Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth: Philosophical Papers
- 1a. ed 20a. imp
- 226 páginas Impreso
Acknowledgments. Introduction: Antirepresentationalism, ethnocentrism, and liberalism. Part I: Solidarity or objectivity?. Science as solidarity. Is natural science a natural kind?. Pragmatism without method. Texts and lumps. Inquiry as recontextualization: An anti-dualist account of interpretation. Part II: Non-reductive physicalism. Pragmatism, Davidson and truth. Representation, social practise, and truth. Unfamiliar noises: Hesse and Davidson on metaphor. Part III: The priority of democracy to philosophy. Postmodernist bourgeois liberalism. On ethnocentrism: A reply to Clifford Geertz. Cosmopolitanism without emancipation: A response to Jean-François Lyotard. Index of names In this volume Rorty offers a Deweyan account of objectivity as intersubjectivity, one that drops claims about universal validity and instead focuses on utility for the purposes of a community. The sense in which the natural sciences are exemplary for inquiry is explicated in terms of the moral virtues of scientific communities rather than in terms of a special scientific method. The volume concludes with reflections on the relation of social democratic politics to philosophy.