skullbochs

One issue on which Ken Wilber and the late Richard Rorty agree is that reductionism, or scientism, is a bad way to look at the world. Both agree that natural science provides a poor guide on ethical, social, and spiritual matters. Both would, I think, agree that reductionistic accounts of what it is to be human are abhorrent and dehumanizing, and that they should be replaced with more robust accounts.

Where they would disagree, I think, is on whether such accounts are missing the obvious, overlooking features that are plain to see and so are not only less useful than some non-reductionistic accounts, but also intellectually irresponsible. Wilber would agree that this is so. Rorty, I think, would refuse to go so far.

Rorty eschewed any purely intellectual attempt to establish what entities exist. So he was dissatisfied by the reductionistic tendency to relegate, for example, tables to a kind of second-class citizenship, having existence only through their derivation from real entities such as electrons and quarks; or to deny the existence of some entities (such as spirits) not because we seem to have no use for them, but because they cannot be reduced to physical particles. For Rorty, there was simply no point to such tactics, and equally little point in the opposite tactics of chiding reductionists for supposedly missing out on the obvious.

For him, the question, “What exists?”, should be replaced by the question, “What is useful for us to talk about?” This is because the first question, taken as a question of absolute reality separate from appearances or practical utility, seems unanswerable. Our only reference for establishing what exists is to ask what seems to exist, which in practice isn’t a significantly different question from asking what is useful to talk about.

So where Wilber and similar anti-reductionists attack reductionism are both morally and intellectually irresponsible, Rorty would just stick to the first charge. I think this is because however much Wilber, etc. hate reductionism, they haven’t freed themselves from the hyperintellectualism that lead to reductionism in the first place.