Dear colleagues,
Metaphysics and Pragmatism Today's discussion clarified many things for me, including why Peirce and James's group was called The Metaphysical Club. Pragmatism IS a metaphysics, but one that collapses metaphysics onto epistemology. The meaning of a term is the effect that it has on inquiry and the meaning of "truth", therefore, is that it sends inquirers looking for a single answer to their questions. That aspiration will be hopeless in most cases, but as an aspiration it has the effect to draw people into discourse. What Chemero's passage misses is that there is no further metaphysics to be had, after one has announced oneself to be an "American Naturalist" as he calls it, or pragmatist, as I would call it. Once a pragmatist, you have already spent your metaphysical wad: you have already committed yourself to a search for truths wherever they may be found and however rarely they may be encountered. Where you got me is probably anathema to you all, but thanks for getting me there, anyway. Nick Nick Thompson <mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com> thompnicks...@gmail.com <https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/ From: thompnicks...@gmail.com <thompnicks...@gmail.com> Sent: Thursday, November 11, 2021 12:30 PM To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' <friam@redfish.com> Cc: 'Mike Bybee' <mikeby...@earthlink.net> Subject: Is Chemero TRULY a pragmatist. And I quote: When one proclaims oneself to be an antirepresentationalist, as proponents of radical embodied cognitive science do, there are two things one might be saying. First, one might be making a claim about the nature of cognitive systems, namely that nothing in them is a representation. For the rest o this chapter I will call this the metaphysical claim. Second, one might be claiming that our best explanation of cognitive systems will not involve representations. I will call this the epistemological claim. These are pretty clearly separate claims. It is easy to imagine, for example, that the metaphysical claim is true and that humans really are just complex dynamical systems, but they are so complex that the best way for us (with our limited intellects) to explain them is by metaphorically or instrumentally ascribing [to] them mental representation. [Chemero, A. 2011. Radical embodied cognitive science. MIT: Cambridge, MA. p67.] Given the pragmatic Maxim concerning meaning, that the meaning of a term is just those practices of investigation that the term's use would imply, how is this passage not anti-pragmatic? What other truth is there but a metaphorically or instrumentally best explanation? Chemero's overall position is that his RADICAL embodied cognitive science is the only rightful heir of the American Naturalism of which Peirce and James are the progenitors. Therefore you, many FRIAMMERS just might just see this as a internecine dustup in the anti-representationalist coven, and because you are computationalists (ergo, representationalists), ignore it. That's OK. Others may say "-ist, -ist, ist; blah, blah blah." That's ok too. But perhaps those few of you who are members of the coven may want to help me square this circle. Nick Nick Thompson thompnicks...@gmail.com <mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
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