יום ב' ,   18.04.2005,   18:00 - 20:00
חדר 496 בנין גילמן

דר' גדי טאוב, החוג לתקשורת,
ביה"ס למדיניות ציבורית - האוניברסיטתה העברית, ירושלים

"גלגוליו של הטיעון נגד אובייקטיביות: ספקנות, פרגמטיזם ופוסטמודרניזם."

The notion that truth, objectively grounded beyond discourse, is a "naïve," "modernist," concept has become widely accepted in the humanities and social sciences. Such conceptions originate in what many believe to be new, and rigorously critical, philosophical insights. These insights have been imported from professional philosophy, and made into common philosophical currency by such figures as Richard Rorty, Thomas Kuhn, and Michel Foucault, and it is on the basis of these more popular versions that they have come to be generally accepted. At the basis of these popular versions, however, lie some assumptions – such as the idea that objectivity is dependent on representation, or that "subjective" and "objective" are mutually exclusive categories – which are worth reexamining in the light of the debate's historical development. The use and misuse of Pragmatism, and Pragmatist-style arguments in this debate, seems to demonstrate why the alleged new insights never really stood the light of philosophical scrutiny. The pronouncement of truth, objectivity and reality dead, seems correspondingly to have been at least premature. It may well be that the death of truth should be regarded as a remnant of postmodern naiveté.