These are the days days of miracles and wonders, living the fruition of millenial dreaming. The Negev blooms, humans fly, we visit the moon, water flows with the turn of a knob. Not a break from yearning for paradise, but the delivery of such. I need only willingness to perceive Gan Edan. Incredible when considered in perspective of how things have been for thousands of years, and it's come so rapidly.
Why do people bother leaving supposedly serious comments on these videos? Hardly anyone's going to read them, and your views are probably amateurish anyway.
interesting. but i think bourgeoise retreat into a comfortable existence with availability of material goods is the opposite evasive extreme with respect to patonic longing for the "things in themselves" in some other dimension.
The desire to pay one's debt of guilt for living back to the world in boons for future generations is no less a symbolic gesture towards immortality than those paradigms more concerned with an immortality earned through a personalized future found after death.
Plato never spoke about an end to inquiry. In the 'sophist', Socrates mentions the impossibility of expressing the idea of 'one' (meaning the reconciliation of the identity and dissemination). Dialectics, mediatised through langage which is an imitation of being is ultimatly confined to be used negatively - it cant end. And what is this bullshit he is talking about Plato. The point of Plato was to live a just life. Damn analyitical thinkers never get it right.
@frogbuster20 I'm no Rorty fan, but Plato definitely believed in an "end to inquiry." Take the Allegory of the Cave (Republic), in which the protagonist is described as finally emerging from the cave and to recognize the sun itself (i.e., the form of the good). Plato was also clearly interested in living a "just life," of course, but that's neither here nor there. The point is that Plato believed that it was possible to grasp truth in a final, definitive sense, something which pragmatists deny.
@frogbuster20 --> I think you are generally right about Rorty's unjustified rendering of Platonism. Rorty of course is also right, but only if Plato is sophist-icated, which many analysts seem to do without apology. Just because Plato REFERS to the sun, the good, the just, etc., it's really the SOPHISTS who think they have an analytical (ad hoc) formulation to grasp these things & they are the amusing fools. The Plato we see in the dialogues does not offer a grasping relationship to the ideal.
Rorty makes out as if the natural order is only a spiritual belief, it does not seem to occur to him that nature itself is a natural order that can be understood as well.
@CadaverSplatter, If you actually analyze what Rorty is saying, you will notice that he is associating the natural order to the spiritual beliefs about religion and God and the ideas of Plato that many people had in the past. It is in his words, his argument does not sound secular, it is aimed at spiritual beliefs. If not, why would he specifically mention God and Plato?
Because, formerly, material progress didn't seem as much of an option, and people hoped for better afterlives in the afterlives. AFTER, he sees these as lass important alternatives to the material development of peoples lives and their children.
To elaborate a bit further on this Kuhn issue, let's take an example: physics. If we look at the history of physics through an obsolete, hard-core Kuhnian paradigm, we are obviously blinded to the basic preserved core of knowledge I refered to earlier. Take the advent of modern physics, which initially had a two-fold "revolution": relativity theory and quantum mechanics. To only real Kuhnian paradigm there is the latter. Relativity improved on Newton, but didn't replace him. Newtonian mechanics
was used, for example, in bringing man to the moon and satellites in orbit. No need for relativity there, but it is useful for adequately describing the orbit of Mercury. Quantum mechanics *was* a paradigm shift, in that the clockwork-universe paradigm from the Age of Reason (not Newton in persona) was replaced by a quasi-non-determenistic one. Its still no Copernican revolution however. Those events are very, very rare. In biology, Darwinian evolution by natural selection really is a biggie.
In fact, I think that must have been the greatest paradigm shift in intellectual history. But apart from the obvious examples, I think its a very rare phenomenon.
Minor correction: relativity is used in GPS and satellites in addition to Newtonian mechanics. But the point is clear, the latter is still very, very useful.
For Nietzsche it's will to power, for Rorty it's justification, I mean, why the psychology? If we verify something through experiment independent of our own prejudices, or deduce something out of sheer logical necessity, I have no problem calling such a thing of greater truth than whatever is not. Of course, anyone can apply supermarket labels to anything and simply call this a perspective too, but I would add, that it *is* a perspective that actually works -that should appeal to any pragmatist.
Verification isn't something that is always possible, and nevertheless, there have been paradigmatic cases where beliefs were thought to have been verified when they were not.
To say a belief is justified is just to say that you have no reason not to believe it.
O sure, I don't deny that. This whole process of acquiring knowledge is far from perfect. But I don't see how other modes of inquiry could be any better, in fact, I think they're worse. I also think that Kuhnians tend to exaggerate this whole paradigm-overthrowing thing. In science the core of knowledge is usually preserved.
"No reason not to believe it". That's a very strange epistemology. It limits only to falsification. You also need reasons to believe something, what's wrong with that?
No :-) I live in the Netherlands. It's my mothers maiden name. Would be nice if I could go there, the States seem like a nice place to live.
I like Rorty in some aspects, for example I share his fascination with both continental and analytical philosophy. Though I tend to lean more towards the latter.
seem to be ignoring key aspect of N's thought: perspectivism. Even scientific experimentation is from a perspective, and that is what the statement "no facts, only interpretation" has in mind
I know that, but to derive from that the epistemology that every perspective is as valid as any other, by not incorporating the notion of such a thing as a fact (or a certain verified truth) *and* such things as untruths (the weight of an electron is 2kg) is utterly ridiculous. I know that Nietzsche himself actually doesn't adhere to such an epistemology, he would find it to be "too democratic".
Rorty seems depressed. The depressed mind thinks in a certain way different than those not depressed. His sneers seem to reveal past traumas. The timbre of one's worldview is ususally formed in childhood. Too much is now known about the developmental psychology to take anyone on their words alone - rather, we want to know why they are saying such and such, and what kind of childhood they had. I am suggesting that Prozac could change Rorty's worldview.
The Greek truth is an ideal reality beyond the physicality of things. Like a defintion that man is rational animal. Finding it -- in an existential sense -- would be to have become a good man. Becoming a good man is what makes man happy -- and which can be lost sight of in material progress.
The arts are a way to celebrate human nature. A world without them -- one kow-towing solely to the pragmatic -- would be a shallow one.
But essences are changing in some sense. Man does not have a fixed nature, unless you deny evolution. The fact that species is a nominal rather than a real kind, poses a huge dillema for any form of naturalistic essentialism.
man does have a fixed nature - of course that statement depends on the defintion of nature. One could define nature to sway the validity of the assertion. I would define "nature" in such a way as to make my assertion true. I could define "essences" in a way that they never change. Most of philosophy comes down to language games and debates over the owership of word definitions. There is absolute truth, for instance, birth and death, pain, and whether the check clears the bank, among others.
So, if the human species is a nominal rather than a real kind how can nature be fixed? I am not in total agreement with Rorty in any sense, but I still want to know how you conceive of human nature as fixed in light of understanding the category of being human as a nominal rather than a real kind, as the evolutionary story suggests.
Hi - thanks for the question. Evolution and a fixed human nature are not incompatible ideas. When homo sapiens became a species it was no longer chimp. Since then we have not changed, else we would be a different species. "Human nature" should refer to our biology, not our ideas. Human natures is still envious, murderous, decietful, cunning, plays a role before self and others (denial), and all that. All those traits are biological, and inherited, but enhancied by the specificly human genes.
Endless word games....the only absolute truths are those definable empiracly with prediction value so near to 100% that only noise floor remains as doubt. As long as you play word games and try to wall off some words in the realm of fantasy you will be a dreamer and likely experience low net worth (unless you inherit wealth) and the pain of folly. Language can be imprecise or precise & the listener can ask for clarification. Electronic schematics are absolutely precise....
...I would be curious to know why you so very much want there to be no truths, or absolute truths we can't know. What is it about you that wants that? Have you questioned that want? Any clue where it came from? Is it conditioned, and if so by what? What scheme to you use to validate a thought that appears in your mind? Or do you validate automaticly simply because it appeared in your mind, not wondering where it came from? Do you wonder why you don't wonder about that?
Why don't I wonder why a thought came into my mind??? I read Rorty and found myself nodding my head during the readings.
I don't know much about the philosophy of science, but there is no reason to suggest the truth that killing babies for fun is wrong is any truer than the truth that gravity exists.
We take both for granted, but of course as a technical matter we cannot be certain of either. All we have is other humans to verify our claims to. They can only reassure us so much.
I agree, but isn't it better to accept essentialism, because it is essentially right? Human nature won't change for a while if you think we have to wait for evolution to change it, after all.
I think Rorty is saying something stronger than that. That there is no human nature, right now. There is a nature of someone from____ and ____., etc... but no general nature of all humans.
It's hard to really justify this view. What about the nature of people to be rational? Rorty has to deny it.
Perhaps because not everyone is a platonist of some kind or other. And I think simply we are stuck in the sense that whenever we reach a point at which we satisfied in our enquiry we would have to presuppose a conception of what is to know if we had reached platonic truth,. In which case I think platonic truth or truth with a capital t is more of an omnipresent goal at which we aim, rather than anything we can attain or know if we attain it.
But Plato in the symposium makes it clear that this desire to bequeath a better life to our descendants is simply the more rudimentary desire for immortality, which is the true object of Love according to Plato. Unfortunately, though, American pragmatists have little imagination for understanding Plato himself, and instead set up the straw dummies of "platonists" in his stead.
make life better for our descendants?
What does "better" mean?
Onieracraft 5 months ago
@Onieracraft It means more opportunities to decide what better means and means what we already mean now by it.
S2Cents 4 months ago
These are the days days of miracles and wonders, living the fruition of millenial dreaming. The Negev blooms, humans fly, we visit the moon, water flows with the turn of a knob. Not a break from yearning for paradise, but the delivery of such. I need only willingness to perceive Gan Edan. Incredible when considered in perspective of how things have been for thousands of years, and it's come so rapidly.
quietearthtube 8 months ago
Why do people bother leaving supposedly serious comments on these videos? Hardly anyone's going to read them, and your views are probably amateurish anyway.
jimbopumbapigsticks 9 months ago
youtube arguments are the end of inquiry
punkfloyd87 1 year ago 21
interesting. but i think bourgeoise retreat into a comfortable existence with availability of material goods is the opposite evasive extreme with respect to patonic longing for the "things in themselves" in some other dimension.
fede2 1 year ago
The desire to pay one's debt of guilt for living back to the world in boons for future generations is no less a symbolic gesture towards immortality than those paradigms more concerned with an immortality earned through a personalized future found after death.
BoStevoD 1 year ago 4
Plato never spoke about an end to inquiry. In the 'sophist', Socrates mentions the impossibility of expressing the idea of 'one' (meaning the reconciliation of the identity and dissemination). Dialectics, mediatised through langage which is an imitation of being is ultimatly confined to be used negatively - it cant end. And what is this bullshit he is talking about Plato. The point of Plato was to live a just life. Damn analyitical thinkers never get it right.
frogbuster20 1 year ago
@frogbuster20 Yes I'm sure you have a much better grip on Plato than Rorty did.
PancakeFlaunter 1 year ago
@PancakeFlaunter @frogbuster20
Maybee you both have a much better grip on Plato than Rorty did. If you agree, I'd be interested to know your criterion 'to live a just life' .
physistica 1 year ago
@physistica maybe all THREE of you have a much better grip on Plato than Rorty did!
MyoyuMusic 1 year ago
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@physistica maybe all THREE of you have a much better grip on Plato than Rorty did.
MyoyuMusic 1 year ago
@frogbuster20 I'm no Rorty fan, but Plato definitely believed in an "end to inquiry." Take the Allegory of the Cave (Republic), in which the protagonist is described as finally emerging from the cave and to recognize the sun itself (i.e., the form of the good). Plato was also clearly interested in living a "just life," of course, but that's neither here nor there. The point is that Plato believed that it was possible to grasp truth in a final, definitive sense, something which pragmatists deny.
redetrigan 1 year ago
@frogbuster20 --> I think you are generally right about Rorty's unjustified rendering of Platonism. Rorty of course is also right, but only if Plato is sophist-icated, which many analysts seem to do without apology. Just because Plato REFERS to the sun, the good, the just, etc., it's really the SOPHISTS who think they have an analytical (ad hoc) formulation to grasp these things & they are the amusing fools. The Plato we see in the dialogues does not offer a grasping relationship to the ideal.
johnuio 1 year ago
@johnuio - well said.
frogbuster20 1 year ago
Rorty makes out as if the natural order is only a spiritual belief, it does not seem to occur to him that nature itself is a natural order that can be understood as well.
Delocrates 2 years ago
@Delocrates
No, not a spiritual belief, a justified belief.
CadaverSplatter 2 years ago
@CadaverSplatter, If you actually analyze what Rorty is saying, you will notice that he is associating the natural order to the spiritual beliefs about religion and God and the ideas of Plato that many people had in the past. It is in his words, his argument does not sound secular, it is aimed at spiritual beliefs. If not, why would he specifically mention God and Plato?
Delocrates 2 years ago
@Delocrates
Because, formerly, material progress didn't seem as much of an option, and people hoped for better afterlives in the afterlives. AFTER, he sees these as lass important alternatives to the material development of peoples lives and their children.
CadaverSplatter 2 years ago
To elaborate a bit further on this Kuhn issue, let's take an example: physics. If we look at the history of physics through an obsolete, hard-core Kuhnian paradigm, we are obviously blinded to the basic preserved core of knowledge I refered to earlier. Take the advent of modern physics, which initially had a two-fold "revolution": relativity theory and quantum mechanics. To only real Kuhnian paradigm there is the latter. Relativity improved on Newton, but didn't replace him. Newtonian mechanics
vanderbilt887 2 years ago
was used, for example, in bringing man to the moon and satellites in orbit. No need for relativity there, but it is useful for adequately describing the orbit of Mercury. Quantum mechanics *was* a paradigm shift, in that the clockwork-universe paradigm from the Age of Reason (not Newton in persona) was replaced by a quasi-non-determenistic one. Its still no Copernican revolution however. Those events are very, very rare. In biology, Darwinian evolution by natural selection really is a biggie.
vanderbilt887 2 years ago
In fact, I think that must have been the greatest paradigm shift in intellectual history. But apart from the obvious examples, I think its a very rare phenomenon.
vanderbilt887 2 years ago
Minor correction: relativity is used in GPS and satellites in addition to Newtonian mechanics. But the point is clear, the latter is still very, very useful.
vanderbilt887 2 years ago
For Nietzsche it's will to power, for Rorty it's justification, I mean, why the psychology? If we verify something through experiment independent of our own prejudices, or deduce something out of sheer logical necessity, I have no problem calling such a thing of greater truth than whatever is not. Of course, anyone can apply supermarket labels to anything and simply call this a perspective too, but I would add, that it *is* a perspective that actually works -that should appeal to any pragmatist.
vanderbilt887 2 years ago
Comment removed
vanderbilt887 2 years ago
Verification isn't something that is always possible, and nevertheless, there have been paradigmatic cases where beliefs were thought to have been verified when they were not.
To say a belief is justified is just to say that you have no reason not to believe it.
bahramf 2 years ago
O sure, I don't deny that. This whole process of acquiring knowledge is far from perfect. But I don't see how other modes of inquiry could be any better, in fact, I think they're worse. I also think that Kuhnians tend to exaggerate this whole paradigm-overthrowing thing. In science the core of knowledge is usually preserved.
"No reason not to believe it". That's a very strange epistemology. It limits only to falsification. You also need reasons to believe something, what's wrong with that?
vanderbilt887 2 years ago
Kuhnians do exaggerate the whole paradigm-overthrowing thing, although everyone else understates it.
Do you go to Vanderbilt? I heard that's a good school for continental philosophy.
bahramf 2 years ago
No :-) I live in the Netherlands. It's my mothers maiden name. Would be nice if I could go there, the States seem like a nice place to live.
I like Rorty in some aspects, for example I share his fascination with both continental and analytical philosophy. Though I tend to lean more towards the latter.
vanderbilt887 2 years ago
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vanderbilt887 2 years ago
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vanderbilt887 2 years ago
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vanderbilt887 2 years ago
seem to be ignoring key aspect of N's thought: perspectivism. Even scientific experimentation is from a perspective, and that is what the statement "no facts, only interpretation" has in mind
fig87 2 years ago
@fig87
I know that, but to derive from that the epistemology that every perspective is as valid as any other, by not incorporating the notion of such a thing as a fact (or a certain verified truth) *and* such things as untruths (the weight of an electron is 2kg) is utterly ridiculous. I know that Nietzsche himself actually doesn't adhere to such an epistemology, he would find it to be "too democratic".
vanderbilt887 2 years ago
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Well, I'm in eternity so he can suck my balls.
zootsoot2006 2 years ago
i watch this once a month and it blows my mind every time.
armstrongw5 2 years ago
Rorty seems depressed. The depressed mind thinks in a certain way different than those not depressed. His sneers seem to reveal past traumas. The timbre of one's worldview is ususally formed in childhood. Too much is now known about the developmental psychology to take anyone on their words alone - rather, we want to know why they are saying such and such, and what kind of childhood they had. I am suggesting that Prozac could change Rorty's worldview.
rh001YT 2 years ago
Congratulations on your lengthy ad-hominem.
manwaring 2 years ago 8
A tic-tack could change yours. Your breath stinks. At least attack his views and not his personal problems.
bahramf 2 years ago
Exactly.
LikeAGlassAsterisk 2 years ago
The Greek truth is an ideal reality beyond the physicality of things. Like a defintion that man is rational animal. Finding it -- in an existential sense -- would be to have become a good man. Becoming a good man is what makes man happy -- and which can be lost sight of in material progress.
The arts are a way to celebrate human nature. A world without them -- one kow-towing solely to the pragmatic -- would be a shallow one.
greatbookie 2 years ago
I wish that "end of" didn't mean so many diverse things. Always makes you think of some eschaton and not a telos.
Why can't philosophy and culture be about expressing the Platonic truth in as many dfferent ways as one encounters it?
greatbookie 2 years ago
Because Platonic truth depends on something containing X and only X, regardless of interpretation.
Plato absolutes are not contingent on observers.
manwaring 2 years ago
They never are. If absolutes were based on observers, things would be changing their essences all over the place.
greatbookie 2 years ago
But essences are changing in some sense. Man does not have a fixed nature, unless you deny evolution. The fact that species is a nominal rather than a real kind, poses a huge dillema for any form of naturalistic essentialism.
LikeAGlassAsterisk 2 years ago
man does have a fixed nature - of course that statement depends on the defintion of nature. One could define nature to sway the validity of the assertion. I would define "nature" in such a way as to make my assertion true. I could define "essences" in a way that they never change. Most of philosophy comes down to language games and debates over the owership of word definitions. There is absolute truth, for instance, birth and death, pain, and whether the check clears the bank, among others.
rh001YT 2 years ago
So, if the human species is a nominal rather than a real kind how can nature be fixed? I am not in total agreement with Rorty in any sense, but I still want to know how you conceive of human nature as fixed in light of understanding the category of being human as a nominal rather than a real kind, as the evolutionary story suggests.
LikeAGlassAsterisk 2 years ago
Hi - thanks for the question. Evolution and a fixed human nature are not incompatible ideas. When homo sapiens became a species it was no longer chimp. Since then we have not changed, else we would be a different species. "Human nature" should refer to our biology, not our ideas. Human natures is still envious, murderous, decietful, cunning, plays a role before self and others (denial), and all that. All those traits are biological, and inherited, but enhancied by the specificly human genes.
rh001YT 2 years ago
There are absolute truths, but you haven't named any of them. They're very likely all above and beyond what we can capture in language.
bahramf 2 years ago
Endless word games....the only absolute truths are those definable empiracly with prediction value so near to 100% that only noise floor remains as doubt. As long as you play word games and try to wall off some words in the realm of fantasy you will be a dreamer and likely experience low net worth (unless you inherit wealth) and the pain of folly. Language can be imprecise or precise & the listener can ask for clarification. Electronic schematics are absolutely precise....
rh001YT 2 years ago
...I would be curious to know why you so very much want there to be no truths, or absolute truths we can't know. What is it about you that wants that? Have you questioned that want? Any clue where it came from? Is it conditioned, and if so by what? What scheme to you use to validate a thought that appears in your mind? Or do you validate automaticly simply because it appeared in your mind, not wondering where it came from? Do you wonder why you don't wonder about that?
rh001YT 2 years ago
Why don't I wonder why a thought came into my mind??? I read Rorty and found myself nodding my head during the readings.
I don't know much about the philosophy of science, but there is no reason to suggest the truth that killing babies for fun is wrong is any truer than the truth that gravity exists.
We take both for granted, but of course as a technical matter we cannot be certain of either. All we have is other humans to verify our claims to. They can only reassure us so much.
bahramf 2 years ago
I agree, but isn't it better to accept essentialism, because it is essentially right? Human nature won't change for a while if you think we have to wait for evolution to change it, after all.
I think Rorty is saying something stronger than that. That there is no human nature, right now. There is a nature of someone from____ and ____., etc... but no general nature of all humans.
It's hard to really justify this view. What about the nature of people to be rational? Rorty has to deny it.
bahramf 2 years ago
depends on your definition of X.
u mad all axioms are contingent upon language?
armstrongw5 2 years ago
Perhaps because not everyone is a platonist of some kind or other. And I think simply we are stuck in the sense that whenever we reach a point at which we satisfied in our enquiry we would have to presuppose a conception of what is to know if we had reached platonic truth,. In which case I think platonic truth or truth with a capital t is more of an omnipresent goal at which we aim, rather than anything we can attain or know if we attain it.
LikeAGlassAsterisk 2 years ago
Comment removed
TESOblivion4 2 years ago
Sacrifice certain change now for uncertain change later? Bah! Sounds like trickle down theory to me.
JrFLYnnIV 2 years ago
But Plato in the symposium makes it clear that this desire to bequeath a better life to our descendants is simply the more rudimentary desire for immortality, which is the true object of Love according to Plato. Unfortunately, though, American pragmatists have little imagination for understanding Plato himself, and instead set up the straw dummies of "platonists" in his stead.
mitohistoriador 3 years ago
Rorty approves of an intramundane eschatology lite.
neothomist1275 3 years ago
He was already passed away when you wrote your stupid first wave existentialist comment, so up yours cocksucker 'cause everything is possible!
RationalEmotive 2 years ago
Where can I find the full interview?
EvoLIEtion 3 years ago
Look for: "Van de schoonheid en de troost".
stopthosenabobs 3 years ago
hi - i mistakenly gave a one star - gave 5 star. great commentary!
velmaanne 3 years ago