I think I spotted a flaw. Around minute 39 he says that (paraphrase) the adjudication of a moral issue is to not to be evaluated by principles but by looking at who is getting hurt by pre-established principles. But isn't that itself a moral principle? I guess in this case he thinks such "principle" is driven by a kind of biological and cultural evolution, and that what he is against is a 'reasoned' principle (something that can be mined from some realm of pre-existing truths). But suppose biology (understood in the broadest sense) gives you the principle, and the imperfectness of biological implementation makes it to be applied inhomogeneously over society and occasions, then... wouldn't it be reasonable to hold that principle out of choice? I mean, once you recognize that Biology has driven us thus far by systematically (although inhomogeneously) applying such principle, wouldn't it be (rationally) correct to embrace the biological imperative as a conscious decision of single, individual, human beings in front of single, individual occasions? Once you know what is the average evolutionary trend (and empirically understand why), isn't it appropriate to uphold the naturally emergent "principle" as a moral principle in all fours? I think it is. Moreover, I guess it can be called a rational choice, and I guess similar strategies can be used to unearth ethical principles of different kinds. I don't mind if it is self-creation or self-discovery as Rorty does. Even if it is self-creation (not being there in an abstract realm), I think its prescriptions can be spread unbiasedly over the whole of society as the main moral guide.

@@Gabriel-pt3ci What he means is that he wants to discard rule based ethics in favor of something like Anette Baier. Look at the lecture about morality and prudence in the Pragmatism as Anti-Authoritarianism book / lectures for reference. The move you are doing here "by rejecting x you are already doing x" tells us nothing more than that the vocabulary of principles can characterize a vocabulary defined in opposition to principles in terms of that vocabulary of principles. Tautological, not immanent critique.

@@gamerhegel7780 No, no, it actually tell us more than that. Notice that he is not just saying there are no rules. He is introducing a new rule about not hurting. Refraining from saying what is the course of action for adjudicating a moral conundrum, saying that it is something intrinsically dependent on the case (as the concept of wisdom by Barry Schwartz) would be a consistent position to take for a defender of an unprincipled ethics. I am not a priori saying I am against unprincipled ethics because it requires at least a principle (i.e., that of rejecting any ethical principle), that would be a extremely pedantic position to take. I am just saying that, at a point, he is introducing a very specific ethical rule (that of not hurting), which is against his preaching.

@@Gabriel-pt3ci He holds opposition to cruelty as a law i.e. principle like actual legal laws are laws i.e. principles. They are just handy things we take part in for our good, not scientific objects to be discovered. There is a gap between his argumentative style which is more about literature and politics than about science and math and yours, which is the opposite. There may or may not be exceptions on a case by case basis but that is beyond the point of the argument, generalizability is not the goal. To invoke principles or not is beyond the point of moving beyond principles, which doesn't mean to abandom them, just to make them tools for human use, rather than objects of mathematical discovery.

You gotta love vanilla if you claim to like ice cream.

@2:20 Haha! Not anymore.

Perhaps Rorty is offering a descriptive, the way someone will say that "Cthulhu swims left." The collector or archivist view of morality, it seems, does not entail the adjudication of moral claims, where one has to be exclusionary and say, "No, not that." It seems perfectly reasonable to be sensitive to a wider community of moral claims, though I myself might not be a participant in some of their moral claims. To use your quote, "Morality progresses or increases with...." does not fill in the substantive quality of morality itself. As Rorty would say...there is no final vocabulary.

The witty part is just the only part u understand but badly !

@@nancymohass4891 The fuck are you talking about? I mean at the beginning when the audience was laughing uproariously at Rorty's comments about academia

Right. No commencement speaker ever says to go out and preserve what is good.

Although I agree with your question and think it is important, I'm afraid it does not make sense within Rorty's framework of contingency and pragmatism. Asking for a rational justification of the idea of progress through sensitivity and inclusion is exactly where we are going wrong. This is not something you can accomplish, all you can do according to Rorty is to present a new story, ethics of sensitivity for example, and if this story is appealing enough people will adopt this story and thereby the vocabulary that goes along with it. This is the historicism he endorses, rational argumentation alone is never sufficient. This is what makes his position pretty tricky, how can you propose a position but reject the idea that it is possible to give any rational justification for it.

@@tobiaspostma4870 Thanks for the reply. Yes, I see that Rorty is historicist while also opposing teleologies. He's not Hegelian or Christian, etc., etc. or even like the Frankfurt School Marxists who tried to recover some connection between reason and ethics. He's embracing nihilism. I just can't decide if he's reassuring us based on what we tend to do, or explaining what we are likely to do. Hegel's Master / Slave analysis, for example, speaks of opposing forces of power and recognition as intrinsically leading to a far-off state of mutuality. It is presented as a process rooted in something like human nature. Rorty doesn't have any of those kinds of assumptions to work with at all, and I wonder, though if philosophy really had to dispense with every kind of assumption about what people want just to avoid metaphysical explanations. But Rorty still seems bent on hoping for and describing a better world, rather than simply describing phenomena with no overarching purpose.

@@robertb1138 Yes I agree with you, Rorty’s view is very questionable yet seductive at the same time. Note that there are also some tendencies with him rejecting essences and being a nominalist yet claiming that there is still some common measure for humans that distinguishes them from other animals which is language and thereby our susceptibility to humiliation. So while he indeed won’t claim, like Hegel, Marx or Kant, that there is some human nature or essence, he does believe that humiliation should he avoided and that through natural evolution human beings are cable of empathy and because he rejects Reason and rational argumentation sensitivity is for him the way to go about this. There might be something to it because the position entails less dubious metaphysical commitments but there are ,I agree, definitely some tensions.

@@tobiaspostma4870 Yes, I see. To me the tensions are sort of fatal to hope in his project. If we take Friedrich Nietzsche's method of looking to the man first, and then the philosophy, I'd say Rorty is a nice guy who happens not to have discovered anything to found his niceness on, either logically or empirically. So maybe his view is a light suggestion of what's possible on appeal to other humans, but nothing like a recommendation. It's for nice, sensitive people who want to think they can make other people nicer and more sensitive, perhaps? Because the mean people certainly work hard and succeed at making people mean.

Where it belongs. Is there actually a systemic universal grammar on offer from that tradition? Is there any evidence that that grammar is biologically hard wired? If not, then what are we taking about?

@@kvaka009 They are talking about how small children develop an extremely complex cognitive/formal [and aesthetic] system just automatically. I don't know what you mean by "on offer." It's an on going research project. It's not a buffet.

@@findbridge1790"on offer" as in here's an instance of some grammatical structure that is hard wired in human genetics/brain architecture. Rather than: here's a feature of language that has no exceptions in the many languages we've studied so far. It's the inference from universality to some features inherent brain structure that I don't find convincing. There may be many explanations for why certain structures in language have no exceptions across different languages that does not require that leap. And there may be biological features of cognition that are universal for human beings, but which have to do with the process of learning from others, rather than grammer. Which would then explain the poverty of stimulus problem without committing us to the absurd (to me) idea that linguistic ability appeared as a result of one evolutionary burst. In other words, I think languages are more like a buffet rather than one dish. Chomsky is great btw, but his linguistics project seems a bit tired at this point.

@@kvaka009 I think you can get something like universal grammar without the single evolutionary burst. That bit always struck me as possible but not necessary. Like you could have some small modification that allows marginally better communication, but that confers such a benefit that it outcompetes all that came before it, and this repeats very quickly in evolutionary time until you get modern linguistic propensity. I'm drunk. I may not be making sense.

You call philosophy an empty void but you're using Nietzsche's philosophical position on morals to make your case.

@@Tom-rg2ex To say that is exactly as absurd as it is to accuse someone of being a Nazi because he uses simple arithmetic which some Nazis also used. There is no question but that what is called "philosophy" is largely pouring from the empty into the void and that what are called" morals" are no more than mechanical reactions of an emotional nature- i.e. mechanical/automatic likes and dislikes which form the basis for religious bunk) generally dressed up to appear to be something other than exactly that. The danger of all that religious morality bunk is that those that go in for religion/morality invariably seek to impose their religion/morality on others, and that can only lead to trouble Whoever goes in for pouring from the empty into the void is such a pourer, whether he be called Nietzsche or Fritz the cat, or just any old idler with no more useful occupation than to pour from the empty into the void. I venture to suggest that remarkably few people find themselves going through the yellow pages at 4 in the morning looking for AAA philosophers, which latter have nothing to do because they are good for nothing, whether called Nietzsche Kant Hume, or Fritz the cat, because they are good for nothing but empty wiseacreing. Philosophy sounds jolly good and fancy but turns out to be completely useless pouring from the empty into the void which is not any form of wisdom. As it happens Fred Nietzsche was a moderately able plumber by some accounts and was thus on occasion good for something, but could not even make a cup of coffee well. Quite why men(human beings) call their worthless wiseacring dreaming opinions the love of wisdom, - philosophy is one of the great mysteries, but my guess is if you give that bunk a fancy name like philosophy you may con others into supposing that you are something more than an idler pouring from the empty into the void. Starve a soi-disant philosopher for a week or hit his thumb with a hammer and somehow epistemology, ontology and ethics, et al. hold no interest for the fellow whatsoever, but to serve and propitiate his gods justification and blame he will sell his own grandmother; for what will a man *Not*do in order justify, seek to excuse or blame? 5 gives you five billion trillion, whatever it is he will give it some fancy multisyllabic name such as philosophy, or morality, or anything *but* justification, blame and making excuses.

@@vhawk1951kl Those are some very interesting philosophical points you make there, Peter. I am very compelled by your justification of your particular philosophical perspective.

@@Tom-rg2ex If *Everything is philosophy, *Nothing is. It is impossible for dreamers to follow but let your rule or aim be: Never com_plain, never ex_plain, never justify or seek to excuse; by all means become interested in philosophy when you can make bread with it or mend a car with it. Philology more interesting than philology; all that guff about morals is religion not the pursuit of wisdom.No man ever understood anything by pouring from the empty into the void Chattering idlers like to pretend that their idle chattering is something more than idle chattering so they call it" philosophy", although idle chattering can never lead a man to wisdom and or understanding; only suffering can do that

@@vhawk1951kl You're so full of it, my friend. You keep pontificating about the uselessness of pontification. I cannot bake bread with your claim that only suffering leads to wisdom, my fellow idle chatterer, nor can I fix a car engine with it. I still think it's true and very useful, though. It was useful when Nietzsche and Kierkegaard made the case for it in their philosophies, and it was useful in the philosophy of the protestant work ethic that preceded them.

Perhaps RR would reply that yes, history amounts to a series of "exclusionary ideologies," but that doesn't make them "more successful" in any relevant way. After all, which type of society would you choose to live in - RR's pluralist democracy, warts and all, or one of the authoritarian regime's of the past? If your choice here is not evidence enough that RR's option is "better historically," then what is? But alas, as you point out, there is no such evidence, is there? Which seems to be what you are complaining about. Sure, society would be easier to control with appeals to some "universal principles," but willfully inventing them solely for the purpose of some benevolent manipulation seems like a road paved with good intentions.

@@ericb9804 agreed, for the most part, but here i think you are just redescribing the problem rather than replying to it. Throughout history, more or less self isolated, societies has constructed elaborate practices accompanied by powerful self deceptive myths to organize themselves into functional, reproductive and adaptive systems. They "won out" in the sense that these structures came to dominate within the very communities that constructed them. The justifications for them that the people themselves accepted were not transparent to those same communities. But now the issue is that we have lost our capacity to establish such structures or to justify the ones that are in place. In other words, someone may just reject pluralism, solidarity, democracy and so on, and there is no objective common ground for resolving the conflict of values that emerges. All we are left with are personal preferences on the alter of which dies both politics and philosophy. The conundrum seems to be that to ground a unifying ethos and set of norms requires that certain principles are grounded in something beyond the social world, but our own understanding of this seems to preclude just this kind of ground. This is why we are witnessing the desertification of political, existential, and spiritual values. And RR's pluralism only highlights this conundrum, without really resolving or addressing it. Hope that clarifies what I had in mind.

@@kvaka009 I think I agree with everything you say. But it just sounds like a complaint; a lament that humans are not more trustworthy, or likeable, or friendly; that we are not easier to control or placate; that we are so quick to anger and distraction and seduction by easy answers. But no one, including RR, said this would be easy. There is no "resolving" this. And the only way of "addressing" it, is to acknowledge it for what it is: our shared fate. Not to sound trivial, but it is a timely reference, it sounds like you are advocating that we live in the Matrix: Let's just pretend that we have "universal principles," for wouldn't it be easier if we were "grounded" in "something beyond the social world?" We know its "self deceptive" but so, what? At least the trains run on time, right? Thanks anyway, but no. I'd rather cast my lot with nothing more than an appeal to my fellow man and let the chips fall where they may. I, for one, have more faith in humanity than that. History be damned. Bring on the "desertification of...values" for its darkest before dawn, I say. YOUR only responsibility is to advocate for YOUR principles, and your right to do so is predicated only on your sincere acknowledgement of MY principles. This relationship of social trust is the only "truth" we have, and if its not enough, so be it.

@@ericb9804 your interpretation of my criticism is a bit off. I'm not lamenting our untrustworthinesss nor our inability to deceive ourselves. Rather I am saying that the realization that we can no longer deceive ourselves in a systemic, organized way does not help to overcome the degradation of values and it's no help in recovering from such loss. In other words, even if RR is right (per your interpretation), there is something fundamental missing. We cannot simply disenchant the world and then hope to hang our political future on winning over hearts and minds. The fact that we cannot pretend while knowing we are pretending simply means that we're crossed a certain threshold; that is the conundrum: we cannot believe in universal truth, but we cannon live without it either. In practice, which is all politics, this sort of pluralistic humanism is a dominated strategy; there is no way to actually build a just and free society on it. What is needed is a way of grounding our commitments and values outside our present selves without appealing to any absolutes. I think I have a way of doing that, but who knows.

@@kvaka009 "the realization that we can no longer deceive ourselves in a systemic, organized way does not help to overcome the degradation of values" No, it doesn't. And nothing, other than our own will to power, can. "we cannot believe in universal truth, but we cannon live without it either" Says you. This is your "lament." I think we can, or rather, that we have to, like it or not, and we very well may not like it. "I think I have a way of doing that" Ok, lets hear it, then? Seriously, I'm listening but try some white space. It will make it easier to follow your thought.

@@billherd9695 I think anyone who has read Rorty -- a classic "male feminist" of that vintage (90s) -- would know nothing of the kind. And if he HAD said things like that to any degree, he would not have continued to be promoted by what C.Wright Mills called "the power elite," ie the DOD/CIA/NATO etc.

@@findbridge1790 any evidence for the claim that RR was supported by the power elite?

@@kvaka009 The evidence is his being turned into a star in a degraded start system.

@@findbridge1790 huh?!

It is time shaped tradition. And time shaped traditions are relativistic.

@@kvaka009 Is the difference between mammals and reptiles relativistic?

@@ozzy5146 difference is always a relation. So in that sense every difference is "relativistic". If you mean something else by relativistic, then you've got to explain better what you mean. My suspicion is that you don't have a very clear sense of what it means.

@@ozzy5146 the fact that you have pragmatism in quotes suggests that you're out of your element here.

@@kvaka009 It means that there are no universal truths for human conduct.