i think i picked up the idea of "conversation" from a b3n w4tson backlash argt against de saussure!

[dubdobdee]

geuss on rorty on "conversation" (and some discontents)

have only skimmed this: am totally back-achey and mentally fuzzy today and not getting my ideas in order on ANYTHING, least of all chumpdom left right or elsewhere

am tryin to do a (small) bit of spring cleaning -- or at least its pintsize cousin "putting stuff away"

Comments

[koganbot]

I gave this a cursory reading: probably deserves a more attentive one, but it's more of "notes towards a character sketch of a character I liked but didn't believe I ever understood" than something that grapples with the arguments that Rorty was grappling with. Or the grappling seems vague (which it sometimes does with Rorty, as well). What Rorty means by "conversation" could just as easily be expressed by the word "dance" - he means human interplay, and he was opposing this to a tendency within philosophy to try to plant itself in principles that were eternal and nonhuman, outside the brawl, as it were, outside the human dance, outside the contingency of actual human purposes and enterprises. I don't see where Geuss is challenging this, actually, so his discontent with Rorty's metaphor doesn't seem to have much point, really.

[byebyepride.livejournal.com]

I think the implication is that Rorty was a poor conversationalist, when he lost interest in, or felt he wasn't being received warmly by, the other party. But the argument isn't ad hominem, since I think it's fairly clear from Geuss's hints at what his own position is, but this is coded via the references to different philosophers. I don't think you could substitute 'dance' for 'conversation' since isn't it the human capacity for language that distinguishes conversation as a practice which might make possible progress, from other rituals by which social groups are constituted, and wouldn't serve to distinguish human behaviour from similarly interactive animal behaviours.

[byebyepride.livejournal.com]

Foucault might be more happy about the substitution of 'dance' for 'conversation' but if you point me to the relevant bit of Rorty (since I've only really dipped into the essays and never got far with The Mirror of Nature book) I'll happily retract!

[koganbot]

We're xposting like crazy, but I don't think Rorty particularly cared about the question "what makes us human" or in distinguishing us from other creatures, except to the extent that he thought we shouldn't think we're different in kind from other creatures. Which is to say that where Rorty makes the point that "language goes all the way down" or some such, so quarks and galaxies only exist for us in relation to the discourses we have about them, he's not doing that to distinguish us from the beasts (for whom dirt and air only exist for them in relation to how they use dirt and air, and not having language they have no access to notions of galaxies and quarks, but they're as reactive as we are) but to distinguish one sort of philosophy (that which tries to plant itself firmly in something extra-human) from another (the adaptive, pragmatic).

And what Rorty's not doing (and I'm not saying that you or Geuss says he is, I'm just making an extra point) is saying "because language is like such and such, therefore we are like such and such." For Rorty, that sort of philosophy is just metaphysics in linguistic guise.

[byebyepride.livejournal.com]

I don't think that's Rorty's question, my point was that it's the presupposition of the claim that that the conversation of mankind is worth pursuing [see 'moral concern' in the passage I cite further down, and this is what Geuss is pointing at when he says 'If to be human ... is to take a part in a, or this, conversation, then it seems but a short step from that to the claim that philosophy is important because it is a way in which the conversation maintains itself']. But perhaps your naturalist Rorty would be happy to see 'conversation' and 'dance' as interchangeable, i.e. unwilling to say that philosophy is important. I'm sure that from Rorty's point of view, Geuss is unhappily attached to old-style metaphysics. But I suspect that Geuss wishes to defend philosophy as more than just a 'style' of talking.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

can't remember if this is a discussion we've had or my in-head sketch of one i felt we should have, but i've wondered in the past if "philosophy" as a topic -- discipline/department -- isn't what you might call a "necessary evil" to get universities as institutions set up and set (somewhat) apart from the rest of human interplay: ie that the "outside the brawl" ideal HAS to be institutionalised (for all its faults) so as to shoulder away the more destructive riptides of all possible brawls, from places where discussion and the exploration of knowledge can flourish if not uninterrupted then at least spottily

(this seems a bit of a kantian idea possibly)

[byebyepride.livejournal.com]

Yeah, this sounds like the modern 'German' idea of a university - the older idea is far more pragmatic as far as I know i.e. it's where people go to learn useful stuff, since rhetoric, dialectic, etc. all have quite well-articulated ideas of their purposes. But this (i.e. the German idea) is philosophy conceived as the science of sciences, i.e. a ground which is precisely not religious, political, social etc, but self-certifying and validating. It's obviously unstable, since it can't compete with the results produced by enquiry on the natural science model, which leads to the shrinking realm occupied by philosophy as a discipline. I guess Hegel sees philosophy as the Brawl of all Brawls, i.e. looks a bit like Rorty since he sees everything as conversation, but a lot unlike Rorty in that he sees the conversation as the absolute, i.e. truth in a way Rorty seems to deny. But my feeling is that yr Oakeshotts, Gadamers etc are 'soft' Hegelians in that they want the shape of total knowledge, but without the distinctively philosophical claim (i.e. that what they know is true).

[byebyepride.livejournal.com]

Although maybe Rorty thinks mankind is a species which just happens to have a conversation? In which case there are no particular grounds on which one might choose whether or not to continue that conversation, or rather there are plenty of grounds (for fun, to achieve some specific end), but no 'deep' ones. e.g. it is not the destiny of the species to have such and such a conversation, and it will continue as long as it continues, and take the course it takes.

[koganbot]

(Oops, my first attempt to write this was unintelligible)

Oh, I missed this post, which says well what I then went on to say later. Rorty puzzles me because I just can't grasp what he thinks a role for pragmatism can be beyond pointing out that one doesn't need a foundationalist philosophy. But he does seem to think pragmatism has a potentially useful role, such as in rooting out the effects of "Platonism" in everyday life (I've put "Platonism" in scare quotes because Rorty doesn't necessarily hold Plato responsible for all of it), while I don't see that this "Platonism" really is in everyday life. (But "Platonism" has had such many and varied uses that I'm completely out of my depth in talking about it.)

[koganbot]

Well, I may be projecting my own wishes on Rorty here, but my guess is that he'd say something like "There are plenty of reasons to keep 'the conversation of mankind going,' but these are no different in kind for reasons to keep any conversation going (the conversation of mankind just being the aggregate conversations (pl.) of mankind), which is to say we have this reason or that reason to talk about stuff (like, 'What should we make for dinner?') but we hardly need to give an overall reason for saying why we don't think conversations should stop altogether, conversations not being generated or ended by such broad reasons." I don't know. Would he say that? I feel confused here, but that is because I never got a handle on what Geuss's critique of any of Rorty's ideas actually was. Anyway, I hope you don't think that I'm badgering you with these responses. When I badger you I'll try to do it on the basis of what you believe, not of what Geuss might believe.