Subject: RE: BHA: Analytic philosophy
Date: Sun, 4 Jan 2004 08:53:15 -0500
From: "Moodey, Richard W" <MOODEY001-AT-gannon.edu>


Hi Viren and Tobin,
 
Putnam goes from the fact that people who use different criteria for classification disagree about where to put the dingo to conclude:
 
 (1)  "All of these classifications are legitimate, and useful in the contexts for which they are
designed," and
 
(2) "To ask what the "real" essence of my last dog, Shlomit was, would
be to ask a meaningless question.(Pragmatism Conference proceedings 6)"
 
I can't speak for CR, but I personally agree with #1, but disagree with #2.  There is a difference between legitimate disagreements about what is essential to being a dog (whether or not its name is "Shlomit"}, and claiming that asking the question about the essential nature of dogs is "meaningless."  I think we use "essence" and "nature" heuristically.  It is the agreement that there is something there to be discovered, and not just socially constructed, that grounds our disagreements about canine "nature."  To say that the question is "meaningless" seems to me to trivialize the work that scientists do.  Maybe that's the idea, to discredit science and embarrass scientists.

Again, I won't speak for CR, but just for myself in regard to Putnam's statement:

"The idea of one fixed conceptual vocabulary in which one can once and
for all describe the structure of reality (as if it had only one fixed
structure), whether in its traditional or its recent materialist form is
untenable." (8) 
 
This seems to me to be an attack upon an assumption, not of CR, but of logical positivism.
 
I agree that our conceptual vocabulary is not fixed once and for all, and I concede that change is real, and that the structure of reality can thus change.  But I don't claim that the essences or natures I seek to discover will never change.  I even believe that there are essential differences in different processes of change -- some are more like embryonic development, some like evolution through environmental selection, some dialectical.  (I would accept that there are dialectical aspects to different types of change, but do not accept that "dialectic" is the master category for interpreting all changes -- that's another argument.)
 
Viren observes:  "He [Putnam] then asserts that reality is "vague" and hence we reach an ultimate level."  And contrasts this with CR's endorsement of a "categorical realism"  "in which certain categories exist in the world."  
 
I would want to keep clear the distinction between (1) those aspects of the real which are neither actual nor empirical, (2) the conceptions different people have of those realities, and (3) the words, written or spoken, we use to articulate, express, and communicate these conceptions.   
 
I hold that all three of these "exist in the world."  Sayer suggests that it might be better to refer to #1 as "generative mechanisms" rather than "essences," since "essential" is so tied up with the issue of classification.  Members of the same class might not all have the same set of generative mechanisms.
 
Regards,
 
Dick
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