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Richard Rorty, RIP
itylus
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I saw a recent article in Slate about the fact that Richard Rorty had recently died. I thought, since quite a few people here seem to be interested in philosophy, that it might be nice/interesting to talk a bit about his philosophy, whether we agree or disagree with it, and why. I had heard his name before but hadn't read any of his work, if any of you are in a similar position, here are a couple of links:
The Slate article:
http://www.slate.com/id/2168488/nav/tap2/
His wikipedia page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Rorty
At the Stanford Encyclopedia of philosophy:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rorty/
A short (10 minutes) film about him:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Q7lB_wDaGJg
Maybe to kick things off, I'll say something about what I found most interesting, being his critique of epistemology. As I understand it, he has a problem with the idea that knowledge is something which exists in the mind as something separate from, but reflecting on, an externally existing reality.
Quoting from the Stanford page:
This probably makes him sound like a "relativist" or a "subjectivist", however, quoting again from the same page:
I find this idea quite compelling although I am curious about how the rejection of "truth" as a general category fits in with the possibitlity of accepting it as a "context and interest bound" category in specific circumstances - doesn't "truth" have to be an absolute concept in order to be "truth" as such?
I'd also like to ask, although of course I can't insist, that a minimal level of decorum be observed. This is a thread about someone's death. I'm not asking for hushed tones of reverence but just a little basic respect would be gratefully appreciated. If you think nothing but contempt is appropriate then perhaps silent contempt on this occasion is called for.
The Slate article:
http://www.slate.com/id/2168488/nav/tap2/
His wikipedia page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Rorty
At the Stanford Encyclopedia of philosophy:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rorty/
A short (10 minutes) film about him:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Q7lB_wDaGJg
Maybe to kick things off, I'll say something about what I found most interesting, being his critique of epistemology. As I understand it, he has a problem with the idea that knowledge is something which exists in the mind as something separate from, but reflecting on, an externally existing reality.
Quoting from the Stanford page:
Epistemology, in Rorty's account, is wedded to a picture of mind's structure working on empirical content to produce in itself items—thoughts, representations—which, when things go well, correctly mirror reality. To loosen the grip of this picture on our thinking is to challenge the idea that epistemology—whether traditional Cartesian or 20th century linguistic—is the essence of philosophy. To this end, Rorty combines a reading of Quine's attack on a version of the structure-content distinction in "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" (1952), with a reading of Sellars' attack on the idea of givenness in "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind" (1956/1997). On Rorty's reading, though neither Sellars nor Quine is able fully to take in the liberating influence of the other, they are really attacking the same distinction, or set of distinctions. While Quine casts doubt on the notion of structure or meaning which linguistically-turned epistemology had instated in place of mental entities, Sellars, questioning the very idea of givenness, came at the distinction from the other side: …Sellars and Quine invoke the same argument, one which bears equally against the given-versus-nongiven and the necessary-versus-contingent distinctions. The crucial premise of this argument is that we understand knowledge when we understand the social justification of belief, and thus have no need to view it as accuracy of representation. (PMN 170)
…Sellars and Quine invoke the same argument, one which bears equally against the given-versus-nongiven and the necessary-versus-contingent distinctions. The crucial premise of this argument is that we understand knowledge when we understand the social justification of belief, and thus have no need to view it as accuracy of representation. (PMN 170)
The upshot of Quine's and Sellars' criticisms of the myths and dogmas of epistemology is, Rorty suggests, that "we see knowledge as a matter of conversation and of social practice, rather than as an attempt to mirror nature." (PMN 171) Rorty provides this view with a label: "Explaining rationality and epistemic authority by reference to what society lets us say, rather than the latter by the former, is the essence of what I shall call ‘epistemological behaviorism,’ an attitude common to Dewey and Wittgenstein." (PMN 174)
This probably makes him sound like a "relativist" or a "subjectivist", however, quoting again from the same page:
Drawing on Davidson's criticism of the scheme-content distinction ("On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme") and of the correspondence theory of truth ("The Structure and Content of Truth"), Rorty is able to back up his rejection of any philosophical position or project which attempts to draw a general line between what is made and what is found, what is subjective and what is objective, what is mere appearance and what is real. Rorty's position is not that these conceptual contrasts never have application, but that such application is always context and interest bound and that there is, as in the case of the related notion of truth, nothing to be said about them in general. Rorty's commitment to the conversationalist view of knowledge must therefore be distinguished from subjectivism or relativism, which, Rorty argues, presuppose the very distinctions he seeks to reject.
I find this idea quite compelling although I am curious about how the rejection of "truth" as a general category fits in with the possibitlity of accepting it as a "context and interest bound" category in specific circumstances - doesn't "truth" have to be an absolute concept in order to be "truth" as such?
I'd also like to ask, although of course I can't insist, that a minimal level of decorum be observed. This is a thread about someone's death. I'm not asking for hushed tones of reverence but just a little basic respect would be gratefully appreciated. If you think nothing but contempt is appropriate then perhaps silent contempt on this occasion is called for.
itylus on
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When it comes to Rorty, I'm generally not a disciple. My acquaintance with him is through his support of Eliminative Materialism, a theory which I find to be vaguely crazy. As per epistemology, I also have a lot of problems with Quine's "Two Dogmas of Empiricism," the essay mentioned in the quote you gave, so I doubt I would follow him their either.
I'm pretty much an unreconstructed Cartesian, though.
Not knowing what eliminative materialism is, I went and looked it up...
...while not exactly thinking it's crazy, I find that I don't agree with it at all. In fact, it seems very odd. I'm not a Cartesian - I believe the mind is different from the non-mental parts of the physical world, but also part of that physical world and emergent from it. But the idea that there is no such thing as a mind, that the mind is "pure illusion" seems... yeah, weird. How can you even have a concept of what an illusion is if you don't have a concept of what mind is?
I am attracted to Quine's idea that there isn't a difference between analytic and synthetic truths, but I would have to think about it more to know if I agree with it. Which I will, I suppose.
Yes, exegesis is hard to get right, isn't it? Rorty was apparently committed to the idea that being able to take new and interesting ideas from someone's writings was more important than to accurately divine their intention, which I guess fits in with his whole thing of pragmatism. (ie, that usefulness is more fundamental than "truthiness"). I guess this attitude is probably helpful when your'e trying to generate original work but unhelpful when you're trying to provide an introduction or summary for someone else's.
I'm not really a Cartesian: I think dualism is a really shitty hypothesis. However, I do have certain intuitions about the mind that are in line with the Cartesians regarding things like transparency and first person access. These go pretty strongly against Rorty, eliminative materialism, and 'theory-theory' in particular.
That's one of my problems with Quine. "My house is red" is synthetic, "my house is a house" is analytic. The method by which he tries to undermine analyticity relies on some quirks of his conception of meaning that I don't think really make any sense.
Yes... the distinction does seem obvious. The truth of "my house is red" depends on some facts about the world correlating with your statement, whereas the truth of "my house is a house" is inherent in the meaning of the words in the statement itself. My understanding of Quine is that he's saying that the meaning of words is itself a "fact about the world" and so... has the same sort of contingent (rather than necessary) truth about it as a synthetic truth.
Which... in some hypoethetical (but rather unlikely) situation could mean that you take the word "is" to mean "is" while I take "is" to mean "is not" (ie, the sound-image is associated with a different meaning) and you declare "my house is a house" to be an analytic truth and I say it's an analytic untruth, and the reason we're differing is because we're relying on different "linguistic facts".
Which... hmm. Maybe it comes down to whether or not meanings exist independently of languages.
Still, RIP brilliant man...may Socrates greet you with a non-poisonous drink in the realm of forms.
They do. Doesn't language just describe that which already exists and has meaning? A tree exists independently of language, and the meaning of the tree or it's existence is not contingent upon the language that we use to describe or classify it. It will still exist outside of our linguistic classifications.
Derrida and Foucault? What the fuck is wrong with you?