Thanks! As I mentioned in my review, in claiming that imagination plays the primary role in aspiration, not reason, I follow in the footsteps of Richard Rorty. Though he doesn't mention aspiring to new values explicitly, I think the intent is clear. Here are a few examples. https://t.co/PB3LnHCZRd

https://twitter.com/AgnesCallard/status/1681071423375425536

'Only the imagination can break through the crust of [conventional values].'

@FHaruspex Here are some examples of Rorty substituting an X that is different from (opposed to, even) Y.

A 🧵... @FHaruspex 'This substitution of objectivity-as-intersubjectivity for objectivity-as-accurate-representation is the key pragmatic move, the one that lets pragmatists feel they can have moral seriousness without "realist" seriousness.'

I was hoping to channel Rorty's unflappability in writing my response to this essay by one of his former colleagues, but I will fall short in this one-line summary: I found it to be an almost sickening caricature of Rorty's philosophy and of philosophical pragmatism.

With my

https://twitter.com/1mark6w/status/1610685710536773654

visceral reaction out of the way, I will now try to channel Rorty's patience, tolerance, and charity in the remainder of my comments in this thread.

I will say one complementary thing about the essay before addressing my criticisms: Edmundson's personal descriptions of Rorty are

I came across a wonderful book, "The Moral Psychology of Hope", which is somewhat misnamed in that it is also about the philosophy of Hope. I'm stunned how relatively neglected the concept of hope has been in philosophy (and apparently also in psychology). I have the feeling that this is due to it being relegated to theology.

I found in it an essay touching on some of the themes I'm addressing in creating my "radically new kind of hope": "Pessimism and the Possibility of Hope". What the author labels "pessimism" isn't what I would call "pessimism". There

@carl_b_sachs I think interpreting Wallace's "centrifugal governor" metaphor (CGM) as a model for natural selection generally is a misreading of the full passage in context. He's applying the CGM to a very specific phenomenon-a supposed balance between highly vs deficiently developed @carl_b_sachs organs-not NS generally.

I googled ["a deficiency in one set of organs always being compensated by an increased development of some others"] and there is virtually no discussion of this 'balance of organ development' hypothesis (BoODH) by Wallace. I think the CGM has been

Bingo! I'm hard at work developing a pragmatism that can be awe inspiring. It's very hard to make a LACK of foundation & direction inspiring! I recently realized that the key is to forge a radically new kind of hope, which redefines & clarifies the muddy concept of

https://twitter.com/Jeffrey_Howard_/status/1529464102489411584

meliorism.

Michael Oakeshott's description of political activity is a perfect description of pragmatism:
'[Humanity sails] a boundless and bottomless sea: there is neither harbour for shelter nor floor for anchorage, neither starting-place nor appointed destination.'

What kind

@YakSaHealth @cancelself What's odd is that you bring up an example of a kind of person (psychopath) that simply LACKS a constraint/attachment, when my entire thread of commentary on @cancelself's tweet has been arguing against the goal of eliminating/lacking constraints/attachments, eg desires, and in @YakSaHealth @cancelself favor of having the right attitude towards them.

So yes, apparently you're not following my reasoning here.

@FHaruspex @Jeffrey_Howard_ @joseph_morris @teddyburkhardt @SeanCr8on @bodhidave3 Fruitionism (F) has a LOT to say about values such as good and bad. I hinted at some of it with "generate novel..axiological values" and "'telos pluralism'...shall always be 'tragic'", but it's hard to describe every detail of a philosophy in a set of tweets.🙂

So to describe a @FHaruspex @Jeffrey_Howard_ @joseph_morris @teddyburkhardt @SeanCr8on @bodhidave3 bit more, F, like Pragmatism, claims value pluralism, not value monism, so there is no concept of "the good", only a plurality of frameworks of good. F generalizes this to claim "axiological pluralism": there is a plurality of value frameworks (aesthetic,

Here is the Brandom/Rorty discussion I said I'd share. It clearly shows that Rorty valorizes novelty (ends) over reducing suffering (means). I tweeted about it a while back, so here is an unroll of the thread: threadreaderapp.com/thread/1444392…
And here is more of the passage:

https://twitter.com/joseph_morris/status/1481420227099332609

"In such passages as this, Brandom leaves himself open to the same accusations of pseudo-
aristocratic condescension & ivory-tower aestheticism as are frequently leveled at me.
...
I think that it is worth subjecting oneself to such accusations to insist on this point."

So do I.

What a serendipitous event: I just (re)stumbled across Richard Rorty's favorite William James passage (and no, it's not "truth is a compliment..."):
«The difference between the two views of morality that I have been discussing in these remarks is well illustrated by the contrast

https://twitter.com/Jeffrey_Howard_/status/1480531662396137478

between the pope’s dismissive reference to “the ego and its desires,” and my favorite passage in the writings of the American philosopher William James. James wrote as follows: “Every de facto claim creates insofar forth an obligation. Take any demand however slight which any

To honor William James on his birthday, here is another one of my favorites. For "true philosophers"😉 is no final valley (equilibrium) in the forest, only perpetual new joys and new sorrows (ridges): "And yet if he be a true philosopher he must see that there is nothing final

https://twitter.com/Jeffrey_Howard_/status/1480874459976409095

in any actually given equilibrium of human ideals, but that, as our present laws and customs have fought and conquered other past ones, so they will in their turn be overthrown by any newly discovered order which will hush up the complaints that they still give rise to, without

@jensensuther @ikesharpless @Jeffrey_Howard_ Your mention of Brandom reminded me that he said something that I interpret as a profoundly moving paean to freedom as a means to fruitfulness.

"It is our capacity to transform the vocabularies in which we live and move and have our being, and so to create new ways of being @jensensuther @ikesharpless @Jeffrey_Howard_ (for creatures like us). Our moral worth is our dignity as potential contributors to the [fruitful] Conversation.
...
The vocabulary vocabulary brings into view the possibility that our overarching public purpose should be to ensure that a hundred private flowers blossom,

Thanks SO much for recommending this essay. It triggered a powerful epiphany for me: 'tragic meliorism' is another way of saying 'will to power'. This passage makes the connection:
«As I understand the pragmatic perspective on life, it is an attempt to make it possible for men

https://twitter.com/Adrian_Rutt/status/1410902022077964288

to live in a world of inescapable tragedy, which flows from the conflict of moral ideals, without lamentation, defiance, or make-believe. According to this perspective, even in the best of human worlds there will be tragedy—tragedy perhaps without bloodshed but certainly not

Thanks for 👇. It got me to read his last lecture. In it, he makes an astonishing claim:
"[T]he parochial, historically-conditioned character of justification is compatible with the eternal and absolute character of truth."
I find it almost impossible to believe Rorty said

https://twitter.com/See_The_0cean/status/1391598798795800580

this. Here's the context:
«But pragmatists, at least those of my sect, do not think that anything—either the physical world or the consensus of inquirers—makes beliefs true. We have as little use for the notion of "what makes a true sentence true" as we do for that of "what a

@clarkjosephf @QuillRKukla @carl_b_sachs First, Thank you for sharing your "opinionated introduction"/reading list. I love it!
Second, Thank you for highlighting the @QuillRKukla essay on stances. It's amazing! It brings together several threads I was in the middle of working on: the interpretive stance, coping, @clarkjosephf @QuillRKukla @carl_b_sachs Davidsonian triangulation, and of course pragmatism. Their generalization of the stance concept to economic stance and interpretive stance was EXACTLY what I was getting at in my tweet.

My favorite line: "There is no neutral stance." In other words, there is no

@Jeffrey_Howard_ @FreihandDenker "There doesn't appear to be any..completely moral action."

It's much more than that.

"Anything can be made to look good or bad..by being redescribed." -- Rorty

So ANY action can be redescribed as moral or immoral.

When that sinks in, the contingency of morality is staggering. @Jeffrey_Howard_ @FreihandDenker Examples:

Eating an apple. The ultimate sin.

Sacrificing your son. The ultimate act of faith.

😉

@Jeffrey_Howard_ @JonAlanSchmidt @Mookmonster30 @FerraraKev @CSPeirceSpeaks Sorry to jump in late, but I think in his "Reply to Ramberg" (mentioned in your excellent recent podcast) Rorty partially recanted the sentiment expressed in "Truth is simply a compliment…": “Ramberg sets me straight here too. He tells me, in effect, that _it was a mistake /1 @Jeffrey_Howard_ @JonAlanSchmidt @Mookmonster30 @FerraraKev @CSPeirceSpeaks on my part_ to go from criticism of attempts to define truth as accurate representation of the intrinsic nature of reality to _a denial that true statements get things right_. What I should have done, he makes me realize, is to grant Davidson's point that _most of our beliefs /2

Prediction: The #SCOTUS ruling in #Bostock will become the central case in law school classes teaching the meaning of "but-for" causation. The entire decision comes down to applying but-for causation analysis! /1 'In the language of law, this means that Title VII’s “because of ” test incorporates the “‘simple’” and “traditional” standard of but-for causation. Nassar, 570 U. S., at 346, 360. That form of causation is established whenever a particular outcome...' /1

Best jargon-free description of #designthinking approach we applied at @ibmdesign … by @mjane_h at @autodesk: To advocate for investment, we don’t start by rationalizing the things we need to do. We start with a vision of what designing and making can feel like to our users. /1 That vision opens with a single, powerful statement that the business can rally around, with a few supporting points to make it visceral and visual. When we’ve done this well, business leaders see their own strategic intent in what we’ve presented. /2