(1) I did a quick skim of that Thompson article and don't trust it much. E.g., "From a common-sense point of view, the individuality of the apple lies within it and depends on nothing but itself." This is not a common-sense view, in that the question whether the individuality of the apple lies within it is a question that one can easily never ask and can have no opinion on. Rorty does indeed use the phrase "the compulsion to believe when staring at an object," but he does not make it equivalent to the idea that, e.g., an apple is obviously an apple. Rather, it's the idea that, e.g., the apple compels us to think of it as an apple. "This is obviously an apple" and "the apple compels us to think of it as an apple" are different ideas, and according to Rorty the latter was invented by Plato.
"For Rorty, what philosophers have called 'an intuition is never anything more or less than familiarity with a language-game' (PMN 34); the unmediated presence of the object is a myth." I'm not comfortable with "the unmediated presence of an object is a myth" as an extrapolation from "an intuition is never more or less than familiarity with a language-game," since Rorty doesn't think of a language-game as a medium, and neither do I. "Social practice" and "medium" are not equivalent concepts. A social practice would be a medium for what, and between what and what else?
And "for Rorty language is primary, preceding and structuring experience. In other words, language, for Rorty, takes on a transcendental or constitutive function as the source of the individuality of objects." This seems very wrong, conflating "structuring" with "transcending" with "constituting," all of which are separate ideas and at least one of which - transcendence - Rorty doesn't believe in. I mean, transcends what? What do these words mean? And a child learning that Mommy comes when you go "waaah!" or (when a little older) "Mommy!" isn't doing so because something called "language" precedes or structures "experience." Rather, learning to go "waaah!" or "Mommy!" to get Mommy's attention is experience, "experience" meaning something like "experience on the job" rather than "sense impression." (I'm using "waaah!" here not as the instinctive cry that the baby starts with but as something that the child subsequently learns to choose and to use.) The social practice involving "waaah!" and "Mommy!" precedes the child's experience in the trivial sense that the social practices existed before the baby did. But so did wind and water and drinking, and so what?
Also, I don't see how "language" i.e. "social practices" can ever be thought of as a metaphor in the sense that "eye of the mind" and "mirror of nature" are metaphors. "_____ is like a mirror" can be filled in with "the mind," but how do you fill in "____ is like a social practice"?
See my caution in Kuhn 16 where I argue that not all similarities or analogies are necessarily metaphoric. (A tangential thought about Wittgenstein's neologism "language-game." "Game" is a metaphor in that Wittgenstein isn't saying that all social practices are games but rather that they are like games in this respect or that. But games are, literally, social practices, which is why Wittgenstein used the metaphor in the first place, so that we'd think of language as a bunch of social practices; and also the way he then uses the term "language-game" is not metaphoric but literal, simply a straight-up synonym for "social practice." [I'm bracketing the question as to whether nonlinguistic animals can have social practices in the sense that we think of social practices.] So now "language-game" as Wittgenstein or Rorty or I would use the term is not a metaphor, just as "neck of a bottle" and "mouth of a river" are no longer metaphors either.)
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2009-06-20 01:55 pm (UTC)"For Rorty, what philosophers have called 'an intuition is never anything more or less than familiarity with a language-game' (PMN 34); the unmediated presence of the object is a myth." I'm not comfortable with "the unmediated presence of an object is a myth" as an extrapolation from "an intuition is never more or less than familiarity with a language-game," since Rorty doesn't think of a language-game as a medium, and neither do I. "Social practice" and "medium" are not equivalent concepts. A social practice would be a medium for what, and between what and what else?
And "for Rorty language is primary, preceding and structuring experience. In other words, language, for Rorty, takes on a transcendental or constitutive function as the source of the individuality of objects." This seems very wrong, conflating "structuring" with "transcending" with "constituting," all of which are separate ideas and at least one of which - transcendence - Rorty doesn't believe in. I mean, transcends what? What do these words mean? And a child learning that Mommy comes when you go "waaah!" or (when a little older) "Mommy!" isn't doing so because something called "language" precedes or structures "experience." Rather, learning to go "waaah!" or "Mommy!" to get Mommy's attention is experience, "experience" meaning something like "experience on the job" rather than "sense impression." (I'm using "waaah!" here not as the instinctive cry that the baby starts with but as something that the child subsequently learns to choose and to use.) The social practice involving "waaah!" and "Mommy!" precedes the child's experience in the trivial sense that the social practices existed before the baby did. But so did wind and water and drinking, and so what?
Also, I don't see how "language" i.e. "social practices" can ever be thought of as a metaphor in the sense that "eye of the mind" and "mirror of nature" are metaphors. "_____ is like a mirror" can be filled in with "the mind," but how do you fill in "____ is like a social practice"?
See my caution in Kuhn 16 where I argue that not all similarities or analogies are necessarily metaphoric. (A tangential thought about Wittgenstein's neologism "language-game." "Game" is a metaphor in that Wittgenstein isn't saying that all social practices are games but rather that they are like games in this respect or that. But games are, literally, social practices, which is why Wittgenstein used the metaphor in the first place, so that we'd think of language as a bunch of social practices; and also the way he then uses the term "language-game" is not metaphoric but literal, simply a straight-up synonym for "social practice." [I'm bracketing the question as to whether nonlinguistic animals can have social practices in the sense that we think of social practices.] So now "language-game" as Wittgenstein or Rorty or I would use the term is not a metaphor, just as "neck of a bottle" and "mouth of a river" are no longer metaphors either.)
(2) So where are you with Kuhn?