Edge and universalism vs. particularism

[Everett, Daniel]

Yes, Blackburn’s view is well-known, Nigel. None of the defenders of the truth successfully engage Rorty, though John Searle’s work comes close.

And I made my point completely apart from the postmodernist view that Blackburn is responding to. I think postmodernism is silly gobbledegook.  But though this does in a sense trace its roots loosely back to Pragmatism, it is very very different, coming back through the lens of Derrida, Lacan, and the gang. 

"Social construction” of knowledge is usually indicative (not always by any means) of postmodernism, which I reject.

But Blackburn’s remarks are orthogonal to the Pragmatist construction in my opinion. Certainly not difficult objections. Misunderstandings on his part mainly.

I want to apologize for hijacking this discussion off of the more relevant, for this group, topic that Frans raised. I do address many of these issues in my forthcoming University of Chicago Press book, Dark Matter of the Mind. And to a lesser degree in my 2016 book, How Language Began, for Liveright (WW Norton) and Profile publishers. 

I am happy to refer people to the relevant literature off-line. I would start with Bob Brandom’s Making it Explicit, which is perhaps the best book on language of the last 50 years or so. It is flavored throughout by his particular kind of pragmatism.

Dan


On Mar 11, 2014, at 8:58 AM, Nigel Vincent <nigel.vincent at manchester.ac.uk> wrote:

> I may express myself a little less brutally than Elisabeth but I'm inclined to agree with her assessment of the relation between truth and theology. One of the people I have always found most eloquent and articulate on this issue is Simon Blackburn, cf in particular his book 'Truth', where he writes (p.196):
> 
> “There may be rhetoric about the socially constructed nature of Western science, but wherever it matters, there is no alternative. There are no specifically Hindu or Taoist designs for mobile phones, faxes or televisions. There are no satellites based on feminist alternatives to quantum theory.”
> 
> I hold to the belief that linguistics is in this same sense a science and I'd be very reluctant to go down the Rortian relativistic road.
> Nigel
> 
> 
> 
> Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE
> Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics
> The University of Manchester
> 
> Vice-President for Research & HE Policy, The British Academy
> 
> Linguistics & English Language
> School of Arts, Languages and Cultures
> The University of Manchester
> Manchester M13 9PL
> UK
> 
> 
> http://staffprofiles.humanities.manchester.ac.uk/Profile.aspx?Id=nigel.vincent
> 
> ________________________________________
> From: Discussion List for ALT [LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG] on behalf of Everett, Daniel [DEVERETT at BENTLEY.EDU]
> Sent: Tuesday, March 11, 2014 12:08 PM
> To: LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG
> Subject: Re: Edge and universalism vs. particularism
> 
> I still bring out the best in you, I see, Prof. Dr. Leiss.
> 
> The idea that “truth” and the striving for it outside of theology is a debatable position, but it does include other proponents of nonsense, from William James ,C.S. Peirce, John Dewey, Richard Rorty, and many others.
> 
> 
> 
> Dan
> 
> On Mar 11, 2014, at 7:55 AM, Elisabeth Leiss <e.leiss at germanistik.uni-muenchen.de> wrote:
> 
>> Nonsense as usual!
>> 
>> Am 10.03.2014 23:01, schrieb Everett, Daniel:
>>> The quaint concept that science is “the pursuit of truth” is a hangover from the Calvinistic and Lutheran roots of the Enlightenment.
>>> 
>>> It is a historical oddity. Some do seem to believe it however.
>>> 
>>> I will be debating Nancy Cartwright and George Ellis on a related matter, is there anything we might call “independent evidence” in support of this or that at the How the Light Gets In Festival at Hay on Wye in May. http://howthelightgetsin.iai.tv
>>> 
>>> At that same conference I will be debating a couple of anthropologists on what hunter-gatherers have to teach us about our evolutionary roots (my answer is "pretty much nothing").
>>> 
>>> Dan
>>> 
>>> On Mar 10, 2014, at 4:31 PM, Matthew Dryer <dryer at BUFFALO.EDU> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> The idea that the search for diversity is somehow less scientific than the search for similarity is nonsense.  Science is the pursuit of truth, whether that truth involves diversity or similarity.
>>>> Matthew
>>>> _______________________
>>>> 
>>>> Matthew Dryer, Professor
>>>> Department of Linguistics
>> 
>> <e_leiss.vcf>