Truth or consequences: The problematic neo-pragmatism of Richard Rorty
Description
The thesis most central to my dissertation is the claim that thinking is a spatio-temporal process, that 'knowing' is an event which, like all others, happens or occurs. It is not an original thesis. It is an implication of materialism, and just as old. However, until the last century there was no way of explaining the development of mental phenomena. Even today, the mind is usually considered different in kind from the rest of nature, as removed from the causal order of things. Such a conception is implied by metaphysical realists, and openly articulated by theists. It is the motivation for the philosophical projects of epistemology and metaphysics, continuing into the scientific age as a rationalist hope of checking the results of empiricism through non-empirical means A generation ago, Richard Rorty claimed that this conception of the mind as a 'mirror of nature' was misguided, that modeling mental activity on the transparent process of sight had outlived its usefulness and led to problems both theoretical and practical. Eliminating the visual metaphors on which traditional conceptions of the mind had depended would mean abandoning philosophical aspirations to the Truth (a way things really are apart from all belief). Unwilling to accept the notion that the mind is a physical (spatio-temporal) phenomenon, Rorty's work was largely disparaged as relativistic, since it made objectivity a matter of intersubjective agreement Such a democratic approach was what the Sophists had advocated, what Plato sought to refute, and what the tradition of philosophy was designed to replace. However, as Rorty's predecessor John Dewey pointed out, a 'spectator theory of knowledge' requires a subject which is detached from the world he observes, a subject beyond the constraints of space and time. It is therefore necessary to choose between the truth of philosophy and the consequences of pragmatism: the view that the mind, like everything else in nature, is a product of space and time The present dissertation is a defense of Rorty's position. It claims that the bulk of that position is not original with him, but is indicative of pragmatism generally, and that in turn the tenets of pragmatism are consequences of Darwinism. That is, the pragmatist claims Rorty makes are nothing other than what Dewey called 'the influence of Darwin on philosophy'. As a result, any effective refutation of Rorty's position will require either a refutation of Darwinism or an explanation as to why the constraints of space and time do not apply to the human ability to think