Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature

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Summary: A Classic in Epistemology
Review: For Enlightenment thinkers, truth always referred to a correspondence between one's conception of reality and reality "itself," and this correspondence was always mediated by some form of representational practice. For Kant, we interpret the world via a priori conceptual schemas; for others, we interpret the world through language. This "representational" project began with Plato, and continues to pervade Western thought even today.

Rorty comes along and (successfully or unsuccessfully) obliterates this representational project. For Rorty, representationalism carries the seeds of its own failure, for we can always pose the question, "Does this really correspond to reality?"

Consider this issue alongside of Quine's great work "Ontological Relativity." Quine argued that it is ultimately impossible to determine whether speakers "mean" the same thing. What is important for Quine is not so much that people "mean" the same thing as it is that their language serves pragmatic utility--that language lets people interact in empowering ways.

This is in some ways analogous to Rorty's reconceptualization of epistemology. For Rorty, certain statements "work." When we certify a statement as being "true," we are ultimately stating that it "works." In this way, the possibility of skepticism that representationalism opens up simply ceases to register. The relative correspondence or noncorrespondence that exists, for example, between Einsteinian physics and the way reality "really is" is irrelevant insofar as Einsteinian physics enables us to make more accurate predictions, go to the moon, etc.

Rather than continue to pose the question of truth as it was posed by Descartes, Kant, and Hegel, Rorty shows us that that question really isn't particularly relevant, and casts serious doubt as to whether or not it can never be answered.

Rorty's philosophy of pragmatism is a bright star in what has been for centuries a very cloudy sky. This is crucial reading for anyone interested in philosophy, science, or just great thinking in general.

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Summary: A strange and wonderful book
Review: I read this book cover to cover back in 1979 when it first came out. I was 21 and an upper-level philosophy undergrad at the University of Houston. Bredo Johnsen led a seminar in which we discussed the book, some of whose arguments were already legendary from the world of "samizdat" philosophy publishing and academic gossip.

I was deciding at the time that I liked philosophy and wanted to do it for a living if somehow I could, but I didn't really like the way that the American mainstream was heading. This was the time of Kripke and Putnam version 4.0, metaphysical realists who backed up their essentialism with logical proofs--though Putnam was already showing signs that he was about to switch to a new operating system. The philosophers I had liked best in my undergrad studies had been the ancient Skeptics, the pragmatists (neo- and paleo-), and the later Wittgenstein. Those figures presented what seemed to me understandable, stylish, ingenious, and above all practically helpful ways of thinking about knowledge, humanity, and morality. But neo-medievalists like Kripke were fighting those ideas as hard as they could, providing backup to all the sticks-in-the-mud who had never liked that all arty Quine and Goodman stuff anyway. American philosophy was going to stay logical and technically difficult; it would remain a professional field separate from--and, by and large, of little importance to--other kinds of inquiry.

Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature disturbed the peace of the cloister. It dealt with all the formidable logical issues in a way nobody expected: namely, historically. It showed how much of the difficult logical reasoning in the philosophy journals was careful reinvention of . . . well, I almost said reinvention of the wheel, but that's not the right metaphor. The wheel is actually good for something. (I'm kidding! A little. Sort-of.)

Rorty showed the origins of the modern mind-body, fact-value, and language/non-language distinctions in larger historical moral and political battles. He showed how pointless those distinctions were apart from those long-since-concluded struggles, and he reminded academic philosophers how those distinctions had already been thoroughly criticized by pragmatic and other historically-minded thinkers.

Rorty is criticized as a relativist and an "anti-realist," but this is precisely wrong. What he is above all is realistic--about where philosophical problems have come from and what we have to do to be rid of them.

PMN focuses our attention on the local, the contingent, and what changes and has changed over time; and by doing so it has become a book of long-lasting value. Twenty-five years and counting. That's short in philosophical terms, but I suspect that in the end the value of this book will be more enduring than that of most reasoning about eternal necessity.

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Summary: Unable to Withstand Peter Munz's Critique
Review: In this influential book, Rorty argues that the history of Western philosophy over the past few hundred years reveals a quest for immutable foundations for knowledge that has finally been shown to have been futile and wrongheaded. Rorty believes that a number of 20th Century philosophers (but most prominently Ludwig Wittgenstein) have demonstrated that all knowledge consists of nothing more than the beliefs of a particular speech community, as embodied in linguistic rules used by that community, and that it is impossible to go outside the closed circle of one's speech community to acquire or validate knowledge.

The most compelling critique of Rorty's thesis that I have read is contained in a little-known but highly enlightening and learned book by Peter Munz entitled "Our Knowledge of the Growth of Knowledge." Munz is a historian and philosopher who has the apparently unique distinction, at least among living scholars, of having been a student of both Karl Popper and Wittgenstein (in the 1940's). Munz acknowledges in his 1985 book that Rorty's book offers "the most sustained and reasoned defense of closed circles" yet written. Munz contends, however, that a careful reading of the book reveals that Rorty has implicitly treated Wittgenstein's own intellectual biography -- i.e., Wittgenstein's move from the "picture theory of meaning" of the "Tractatus" to the closed circle philosophy of his "Philosophical Investigations" -- as representative of the history of philosophy in the last four centuries. Rorty's use of this particular paradigm for his history is misguided, Munz says, because, among other things:

1) "Wittgenstein's 'Tractatus,' far from being symptomatic of mirror philosophy, is the only mirror philosophy ever put forward." Descartes and Kant, who are presented as the "two great anti-heroes" in Rorty's account, were not "mirror philososphers at all," according to Munz. Indeed, Munz says, one of Kant's central tenets was that our minds distort the ultimate reality (the "thing in itself") and therefore preclude any "mirroring" of that reality; and

2) Because there are many possible alternatives to the picture theory of meaning, the proper rejection of that theory cannot prove the validity of the closed circle theory of knowledge. In embracing the closed circle, Wittgenstein (and Rorty) are postulating a false dichotomy. Moreover, Wittgenstein's modest attempt to demonstrate the validity of the closed circle philosophy is circular. (Ernest Gellner's scholarly but witty 1974 book, "Legitimation and Belief," offers similar criticisms of Wittgenstein's position.)

Munz also points out other problems with Rorty's closed circle philosophy, including: Rorty's implicit adherence to the longstanding view that knowledge must be "justified" in order to be valid; his inability to distinguish various kinds of knowledge from one another (e.g., witchcraft from modern physics) according to their respective explanatory power, or to account for (or even recognize) progress in human knowledge; and his complete failure to even consider the nature of human knowledge from a biological and evolutionary/adaptive standpoint (as the later Karl Popper did). See also Gellner's short and rather humorous critique of Rorty's cognitive relativism in "Debating the State of Philosophy" (Niznik & Sanders, eds.), pp. 79-84.

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Summary: see through the hype...
Review: Let's be honest, the latter half of the 20th century has produced only a handful of important works of philosophy. This is certainly one of them. For those of us who were students of philosophy in the early eighties, toiling away in the less-than-abundant vineyards of the analytical tradition, this book came as a revelation and a liberation.

Rating:
Summary: A nice try, by a nice guy.
Review: Richard Rorty's agenda is about deconstructing the judeo-christian civilization. This desire he shares with men like Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Jacques Derrida and... Ussama Ben Laden! Of course there are some differences between them. The last one resorts to more explosive and deadly arguments.

Still all of them have a low understanding of human nature and human dignity and need to be "smoked out and brought to justice", even if in a purely figurative sense (except for Ben Laden).

I understand some of the political concerns of Rorty. He cares about establishing an open liberal society with liberty and justice for all, and I care about that too. But Rorty doesn't want it to be under God. No way. For him, there is no God, there is no God's eye perspective, there is no absolute truth, there is no fact of the matter. I guess Richard Rorty knows it because he has been there and done that!

I want to build such a society, too, but I think it has more to do with the Enlightment Project (in a true sense) than with Rorty sofistic mistifications. I think human reason still plays an important role in this project, if we consider its absolute foundations.

Questions that deal with the meaning and purpose of our lives are too important to be arbitrarily subjected to a naturalistic reduction (just because men like Rorty, Dawkins, or Dennett say so), or to be solved with pragmatic considerations, without any regard for the truth of the matter.

Of course Rorty gives the example in the project of building a true society. If some mad driver calls him "animal!", he returns the compliment in a very nice, polite and tolerant way, because that's the way he actually sees himself: an animal, totally an animal and nothing more than an animal. I guess that is the pragmatic equivalent of the sermon of the mount. This may sound harsh, but it corresponds entirely to the fact of the matter as Rorty sees it. In my view Rorty thinks too low of himself.

I believe that a free, fair, tolerant and democratic society can and should be based on a broad and inclusive sense of human dignity and a principle of equal concern and respect (Dworkin)(in the line of Rawls' "overlapping consensus", Sunstein's "incompletely theorized agreements" or Rosenfeld's "compreensive pluralism"), which is perfectly compatible with faith in God and the observance of the Golden Rule (principle, not rule), without requiring any sort of "evolutionary regression" to the level of the "beasts in the field".

If we consider that the more politically stable, economically prosperous, scientifically advanced and rights-based societies are those that were more influenced by the Protestant Reformation and the Enlightment, we have some food for thought about society building. On the other end, atheist societies have the poorest marks on all these items.

Rorty's self-representation he borrows from Darwin, whom he takes seriously. Darwin and his acolite Richard Dawkins have a strong (although not scientifically warranted) belief that Man (in an improper sense) is the mere byproduct of matter, random mutations and natural selection. Man is just a bunch of selfish genes doing what comes naturally.

There is no reason, no self and no reality beyond thought. Rorty's problem is that according to this view, there is no thought either. Thoughts are just a casual byproduct of subatomic particles in motion, whom we have no reason watsoever to trust. In the end, all philosophical inquiries have to deal with subatomic particles.

Rorty tries to take his atheistic assumptions to the last consequences, but he doesn't take his naturalistic reduction to the end. He stops short of admitting the futility of his own project. Rorty talks about himself, even as a special animal, as if there is such a thing called Rorty. He still seems to believe in the existence of a "ghost in the machine".

But if we take neodarwinism seriously (which we shouldn't), Rorty doesn't exist, and his thoughts are nothing but particles in random motion. Since everything is matter, nothing matters at all.

Of course we now know better than that. Biology, microphysics, and astrophysics all talk about the irreducible complexity of life, matter, and the cosmos. Just search Amazon.com for authors like William Dembski, Michael Behe, Phillip Johnson, Charles Taxton, Guillermo Gonzalez.

Intelligence and information are a structural part of reality, along with matter, mutations and selection. Information is now empirically detectable and measurable, thanks to information, complexity, design and probabilities theories.

It is true that microevolution exists, along with some macroevolution. But we are coming to realize that megaevolution is only possible through complex-specified information, a product of external informed intervention in the universe.

There is no place for neodarwinian free lunches and just-so stories of the kind Rorty appreciates. Random mutations and natural selection cannot generate the huge amounts of complex-specified information needed to get abiogenesis, DNA and RNA, the irreducible complexity of molecular machines, the fine-tunning of the Universe, etc.

That being the fact of the matter, maybe there is some Absolute Reason after all. Maybe there is an intellectual bridge between objective reality and subjective perception, since both of them display signs of intelligent design.

In this case, the pursuit of truth still makes sense after all this years, and Richard Rorty's project is nothing more than a nice try by a nice guy. For now, the preponderance of scientific evidence (not theological or philosophical speculation) points to the existence of intelligent design in the Universe "beyond reasonable doubt".

Richard Rorty is desperately in need of a kuhnian paradigm shift, or else he risks being himself the object of some form of 21 st century antipositivist carnapian scorn.

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Summary: Anti-essentialism & Anti-realism
Review: This book is one of Rorty's ealier works, and, thus, he is still more "analytic" in his approach. The basic purposes of the book are (1) why it is wrong to speak of coming to a knoweldge of the truth by means of our glassy essence *mirroring* reality and (2) how can we continue philosophy after we have gotten rid of the post-Cartesian epistemological binary opposition.

Rorty makes repeated attacks on the correspondence theory of truth. Furthermore, he ties in his anti-essentialism into this in such a way that if you stand with him in denying the naive realist epistemology, you will begin be unable to see why people speak of "essence" or the ding-an-sich vs. it's representation. Rorty does not wish to make us into individualistic relativists who believe that however it is that we are appeared to defines what is true. Rather, he wants us to forget about the whole search for objective ahistorical truth--"Truth" that transcends our contingency. Also, Rorty engages in a tireless critique of the ocular metaphor that has pervaded Western philosophy from the beginning.
So, truth becomes, ceteris paribus, what our peers will let us get away with saying. This seems at least half-Wittgensteinian (of course, depending on how you interpret LW). In the process of deconstructing Western philosophy as the search for transcendental truth, Rorty uses, most notably, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, and Dewey.

Rorty's answer to the second issue dealt with in the book is that philosophers should try to "continue a conversation." Forget about metaphysics and all other metanarratives. We must guide ourselves by "our lights". Philosophy is more about settling disputes peaceably (thus inscreasing solidarity) and enjoying ourselves. Philosophy is just another language game, like science, poetry, etc. There is nothing that puts the philosopher in access to more basic or fundamental knowledge and truth. Rather, he is just good at playing a particular language game.

Personally, despite Rorty's claims otherwise, I see this all as just another form of social relativism. If a society achieves solidarity on an issue, there really isn't much one can say against it from a Rortian view, if we were a part of that society. But, as Westerners, we might have a lot of things to say. This is all connected with what is later developed by Rorty into Ethnocentrism. Basically, because we can't get out of our own bodies, and transcend ourselves, all we can do is speak from where we are. And, this "where we are" is just a contingent, situated whatever that will no longer be in but a little while.

Rating:
Summary: Anti-essentialism & Anti-realism
Review: This book is one of Rorty's ealier works, and, thus, he is still more "analytic" in his approach. The basic purposes of the book are (1) why it is wrong to speak of coming to a knoweldge of the truth by means of our glassy essence *mirroring* reality and (2) how can we continue philosophy after we have gotten rid of the post-Cartesian epistemological binary opposition.

Rorty makes repeated attacks on the correspondence theory of truth. Furthermore, he ties in his anti-essentialism into this in such a way that if you stand with him in denying the naive realist epistemology, you will begin be unable to see why people speak of "essence" or the ding-an-sich vs. it's representation. Rorty does not wish to make us into individualistic relativists who believe that however it is that we are appeared to defines what is true. Rather, he wants us to forget about the whole search for objective ahistorical truth--"Truth" that transcends our contingency. Also, Rorty engages in a tireless critique of the ocular metaphor that has pervaded Western philosophy from the beginning.
So, truth becomes, ceteris paribus, what our peers will let us get away with saying. This seems at least half-Wittgensteinian (of course, depending on how you interpret LW). In the process of deconstructing Western philosophy as the search for transcendental truth, Rorty uses, most notably, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, and Dewey.

Rorty's answer to the second issue dealt with in the book is that philosophers should try to "continue a conversation." Forget about metaphysics and all other metanarratives. We must guide ourselves by "our lights". Philosophy is more about settling disputes peaceably (thus inscreasing solidarity) and enjoying ourselves. Philosophy is just another language game, like science, poetry, etc. There is nothing that puts the philosopher in access to more basic or fundamental knowledge and truth. Rather, he is just good at playing a particular language game.

Personally, despite Rorty's claims otherwise, I see this all as just another form of social relativism. If a society achieves solidarity on an issue, there really isn't much one can say against it from a Rortian view, if we were a part of that society. But, as Westerners, we might have a lot of things to say. This is all connected with what is later developed by Rorty into Ethnocentrism. Basically, because we can't get out of our own bodies, and transcend ourselves, all we can do is speak from where we are. And, this "where we are" is just a contingent, situated whatever that will no longer be in but a little while.