From: Samantha Atkins (samantha@objectent.com)
Date: Sat Jun 23 2001 - 14:58:50 MDT
Mark Walker wrote:
>
> ----- 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.
>
I agree some Pragmatists attempt to deal with the questions.
But the school
as a school of philosophy does not really seem to answer these
questions.
> > 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?
>
How can faith lead us to truth when it is bound to just what it
believed
in the beginning? Faith in the sense of proceeding as if
something is
true would be more fruitful but require noticing results to get
anywhere.
But why should the more stultified ways some hold faith say that
philosophy
is or is not important? Faith is a philosophical assertion
although in
its more virulent forms one that short-circuits philosophical
inquiry.
I don't think an argument that philosophy is important requires
that
philosophy or some philosophy actually successfully discovers
truth. I
think it is enough that philosophy provides grounding for the
concept of
truth and for examining claims of how truth may be apprehended
(and other
matters that I don't mean to exclude by this focus).
Epistemology is
about examining what we mean by truth or knowledge and how it
can be
attained more than it is about the truth of some particular
matter. It
is, if you like, at the meta-level. All means of pursuing
truth, including
science, rest on some epistemological positions.
> >>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.
Didn't Kant argue that the very fact of having a bounded set of
perceptual
abilities and characteristics automatically means that we cannot
know things
as they are in themselves? That argument is open to the
criticism that any
being will have some such bounds by the nature of being and thus
that no being
can know things as they are in themselves. In short it defines
knowing as an
impossibility. And if knowing was only defined in some
absolutist sense then
it would be impossible. But there are other ways of definining
knowing.
- samantha
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