A few clips of Hilary Putnam discussing Richard Rorty. Check out their conversation together on truth and pragmatism with James Conant: • Pragmatism & Truth - R... #Philosophy #Rorty #Putnam
Putnam is implying a distinction here between inner and outer that was anathema to the most sophisticated positivists (see Schlick's Positivism and Realism) and anathema to Rorty himself. It might be attributable to the fact that Putnam saw a positive task for philosophy which was crucial for Rorty to deny. The reduction emerges out only if one wants to couch Rorty's style as a form of theory of knowledge, but he just aimed to change some forms of speech
I agree that Putnam ignores the earliest theme in Rorty's Mirror of Nature: that is, when Rorty assaults the Cartesian dualistic distinction between the mind and the body. It's precisely this tendency toward solipsistic thought which Rorty had repudiated.
Rorty is indifferent to common sense realism because it is an attempt to overcome the same tired projects found in the tradition of epistemology. Talking about "sense data" and "thing-in-themselves" or the "external world" are all incoherent linguistic tools Rorty liked to ignore. Dewey's organic circuit, Davidson's triangulation, and LW's chess pieces are linguistic tools Rorty favored.
A man called Hilary ... and a great guy and I've been told he's also a great philosopher. I first heard him on a series of lectures at MIT (I watched on TH-cam) with Chomsky and Pinker. In the Brazil World Cup some years ago, we lost to Germany 7x1 - Pinker was Brazil and Putnam+Chomsky were Germany. Oh ... BTW, that was also the first time I saw Chomsky laughing at jokes and making jokes of his own!!!! People think he's this demi-god but I think he's just human!
I once had a professor try to argue on behalf of the concept "self-evident" when discussing Descartes. The trouble was that I had been reading a lot of Brandom and was convinced that one could only comprehend meaning by knowing what is at stake when making a claim -- that is, holding or being held responsible for having a belief is a necessary condition for any account of an individuals ability to understand the belief. To my mind, Brandom moved on from Putnam's concerns here and kept much of Rorty's picture intact. The coping argument at the end surprised me. I thought Putnam organized in his understanding of Rorty. It seems to me that Darwin and Hegel (language is a tool that provides an advantage such that communities of speakers become answerable to each other in a way that also makes the community answerable to nature) do away with the need for an external explanation for truth. Each community has its own criteria for expertise, but there is not a special community called Philosophers that get at truth from an angle unavailable to engineers, baseball players or politicians.
Philosophy can be divided between a inflationary philosophy and a deflationary philosophy. Inflationism: They are animated by what I would call, the philosophical soul of curiosity that strives for the transzendent beyond. The philosopher who represents it at best is Plato. Deflationism: They do understand the limitations of humans and want to do a down to earth philosophy that doesn’t rely on metaphysical background assumptions that are taken for granted. The philosopher who represents it at best is Ludwig Wittgenstein. -The problem with the Inflationists is that they are very naive and ultimately rely on blind faith for the foundation of their argumentation. -The problem with the Deflationists is that they are soulless as they are lacking the curiosity for the beyond which I think is the essence of philosophy. It seems that there are two extreme scenarios: -In the inflationary scenario we can directly talk about the content of a noumenal reality that exists independent of our personal opinion about it. This would mean that we have a rich number of metaphysical topics to talk about and that our believes can be true by corresponding to reality. -In the deflationary scenario it can not be expressed by using language, we can not even point indirectly towards it trough language. In that case both realism and antirealism would be nonsense since it tries to deny or acknowledge something that can’t be denied or acknowledge by using language. As Ludwig Wittgenstein said: „whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent“. -It is questionable if it is possible to know in which scenario we are in. I take therefore a middle position in which we can not directly talk about it, but indirectly pointing towards it by negating what we can talk about.
I agree that Putnam ignores the earliest theme in Rorty's Mirror of Nature: that is, when Rorty assaults the Cartesian dualistic distinction between the mind and the body. It's precisely this tendency toward solipsistic thought which Rorty had repudiated.
Saying that Rorty "has fallen into a Kantian picture" is, at the very least, a strange statement. It seems Putnam is too quickly lumping together Kant's view; ie. that the conscious subject has an active role in the construction of it's phenomenal reality with universal rules stemming from the faculty of understanding (time, space etc.) With the post-structiralist view, which is more of a conventionalist way of seeing things; it doesn't distinguish between the-world-as-it-appears and the-world-in-itself, but rather claims there is no world-in-itself, conventions can change how we experience "reality", but there is nothing "behind" appearance, as it were. Mixing these together into the same category is not only reductionist, but also causes Putnam to completely miss Rorty's point.
Is strange Putnan talks about solipsism in Rorty, when Rorty never said that. He aways talked about an "We", while a socialized species that learned use language. By the way I've seen Putnan talk about Rorty I'm sure that these are caricatures and simplifications. I never see Rorty say that things Putnam said about him, at least the way Putnam talks.
Agreed. Rorty's rejection of James and Dewey's "experience" in favor of Wittgenstein's language-games is itself a rejection of a subject-oriented approach to philosophy that views things as "in our heads" (at least as Rorty would characterize 'experience'). Wittgenstein's approach is radical precisely because it begins with people in communities rather than with the solipsistic subject.
@@ashercaplan3254 Whenever you don't like an idea, put quotes around the word for it. Then you will appear sophisticated, the owner of an upgraded mind.
@@Brewmaster757 yeah! Thanks for clarification, I was just letting you know there was McDowell content available. I’m with you, very insightful. You actually got me to pick up a book of his with my coffee (also put on some Brian Eno)
@@Brewmaster757 Hi, I personally feel that Philosophy Overdose should start a patreon account for his efforts and do original material as well, interviews and such. I'm sure many of us have studied philosophy and could contribute content. I know people are starving for more philosophy audio, at least according to my students. What do you think?
@@Philosophy_Overdose Oh, Ok. It makes sense since I remember it being taken down a few weeks after being uploaded. It is a shame though cause I remember that he dealt there with a variety of subjects ranging from Descartes and Kant´s epistemological revolution to Posmodernism and Richard Rorty, but you know... bummer.
@@tomasgrossmann1033 A couple of years ago it could be found in a TH-cam channel called "Intelcom" or something like that but it was first divided into many parts and then taken down. I haven't found it since. Maybe try the wayback machine.
If you truly believe in Rorty’s theses, why not just admit that you believe that language is literally magic, and that words like “solidarity” can affect more political change than acts of solidarity.
@@paulheinrichdietrich9518 i honestly think that a personal bitterness about having wasted time reading so much philosophy and not other stuff was part of Rorty's strong repudiation of philosophy at the last stage of his life (for example, see the tangential references by Rorty to analytic philosophy in his conversation with Davidson "D: I think a lot of good philosophy came out of the discussions etc. R: well, very intelligent philosophy, but...")
Yes, it certainly seems like tables and chairs exist and are "real outside ourselves" and we can call that view "common sense," for it works well enough to help us live. And yet, we ALSO don't have to make that "common sense" view the foundation of epistemology and bother with "truth" in a metaphysical sense. Because it turns out that "commons sense" doesn't give us anything that "solipsism" doesn't, so there is no utility in insisting that we have to tell them apart at all.
Hi. We meet again, it seems. 1. Putnam has a point here that Brandom also manages to recover with his introduction of the concept of a 'claimable' as a deflated positivist notion of a 'fact'. Brandom's idea, which is profoundly anti-anti-realist (in a good way), is that the totality of claimables doesn't change so it's not incoherent to say that Newtons laws were true or false before Newton wrote them down or that before the English language slavery wasn't wrong (this is a Heideggerian picture that Brandom rejects and Rorty should've but didn't). 2. Putnam however is wrong to think that he can provide a substantive theory of truth, as Rorty points out. I think these two points must be separated. I believe Rorty is confused and a bit solipsistic (perhaps in Jamesian spirit) on (1) but right on (2).
@@hss12661 "the totality of claimables doesn't change" - this is a metaphysical claim. It is to declare that "the world must truely be in such-and-such a way because of reason." Like all metaphysics, there is certain "common sense" appeal to it, and yet, it can't be demonstrated. Following Rorty, at the end of the day, each of us is either a metaphysician or an ironist. Metaphysicians insist that our experience simply MUST have a "connection," (by way of "claimables," for example) to "reality." They insist that, for example, Newton's laws MUST be "True" in some grandiose, existential sense because they can't bear to face whatever they think is the alternative. Ironists insist that even if metaphysics are "correct," in some sense, there is no way for us to know that, which is why it doesn't matter if they are or aren't. Regardless of if Newton's laws are a "claimable" or not, it doesn't change the value the find in them which is the only reason we use them in the first place - not because they are "claimable." And we don't need to provide a "reason" for WHY we find them "valuable." We just do, until we don't of course. And that's enough. Metaphsyicians think that their argument with ironists is about the "nature of reality," such as why "realism" is obvious and must be accepted so that our language can tell us what is "True." Ironists think that their argument with metaphysicians is about "how to use language," such as why "realism" is obvious and yet also useless because language can't identify "Truth." I like to think I am an ironist. But, also following Rorty, I've come think this is mostly about personal temperament - I don't begrudge metaphysicians for being who they are. Until they start to impose metaphysics that cause some practical harm, of course.
@@ericb9804 This is not a metaphysical claim, it is a rule of the language game of the truth predicate. There is a crucial difference between (a) "chess is man-made" and (b) "all moves in chess are allowed". We are solely responsible for the meaning of our propositions and utterances (this is the ironist, anti-metaphysical lesson) and this is exactly the reason why they're NOT arbitrary. Or, at least, they're not any more arbitrary than laws of Newtonian physics. You're confused about the nature of my claim.
@@hss12661 Perhaps I am confused. I'm not sure of the point you are trying to make... "it's not incoherent to say that Newtons laws were true or false before Newton wrote them down " - Ok. I agree that I understand what you mean when you say that, and I agree is has certain "common sense" appeal, and is even useful as a colloquial shorthand of our experience, so it's not "incoherent" in that sense, I guess. And yet, unless to insist upon some "connection" between our experience and "reality-as-it-is," its unclear what purpose this assertion is supposed to serve. I don't see why its important, in an epistemological sense, for me to insist on the state of Newtonian physics before I was around to insist on the state of Newtonian physics - it seems like incoherent, metaphysical navel gazing. And now you say that its important to realize that our statements are not "arbitrary," but I don't think I ever implied they were? Clearly not "all moves in chess are allowed," but so what? Yet, just as clearly we can change the rules of chess if we had good reason to do so. By the same token, we can change what we think of Newtonian physics, if we deemed ourselves justified in doing so. Again, so what? We believe what we do for the reasons we find compelling. So be it. I'm not sure why one would describe this situation as being "arbitrary" except as an attempt to impugn some fantasy rival as Putnam does here.
@@ericb9804 I agree with your remarks, but, again, it's not about big-R Reality which science, metaphysics or whatever supposedly unveils but about any claimable. It's a consequence of the deflationary approach to truth (which Putnam unfortunately opposes) that "F = ma", "Sun is bright" and "Slavery is wrong" can be handled in the same exact way. I just think (this time against Rorty and with Putnam) that the inference from "X happened in the past" to "in the past it was true that X happened" is nice to have. You might be right that one shouldn't appeal to common sense when one generally agrees with Nietzsche that "there are no facts, but merely interpretations". Brandom however has convinced me that the property of the truth-predicate I'm referring to is philosophically harmless yet important for certain kinds of reasoning in science and the everyday life.
Putnam seems to be strawmanning Rorty here. Putnam seems to state that Rorty is caught inside the Kantian picture that there is no mind-independent reality. Rorty believes in an objective reality. But unlike the folk psychology upon which common sense realism is premised, Rorty accepted the anthropocentric view of our access to objective reality, while the commonsense realists are inclined to a theocentric model by virtue of explaining objective reality in terms of 'veritas aeternae' (an insight from Rorty that Putnam just wants to dismiss). Common sense realism leads inevitably to some kind of theology. For more information, check out Allison's interpretation of Kant which describes this shift from a theocentric to an anthropocentric worldview.
It doesn't seem common sense realism is much of a refuge. How do I know the sky is blue? Because it appear so. Is the sky actually blue? No, the way our brains evolved causes us to depict diffused light at a certain wavelength in that way. Is this table solid and made of wood? Yes, but it is also mostly empty space and made of particles which are not wood. At least in the interview he also seems to telescope ontological and epistemological relativism.
@@evinnra2779 Certainly, our evolutionary history has given our perceptual and cognitive faculties a certain utility. However, it would be rather 'solipsistic', to borrow from the video, to think that one particular species of apes nervous system understands how the universe 'really' is.
I would say this is not necessarily the case. Rorty himself often talks of particles and evolution and neurology, but only while seeing science as a particular collection of language games developed historically in the course of a social practice. If one sees science as yet another part of our culture, instead of that particular sector that "gets reality as it really is," one can make a scientific claim without sliding into metaphysics.
The lack of philosophs/philosophy outside of the western world is what keeps this channel from being perfect. A little Charles Mills could balance out but we need to de-center a little bit. Ps: I cite Mills because he criticizes this very thing
You must have just joined. Sorry but he did but TH-cam took them down. He’s gradually reuploading everything. I had to protest to TH-cam to allow him to get everything back up. Please don’t make such a judgment.
I don't think they'll reply, but I also think the selection of excerpts uploaded speak for themselves. As a Rortyan myself, I am thankful for the Rorty content uploaded and also for the very insightful criticisms -- like the OP -- which help me sharpen my own thinking.
Putnam is implying a distinction here between inner and outer that was anathema to the most sophisticated positivists (see Schlick's Positivism and Realism) and anathema to Rorty himself. It might be attributable to the fact that Putnam saw a positive task for philosophy which was crucial for Rorty to deny. The reduction emerges out only if one wants to couch Rorty's style as a form of theory of knowledge, but he just aimed to change some forms of speech
I agree that Putnam ignores the earliest theme in Rorty's Mirror of Nature: that is, when Rorty assaults the Cartesian dualistic distinction between the mind and the body. It's precisely this tendency toward solipsistic thought which Rorty had repudiated.
Rorty is indifferent to common sense realism because it is an attempt to overcome the same tired projects found in the tradition of epistemology. Talking about "sense data" and "thing-in-themselves" or the "external world" are all incoherent linguistic tools Rorty liked to ignore. Dewey's organic circuit, Davidson's triangulation, and LW's chess pieces are linguistic tools Rorty favored.
I think Rorty was antagonistic to common sense because a lot of 'common sense' is incredibly awful.
Many fear without some kind realism we lose empirical faithfulness. They underestimate the conceptual flexibility of our species.
Love Putnam and love this title.
A man called Hilary ... and a great guy and I've been told he's also a great philosopher. I first heard him on a series of lectures at MIT (I watched on TH-cam) with Chomsky and Pinker. In the Brazil World Cup some years ago, we lost to Germany 7x1 - Pinker was Brazil and Putnam+Chomsky were Germany.
Oh ... BTW, that was also the first time I saw Chomsky laughing at jokes and making jokes of his own!!!! People think he's this demi-god but I think he's just human!
I once had a professor try to argue on behalf of the concept "self-evident" when discussing Descartes. The trouble was that I had been reading a lot of Brandom and was convinced that one could only comprehend meaning by knowing what is at stake when making a claim -- that is, holding or being held responsible for having a belief is a necessary condition for any account of an individuals ability to understand the belief. To my mind, Brandom moved on from Putnam's concerns here and kept much of Rorty's picture intact.
The coping argument at the end surprised me. I thought Putnam organized in his understanding of Rorty. It seems to me that Darwin and Hegel (language is a tool that provides an advantage such that communities of speakers become answerable to each other in a way that also makes the community answerable to nature) do away with the need for an external explanation for truth. Each community has its own criteria for expertise, but there is not a special community called Philosophers that get at truth from an angle unavailable to engineers, baseball players or politicians.
Philosophy can be divided between a inflationary philosophy and a deflationary philosophy.
Inflationism:
They are animated by what I would call, the philosophical soul of curiosity that strives for the transzendent beyond. The philosopher who represents it at best is Plato.
Deflationism:
They do understand the limitations of humans and want to do a down to earth philosophy that doesn’t rely on metaphysical background assumptions that are taken for granted. The philosopher who represents it at best is Ludwig Wittgenstein.
-The problem with the Inflationists is that they are very naive and ultimately rely on blind faith for the foundation of their argumentation.
-The problem with the Deflationists is that they are soulless as they are lacking the curiosity for the beyond which I think is the essence of philosophy.
It seems that there are two extreme scenarios:
-In the inflationary scenario we can directly talk about the content of a noumenal reality that exists independent of our personal opinion about it. This would mean that we have a rich number of metaphysical topics to talk about and that our believes can be true by corresponding to reality.
-In the deflationary scenario it can not be expressed by using language, we can not even point indirectly towards it trough language. In that case both realism and antirealism would be nonsense since it tries to deny or acknowledge something that can’t be denied or acknowledge by using language. As Ludwig Wittgenstein said: „whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent“.
-It is questionable if it is possible to know in which scenario we are in. I take therefore a middle position in which we can not directly talk about it, but indirectly pointing towards it by negating what we can talk about.
I agree that Putnam ignores the earliest theme in Rorty's Mirror of Nature: that is, when Rorty assaults the Cartesian dualistic distinction between the mind and the body. It's precisely this tendency toward solipsistic thought which Rorty had repudiated.
Saying that Rorty "has fallen into a Kantian picture" is, at the very least, a strange statement. It seems Putnam is too quickly lumping together Kant's view; ie. that the conscious subject has an active role in the construction of it's phenomenal reality with universal rules stemming from the faculty of understanding (time, space etc.) With the post-structiralist view, which is more of a conventionalist way of seeing things; it doesn't distinguish between the-world-as-it-appears and the-world-in-itself, but rather claims there is no world-in-itself, conventions can change how we experience "reality", but there is nothing "behind" appearance, as it were.
Mixing these together into the same category is not only reductionist, but also causes Putnam to completely miss Rorty's point.
Is strange Putnan talks about solipsism in Rorty, when Rorty never said that. He aways talked about an "We", while a socialized species that learned use language. By the way I've seen Putnan talk about Rorty I'm sure that these are caricatures and simplifications. I never see Rorty say that things Putnam said about him, at least the way Putnam talks.
Agreed. Rorty's rejection of James and Dewey's "experience" in favor of Wittgenstein's language-games is itself a rejection of a subject-oriented approach to philosophy that views things as "in our heads" (at least as Rorty would characterize 'experience'). Wittgenstein's approach is radical precisely because it begins with people in communities rather than with the solipsistic subject.
@@ashercaplan3254 exactly. Intersubjectivity.
Never said what? to what does "that" refer? This isn't even English.
@@ashercaplan3254 Whenever you don't like an idea, put quotes around the word for it. Then you will appear sophisticated, the owner of an upgraded mind.
@@plekkchand You misread my intent. My point was that Rorty's notion of experience does not map onto what James and Dewey would call experience.
common sense philosophy just sounds like just another form of stoicism, or practical/wisdom-based philosophy.
what lol, you're mistaken.
The table is actually there, independent of me sitting at it. How do I know such a thing? Because I sit at a thing called a table.
Do you have any McDowell content?
Look up McDowell and Davidson here on TH-cam
@@bpatrickhoburg Yeah I know about the youtube stuff I just want more lol. The old channel had a 2+ hour roundtable discussion with him.
@@Brewmaster757 yeah! Thanks for clarification, I was just letting you know there was McDowell content available. I’m with you, very insightful. You actually got me to pick up a book of his with my coffee (also put on some Brian Eno)
@@Brewmaster757 Hi, I personally feel that Philosophy Overdose should start a patreon account for his efforts and do original material as well, interviews and such. I'm sure many of us have studied philosophy and could contribute content. I know people are starving for more philosophy audio, at least according to my students. What do you think?
@@Brewmaster757 There was a 2+ hour roundtable discussion? I'm not sure I know what you're referring to, unless it was audio only. Was it just audio?
Do you happen to have this in full?
Yeah, but that doesn’t mean I'll upload it. I got a copyright strike the last time...
@@Philosophy_Overdose Oh, Ok. It makes sense since I remember it being taken down a few weeks after being uploaded. It is a shame though cause I remember that he dealt there with a variety of subjects ranging from Descartes and Kant´s epistemological revolution to Posmodernism and Richard Rorty, but you know... bummer.
@@paulheinrichdietrich9518 hey, have you found the full interview somewhere? Do you know which channel is interviewing Putnam in this video?
@@tomasgrossmann1033 A couple of years ago it could be found in a TH-cam channel called "Intelcom" or something like that but it was first divided into many parts and then taken down. I haven't found it since. Maybe try the wayback machine.
Agree with Putnam completely.
How Quinean
Awesome
If you truly believe in Rorty’s theses, why not just admit that you believe that language is literally magic, and that words like “solidarity” can affect more political change than acts of solidarity.
I have only one thing to say to Richard Rorty and his disciples: If we live in a post-philosophical milieux, WHY DIDNT YOU CHOOSE A DIFFERENT MAJOR?!
Ha! But I don't think that many Rorty disciples are philosophy majors...
Maybe he realised that it was too late.
@@paulheinrichdietrich9518 i honestly think that a personal bitterness about having wasted time reading so much philosophy and not other stuff was part of Rorty's strong repudiation of philosophy at the last stage of his life (for example, see the tangential references by Rorty to analytic philosophy in his conversation with Davidson "D: I think a lot of good philosophy came out of the discussions etc. R: well, very intelligent philosophy, but...")
Because you don't understood what means post-Philosophical ( Rorty used with capital P) or you didn't even read what Rorty said about it.
@@daimon00000 Oh, do please explain how Rorty’s “particular set of books” is superior to all the other “sets of books.”
Yes, it certainly seems like tables and chairs exist and are "real outside ourselves" and we can call that view "common sense," for it works well enough to help us live. And yet, we ALSO don't have to make that "common sense" view the foundation of epistemology and bother with "truth" in a metaphysical sense. Because it turns out that "commons sense" doesn't give us anything that "solipsism" doesn't, so there is no utility in insisting that we have to tell them apart at all.
Hi. We meet again, it seems.
1. Putnam has a point here that Brandom also manages to recover with his introduction of the concept of a 'claimable' as a deflated positivist notion of a 'fact'. Brandom's idea, which is profoundly anti-anti-realist (in a good way), is that the totality of claimables doesn't change so it's not incoherent to say that Newtons laws were true or false before Newton wrote them down or that before the English language slavery wasn't wrong (this is a Heideggerian picture that Brandom rejects and Rorty should've but didn't).
2. Putnam however is wrong to think that he can provide a substantive theory of truth, as Rorty points out.
I think these two points must be separated. I believe Rorty is confused and a bit solipsistic (perhaps in Jamesian spirit) on (1) but right on (2).
@@hss12661 "the totality of claimables doesn't change" - this is a metaphysical claim. It is to declare that "the world must truely be in such-and-such a way because of reason." Like all metaphysics, there is certain "common sense" appeal to it, and yet, it can't be demonstrated.
Following Rorty, at the end of the day, each of us is either a metaphysician or an ironist.
Metaphysicians insist that our experience simply MUST have a "connection," (by way of "claimables," for example) to "reality." They insist that, for example, Newton's laws MUST be "True" in some grandiose, existential sense because they can't bear to face whatever they think is the alternative.
Ironists insist that even if metaphysics are "correct," in some sense, there is no way for us to know that, which is why it doesn't matter if they are or aren't. Regardless of if Newton's laws are a "claimable" or not, it doesn't change the value the find in them which is the only reason we use them in the first place - not because they are "claimable." And we don't need to provide a "reason" for WHY we find them "valuable." We just do, until we don't of course. And that's enough.
Metaphsyicians think that their argument with ironists is about the "nature of reality," such as why "realism" is obvious and must be accepted so that our language can tell us what is "True."
Ironists think that their argument with metaphysicians is about "how to use language," such as why "realism" is obvious and yet also useless because language can't identify "Truth."
I like to think I am an ironist. But, also following Rorty, I've come think this is mostly about personal temperament - I don't begrudge metaphysicians for being who they are. Until they start to impose metaphysics that cause some practical harm, of course.
@@ericb9804 This is not a metaphysical claim, it is a rule of the language game of the truth predicate. There is a crucial difference between (a) "chess is man-made" and (b) "all moves in chess are allowed". We are solely responsible for the meaning of our propositions and utterances (this is the ironist, anti-metaphysical lesson) and this is exactly the reason why they're NOT arbitrary. Or, at least, they're not any more arbitrary than laws of Newtonian physics. You're confused about the nature of my claim.
@@hss12661 Perhaps I am confused. I'm not sure of the point you are trying to make...
"it's not incoherent to say that Newtons laws were true or false before Newton wrote them down " - Ok. I agree that I understand what you mean when you say that, and I agree is has certain "common sense" appeal, and is even useful as a colloquial shorthand of our experience, so it's not "incoherent" in that sense, I guess.
And yet, unless to insist upon some "connection" between our experience and "reality-as-it-is," its unclear what purpose this assertion is supposed to serve. I don't see why its important, in an epistemological sense, for me to insist on the state of Newtonian physics before I was around to insist on the state of Newtonian physics - it seems like incoherent, metaphysical navel gazing.
And now you say that its important to realize that our statements are not "arbitrary," but I don't think I ever implied they were? Clearly not "all moves in chess are allowed," but so what? Yet, just as clearly we can change the rules of chess if we had good reason to do so. By the same token, we can change what we think of Newtonian physics, if we deemed ourselves justified in doing so. Again, so what?
We believe what we do for the reasons we find compelling. So be it. I'm not sure why one would describe this situation as being "arbitrary" except as an attempt to impugn some fantasy rival as Putnam does here.
@@ericb9804 I agree with your remarks, but, again, it's not about big-R Reality which science, metaphysics or whatever supposedly unveils but about any claimable. It's a consequence of the deflationary approach to truth (which Putnam unfortunately opposes) that "F = ma", "Sun is bright" and "Slavery is wrong" can be handled in the same exact way. I just think (this time against Rorty and with Putnam) that the inference from "X happened in the past" to "in the past it was true that X happened" is nice to have.
You might be right that one shouldn't appeal to common sense when one generally agrees with Nietzsche that "there are no facts, but merely interpretations". Brandom however has convinced me that the property of the truth-predicate I'm referring to is philosophically harmless yet important for certain kinds of reasoning in science and the everyday life.
People who follow Rorty are just worshiping a particular set of books… *wink*
Putnam seems to be strawmanning Rorty here. Putnam seems to state that Rorty is caught inside the Kantian picture that there is no mind-independent reality. Rorty believes in an objective reality. But unlike the folk psychology upon which common sense realism is premised, Rorty accepted the anthropocentric view of our access to objective reality, while the commonsense realists are inclined to a theocentric model by virtue of explaining objective reality in terms of 'veritas aeternae' (an insight from Rorty that Putnam just wants to dismiss). Common sense realism leads inevitably to some kind of theology. For more information, check out Allison's interpretation of Kant which describes this shift from a theocentric to an anthropocentric worldview.
my 'common sense' tells me not to trust a single word being issued from that sinister grin.
That grin is just great haha
It doesn't seem common sense realism is much of a refuge. How do I know the sky is blue? Because it appear so. Is the sky actually blue? No, the way our brains evolved causes us to depict diffused light at a certain wavelength in that way. Is this table solid and made of wood? Yes, but it is also mostly empty space and made of particles which are not wood. At least in the interview he also seems to telescope ontological and epistemological relativism.
But I doubt you would deny that common sense realism is an advantage when one stands in the path of an oncoming train.
@@evinnra2779 Certainly, our evolutionary history has given our perceptual and cognitive faculties a certain utility. However, it would be rather 'solipsistic', to borrow from the video, to think that one particular species of apes nervous system understands how the universe 'really' is.
Your appeals to evolution and particles are themselves metaphysical claims
I would say this is not necessarily the case. Rorty himself often talks of particles and evolution and neurology, but only while seeing science as a particular collection of language games developed historically in the course of a social practice. If one sees science as yet another part of our culture, instead of that particular sector that "gets reality as it really is," one can make a scientific claim without sliding into metaphysics.
@@eleaticeyes813 See Vitor's reply above
The lack of philosophs/philosophy outside of the western world is what keeps this channel from being perfect. A little Charles Mills could balance out but we need to de-center a little bit.
Ps: I cite Mills because he criticizes this very thing
@Bagpuss Bagpuss the fact that you equate non western philosophy/philosophers says a lot about you
You must have just joined. Sorry but he did but TH-cam took them down. He’s gradually reuploading everything. I had to protest to TH-cam to allow him to get everything back up. Please don’t make such a judgment.
I wouldn't consider Mills particularily unwestern.
@@noaan Hence my post-scriptum
@@noaan hmmm. Can you say more? I’m not sure what you mean
Why would I buy a life insurance policy? I have 100 grand burning a hole in my pocket.
This channel is super anti-rorty lol
There are like 10 Rorty lectures/interviews on the channel...
@@Philosophy_Overdose Sorry, I meant to say the person running this channel is anti-rorty :P
@@Catofminerva I like Rorty. But I also think he was badly mistaken.
im interested in the follow up
I don't think they'll reply, but I also think the selection of excerpts uploaded speak for themselves. As a Rortyan myself, I am thankful for the Rorty content uploaded and also for the very insightful criticisms -- like the OP -- which help me sharpen my own thinking.