Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature RICHARD RORTY Princeton University Press Princeton, New Jersey Copyright © 1979 by Princeton University Press Published by Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey All Rights Reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Rorty, Richard. Philosophy and the mirror of nature. Includes index. 1. Philosophy. 2. Philosophy, Modern. 3. Mind and body. 4. Representation (Philosophy) 5. Analysis (Philosophy) 6. Civilization-Philosophy. I. Title. B53·R68 190 79- 84013 ISBN 0-691-07236-1 ISBN 0-691-02016-7 pbk. Publication of this book has been aided by a grant from The National Endowment for the Humanities This book has been composed in Linotype Baskerville Princeton University Press books are printed on acid-free paper and meet the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources Printed in the United States of America Second printing, with corrections, 1980 First Princeton Paperback printing, 1980 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 I I 10 TO M. V. R. When we think about the future of the world, we always have in mind its being at the place where it would be if it continued to move as we see it moving now. We do not realize that it moves not in a straight line, but in a curve, and that its direction constantly changes. Philosophy has made no progress? If somebody scratches where it itches, does that count as progress? If not, does that mean it wasn't an authentic scratch? Not an authentic itch? Couldn't this response to the stimulus go on for quite a long time until a remedy for itching is found? Wenn wir an die Zukunft der Welt denken, so meinen wir immer den Ort, wo sie sein wird, wenn sie so weiter Hiuft, wie wir sie jetzt laufen sehen, und denken nieht, da�s sie nieht gerade lauft, sondern in einer Kurve, und ihre Riehtung sieh konstant andert. (Ludwig Wittgenstein, Verrnischte Berner· kungen, Frankfurt, 1977, p. 14·) Die Philosophie hat keinen Fortschritt gemaeht? Wenn Einer kratzt, wo es ihn juckt, muss ein Fortschritt zu sehen sein? 1st es sonst kein echtes Kratzen, oder kein echtes Jucken? Und kann nieht diese Reaktion auf die Reizung lange Zeit so weitergehen , ehe ein Mittel gegen das Jucken gefunden wird? (Ibid., pp. 163-164.) Contents Preface xiii Introduction 3 PART ONE: Our Glassy Essence 15 CHAPTER I: The Invention of the Mind 17 1. CRITERIA OF THE MENTAL 17 2. THE FUNCTIONAL, THE PHENOMENAL, AND THE IMMATERIAL 22 3. THE DIVERSITY OF MIND-BODY PROBLEMS 32 4. MIND AS THE GRASP OF UNIVERSALS 38 5. ABILITY TO EXIST SEPARATELY FROM THE BODY 45 6. DUALISM AND "MIND-STUFF" 61 CHAPTER II: Persons Without Minds 70 1. THE ANTIPODEANS 70 2. PHENOMENAL PROPERTIES 78 3. INCORRIGIBILITY AND RAW FEELS 88 4. BEHAVIORISM 98 5. SKEPTICISM ABOUT OTHER MINDS 107 6. MATERIALISM WITHOUT MIND-BODY IDENTITY 114 7. EPISTEMOLOGY AND "THE PHILOSOPHY OF MIND" 125 PART TWO: Mirroring 129 CHAPTER III: The Idea of a "Theory of Knowledge" 131 ix CONTENTS ' 1. EPISTEMOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY S SELF-IMAGE 131 2. LOCKE'S CONFUSION OF EXPLANATION WITH JUSTIFICATION 139 3. KANT'S CONFUSION OF PREDICATION WITH SYNTHESIS 148 4. KNOWLEDGEAS NEEDING "FOUNDATIONS" 155 CHAPTER IV: Privileged Representations 165 1. APODICTIC TRUTH, PRIVILEGED REPRE- SENTATIONS, AND ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY 165 2. EPISTEMOLOGICAL BEHAVIORISM 173 3. PRE-LINGUISTIC AWARENESS 182 4. THE" 'IDEA' IDEA" 192 5. EPISTEMOLOGICAL BEHAVIORISM, PSYCHOLOGICALBEHAVIORISM, AND LANGUAGE 209 CHAPTER V: Ep istemology and Empirical Psychology 213 1. SUSPICIONS ABOUT PSYCHOLOGY 213 2. THE UNNATURALNESS OF EPISTEMOLOGY 221 3. PSYCHOLOGICALSTATES AS GENUINE EXPLANATIONS 230 4. PSYCHOLOGICALSTATES AS REPRESENTATIONS 244 CHAPTER VI: Epistemology and Philosophy of Language 257 1. PURE AND IMPUREPHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE 257 2. WHAT WERE OUR ANCESTORS TALKING ABOUT? 266 3. IDEALISM 273 4. REFERENCE 284 5. TRUTH WITHOUT M1RRORS 295 6. TRUTH, GOODNESS, AND RELATIVISM 306 X CONTENTS PART THREE: Philosophy CHAPTER VII: From Epistemology to Hermeneutics 315 1. COMMENSURATION AND CONVERSATION 315 2. KUHN AND INCOMMENSURABILITY 322 3. OBJECTIVITY AS CORRESPONDENCE AND AS AGREEMENT 333 4. SPIRIT AND NATURE 343 CHAPTER VIII: Philosophy Without Mirrors 357 1. HERMENEUTICS AND EDIFICATION 357 2. SYSTEMATIC PHILOSOPHY AND EDIFYING PHILOSOPHY 365 3. EDIFICATION, RELATIVISM, AND OBJECTIVE TRUTH 373 4. EDIFICATION AND NATURALISM' 379 5. PHILOSOPHY IN THE CONVERSATION OF MANKIND 389 Index 395 xi Preface ALMOST as soon as I began to study philosophy, I was im­ pressed by the way in which philosophical problems ap­ peared, disappeared, or changed shape, as a result of new assumptions or vocabularies. From Richard McKeon and Robert Brumbaugh I learned to view the history of philos­ ophy as a series, not of alternative solutions to the same problems, but of quite different sets of problems. From Rudolph Carnap and Carl Hempel I learned how pseudo­ problems could be revealed as such by restating them in the formal mode of speech. From Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss I learned how they could be so revealed by being translated into Whiteheadian or Hegelian terms. I was very fortunate in having these men as my teachers, but, for better or worse, I treated them all as saying the same thing: that a "philosophical problem" was a product of the unconscious adoption of assumptions built into the vocabu­ lary in which the problem was stated-assumptions which were to be questioned before the problem itself was taken seriously. Somewhat later on, I began to read the work of Wilfrid Sellars. Sellars's attack on the Myth of the Given seemed to me to render doubtful the assumptions behind most of modern philosophy. Still later, I began to take Quine'S skeptical approach to the language-fact distinction seriously, and to try to combine Quine'S point of view with Sellars's. Since then, I have been trying to isolate more of the as­ sumptions behind the problematic of modern philosophy, in the hope of generalizing and extending Sellars's and Quine's criticisms of traditional empiricism. Getting back to these assumptions, and making clear that they are op­ tional, I believed, would be "therapeutic" in the way in xiii PREFACE which Carnap's original dissolution of standard textbook problems was "therapeutic." This book is the result of that attempt. The book has been long in the making. Princeton Uni­ versity is remarkably generous with research time and sab­ baticals. so it is embarrassing to confess that without the further assistance of the American Council of Learned Societies and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foun­ dation I should probably never have written it. I began thinking out its plot while holding an ACLS Fellowship in 1969-1970, and wrote the bulk of the first draft while hold­ ing a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1973-1974. I am most grate­ ful to all three institutions for their assistance. Many people-students at Princeton and elsewhere, audi­ ences at papers given at various conferences, colleagues and friends-have read or listened to various drafts of various sections of this book. I made many changes of both sub­ stance and style in response to their objections, and am very grateful. I regret that my memory is too poor to list even the most important instances of such help, but I hope that here and there readers may recognize the beneficial results of their own comments. I do wish, however, to thank two peo­ ple-Michael Williams and Richard Bernstein-who made very helpful comments on the penultimate version of the entire book, as did an anonymous reader for the Princeton University Press. I am also grateful to Raymond Geuss, David Hoy, and JeffreyStout, who took time out to help me resolve last-minute doubts about the final chapter. Finally, I should like to thank Laura Bell, Pearl Cava­ naugh, Lee Ritins, Carol Roan, Sanford Thatcher, Jean Toll, and David Velleman for patient help in transforming what I wrote from rough copy into a printed volume. • • • • • Portions of Chapter IV appeared in Neue Hefte fur Philosophie 14 (1978). Portions of Chapter V appeared in Body, Mind and Method: Essays in Honor of Virgil C. xiv PREFACE Aldrich, ed. Donald F. Gustafson and Bangs L. Tapscott (Dordrecht, 1979). Other portions of that chapter appeared in Philosophical Studies 31 (1977). Portions of Chapter VII appeaJ;ed in Acta Philosophica Fennica, 1979. I am grateful to the editors and publishers concerned for permission to reprint this material. xv Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature Introduction PHILOSOPHERS usually think of their discipline as one which discusses perennial, eternal problems-problems which arise as soon as one reflects. Some of these concern the dif­ ference between human beings and other beings, and are crystallized in questions concerning the relation between the mind and the body. Other problems concern the legitimation of claims to .know, and are crystallized in questions concern­ ing the "foundations" of knowledge. To discover these foun­ dations is to discover something about the mind, and con­ versely. Philosophy as a discipline thus sees itself as the attempt to underwrite or debunk claims to knowledge made by science, morality, art, or religion. It purports to do this on the basis of its special understanding of the nature of knowledge and of mind. Philosophy can be foundational in respect to the rest of culture because culture is the as­ semblage of claims to knowledge, and philosophy adjudi­ cates such claims. It can do so because it understands the foundations of knowledge, and it finds these foundations in a study of man-as-knower, of the "mental processes" or the "activity of representation" which make knowledge possi­ ble.