Richard Rorty's realism

An examination of late Rorty shows that he does not abandon belief in an external world about which we can, and indeed must, acquire knowledge. His disapproval of the correspondence theory of truth does not involve the idea that anything other than local weather, for example, could falsify remarks a...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inMetaphilosophy Vol. 54; no. 2-3; pp. 341 - 351
Main Author Earle, William James
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Oxford Wiley Subscription Services, Inc 01.04.2023
Subjects
Cognition & reasoning
Philosophy of science
Pragmatism
Realism
Richard Rorty
Rorty, Richard
scientific progress
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Summary:An examination of late Rorty shows that he does not abandon belief in an external world about which we can, and indeed must, acquire knowledge. His disapproval of the correspondence theory of truth does not involve the idea that anything other than local weather, for example, could falsify remarks about local weather. It is just that once we get done looking out the window or, if we are outside, feeling the right kind of drops make contact with our skin, there is nothing else we can do, nothing better, to make ourselves more certain, more cognitively secure. One can see this in the detailed work that enables scientific progress. Science improves itself by doing more of the same. G. E. Moore's famous open question stays open only as a reminder that our fallibility never disappears and that our cognitive security is never better than pro tem. Rorty, as a faithful pragmatist and undogmatic meliorist, thinks this is perfectly O.K.
ISSN:0026-1068
1467-9973
DOI:10.1111/meta.12623