In defense against the identification of
pragmatism with
relativism, the following is a
pragmatic critique of the problematic in which Putnam's
pragmatic realism is embroiled. Indeed,
Rorty finds
Putnam an interesting thinker, and probably has more in common with him, than not. There is yet wide divergence in their viewpoints, particularly, at least in my mind, in terms of Putnam's concern with the problem of relativism in the first place.
"Nobody wants to be a relativist." This is, at least, true of
pragmatists. The question for a thinker like Rorty (or his forefathers
William James and
John Dewey) is not so much whether or not there
could be a world independent of an
individual human being, which is the form of the problem posed in the node above, but whether or not there
actually exists a world independent of any
practical and social human activity. The answer to the latter question, for the pragmatist, is "no". As for the former question, the pragmatist feels that it is all caught up in the
metaphysical and
epistemological rhetoric that took
philosophy down the wrong path (of
Kant and
analytic philosophy - see
the pragmatic critique of analytic philosophy) in the first place.
Unfortuantely, for the pragmatists,
Putnam's argument addresses
the wrong question. The issue, for a pragmatist, is not so much whether or not there is a
mind-independent universe, but whether or not there is a
human-independent universe. And, since we are human beings, the pragmatist thinks that it is somewhat useless to think about a universe in which we don't exist. We might say that
pragmatists want to reinvest
philosophy with the obvious truths of
anthropology and
sociology that everybody already believes (i.e., humans are social creatures, humans have two eyes, an enlarged frontal lobe).
The above node is interesting insofar as a particularly salient issue for
the pragmatic critique of epistemology and metaphysics is the identification of pragmatism with
relativism. Pragmatists are not relativists, because freeing the universe from the constraints of an individual human mind (that may or may not be instantiated universally) certainly does not free it from the severe social constraints of the human community.
Stanley Fish makes the point that, although an individual is
epistemically free to conceive of the world in various ways, the individual is certainly not so free in any
pragmatic,
social, or
moral sense.
The above node author summed up the
objectivist critique of
relativism, which is often wrongly used as an argument against an
ethics pragmatism: "Murder might be wrong for most people, but if it's ok for some, there's no objective fact of the matter we can appeal to." According to the
pragmatist this is exactly right, and there is nothing to lament. Whereas the objectivist laments the so-called 'loss' of an
objective fact that
demonstrably proves the
ethical wrongness of
murder, the pragmatist sees this as our (our human) particular state of affairs, and nothing obviates this more than the phenomenon of
Auschwitz, in which there was so obviously not a
logic or
reason that could be called upon to demonstrate the
wrongness of
Hitler's vicious treatment of the European Jews, Russian POWs, Gypsies, Homeosexuals, terminally ill, elderly, etc..
The pragmatist is perfectly aware of a fact that the objectivist seems to be in constant denial of. Sometimes, you just can't convince another person that
murder is
wrong. Likewise, sometimes you can't convince them that
2 and 2 is 4. When things break down like this, there obviously aren't any
objective facts we can appeal to. Usually we wind up appealing to some
force, be it
violent or
capitalistic. The pragmatist sees the ethical task being one not so much of
proof of
ethical truths, but
remedy of
ethical aporia, and
development of
non-violent forms of theories, solutions, and remedies.
The pragmatist position might end up looking like the relativist's, but the important difference is that the pragmatist
doesn't enter into the debate with the relavist and objectivist. The relativist starts from the absence of objectivity and argues towards a
relativistic ethics and epistemology. The pragmatist, on the other hand, starts from the presence of practical human action and argues towards an ethics of praxis, an ethics of
aporia, an ethics of remedy, a
practical ethics in which all salient claims are of concern. The motivation, it might be claimed (as
elevator music noted to me) is different, but the conclusion is the same. However, to call the pragmatist a relativist is to attribute to them an argument that occurs in a debate that they were never interested in in the first place. This would be like a
Christian claiming that a
primitive tribal religion is
Satanic. The primitive religion might end up at the same point (i.e., hell, disbelief, nonacceptance of Christ), from the point of view of the Christian, yet to somebody on the outside of the theological debate, we can see the problem with this sort of blame.