Date: Mon, 8 Apr 1996 20:41:33 -0500
Subject: Re: Modernism, Reason and Myth (Was WHOSE MODERNISM? MODERNISM VS POST-MODERNISM)


Justin:

>Some (William Jamesian) versions of pragmatism slide into the view we both
>repudiate. My old teacher Gil Harman at Princeton accepts a pretty crude
>version it. But I take pragmatism to be the sort of views that I expressed
>in criticicing Leo and defending rationality: the recvognition that
>epistemic standards are context bound, that there are no foundational
>beliefs or standards given independently of where we happen to be, but
>that (a) rational criticism and argument is possible using what we have
>and (b) that just because we don;t have a view from nowhere on the naked
>truth doesn't mean that there isn't a truth or that we cannot approximate
>it. Finally, that practical success in attaining one's aims is an
>important test of our approximation to the truth and thea dequacy of our
>standards, although not constitutive of their correctness.
>
>What's pernicious about that?

This is so watered down there's not much point in calling it pragmatism.
That practical success is to some degree constitutive of correctness is the
whole point, or so I would have thought. The perniciousness of that idea is
obvious.

Rahul




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