I would not speak for philosophers in general. I wouldn't be confident that
even Anglo-American philosophers have all or mostly given up their Method
Police badges. I am speaking for myself, and for an approach I picked up in
no small part from Rorty; it was pretty common at the places where I studied
and taught, influenced by neopragmatism. As far as when it came about, I'd
say with the demise of logical empiricism, the somewhat more liberal
successor to logical positivism, in the face of various attacks; maybe obe
would date it somewhere between 1970a and 1980, earlier than 1980.
A few years back there was a lot of talk, largely provoked by Rorty's more
grandiose claims, about what is left of philosophy if neopragamtism is
right. Avner Cohn did a good anthology on the subject; I forget the title.
Unsurprisingly, I do not go with Rorty's extreme skepticism. I think
pragmatism is muchj more modest and less interesting than R thinks it is. In
fact, I think pragmatism is consistent with hard-boiled scientific realsim
(which I espouse), metaphysical truth of the correspondence sort (which I
believe in), objectivity about morality (which I defend), and lots of stuff
R thinks is baggage taht pragmatism has got rid of. It is also consistent
with the rejection of those doctrines.
My own view is that R tries to set pragmatism up as a sort of Method Police
himself. "Hey, you! Don't go there, corres[pondance truth is off bounds
these days!" My own view is more like: show me what you got! See if you can
make it walk and talk!
The relevance of thia to the question about what philosophy can be today is:
whatever it ever was. Partly R is right that philosophers are ministers with
travelling portfolios who can learn a little bit about a lot of things and
see them from a middle distance taht practioners often can't; they are too
close.
Partly philosophers are trained in a literature and a textual tradition
that others aren't and that addresses questions that interest others as well
as only themselves. As such they know a lot of moves and pitfalls that
people can learn more easily from them than having to disvover, painfully,
for themselves. This doesn't giove us the ability to say,"Don't go there!"
But in many cases we can say we know what happens if you DO go there.
Anyway, I think that philosophers can do everything they ever could; only,
they cannot set the bounds to knowledge or presume to dictate to scientists
what the scientists may do as far as science goes.
--jks
>Justin:
>
>>>>JKS: philosophers cannot tell scientistr What Is Good Method.
>>>
>>>JD They can tell them, but only a small number will listen.
>>
>>I was unclear. I meant: We _should_ not tell them. We have no
>>special knowledge. No one appointed us the method police.
>
>I think you're right, but philosophers used to think that they had
>special insight into the nature of knowledge production. When do you
>think that philosophers decided that they really didn't? Moreover,
>if philosophy is not the master of all disciplines, telling us the
>truth of truths as it were, what is philosophy & what is the job of
>the philosopher? All is rhetoric, as Rorty says? Should Philosophy
>be subsumed under English & Comparative Literature, which in turn
>should be subsumed under History?
>
>Yoshie
>
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