In defence of pure reason

Economics Political Theory
1

Now strictly speaking I’m not a rationalist, but as an Aristotelian I also hold to the notion of knowledge that can be attained a priori. I’ve not been satisfied on the relatively scant criticism directed towards pragmatists though. Hoppe addresses them briefly in some of his works, as do Hollis and Nell. Plantinga, and Henry Veatch, but nothing too substantive. Today I came across what looks to be a very interesting book, by someone who is apparently a respected philosopher. So here it is. It might help anyone trying to figure out how to approach pragmatism.

-Jon

2

Yeah…pragmaticism does lack a coherent definition and is a just a tad all over the place.

EDIT: I took the initial wrong link as a joke.

3

The thing about it is that it’s not as straightforward as positivism, mainly by way of its association with coherence theories of truth.

-Jon

4

i’m not sure if that’s supposed to be a joke or if you accidently put the wrong link there…

5

LP is a very cohesive program, unlike the diversity of pragmaticism. It is much easier to critique LP than pragmaticism, since it is much more cohesive. I am not even sure how to critique pragmaticism: one would have to critique the individual pragmatic.

The two historical concepts that broke down LP were underdetermination and theory-ladenness introduced by Quine and N.R. Hanson, respectively. Quine was associated with pragmaticism. I am not sure that Hanson was.

Both underdetermination and theory-ladenness are valid criticism of LP. I don’t understand how a modern day positivist cannot be aware of these criticism and work it into their scientific program.

6

Yes, I saw that now, thanks for pointing it out.

7

Since when is “pure reason” or pragmatism the only two forms of intellectual construct?

8

Which has what to do with anything? The book is a vindication of knowledge attainable a priori, and a defence against epistemological schemes which would have it erased altogether.

-Jon