Frank,
That
is a splendid article,
http://m.chronicle.com/article/The-Attack-on-Truth/230631/
and
I think you undersell it. Even the worse philosophophobes
on the list will be happy to read it, and take strength from
it.
NOT
SO MY RESPONSE TO IT, which I copy in below.
Philosophophobes beware!
Nick
Begin
philosophophobe free zone:
The confusion about truth has its
roots in the deep history of Pragmatism. Peirce famously
said that the truth is that upon which we are fated to agree
and the real is that which is the case, no matter what you,
or I or any other person might believe. Some pragmatists
(James, perhaps?) took this to mean that the truth is
whatever we happen to agree upon. Peirce hated that
interpretation because he was well aware that it may take
millennia for the fated convergence of opinion to take
place. He deplored literary criticism. Dewey was rather on
Peirce's side of this argument, and after WWII, and around
the time of Dewey's death, this country basked in the glow
of a Deweyan consensus until the Left Critics started to
hack away at it, and the right wing took up the cry. The
author does not mention the role of the field of
anthropology in all of this, which, I gather, almost
destroyed itself as a field over this very issue, and almost
took down social science with it.
We probably won't get through this mess until we find a
solution to the problem that the Pragmatists struggled over
-- that the only measure of the truth or falsity, the
reality or unreality, of our experiences is other
experiences. How, now, do we pick out from our experiences
those upon which the community of inquiry is fated to agree,
in the very long run?
End
of philosophophobe free zone
Nicholas
S. Thompson
Emeritus
Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark
University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
From:
Friam [[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Frank
Wimberly
Sent: Monday, June 08, 2015 9:20 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee
Group
Subject: [FRIAM] The Attack on Truth - The Chronicle
of Higher Education
Philosophy haters do not read the linked article. It
mentions Andy Norman. He is a member of the faculty at
Carnegie Mellon, in the department where I used to work. My
daughter was a friend of his when they were in high school in
the 1980s. I am old.
Frank
http://m.chronicle.com/article/The-Attack-on-Truth/230631/
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