Hi,
I just wanted to accept Jim Tantillo's invitation to comment on issue 
of pragmatist philosophy as a kind of cultural criticism. But first 
for those of you who are interested in Cornel West's book, Jim's 
summary of it is dead on accurate. West's version of the history of 
American pragmatism can be argued but Jim has West down right. On the 
whole, the West's take on Emerson's antifoundationalism is a major 
theme throughout it's history and remains an issue of debate, but 
generally, on the whole, pragmatism does reject foundationalism and 
the idea of philosophical (or any other kind) "certainty" especially 
the metaphysical kind, or certainty with a capital C. Pragmatists 
(again generally) reject most "Capitilized" concepts, the really 
Real, Mind, Time, Space, Nature, whatever. Pragmatism is an 
"agent-centered" philosophical practice. It doesn't aim at 
discovering an antecedent reality, Truth, Goodness, because for 
pragmatists, such concepts are just concepts that humans use (via 
language and other sign systems) in their everyday lives. There is 
nothing beyond this, nor in from an ethical standpoint, does there 
need to be. The idea that there some "structure" to a concept (such 
as Nature or whatver) that could be known with certainty (in a final, 
end of story way) is simply empty  (and it doesn't matter what 
Socrates or Plato, or Descartes, or Kant thought or argued). This is 
because pragmatists are, on the whole, nominalists, they don't think 
that there are "essences" to such concepts as Nature named a single, 
real entity that has a structure to "get right" in the sense of 
certainty. John Dewey argued that the philosophical  "quest for 
certainty" was neurotic, and contemporay pragmatists such as Richard 
Rorty and Hilary Putnam agree (although in different ways). As Putnam 
puts it, more or less, "we need to get over the 17th century (that is 
the Cartesian desire for certainty). So instead of certainty 
pragmatists are more interested in how different groups of people 
think the they way they do about the various  things they think 
about. Because how one thinks about a subject is culturally 
determined (in a constructed, reflexive sense), there being no other 
way to think, affects how one acts in the world, pragmatists have 
strong ties to what Jim has called cultural criticism, where be 
culture is, more or less, a set of beliefs about the way the world 
is. So in practice, pragmatist philosophers do what most philosophers 
do, analyze ("criticize") concepts, or more particular the language 
in which such concepts come couched (concepts not existing outside 
language).Since Kant, philosophy has been 'critical' in this sense. 
Although I like Jim's comparison to literary criticism, lit crit in 
the traditional sense did have an evaluative aspect to it, (which has 
ties to two different impulses, one political and one "scientific".) 
Philosophy doesn't have this evaluative side. But because pragmatists 
no longer believe that one is analyzing a concept separate from its 
language, some pragmatists, notably Rorty, see philsophers as they 
analyze "texts" have more in common with literature professors than 
physicists. Because linguistic meaning is constructed or generated by 
human use in societies, the pragmatist philosophy is deeply concerned 
with contexts or situations. As Charles Taylor puts it" Meaning is 
for a subject: it is not the meaning of the situation in vacu."  This 
includes science as well. There is no such thing as science, only 
scientific descriptions, practices that go according to how 
scientific cultures proceed. Even scientific certainty makes no sense 
because scientific claims are always under a description and are (in 
principle) always subject to revision given new evidence.

I'll end with a quote from Nelson Goodman's book "Ways of 
Worldmaking" a truly fascinating book, written by an original 
philosopher who is also one of the great stylists in the postwar 
Philosophical world (in the US anyway). Goodman's basic thrust is 
that is one world, but unlimited ways of "making it up" that is 
providing it with meaning, a radical pluralism.

Historically, he puts it this way:

"Few familiar philosophical labels fit comfortably a book that is at 
odds with rationalism and empiricism alike, with materialism and 
idealism and dualism, with essentialism and existentialism, with 
mechanism and vitalism, with mysticism and scientism, and with most 
other ardent doctrines. What emerges can perhaps be described as a 
radical relativism under rigorous restraints, that eventuates in 
something akin to irrealism.

"I think of of this book as belonging  in that mainstream of modern 
philosophy that began when Kant exchanged the structure of the world 
for the structure of the mind, continued when C.I. Lewis exchanged 
the structure of the mind for the structure of concepts, and that now 
proceeds to exchange the structure of concepts for the structure of 
the several symbol systems of the sciences, philosophy, the arts, 
perceptions, and everyday discourse [TF: inother words culture]. The 
movement is from unique truth and a world fixed and found to a 
diversity or right and even conflicting versions or worlds in the 
making."

I think Goodman's got it about right. Lists like this one are only 
one way such conflicting versions are made.

Have a good weekend,
Tom Frank


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