univ of minnesota pr consequences of pragmatism essays 1972-1980 sep 1982

[...]... "deconstruction" of the "Western metaphysics of presence" which was Heidegger's legacy The latter would like to recapture the spirit of the early logical positivists, the sense that philosophy is the accumulation of "results" by patient, rigorous, preferably cooperative work on precisely stated problems (the spirit characteristic of the younger, rather than of the older, Wittgenstein) So philosophy professors... with Richard Kroner, one sees the whole sweep of Kant's work in the light of his project of "denying reason to make room for faith," and if ~?e thinks of Kant th~ pietist rather than Kant the professor, of the pnmacy of the practIcal" rather than of the "transcendental standpoint," then one can see both Kant and Wittgenstein as yearning for that purity of heart which replaces the need to explain, justify,... strong grasp of the problem instead of abandoning it, and coming to understand the failure of each new attempt at a solution, and of earlier attempts (That is why we study the works of philosophers like Plato and Berkeley, whose views are accepted by no one.) Unsolvable problems are not for that reason unreal 33 As an illustration of what Nagel has in mind, consider his example of the problem of "moral... depths, what limit of language, does it lead us? What does it show us about being human?" and asking, on the other hand, "What sort of people would see these problems? What vocabulary, what image of man, would produce such problems? Why, insofar as we are gripped by these problems, do we see them as deep rather than as reductiones ad absurdum of a vocabulary? What does the persistence of such problems show... Habermas' criticism of Peirce in Knowledge and Human Interests (Boston: Beacon Press, 1968), chap 6, esp p 135, and also the quotation from Heidegger at n 66 of Essay 3, below 3 Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979) 4 To appear in the Cambridge University Press Modern European Philosophy series 5 I develop this claim in Essays 6 and 8, below... may be that the notion of improvement [in our theories] is sufficient to interpret remarks to the effect that my favorite theory may be wrong, but not itself sufficient to justify the notion of a limit of investigation" [po 358].) 26 William James, Pragmatism and the Meaning of Truth (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1978), p 42 27 Ibid., p 322 28 Note that the question of whether there can... the pragmatist wants to debate is just this point He does not want to discuss necessary and sufficient conditions for a sentence being true, but precisely whether the practice which hopes to find a Philosophical way of isolating the essence of Truth has, in fact, paid off So the issue between him and the intuitive realist is a matter of what to make of the history of that practice-what to make of the... strenge Wissenschaft-and ~he so.rt of po~t­ professional, redemptive, private purity of heart whIch Wlttgenstem seemed to suggest might be possible They are torn between th~ ne.ed to profess a pure subject, to rejoice in the possessIOn of a dlstmctlve Fach and the need to come to terms with Wittgenstein's account of the ~ature of their discipline (I use Fach, instead of "subject" or "area," because the... objection to the coherence theory of truth ("it cuts truth off from the world") and (b) recurring to our previous discussion of the Kantian roots of the notion of "conceptual framework." Consider first the traditional objection to coherence theories of truth which says that, although our only test of truth must be the coherence of our beliefs with one another, still the nature of truth must be "correspondence... belIefs for the notIOn of "the world." It reminds us of such coherence theorists as Royce, who claim that our notion of "the world" ~s just the notion of the ideally coherent contents of an ideally large mlI~d, or ~f the pragmatists' notion of "funded experience"those belIefs whIch are not at the moment being challenged, because they present no problems and no one has bothered to think of alternatives t? . class="bi x0 y0 w0 h0" alt="" Consequences of Pragmatism (Essays: 1972-1980) Richard Rorty I University of Minnesota Press Minneapolis Copyright 1982& apos;by the University of Minnesota. All rights. by the University of Minnesota Press, 2037 University Avenue Southeast, Minneapolis, MN 55455-3092 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper Sixth printing, 1994 Library of Congress. way of isolating the essence of Truth has, in fact, paid off. So the issue between him and the intuitive realist is a matter of what to make of the history of that practice-what to make of the history of Phi- losophy.