A CRITIQUE OF RICHARD RORTY AND HIS OBJECTIONS TO

"TECHNICAL" REALISM

by

Shandon L. Guthrie

INTRODUCTION

Post-Modern philosopher Richard Rorty is perhaps one of the most well known American pragmatists still living today. In this paper, I will be looking at Rorty's essay, "Pragmatism and Philosophy."⁽¹⁾ In this work, Rorty counters the particular notion of technical realism as defended by such philosophers as Hilary Putnam and Michael Dummett. Technical realism is defined by Rorty as pertaining to a threefold definition:

(1) the view that recent, technical developments in the

philosophy of language have raised doubt about traditional

pragmatist criticisms of the "correspondence theory of

truth," . . . (2) the sense that the "depth," the human sig-

nificance, of the traditional textbook "problems of philosophy"

has been underestimated, that pragmatists have lumped real

problems together with pseudo-problems in a feckless orgy

of "dissolution"; (3) the sense that something important

would be lost if Philosophy as an autonomous discipline, as

a Fach, were to fade from cultural scene . . .⁽²⁾

Points (1) and (2) refer to some negative commitment against pragmatism and point (3) suggests that the world would somehow suffer if Platonic realism were untrue.⁽³⁾ In his essay, Rorty defends his notion of pragmatism against technical realism by countering the objections given by various realists. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the objections to pragmatism given by Putnam and Dummett and to evaluate Rorty's responses to them.

HILARY PUTNAM

Hilary Putnam has suggested that pragmatism, or antirealism, is simply an "intra-theoretic notion." Pragmatism merely plays by the rules given by a certain accepted notion of truth. Consider:

The trouble is that for a strong antirealist, truth makes no

sense except as an intra-theoretic notion. . . in the sense of

a "redundancy theory" [i.e., a theory according to which

"S is true" means exactly, only, what "S" means] but he does

not have the notion of truth and reference available extra-

theoretically. But extension [reference] is tied to the notion

of truth. The extension of a term is just what the term is

true of. Rather than try to retain the notion of truth via an

awkward operationalism, the antirealist should reject the notion

of extension as he does the notion of truth (in any extra-

theoretic sense). Like Dewey, he can fall back on a notion

of "warranted assertability" instead of truth . . . .⁽⁴⁾

The main contention for Putnam is: Is truth extra-theoretical? The objection to pragmatism is seen in the view that the pragmatist must dismiss any notion of truth-as-reference.

Rorty responds to Putnam by suggesting that "it is not clear what data the philosophy of language must explain." According to Rorty, a problem-solving strategy is indicative of realism since a correlation to the world would yield accurate success, and this is seemingly questioned in pragmatism since intentionality does not exist (i.e. pragmatism does not assert something true of something else). Rorty retorts with, "How, pragmatists rejoin, does that count as an explanation?"⁽⁵⁾ Rorty further suggests that "truth" as objective simply confuses our beliefs with actual existence. He is simply requesting to "see" what connects sentences with the world itself (e.g. what causal apparatus exists to make sentences symbols of objects in the world?).

There are a couple of things that can be stated in response to Rorty. First, it is not clear that one must make sentences refer to some property in the world. Indeed, one word may represent a collection of properties while the word itself carries no intrinsic ontological status. For example, realism can be seen as a correspondence theory if I say "Fido is a brown dog." However, the problem is exemplified in the statement, "the average family has 2.5 children."⁽⁶⁾ Grammatically, the referring terms "Fido" and "the average family" function the same. However, when we investigate the matter further we see that "the average family" is a representation of a network of properties and that "the average family" refers to "add the total number of children and divide by the total number of families and you get 2.5." Such semantic correspondence also sees its probelms in transfinite mathematics. For example, an infinite number of Ohms in a circuit does not correspond to the statement "The circuit is open." The two are not the same. A multimeter may designate a measurement of infinite resistance, but, in reality, the circuit is merely "open" (meaning that a wire somewhere is not making contact with another to complete the circuit). Secondly, if it can be seen that sentences usually correspond to the world itself, then it seems to follow that such a relationship entails the notion of explanation. Asking why, in a pragmatic sense, seems to beg the question by assuming that a specific paradigm contains a consistent set of rules that all persons must follow. But why should we follow these rules and concepts? To provide pragmatic paradigmatic answers to questions of explanation seems to either extend the problem to other sentences or press one step closer to technical realism.

MICHAEL DUMMETT

Michael Dummett, according to Rorty, "has suggested that a lot of traditional issues in the area of the pragmatist-realist debate can be clarified by the technical apparatus of philosophy of language" in the concept of bivalence.⁽⁷⁾ "Bivalence" is a familiar reconstruction of the logical Law of Non-Contradiction in relation to truth (i.e. something that claims to be true cannot be false at the same time). For Dummett, pragmatic statements are devoid of bivalence while realism is laced with it.

Rorty responds by stating that the bivalence objection works only if the pragmatist is "a quasi-idealist metaphysician who is ontologically committed only to ideas or sentences, and does not believe that there is anything 'out there' which makes any sort of statement true."⁽⁸⁾ Instead, Rorty states:

[The pragmatist] does not think of himself as any kind of a

metaphysician, because he does not understand the notion

of "there being _____ out there" (except in the literal sense

of "out there" in which it means "at a position in space").⁽⁹⁾

Secondly, Rorty states that Dummett's view is too obscure since it entails an unclear comparison of one "kind of meaning" with another and what it would entail to possess "intuitions" about the presence of bivalence of these "kinds." For Rorty, the intuitionist assumptions of truth is precisely what the pragmatist is departing from. This creates problems when asking questions such as, "Are you really in love, or merely inflamed by passion?"

I think there are a couple of things that can be stated against Rorty here. First, Rorty's position of "the world out there" is unclear. In the above passage, he seems to suggest that a position demanding "there being _____ out there" is incorrect. Yet he accepts the idea that something that exists does so "in space."⁽¹⁰⁾ This seems to denote some type of objective epistemology. Secondly, one cannot escape from all intuitionist notions of reality. That is, there will always be something that we adhere to as a frame of reference. If I am talking to someone else, there is an intuition that my communication is being directed at someone whether they are really there or not. Many of us are not ready to make the sacrifice that our intuitions are misleading a priori. It seems to be just the opposite that makes sense to me. As for the question, "Are you really in love, or merely inflamed by passion?" it seems that if one defines love by the antecedent notion of inflamed by passion, then the question is redundant. For those who attach different definitions to these terms (as I do), then the question of correspondence is maintained (that is, one is now asking, "Which property exists in you: love or passion?"). This makes perfect sense on a realist notion. Rorty simply waves away the presence of metaphysically objective properties by posing difficulties with definitions, but ambiguity in no way means that a position on the matter is incorrect.

CONCLUSION

In this paper we saw two technical realist philosophers who objected to the theory of pragmatism. Hilary Putnam objected to pragmatism on grounds that it failed to maintain extra-theoretical entities. Michael Dummett objected to pragmatism by suggesting that it failed to consider the bivalence of sentences. We saw that pragmatist Richard Rorty objected to Putnam's and Dummett's statements and that Rorty's position did not fair well in light of philosophical scrutiny. I feel that more can be said on the subject, but an examination of realism (one that requires caution and allowances for exceptions) needs to be pursued as a better metaphysical world view.

END NOTES

1. Contemporary Approaches to Philosophy, Paul Moser and Dwayne Mulder, eds., (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1994), pp. 403-33.

2. Ibid., p. 410.

3. Platonic realism, which Rorty calls "Philosophy" as opposed to "philosophy," deals with the idea that sentences always represent some Form or Reality in the "real world."

4. Ibid., p. 412.

5. Ibid., p. 413.

6. J.P. Moreland cites these examples in his work, Christianity and the Nature of Science (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1989), p. 144.

7. Rorty, "Pragmatism," pp. 414-5.

8. Ibid., p. 415.

9. Ibid.

10. Ibid.