Re: PHIL: Justificationalism (Was: Dynamic Optimism as a tool in logical reas...

From: Dan Fabulich (daniel.fabulich@yale.edu)
Date: Sun Jan 16 2000 - 13:12:35 MST


'What is your name?' 'Enigl@aol.com.' 'Do you deny having written the
following?':

> No one else has been able to do that as far as I know.

<ahem> The continental philosophers have been doing this for ages, having
long ago given up on foundationalist accounts of knowledge/truth/whatever.
Most people call them "relativists." And not very wrongfully. If
PCR/evolutionary epistemology/catch-word-of-the-day is right, then truth
and what constitutes knowledge is necessarily relativized to your
conceptual scheme, your starting assumptions, and basically what you bring
to the table. (This isn't, per se, a bad thing.)

If you like PCR, start reading some Heidegger, some Foucault, some
Derrida. These people have been thinking about questions like these a lot
longer than any of the new-kid-on-the-block we've-given-up-on-Russell-
long-ago "analytic" philosophers. In this group I'd put Wittgenstein
after the Philosophical Investigations, Putnam after _Reason, Truth and
History_ and Richard Rorty.

-Dan

      -unless you love someone-
    -nothing else makes any sense-
           e.e. cummings



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