Fall 1999 Cyberseminar in Objectivist Studies
The Continental Origins of Postmodernism

Week 13: December 6-12 and Week 14: December 13-19

David Ross Comments on
Shawn Klein's Review of Richard Rorty's
"Solidarity or Objectivity?" and "The Contingency of Language"

To: TOC Cyberseminar <cybersem@objectivistcenter.org>

Sent: Friday, December 17, 1999 8:32 AM

Subject: Cyberseminar: DR Comment on Shawn on Rorty

[From: David Ross]

My assignment was to comment on Shawn's review of Rorty. Shawn's
identification of issues on which Objectivists agree with Rorty, and his
account of where we diverge, were very clear. And I particularly liked
Shawn's explanation of how and why Objectivism has been able to maintain the
Enlightenment perspective. Along with Will's analysis of Rorty as
self-refuting, Shawn's essay made a succinct and thorough account.

I'm afraid that I can find almost nothing to comment on, I simply agree with
Shawn. I'm just going to ask some general questions about Rorty and his
views, in the hope that some of the philosophers will educate me a bit about
him, and about their field.

First, as I understand it, Rorty is regarded as one of the major living
philosophers. Why? Of course, as Objectivists, we see Rorty's view as
rehash of old mistaken views, a rehash of Kant, Dewey, Ayer, and others. We
reject Rorty because his views are mistaken. But I'd expect even the
philosophy community to reject him-or at least to ignore him-because his
views are old. I disagree with, say, Russell and Wittgenstein. However, I
do recognize them as innovators. I can see why, by its own standards, the
philosophy community has deemed them worthy of attention. What, by the
standards of modern philosophy, has Rorty added to the field?

My second question is about intersubjectivity. For quite some time,
(beginning with Kant?), it has been taken as an alternative to a
correspondence theory of truth in the context of arguments like Rorty's,
arguments that say that we don't have the necessary access to reality to
make
correspondence possible. This has always seemed to me to be an argument
that, more than any other, wears its self-refutation on its sleeve. Aren't
other humans parts of that reality to which we don't have sufficient access?
Why has this argument flourished so well for so long? Is there something,
either about the argument, or the context, that I'm missing?

Shawn wrote:

> An interesting implication of this view is that metaphysics and
> epistemology are irrelevant disciplines (Rorty says as much on
> page 23 of ORT). Truth is not a matter of reality, but of the
> community. It does not require knowing anything about reality,
> only of other people.

Far from rendering epistemology irrelevant, it seems to me that an
intersubjective standard would require a subtler and more complex science of
knowledge. Other persons are the most difficult things to understand.
Just
understanding what they mean when they say something is often a chore.
They're vague in the first place, then they change what they're saying, then
they say something different to someone else, then they contradict
themselves, then they act in a manner that refutes all of their utterances.
What is the argument for the claim that we can establish intersubjective
agreement without epistemological standards?

[David Ross]


*************************************************
Fall 1999 Cyberseminar in Objectivist Studies

All Cyberseminar posts are working papers with copyright
reserved to the author. They may not be published or adapted
without permission, but may be circulated for purposes of
scholarly discussion.

*************************************************

To: TOC Cyberseminar <cybersem@objectivistcenter.org>

Sent: Sunday, December 19, 1999 10:01 PM

Subject: Cyberseminar: re: David Ross's Question on Intersubjectivity

[From: Michal Fram Cohen ]

David Ross wrote:

"My second question is about intersubjectivity. For quite some time,
(beginning with Kant?), it has been taken as an alternative to a
correspondence theory of truth in the context of arguments like Rorty's,
arguments that say that we don't have the necessary access to reality to
make correspondence possible. This has always seemed to me to be an
argument that, more than any other, wears its self-refutation on its
sleeve. Aren't other humans parts of that reality to which we don't have
sufficient access? Why has this argument flourished so well for so long?
Is there something, either about the argument, or the context, that I'm
missing?"

I would like to suggest the hypothesis that the idea of
intersubjectivity is ultimately founded on the assumption that man's
consciousness has innate ideas, i.e. a source of knowledge that is
independent of any correspondence to anything. Innate ideas, which
originated in Kant's categories, are irreducible. True, they are a part
of reality, but they don't correspond to anything in reality. They are
primary ideas that man is born with. I would like to quote Martin Buber
in "I and Thou" as an example of a possible connection between innate
ideas and intersubjectivity:

"To man the world is twofold, in accordance with his twofold attitude.
The attitude of man is twofold, in accordance with the twofold nature of
the primary words which he speaks. The primary words are not isolated
words, but combined words. The one primary word is the combination
"I-Thou." The other primary combination is the combination "I-It;"
wherein, without a change in the primary word, one of the words "He" and
"She" can replace "It"... Primary words do not signify things, but they
intimate relations. Primary words do not describe something that might
exists independently of them, but being spoken they bring about
existence." ("I and Thou" p 3)

I would be interesting to contrast Buber with Rand's notion of the "I."
In the context of my post, however, I only intend to show that he
attempts to describe collective innate ideas as a source of knowledge.

Michal Fram-Cohen


*************************************************
Fall 1999 Cyberseminar in Objectivist Studies

All Cyberseminar posts are working papers with copyright
reserved to the author. They may not be published or adapted
without permission, but may be circulated for purposes of
scholarly discussion.

*************************************************