SUSAN HAACK
105
ference between facts and val ues, nor any methodological difference
between morali ty and science
(p.l63) ....
The pragmatists tell us, it is the
vocabulary of practice rather than of theory ... in which one can say
something useful about truth
(p.l62).
[A] third ... characterization of prag-
matism [is]: it is the doctrine that there are no constraints on inquiry save
conversational ones.... The only sense in which we are constrained to
truth is that, as [you] suggested, we can make no sense of the notion that
the view which can survive all objections might be false. But objections -
conversational cons traints - cannot be antici pated
(p.165).
CSP:
To satisfY our doubts, ... it is necessary that a method should be
found by which our beliefs may be determined by nothing human, but by
some external permanency - by something upon which our thinking has
no effect... . It must be something which affects, or might affect, every
man.. .. The method must be such that the ultimate conclusion of every
man shall be the same. Such is the method of science
(5.384).
RR: Once human desires are admitted into the criterion of " truth," ... we
have become pragmatists. The pragmatist's claim is that to know your
desires is to know the criterion of truth ... (EHO,
pp.30-31).
CSP:
It is necessary to note what is essentially involved in the Will to
Learn .... I can excuse a person who has lost a dear companion and whose
reason is in danger of giving way under the grief, for trying, on that
account, to believe in a future life. ... [But] I myself would not adopt a
hypothesis ... simply because the idea was pleasing to me.... That would
be a crime against the integrity of ... reason ...
(5.583,598).
RR: What I am calling "pragmatism" might also be called "left-wing
Kuhnianism"
(55, p.4l) .
CSP:
An opinion which has of late years attained some vogue among men
of science, [is] that we cannot expect any physical hypothesis to maintain
its ground indefinitely even with modifications, but must expect that from
time to time there will be a complete cataclysm that shall utterly sweep
away old theories and replace them by new ones. As far as I know, this
notion has no other basis than the history of science. Considering how
very, very little science we have attained, and how infantile the history of
science still is, it amazes me that anybody should propose to base a theory
of knowledge upon the history of science alone. An emmet is far more
competent to discourse upon the figure of the earth than we are to say what
future millennia and millionennia may have in store for physical theories
... The only really scientific theory that can be called old is the Ptolemaic
system; and that has only been improved in details, not revolutionized
