NP the PoMo President

[Terrance]

Doug Millison wrote:
> 
> http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20001225&s=alterman
> "Ce N'est Pas un Président" by Eric Alterman

"Rorty explains it, we call our beliefs "true" for the
purposes of
self-justification and little more. The point is not
accuracy but pragmatism."

Pragmatic, might be a better term here and not Pragmatism. 

"Inquiry is the controlled or directed transformation of an
indeterminate situation into one that is so determinate in
its constituent distinctions and relations as to convert the
elements of the original situation into a unified whole." 

						Dewey, Logic


"Dewey arguing for a more consensual one, arrived at through
discourse and debate."

Pragmatic for Rorty is operational, agonistic, sophistic,
gathering, contest. 

No so for the Pragmatist Dewey, although, just as in Kant,
the pragmatic, the struggle functions not as engaged
conflict but to ascertain the cause of conflict.

Again, Dewey:


"Inquiry is the controlled or directed transformation of an
indeterminate situation into one that is so determinate in
its constituent distinctions and relations as to convert the
elements of the original situation into a unified whole." 

Transformation here is effected through the institution of
facts and ideas as material AND procedural means: 



"Perceptual and conceptual materials are instituted in
functional correlatively with each other, in such manner
that the former locates and describes the problem while the
latter represents a possible method of solution." 
				Dewey, Logic

On Education Dewey makes it quite clear, "All social
movement (this is Darwin's influence not Freud's) involves
conflict...it is the business of an intelligent theory of
education to ascertain the cause for the conflicts that
exist and then, instead of taking one side or the other, to
indicate a plan of operations proceeding from a level deeper
and more inclusive than is represented by the practices and
ideas of the contending parties. 
				Dewey, Education and Experience
A while back Otto posted, I think, some quotes or comments,
perhaps from Dewey's Art and Experience, wherein Dewey, as
he works to establish a theory of EXPERIENCE, critiques the
Greek perfect and finished universe. What Dewey is really
after is what TRP is also after, not the Greeks, who did not
have an eschatological bone in their bodies, but two
thousand years of HIS Story. 


Dewey turns with an historical eye to Darwin, TRP I think
turns to Nature as well.