On Nov 26, 2007, at 1:41 PM, Rakesh Bhandari wrote:
> Doug thinks
> there are no real world consequences. I don't
> agree, but that reflects a pragmatist conception
> of truth which I don't accept anyway.
Yeah, and Jerry Levy used to call me a vulgar empiricist.
In any case, I certainly don't subscribe to a "pragmatist conception of truth." Were that the case, I'd probably have applied for work at Goldman Sachs long ago and dabbled in Democratic politics on the side. It seems to me, though, that the value crowd used to want to prove that a rising OCC or something meant that capitalism had an inevitable date with the Reaper. Since that prophesy hasn't panned out, the pursuit has lost some of its urgency, to a point that's reminiscent of the session of the Wallace Stevens Society I dropped in on long ago that debated just what kind of jar it was he found in Tennessee.
As I recall, Marx himself thought the point was to change the world, which suggests he subscribed to a pragmatic conception of truth in some sense. Temporal single system, atemporal multiple system, whatever. Is it any more relevant to the class struggle, or even understanding today's Financial Times, than studying the villanelle throughout history?
Doug