2. comes from reading too much Dewey, Peirce, James, and Royce will teaching a Critical Thinking course with a book that implicitly advocates realism and naturalism, but appears to assume a many-to-one relation between experience and the world. The world can never be known to be in that relation, and even if we admit a unity to the world, it would not support that kind of realism.
And, 2. comes from my distaste for the realist move, usually scientific realist, to push all objectivity and truth into the world and out of human experience and practices. It's "view from nowhere" thinking that so many who claim to accept that fall back into.
I have been thinking about it because my project in pragmatist phenomenology as a realist phenomenology is worthless without the realism. I've worked out a lot of the details, but in my experience I have to defend the very idea of realist phenomenology--nobody bothers to get to the details.
Actually, realism (about the existence of the external world) gets you very little. As I just taught today, the last day of my Critical Thinking class (with emphasis on science and abduction), garden-variety realism assumes that the world is unitary. Why? Why is not experience-to-world a many-many relation even with one individual? It does seem appear that it could be otherwise is time is a primitive, and that is part of the second post.
2. comes from reading too much Dewey, Peirce, James, and Royce will teaching a Critical Thinking course with a book that implicitly advocates realism and naturalism, but appears to assume a many-to-one relation between experience and the world. The world can never be known to be in that relation, and even if we admit a unity to the world, it would not support that kind of realism.
ReplyDeleteAnd, 2. comes from my distaste for the realist move, usually scientific realist, to push all objectivity and truth into the world and out of human experience and practices. It's "view from nowhere" thinking that so many who claim to accept that fall back into.
ReplyDeleteJason,
ReplyDeleteI invite your reflections on realism and nominalism. I want to riff on that because its something that I, too, have been thinking about lately.
Leon / after nature
I have been thinking about it because my project in pragmatist phenomenology as a realist phenomenology is worthless without the realism. I've worked out a lot of the details, but in my experience I have to defend the very idea of realist phenomenology--nobody bothers to get to the details.
ReplyDeleteActually, realism (about the existence of the external world) gets you very little. As I just taught today, the last day of my Critical Thinking class (with emphasis on science and abduction), garden-variety realism assumes that the world is unitary. Why? Why is not experience-to-world a many-many relation even with one individual? It does seem appear that it could be otherwise is time is a primitive, and that is part of the second post.
ReplyDeleteI finally posted that last one a few days ago.
ReplyDelete