“There is no way in which tools can take one out of touch with reality. No matter whether the tool is a hammer or a gun or a belief or a statement, tool-using is a part of the interaction of the organism with its environment…No organism, human or non-human, is ever more or less in touch with reality than any other organism.â€
Richard Rorty, Philosophy and Social Hope, Relativism: Finding and Making
Philosophy has a long tradition of arguing over which statements or positions put us more or less in touch with reality, yet Pragmatisms attempt to unseat this purpose, largely through a naturalization of reason, a seeing of the human being as one more animal whose tool-making abilities, including that of language use and reasoning itself, are evolutionary adaptations, and nothing more, purports to dissolve this elementary problem. Convincing - and refreshing - about this argument is that it gives one a bit of breathing room, seeming to take one outside of the content of language use, beyond any opinion, all the while paradoxically posing a languaged description itself. By its own inner logic, things cannot “really be†as it describes, but what it does suggest is that there is, argued by reason, empirical theory and cultural paradigm, an interior limit to the referencing capacities of thought. There is a circular horizon within which all arguments must bend, like a body beyond our bodies. Differences of opinion and position become not, as such “really trueâ€, but “what does such allow us to do”.
“No organism, human or non-human, is ever more or less in touch with reality than any other organism.â€
What does he mean by “reality” here? Depending on your definition of reality, there can be a hierarchy of being in touch with it. It seems like pragmatism is describing a reality that we CAN have varying proximities to, versus the reality beyond the circular horizon.
A drugged racoon might hallucinate, and consequently he’s more distant from a certain kind of reality. His subjective perception is a kind of reality. It seems logical to say tools can afford us varying proximities to different kinds of realities…but not ultimate Reality.
I don’t yet feel the sense of breathing room from the pragmatist paradox. But I do get a sense of a limited playing field, and that’s sort of a relief. When you mention curved horizon it reminds me of the edge of our universe…finite, yet nothing can exceed its boundaries. Anything beyond the boundaries is religion. I’ve often felt philosophy was a metaphor for the universe’s vexing qualities. Do you see metaphorical parallels between pragmatism and atheism?
<…“There is no way in which tools can take one out of touch with reality. No matter whether the tool is a hammer or a gun or a belief or a statement, tool-using is a part of the interaction of the organism with its environment…No organism, human or non-human, is ever more or less in touch with reality than any other organism. >
This is equivalent to saying that consciousness itself is a tool; in that sense whatever consciousness devises to follow it’s geodesic - as determined by its environment - becomes pragmatic. By implication , this would incorporate everything in it’s horizon in which ‘reality’ becomes the context of consciousness. I don’t find anything new in this. With humans, it just adds beliefs and ideals in a pragmatic way to deal with it’s wider theater of operations.
He means two things by “reality” here. Primarily he means to upend Foundationalists who claim that proximity to an “objective” reality is the measure of truth. If language is a tool, one cannot be closer to or further from “reality”. But he also suggests that what other refer to as “reality” is a tool-driven construction, that one can be closer to or further from what a community of language users has constructed as “real”, that is your version of events cannot be justified within the range of their tool-use.
Do you see metaphorical parallels between pragmatism and atheism?
I don’t, but Rorty does - being an atheist. What his basic social premise is, is that much as “god died” at the beginning of the Enlightenment, freeing us from having to bow down to an inhuman “other”, a death that everyone proclaimed would be the end of moral behavior, so he claims that with Wittgenstein and others so too did “objectivity” die, that is a material inhuman other, to which we must submit. Just as the death of “god” made us grow up and take resposibility for our own morality, so too does the death of the “objectively material”, the imposed universe, force us to grow up and take responsibility for our world. I think there is a very significant point being made here, but I’m not sure that I agree entirely with the atheism = maturity equation, and not all pragmatists head where Rorty is going. One thing though that pragmatism does do is place very heavy emphasis on concensus, for it is in concensus that both our morality and our “objective” universe comes to be. In the concept of “concensus” I do sense that something of the religious-effect is alive and kicking.
This is equivalent to saying that consciousness itself is a tool; in that sense whatever consciousness devises to follow it’s geodesic - as determined by its environment - becomes pragmatic. By implication , this would incorporate everything in it’s horizon in which ‘reality’ becomes the context of consciousness. I don’t find anything new in this. With humans, it just adds beliefs and ideals in a pragmatic way to deal with it’s wider theater of operations.
Your description is rather right on. What is “new” about it, is that it is argued from an analytic philosophy perspective, or really a synthesis of analytic and post-Nietzschean continental philosophy perspectives. For people who take either of these perspectives, it is relatively “new”.
“If language is a tool, one cannot be closer to or further from ‘reality’.”
Could this if/then statement be altered if language was NOT considered a tool? It seems unclear how to define organism or tool. Where does the organism end and the tool begin? Or put more clearly, is there anything but tools? I know I’m one.
It seems unclear how to define organism or tool. Where does the organism end and the tool begin?
I think this is a very important point, and a weakness, or at least underconsidered aspect of the Pragmatic metaphor of tool-use. For instance Rorty likens language-use to beaver’s teeth. Well beaver’s teeth can be seen as a tool for building dams, but really beaver’s teeth are the beaver. The teleological angle taken in the metaphor of tool use is really a socialized way of interpreting evolutionary development, and I think fundamentally a weaker way of doing so. The beaver did not develop teeth in order to build dams, but dams and teeth developed concurrently. So with language and culture. The idea that we can take charge our language tool and build something other than dams, seems unlikely. The entire process must be an immanent unfolding. I’m unsure of the full consequences of this aspect of the argument, but to me it ties pragmatism back down into larger things than simply the utility of ideas.
It seems to me that the author of the statement is at odds with someone like Schopenhauer regarding the term “reality†as it applies to humans. He put forth the concept that there is no objective reality. That is a reasonable statement in light of the myriad of conflicting thoughts and ideas that populate the minds of humanity.
What I believe the author is proposing is that there is a concrete reality that could be called a “now†that is related to all things. Thus, the organism no matter what its orientation is always in the “now†that is going on at the moment (or again now).
On one hand, this clarifies that there is an “is†that we are all dealing with, but on the other it seems to deny the subjective power of the human mind and force of motivation. So, I would say that the proposition is a good clarifying statement that levels the field for a further analysis of human subjectivity as it is layered over the “now†that is objective reality.
That’s how I took it, or more appropriately, would use it.
