Right on. Actually if Jon argues that numbers (two chairs) somehow have intrinsic authenticity outside human practice, experience, and temporality, Richard Rorty is not on his side either.
The classical Marxists on this list also, although for somewhat different reasons, should not be on Jon's side on this issue. After all, a core component of Marx's critique of speculative philosophy was that it uncritically received empirical data, absorbed them in existing state of affairs and reified and eternalized them. Actually Karl would have been very upset if someone told him that those two chairs existed just because they were empirically accessible to us. As a post-Marxist, I don't make essence vs. appearance arguments any more, but the old man would have said- o.k. I see the appearance of those chairs, but where the hell is the essence? Marx would also think that it is a mechanical materialist argument, where the production of knowledge about matter (two chairs) are assumed to be possible without human intervention/ interpretations. Marx never systematically developed a critique of empiricism, but knowing his disdain for vulgar empiricism, he also would not like the
idea of seeing those two chairs as independent empirical data provided by their appearance without the intervening role of theory in actively organizing and reorganizing them.
Manjur
Chris Doss <lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com> wrote:
--- Jon Johanning wrote:
>
> Of course we don't see "absolute reality," but that
> doesn't mean that
> we can't make true statements. It's simply true that
> there are two
> chairs in my room, even though we don't perceive the
> elementary
> particles (or superstrings) which make them up. Nor
> can we be sure,
> even, that they are made up of superstrings; an even
> better theory may
> be discovered by the 24th century, Star Trek time.
"Chair" is a concept in a particular cultural-linguistic framework. Until those things in your room are subsumed under the concept "chair," they are not "chairs." They are Dingen-an-sich. (I don't mean "until" temporally, obviously.) I am pretty sure that, if people were floating Jovian gasbags, they would not have the concept of "chair."
I think Wittgenstein is not on your side in this, BTW. (He certainly took religion very seriously.)
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