CLASS #26: TRUTH, MEANING, AND PRAGMATISM
1.
Another Problem of Reading
a. Rorty Quote
“People have, oddly enough, found something interesting to say about the essence
of Force and the definition of “number”. They might have found something
interesting to say about the essence of Truth. But in fact they haven’t . . . When
[pragmatists] suggest that we do not ask questions about the nature of Truth and
Goodness, they do not invoke a theory about the nature of reality or knowledge or
man which says that “there is no such thing” as Truth or Goodness. Nor do they
have a “relativistic” or “subjectivisitic” theory of Truth or Goodness. They would
simply like to change the subject.”
b. Changing the subject is consequential
c. How do we determine what research means?
d. Social science continuous with literature
i. Text creation
ii. Heterophenomenology
iii. Sensemaking
e. Research and rhetoric
f. Foundationalism revisited
g. Making a text our own
h. Modernist illusions
2.
Truth, Meaning, Rhetoric, and Pragmatism
a. Choosing without knowing whether we are right
i. Small t-truth and meaning are not distinct
ii. Research findings are social constructions
iii. Research creates texts
b. Each reading enlarges the meaning of the text
c. Research, if persuasive, produces truth
d. Statements that function as true are produced by attempts to determine
what something means
i. Jaynes narrative
ii. metaphors
e. Truths about practices generate meanings that are the conceivable
consequences of those truths
i. What meanings are allowed in?
ii. What meanings are investigated scientifically?
f. Set of conceivable practical consequences of a theory subsumes and
exceeds the set of what is reasonable to believe
i. We are choosing a way of life
ii. Not simply generating knowledge
g. Not all meanings are reasonable to believe
Unimagined
Consequences
Trying to Expand
Continually
meanings
(imagined
consequences)
truths
(what it is
reasonable to
believe)
h. Aesthetics and Ethics
i. Empiricist approaches are designed for control
ii. Produce information that is valuable for control
iii. Ethics
iv. Rhetoric
v. Values and standards pervade all choices
vi. We try to evade
i. Obligations of reading
3.
Pragmatism and its Ambiguous Link to Modernity
a. What does it mean to be modern?
“I will use the term modern to designate any science that legitimates itself
with reference to a metadiscourse . . . “(Lyotard)
Lyotard regards as metanarrative all philosophical and social conceptions
that proceed from the possibility of arriving at a general understanding of
the world and society—a scientific understanding which could then
provide the basis for consciously changing the world.
b. Basic ideas of the Enlightenment:
1. There is a stable, coherent, knowable self. This self is conscious,
rational, autonomous, and universal.
2. This self knows itself and the world through reason, or rationality.
3. The mode of knowing produced by the objective rational self is
"science," which can provide universal truths about the world, regardless
of the individual status of the knower.
4. The knowledge produced by science is "truth," and is eternal.
5. The knowledge/truth produced by science will always lead toward
progress. All human institutions and practices can be analyzed by science
(reason/objectivity) and improved.
6. Reason is the ultimate judge of what is true, and therefore of what is
right, and what is good (what is legal and what is ethical).
7. Science thus stands as the paradigm for any and all socially useful
forms of knowledge.
8. Science is neutral and objective; scientists, those who produce
scientific knowledge through their unbiased rational capacities, must be
free to follow the laws of
reason, and not be motivated by other concerns (such as money or power).
9. Language must be rational also. To be rational, language must be
transparent; it must function only to represent the real/perceivable world
that the rational mind observes. There must be a firm and objective
connection between the objects of perception and the words used to name
them.
4.
Modernity is fundamentally about order achieved through the means of "grand
narratives" or "master narratives,"
a. a kind of meta-theory, or meta-ideology, that is, an ideology; a story that is
told to explain the belief systems that exist.
 Pragmatism is a critique of grand narratives,
o Favors mini-narratives
o Mini narratives are always situational, provisional,
contingent, and temporary, making no claim to universality,
truth, reason, or stability.
 For the pragmatist, knowledge becomes functional--you learn
things, not to know them, but to use that knowledge.
b. Justification and Legitimacy
i. What if no church
ii. How do I justify
c. Havel at the UN
d. What difference does it make?
 Efforts to describe, explain, and predict are couched in theoretical
terms that highlight rationality, et
 Empiricism granted a central role to logic
 Rhetoric was given second class status in persuasion and politics
 It comes down, however, to being able to persuade ourselves and
others about the world and how it operates
e.
Modernity seems natural