File spoon-archives/marxism-thaxis.archive/marxism-thaxis_1998/marxism-thaxis.9801, message 70


Date: Mon, 5 Jan 1998 02:09:55 -0800 (PST)
From: Ralph Dumain <rdumain-AT-igc.apc.org>
Subject: M-TH: WHY PRAGMATISM? [was: Response to Re: Christopher Phelps'


Revisiting December's debate between Justin and me....

In his last rebuttal to me, Justin insisted that pragmatism and ethical
utilitarianism should not be conflated; that one could indeed object to
utilitarianism on pragmatic grounds, which recognizes a variety of concrete,
contextualized, and variegated needs, and that pragmatism is not, or need
not be confined to, the same sort of general, abstract, vacuous notion that
rules utilitarianism.

Justin not only objected to my analogy between or conflation of the two, but
reacted against my insistence on the vacuity of the social embeddedness of
all knowledge as a general philosophic principle.

Justin also acknowledged my objections to the concept of naked "interest"
that drives extreme relativist sociology of science.

And Justin insisted that he is a realist as well as a pragmatist, as are
many pragmatists.

At 10:34 PM 12/15/97 -0500, Justin Schwartz wrote:
>In any case not all pragmatists are relativists. 
>Me, for instance, and the scientific realist current I come from.

I find it rather curious that a scientific realist would find it desirable
or necessary to label himself a "pragmatist" as well.  One would wonder how
such a term as "pragmatism" came into existence to define a philosophical
school, if pragmatism is so cozy with realism.  After all, since we've all
known since Galileo that scientific knowledge does not progress by pure
contemplation alone, but by active intervention in the physical world
(experiment), isn't it odd that in the latter half of the 19th century
thinkers should discover that they are pragmatists?  Since the notion of
scientific practice is already embedded in the notion of scientific realism,
why would a special philosophy called pragmatism even be needed?

To focus a little closer, let me reproduce a crucial little bit of Justin's
response.

I had written:
>>  We've moved from the detached individual to the
>> socially conceptualized individual as a philosophical abstraction,

Justin responds:

>This is an invidious characterization. All philosophy involves
>abstraction. Particular pragmatists spell out the social embeddedness in
>very detailed terms. You want social context with a vengeance, look at,
>e.g., Shapin's Social History of Truth. Or Kuhn on the scientific
>revolution. Etc. 

Justin could have gone even farther if he really wanted to kick my ass.  But
at least we are close to nailing the master issue.  One could ask, for
example, if I object to general abstractions as master categories, what
makes "matter" a more valid fundamental philosophic category than
"practice"?  It is just this implicit question that I am trying to answer.

If pragmatism is the master category that I criticized, then it must lead to
subjectivism.  If it is not, or need not be, as Justin insists--if it is in
its best incarnations a variant of realism--then why does "pragmatism" even
exist?

In an earlier post Justin had stated the following:

>>>Pragmatist theories of knowledge don't purport to tell you in the
>>>abstarct how to adjudicate truth claims. The enterprise of doing that in
>>>the abstract is antithetical to pragmatism. What pragmatists do is direct
>>>you to the social practices in which we do adjudicate truth claims, look
>>>at science, look at its social context, see how it actually operates. 

This _philosophically_ leads to nothing, if you are a realist as well.  What
unique claim do pragmatists have on taking a look at the social practice of
science, and once it's looked at, what general philosophical conclusions are
to be drawn?  Why does "pragmatism" even exist for the realist?

Note, that when I ask why pragmatism exists, I am not interested simply in
the social datum that there are realist philosophers out there who happen to
call themselves "pragmatists" and that's the end of the matter.  Why would
it be necessary for any scientific realist to refer to himself as a
pragmatist, without tending in the undesirable direction that I've criticized?



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