Abstract
Rorty’s Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature presents the most thorough and sustained critique of Western epistemology and foundationalism in the second half of the twentieth Century. The work deconstructs philosophy as an autonomous discipline generating a “neutral matrix” to assess knowledge, truth, and rationality, offering philosophical analyses of the mind-body distinction, representation, reference, and truth, and ultimately the concept of knowledge as a “mirror of nature.” The deconstruction of Cartesian dualism undermines the mind as the immaterial ground of absolute certainty; the deconstruction of the Kantian empirical-transcendental distinction destroys the transcendental realm as philosophy’s uniquely accessible and founding domain. Instead, Rorty invites us to reconceive philosophy as an edifying voice in the “conversation of mankind.”
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Notes
- 1.
The criticism to analytical philosophy presented in PMN has an important antecedent in Rorty’s introductory essay to the volume The Linguistic Turn (Rorty 1967), a by now famous collection of papers that was edited by him. This essay is significant of Rorty’s theoretical evolution, since, on the one hand, it points out the impasses of the analytic philosophy of the time and, on the other hand, sketches some possible remedies that by and large anticipate crucial arguments of PMN.
- 2.
To be sure, Rorty also uses systematic arguments as well as thought experiments to displace these entrenched Cartesian distinctions. See Heindl 2020.
- 3.
Rorty advocated in his early essays an eliminative but not reductionist physicalism, see Rorty 2014. There is a crucial methodological difference between these two, but they match ontologically.
- 4.
The thought experiment of the Antipodeans aims to show that the anti-physicalist intuitions of Cartesian dualism are dependent on our own particular history by imagining an encounter with “mindless people” who live on a hypothetical planet far from Earth. Once in contact with these “Antipodeans”, human philosophers are unable to determine whether these people express their feelings in a neurophysiological language or lack feelings altogether. For further discussion see Tartaglia 2007, chapter 4 (pp. 71–99).
- 5.
Among the numerous passages presenting this conception, see Rorty 1979, pp. 89–97, 213–220.
- 6.
The “naturalistic fallacy” in ethics was denounced by G. E. Moore (1993).
- 7.
For a more detailed discussion of Rorty’s criticism of Kant and his “confusion of predication with synthesis” (Rorty 1979, p. 148) see Hammer 2020 in this volume.
- 8.
- 9.
- 10.
Rorty acknowledges that we may want to make sure that we are talking about the same things when reconstructing previous philosophical ideas and perspectives. To understand “what our ancestors talked about” (Rorty 1979, pp. 266–273) seems to ask both for an objective reference as well as for the assignment of truth values. Regarding science, we are inclined to say “there jolly well is something out there – motion and its law, for instance – which people meant to refer to, or at least were referring to without realizing it.” (Rorty 1979, p. 288). The shared reference would then allow us to determine (“what they were really talking about,”) which thus calls for the philosophical project to establish a universal matrix of reference and truth that is neutral, objective, and transcontextual.
- 11.
Rorty skillfully shows how the realist philosophy of language accepts holism and contextualism as a challenge, yet unfortunately not as one to leave behind the image of philosophy as nature’s mirror, but rather as one to now re-establish the condition of possibility for a theory of reference that will safeguard objective meaning and truth.
- 12.
See especially (Rorty 1979, p. 276, 294, 295): “Our present views about nature are our only guide in talking about the relation between nature and our words ... for we discover how language works only within the present theory of the rest of the world, and one cannot use a part of one’s present theory to underwrite the rest of it ... our theory about what the world is made of will produce, trivially, a self-justifying theory about that relation.”
- 13.
Davidson develops the intuition of the scheme-independent, causal account of contact with reality in his later account of triangulation, in which the constitution of meaning is explained by the mutual and simultaneous responses of at least two speakers to external stimuli (Davidson 1990). Rorty refers to Davidson’s triangulation account, which was not available explicitly by the time of PMN, in later writings (see for example Rorty 2000).
- 14.
Rorty explicates his adaptation of Kuhn with a brief assessment of the debate between Galileo and Bellarmine concerning the Copernican versus the Ptolemaic worldview. He aims to show that there is no external or neutral viewpoint from which to judge the “scientific” superiority of the Copernican explanation. In a first step, he clarifies that the definition of a “scientific” versus a “scriptural” or “theological” viewpoint was not yet available for historical participants in the debate, since the scientific verus the theological view was itself in the process of articulating itself (Rorty 1979, p. 330). Second, analyzing the scope of the arguments of both sides reveals that the decisive point is the choice of perspective, i.e. what Kuhn calls a “disciplinary matrix” or what hermeneutics call “world disclosure:” “Mere looking at the planets will be of no help in choosing our model of the heavens, any more than mere reading of Scripture.” (Rorty 1979, p. 332). Thirdly and finally, Rorty draws from this the (controversial) conclusion that the “patterns of argumentation” (Rorty 1979, p. 332) in natural science do not differ substantially from politics or literary criticism. While Rorty can convincingly show that any discursive disclosure brings to bear certain value-assumptions and its own scope, the internal standards and practices of assessing validity and evidence may still be acknowledged to differ widely between symbolic frameworks, as much as they still allow, albeit always from the standpoint of a certain perspective (See Rorty 1979, pp. 327–333) general judgments about reality. (See Rorty 1979, 327–333).
- 15.
In a rare reference to Peirce, Rorty suggests that this position confuses “contact with reality (a causal, non-intentional, non-description related relation) with dealing with reality (describing explaining, predicting, and modifying it). – all of which are things we do under description. The sense in which physical reality is Peircean ‘Secondness’ – unmediated pressure – has nothing to do with the sense in which one among all our ways of describing, or of coping with, physical reality is ‘the one right’ way. Lack of mediation is here confused with accuracy of mediation.” (Rorty 1979, p. 375).
- 16.
Rorty also utilizes Sartre’s radical distinction between en-soi and pour-soi to argue that the attempt by any radically free self to understand itself in objectivistic terms would amount to an avoidance and rejection of one’s responsibility to choose oneself. (See Rorty 1979, pp. 360–362, 375–376). The use of Sartre here, however, is somewhat ironic, as Sartre’s distinction is based on an insurmountable ontological gap between self and object – an ontological account Rorty himself rejects (not to speak of his avowed naturalism that seems to leave no space for Sartre’s emphatic notion of freedom).
- 17.
For further and more in-depth discussion of Rorty’s appropriation of hermeneutic ideas and insights, see Kögler 2020 in the final section of this volume.
- 18.
The expression “logical socialism” is due to the interpretation of Peirce’s work by Karl O. Apel (Apel 1967, pp. 13–153).
- 19.
For an analysis of these aspects, see Calcaterra 2003, pp. 17–65.
References
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Bernstein, Richard. 2013. Hegel and pragmatism. In The Cambridge companion to pragmatism, ed. Alan Malachowski, 105–123. Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press.
Calcaterra, Rosa M. 2003. Pragmatismo: i valori dell’esperienza. Roma: Carocci.
Calcaterra, Rosa M. 2019. Contingency and normativity. The challenges of Richard Rorty. Leiden-Boston: Brill Rodopi.
Davidson, Donald. 1984a. Inquiries into truth and interpretation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Davidson, Donald. 1984b. On the very idea of a conceptual scheme. In Davidson 1984a, 183–198.
Davidson, Donald. 1984c. Radical Interpretation. In Davidson 1984a, 125–139.
Dewey, John. 1938. Logic: The theory of inquiry. New York: Holt, Reinhart and Winston.
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Gross, Neil. 2008. Richard Rorty: The making of an American Philosopher. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Heindl, Alexander. 2020. Richard Rortys Kritik der Erkenntnistheorie: Demokratischer Anti-Repräsentationalismus, in this volume, pp 1–16.
Kögler, Hans-Herbert. 1992. Die Macht des Dialogs. Kritische Hermeneutik nach Gadamer, Foucault, und Rorty. Stuttgart: Metzler.
Kögler, Hans-Herbert. 2012. Interpretation als Prima Philosophia: Rorty und die normativen Wurzeln des Dialogs. In Pragmatismus und Hermeneutik. Beiträge zu Richard Rortys Kulturpolitik, ed. Matthias Buschmeier and Espen Hammer, 60–88. Hamburg: Meiner.
Kögler, Hans-Herbert. 2020. Rortys Herausforderung für die Hermeneutik, in this volume, pp.
Moore, G. E. 1993. Principia Ethica. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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Peirce, Charles Sanders. 1992. Grounds of validity of the law of logic. In The essential Peirce, ed. Nathan Houser and Christian Kloesel, Vol. I, 57–82. Bloomington/Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
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Recommended further Reading
Bhaskar, Roy. 1990. Rorty, realism and the idea of freedom. In Reading Rorty, ed. Alan Malachowski, 198–232. Oxford: Blackwell. While of Rorty’s deconstruction of Cartesian foundationalism, Baskhar provides a succinct challenge to Rorty’s suggested consequences by rejecting the impossibility of (post-foundationalist) ontology, supportive Rorty’s implicit scientism, and the denial of the critical-emancipatory potential of the human and social sciences.
Hernandez, Nalliely. 2017. Concequences of Rorty’s pragmatism in science. European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy 9(2): 180–208. This article develops a critical analysis of Rorty’s image of science, pointing out its cultural implications and suggesting its positive connections with important contemporary philosophical accounts of scientific practices, especially in physics and biology.
Marchetti, Giancarlo, ed. forthcoming. The ethics, epistemology, and politics of Richard Rorty. London: Routledge. This book gathers original essays that critically engage Rorty’s solicitation to reconsider the role of science and truth with a liberal-democratic vision of politics and in the light of moral progress. The essays employ the conceptual tools and argumentative techniques of analytic philosophy and pragmatism, focalising on the importance of Rorty’s thought to the current theoretical debate.
Tartaglia, James. 2007. Rorty and the mirror of nature. New York: Routledge.
This is a book entirely dedicated to a critical assessment of PMN, rich of detailed discussions and intriguing comments regarding its main epistemological and metaphysical issues.
Williams, Michael. 2000. Epistemology and the mirror of nature. In Rorty and his critics, ed. Robert Brandom, 191–213. Malden/Oxford: Blackwell. Williams brilliantly engages Rorty’s claim of the ‘emergence of epistemology’ as a modern event. While agreeing about the uniqueness of Cartesian foundationalism, Rorty’s clear-cut subordination of metaphysics to (modern) epistemology and the role of skepticism are revised, with the consequence that Rorty’s proclaimed ‘death of epistemology’ may be problematized.
Williams, Bernard. 2009. Introduction to the Thirtieth-Anniversary Edition. In Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. Thirtieth-Anniversary Edition, ed. Richard Rorty, xiii–xxix. Princeton/Oxford: Princeton University Press. This text presents a perspicuous synthesis of the major themes and problems of Rorty’s PMN, including naturalism, antirepresentationalism, linguistic priority, and historicism. The Author sketches Rorty’s attack of modern and contemporary epistemology, and challenges his labels as skeptical philosopher or ‘linguistic idealist’.
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Calcaterra, R.M., Kögler, HH. (2020). Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979). In: Müller, M. (eds) Handbuch Richard Rorty. Springer VS, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-16260-3_11-1
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