Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature

"Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature" is Richard Rorty's magnum opus, his manifesto for a new philosophy and a new philosophical language. Taking aim at some thousands of years of philosophical tradition, Rorty argues that the concept of representation ought to be given up entirely, and with it all epistemology and all metaphysics. A big part of the book consists of a very in-depth discussion of the traditions in epistemology and metaphysics (including ontology), and where the idea of the point of epistemology comes from in the first place. Our intuitions of our minds as "Mirrors of Nature", reflecting the Real out there in whatever imperfect way it impresses itself upon us, are traced by Rorty to the Cartesian revolution in philosophy. The whole ensemble of philosophical thought from Descartes (but inspired already by Plato), via Locke, Spinoza, Kant all the way to Frege, Russell and the early Wittgenstein and modern "analytical philosophy" is to blame for this popular view, but Rorty launches a convincing and masterfully written attack on precisely this view. Epistemology, the 'linguistic turn', ontology, and so on, Rorty argues, have never given an adequate answer to what it means exactly to say that an idea or meaning "represents" reality, nor how we would know this; and, what's worse, the problem itself is really a non-problem, since we can simply do entirely without talk in terms of truth and representation, and we will be just as able to solve the problems confronting us in daily life. Much of the book is particularly focused on attacking the concept that the linguistic turn in philosophy has provided or can provide us with a better 'foundation for truth' than earlier attempts (Kant, Hegel, etc.). This is a highly abstract and technical discussion, where Rorty relies strongly on the counter-tradition of Quine, Sellars, and the late Wittgenstein. Thorough knowledge of all these writers and the issues in philosophy of language are required to understand this, though if you do, it is very rewarding. Rorty subsequently goes on from his conclusions on the redundancy of the linguistic turn to found on this a general "pragmatist" approach to philosophy. Working with Davidson's concept that a majority of things we know cannot be false (since our concepts of true and false rely on context), as well as Dewey's dictum that whatever is not a problem in reality cannot be a problem in philosophy, he passionately and intelligently shows that we can do without ANY foundation for truth at all. Moreover, this also entails that the special position of philosophy as guardian of 'truth' or 'rationality' or the 'a priori synthetic' or other ways to formulate the "permitted ways of talking" disappears entirely, hopefully ending these philosophers' self-delusions so carefully constructed since Kant. Instead, Rorty proposes that we see philosophy as just another way of talking about problems we face in life, similar to and equal with poetry, literature, but a

Richard Rorty is not exactly an obscure figure; and although his time of maximum exposure is probably a decade past, "Rortian" ideas still inform much of the educated world's understanding of philosophy and its relation to other fields of inquiry and culture. *Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature* is interesting today, perhaps *in spite* of the Rorty fad, because it contains much which will surprise the person with a casual acquaintance with such tropes. This is not the work of a social-democratic Nowhere Man attempting to resurrect dead cultural and political standpoints, but someone with a lively understanding of *la conjoncture* in analytic philosophy: the book successfully and elegantly engages with analytic programs that were most contemporary at the time of its writing, and remain influential even today. In this it notably builds on Rorty's period of "normal science", the essays in philosophy of mind he wrote during the '60s (which helped establish the position of "eliminative materialism"). Here Rorty reassesses this work in light of what has since come to seem like an inescapable revolution in analytic philosophy, the metaphysical conclusions derived from modal logic by Kripke and others. Rorty's treatment of Kripkeanism is one of the most exciting parts of the book, but there is some competition from his charitable and capable assessment of Fodor's philosophy of psychology and its consequences for our philosophical practice generally. Rorty is also a talented expositor of Donald Davidson, who figures as an ally in this book for pursuing a "pure" research program with fewer "metaphysical" consequences than the work of Putnam: Davidsonianism, like much else, receives a relatively effortless yet suitably careful treatment, making this a suitable work for someone who wants to learn more about the general layout of analytic philosophy. Someone familiar with the book, or with thumbnail sketches of Rorty, might object to this assessment: surely the point of the book is its sweeping pragmatist metaphilosophy, vindicating "antifoundationalist" positions on everything from phenomenal consciousness to human rights. Well, as mentioned in the book much of this ground was already covered by others (Dewey's *The Quest For Certainty* is an especially notable precursor), and in my opinion the concluding argument that philosophy ought to move from technical work to an Oakeshottean "conversation" about what is important to us as a culture is somewhat of a comedown after the able and exciting argumentation of the rest of the book. This section presages much of the way Rorty would continue on, but there is really no reason at all to throw bad money after good; a suitable understanding of this fine book should relieve you of the need to "advance" to Rorty's tiresome cultural politics.

I read this book cover to cover back in 1979 when it first came out. I was 21 and an upper-level philosophy undergrad at the University of Houston. Bredo Johnsen led a seminar in which we discussed the book, some of whose arguments were already legendary from the world of "samizdat" philosophy publishing and academic gossip. I was deciding at the time that I liked philosophy and wanted to do it for a living if somehow I could, but I didn't really like the way that the American mainstream was heading. This was the time of Kripke and Putnam version 4.0, metaphysical realists who backed up their essentialism with logical proofs--though Putnam was already showing signs that he was about to switch to a new operating system. The philosophers I had liked best in my undergrad studies had been the ancient Skeptics, the pragmatists (neo- and paleo-), and the later Wittgenstein. Those figures presented what seemed to me understandable, stylish, ingenious, and above all practically helpful ways of thinking about knowledge, humanity, and morality. But neo-medievalists like Kripke were fighting those ideas as hard as they could, providing backup to all the sticks-in-the-mud who had never liked that all arty Quine and Goodman stuff anyway. American philosophy was going to stay logical and technically difficult; it would remain a professional field separate from--and, by and large, of little importance to--other kinds of inquiry. Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature disturbed the peace of the cloister. It dealt with all the formidable logical issues in a way nobody expected: namely, historically. It showed how much of the difficult logical reasoning in the philosophy journals was careful reinvention of . . . well, I almost said reinvention of the wheel, but that's not the right metaphor. The wheel is actually good for something. (I'm kidding! A little. Sort-of.) Rorty showed the origins of the modern mind-body, fact-value, and language/non-language distinctions in larger historical moral and political battles. He showed how pointless those distinctions were apart from those long-since-concluded struggles, and he reminded academic philosophers how those distinctions had already been thoroughly criticized by pragmatic and other historically-minded thinkers. Rorty is criticized as a relativist and an "anti-realist," but this is precisely wrong. What he is above all is realistic--about where philosophical problems have come from and what we have to do to be rid of them. PMN focuses our attention on the local, the contingent, and what changes and has changed over time; and by doing so it has become a book of long-lasting value. Twenty-five years and counting. That's short in philosophical terms, but I suspect that in the end the value of this book will be more enduring than that of most reasoning about eternal necessity.

Let's be honest, the latter half of the 20th century has produced only a handful of important works of philosophy. This is certainly one of them. For those of us who were students of philosophy in the early eighties, toiling away in the less-than-abundant vineyards of the analytical tradition, this book came as a revelation and a liberation.

Rorty is a (post-?)modern Dewey: clear, pragmatic and historical. His analysis of classical philosophical problems is somewhat Wittgensteinian in spirit, but lacks the enigmatic halo so characteristic in the writings of the latter. Strongly recommended for beginners and philosophy majors who are struggling to make sense of Locke, Hume, Kant and the representational approach in the philosophy of mind. Very effective if you understand philosophical problems better after they are presented to you in their original socio-historical context.