Date: Mon, 30 Jan 1995 14:03:31 -0500 (EST) From: Justin Schwartz <jschwart-AT-freenet.columbus.oh.us> Subject: Reply to Goldstein On Mon, 30 Jan 1995, Philip Goldstein wrote: > In reply to Wolf, Schwartz makes the following point, which I > find confusing: "The reasonable interpretation is that > beliefs are warranted only by other beliefs and none have independent > warrant in virtue of self-evidence or some other such property. (This is > what _I_ mean by antifoundationalism.) But nothing follows from this > about the status of what some of the beliefs are about: beliefs warranted > by others could be about an objective mind-and-language independent > reality. The unreasonable interpretation is that beliefs can only be > _about_ other beliefs (and so not about a mind, etc. independent reality.) > But it doesn't even follow from _that_ that there is no such reality, just > that we can't have beliefs about it." I take the point to be that, from > the fact that beliefs are warranted by others, one cannot conclude that > there is no objective reality, since some of these warranted beliefs > could include claims about objective reality. The trouble is that one > usually speaks of objective reality as a ground or warrant of beliefs and I don't know who speaks of it this way. I don't. Only beliefs warrant other beliefs. My beliefs about the capitalist class are about that part of objective reality which owns the means of production in capitalist society, but it is not the epistemic warrant of any of those beliefs, and I don't know what it would mean to say that the class warrants a belief, e.g., that it's the ruling class in capitalism. Now I do think that my beliefs about the class are in part caused by the class, which causal relations are similarly objective, and that the best explanation of my belief that that class is the ruling class is that it is, objectively, the ruling class. But if asked what grounds I have to believe this I can only cite other beliefs, e.g., that the class that owns the maens of production will exercise disproportionate influence on the government, and so forth. > , moreover, one that resists what others believe. I don't understand this. One what that resists what others believe? A ground can't resist the beliefs of others, only a person can. To concede that what > warrants claims about reality is the beliefs of others is to deny > objective reality just that normative status which antifoundationalism > opposes. If AF just says that objective reality isn't the epistemic warrant for our beliefs, and not that, in virtue of not being that warrant, it doesn't exist or isn't objective, I have no problem with it. But I do want to keep the following normative claim about objective reality: that it is normatively desirable that our beliefs be true of it. To say claim is warranted means, as I understand it, that in view of other beliefs I hold it is likely to be true. That's why warrant matters, because we want true beliefs. In other words, I do not see how your defense of objective > reality as warranted belief I do not identify objective reality with warranted belief, or any belief. For something to be objective is for it to be independent of us, our beliefs, concepts, and so forth. (Socially constituted realities like class are therefore not fully objective in this sense, but their existence and properties, while part;y involving us and our beliefs, are independent of our beliefs about them. I cannot make the working class the ruling class in capitalist society by coming to believe that it is so.) ---Justin Schwartz supports your opposition to > antifoundationalism. ------------------
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