Pragmatism, Pluralism, and the Nature of Philosophy by Aikin Scott F. Talisse Robert B. & Robert B. Talisse

Author:Aikin, Scott F.,Talisse, Robert B. & Robert B. Talisse
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (CAM)

The claim here is that analytic pragmatists follow their classical ancestors in weakening the Cartesian standard for justification while maintaining the Cartesian conception of the object of knowledge. This is objectionable, according to Rockmore, because the claim to “get it right about the way the world is” (2005: 261) stands in need of the kind of foundationalist justification that Descartes sought, a standard for justification that analytic pragmatists reject. Thus, Rockmore alleges, analytic pragmatists help themselves to claims to know about the “so-called mind-independent real as it is” (2005: 262) even though they have jettisoned the epistemological machinery required to underwrite them. The result is that analytic pragmatists make staggering claims to knowledge but never provide requisite justifications for such claims (2005: 265–266).

Rockmore is confused about the epistemic norms that have been revised. Precisely what it is to abandon the Cartesian standard of epistemic justification is to accept a weaker burden of proof about claims about the way the world is. Put otherwise, Rockmore applauds analytic pragmatists for following classical pragmatism in weakening the requirements for epistemic justification, but then he objects to an epistemology based on the weakened requirements on the grounds that such an epistemology cannot meet the old Cartesian standard. Rockmore apparently believes that to adopt the weaker epistemic standards is to also adopt a more modest metaphysics, one that rejects metaphysical realism, the view that there is a way the world is apart from the way be believe it is. But this is a muddle. Surely Rock-more is correct to characterize the pragmatist epistemological program as one that rejects the Cartesian view that the entirety of the epistemological project consists in the “concern to know the so-called mind independent real as it is” (2005: 262). Pragmatists both classical and analytic insist that our epistemic objectives are broader than that; for example, we engage in epistemology for the sake of assuaging doubt, reinstituting action, solving a problem, or participating in community. But there is nothing in this pragmatist commitment that entails anything about our metaphysical commitments as such. In fact, many contemporary pragmatists see it is a cardinal virtue of the classical pragmatist’s epistemology that it is “metaphysically neutral” (Hookway 2000: 77), “low profile” (Westbrook 2005: 239), and not “metaphysically loaded” (Misak 2007: 70).

According to Rockmore, however, epistemology drives metaphysics. Hence he marvels at the tendency of analytic pragmatists to claim that there is an external world (2005: 265) without bothering to address the skeptic. But, again, the very point of weakening the epistemic justificatory standards was to resist the Cartesian imperative to refute the external world skeptic before any other philosophical program may begin; according to the pragmatists, both classical and analytic, we need not put our endeavors—epistemic, political, aesthetic, or otherwise—on hold until we can find a way to devise a proof of the external world that could satisfy the skeptic. Rather, the point is to proceed despite skeptical challenges, and to use the positive consequences of adopting realist metaphysical commitments as a way to indict the skeptic.

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