From: Mark Walker (tap@cgocable.net)
Date: Sat Jun 23 2001 - 07:33:25 MDT
----- Original Message -----
From: Samantha Atkins <samantha@objectent.com>
> Pragmatism is philosophically ungrounded when it comes to value
> issues. Simply saying that is most valuable/best/good which
> *works* begs the question of what it means for it to *work*, by
> what standards, what values and how does one ascertain and
> ground values?
>
I am not a pragmatist (or more precisely, I am a recovering pragmatist) but
I do not see the point of such assertions other than as a record of your
opinion. It is simply false that pragmatist have not attempted to grapple
with these issues. For example, I think Richard Rorty deals with each of
these (depending on exactly what you mean by your questions) in
_Contingency, irony, and solidarity_. Other examples could be provided ad
nauseum.
> Claims that philosophy is unimportant vs claims that it is not
> important are both philosophical claims. They are claims to a
> truth asserting that the very study of what we mean by truth and
> how we may ascertain it is or is not important. Both claims
> argue that philosophy *is* important, and is actually central.
>
>
I smiled when I read this. I thought of the philosophers of the world
rejoicing in the discovery that theirs is necessarily an important
discipline. In case you were serious, why should someone who believes that
faith and not philosophical reason leads us to the truth believe your
argument? In other words, doesn't your argument require more than the claim
that philosophy attempts to discover truth, but also that it is successful
at this? Isn't this exactly what the philosophy nay-sayers are going to
claim?
>>Transhumanism too raises these questions: The
> > question of what we can know is of relevance in the possibility of
> > skepticism that transhumanism raises, namely, that we might be able to
> > create beings whose knowledge transcends our own in the same way that
ours
> > transcends that of an ape or bug, etc. This sort of transcendental or
noetic
skepticism clearly has historical antecedents in Kant.
> What does such transcendence have to do with skepticism?
> Particularly with the philosophical school of Scepticism or with
> any of its modern false relatives?
>
I am not sure what just I can do this question within the confines of this
sound-bite philosophical forum.... Skepticism is often understood as the
thesis that we may not know what we think we know. Kant was a skeptic in
this sense in that he did not believe that we could ever claim to know the
ultimate nature of reality, what he calls 'things in themselves'. He defends
this claim in part by the idea that there might be other beings with a
perspective that transcends our own, these beings might know reality as
'noumena' whereas as our human form of cognition, our human perspective,
allows us to understand things only qua phenomena. (This appeal to a
superior form of cognition is a thinly veiled reference to God's form of
understanding). From this Kant concluded that metaphysics is impossible, for
metaphysics is the discipline that attempts to describe ultimate reality,
i.e., seeks to obtain knowledge of things in themselves. Transhumanism opens
the possibility that we might attempt to "become gods" and thus rescue
metaphysics from Kant's transcendental skepticism. (If you think that Kant's
skepticism is passé, consider that thinkers like Chomsky, Fodor, et al have
updated Kant's arguments with an empirical/evolutionary spin).
Mark.
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