Re: Theory-laden observation

["Alan G. Isaac" <AISAAC@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Herb,
To describe Rorty in these terms is to fail to take the
pragmatist strain in his writing at all seriously. And
he would not find your use of 'subjective' at all helpful:
what is it in contrast to? He doesn't want us to stop
talking about "truth" or about what constitutes good
science. In fact, he wants to free scientists from
worrying about philosophers who offer a "scientific
method" that tells us when we are
doing science and when we aren't. What you may not
like, and what a lot of people don't like, is that
the end of a search for such criteria levels the
ground between science and other human activity.
But it doesn't mean that we cannot discuss whether
a piece of work is good, careful, useful, etc.
It does mean, however, that the criteria in such
discussion will be internal to the project and
that they will be human criteria.

I think Rorty is excellent at two things. First, he is an
extremely perceptive commentator on other writers.
Second, he pushes us to accept the implications of our
condition of never being able to step outside of human
experience. One would think that the latter would be
trivial, but it is what gets people the most upset.
(For example, he provokes you to introduce the term
'subjective' in a dismissive tone, as if that addressed
his argument.)

(I should confess that my own instincts side with the
Enlightenment vision rather than the pomo vision, but
I have not been able to defend my preference against
Rorty's devastating attacks. Not that I've given up
searching for new defenses.)


Onward: is self-interest descriptively innocuous, as
you hesitantly suggest? I deny this unless you are just
saying that new motivations can be introduced as new tastes
in utility theory. I take Butler's refutation of psychological
egoism to have demolished the idea that my tastes must be
narrowly self-interested just because they are _my_ tastes.
At the descriptive level, I think that we need to understand
motivation to understand and predict human behavior. If you grant
me this, then if the term 'self-interested' is to be understood narrowly
enough to restrict the range of motivation under consideration,
it will be misleading. If it is not to be understood so narrowly,
why introduce it (i.e., what distinction is being drawn)?

--Alan G. Isaac



On Fri, 11 Nov 1994 08:03:06 -0700 Herbert Gintis said:
>         Rorty argued in Mirror that the theory you choose is simply a
>matter of 'taste' and thoroughly subjective. This is both false and
>dangerous, I think. It is dangerous because it leads to intellectual
>flaccidity (why bother having a good theory if you can have a good
>tasting theory) and justifies censorship (ban a theory that doesn't
>taste good, even if it's correct).
>
>>
>	I think self-interest is incorrect, but it is not really used
>anywhere in economic theory except the Fundamental Theorem of Welfare
>Economics. For welfare purposes it's awful, but for descriptive
>purposes, I don't see where the problem is. I mean this seriously.
>Give me an example of where it makes a difference.
>
>	Actually, I should think about this before being so
>categorical, because I will be misunderstood. But it's worth
>discussing.