular conversation isn't worth getting into. But I would like to open up pop music to the media literacy world, at which point I'll come back here and bring you in, quite forcibly, since there's a lot yet to be written and said. Provided I'm not all talk about it (we'll see).

[petronia.livejournal.com]

In that post he said that Hopper was playing a game of one-upmanship, but he didn't address why or how that particular game of one-upmanship came to be. Maybe he addressed the why and the how in some other post, but to leave it at "it's one-upmanship" and "it's posturing" and "people are suspicious of being bourgeois" doesn't get us very far.

No, he hasn't, but you're years and years ahead in the thought process as you know yourself. XD; He's talking to ppl who barely recognize that they're playing A Game, in a way that indicates that he only relatively recently named the phenomenon to himself, in his own head.