----- Original Message ----- From: "Thomas Seay" <entheogens at yahoo.com> To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Sent: Friday, March 29, 2002 1:10 PM Subject: Rorty on Cant
The work in question is that of enlarging oneself. That requires being ready to be bowled over by tomorrow's experiences-to remain open to the possibility that the next book you read, or the next person you meet, will change your life.
================== So why does being 'bowled over' by some epistemic-emotive experience of --fill in your limit experience of choice here-- lead to 'enlarging oneself'? Oh those spatial metaphors of selfhood! :->
Increased rationality-increased coherence of belief and desire-cannot close itself off from this possibility of disruption without falling victim to cant. You are such a victim insofar as you believe that you already possess criteria for judging the value of any books or people you may encounter-criteria that will provide you with good and sufficient reasons for tucking each of them into some familiar pigeonhole. To avoid such victimization, you must give up one of the dreams of philosophy-the dream of completeness, of the imperturbability attributed by the wise, of the mastery supposedly possessed by those who have, once and for all, achieved completion by achieving enlightenment.
======================
For some truly excellent and challenging stuff on the virtues of incompleteness in experience-cognition etc., see Patrick Grim's "The Incomplete Universe" and "The Philosophical Computer"
< http://www.sunysb.edu/philosophy/faculty/pgrim/pgrim.htm >
Ian