Yong paper for ETS 2002 - all rights reserved - p. 5
pragmatically motivated to enable better human coping. (For Rorty, the concept true is non-
explanatory; rather, it denotes the practical-causal relationship between organisms and environments.) In
fact both disciplines are seen to operate according to differing human conventions and procedures, and
not according to their own strictly defined logic. As such, following the later Wittgenstein, they are at
one level incommensurable language games which disparity needs to be respected even if both contribute
in the long run to human happiness.
9
Rationality is redefined from being methodical to being morally
virtuous--i.e., being tolerant and persuasive rather than forceful.
10
The implications for the
conversations--philosophical and otherwise--Rorty wishes to continue include: transitioning from
confrontative polemics to edifying chit-chat; utilization of narrative redescription rather than critical
argumentation; an ironic stance which draws from various traditions of discourse in an ad hoc way for
purposes at hand, viz., to enable the speaker to do what she wants to do and get what she needs most
efficiently. All of this follows inevitably from our postfoundationalist awareness that there are no
mutually agreeable starting points or rules of engagement which must of necessity govern our
interactions.
11
In order to see the implications of this move, we need to take a short detour and get a close-up
view of Rorty`s philosophic method in action. His intention is to expose the pretenses of what he calls
the Philosophic (capital P) tradition. Metaphysical, ontological, and epistemological questions from Plato
through to Descartes, Kant, and modern thinkers have been misled by a representationalist view of
language and ideas. Philosophy (with the capital P) has therefore been concerned to get things right, to
Truth: Philosophical Papers, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 35-45 and 63-77 respectively.
On Kuhn, see Thomas Kuhn, Rocks and the Laws of Physics in Rorty, Philosophy and Social Hope, 175-90.
9
Cf. Keeping Philosophy Pure: An Essay on Wittgenstein in Rorty, Consequences of Pragmatism
(Essays: 1972-1980) (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982), 19-36, and Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and
the Reification of Language in Rorty, Essays on Heidegger and Others: Philosophical Papers, vol. 2 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1991), 50-65.
10
More recently, Rorty has defined moral progress as a matter of wider and wider sympathy; see his
Ethics without Principles in Rorty, Philosophy and Social Hope, 72-90, quote from 82.
11
My exposition of Rorty`s antifoundationalism does not mean to ignore the fact that there are viable
counter-arguments; see, e.g., Timm Triplett, Rorty`s Critique of Foundationalism, Philosophical Studies 52
(1987): 115-29, and Paul K. Moser, Does Foundationalism Rest on a Mistake? Philosophical Studies (Ireland) 31
(1987): 183-96.