Richard Rorty

Philosopher Richard Rorty has died (via Kieran Healy). I can't remember how it is I came to be reading a copy of Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. Certainly, it wasn't assigned for any of the classes I took. However it came to be, I was sufficiently influenced by Rorty's thinking to decide that even though I really enjoyed taking philosophy classes, I didn't really think "doing philosophy" was a worthwhile activity.

To people who've never studied philosophy, the book would probably seem pointless, but Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity is pitched at a generalist audience and is also excellent.

Comments

Ah, crap.

I had the same journey as you, Matt. After two years of studying philosophy, Rorty sufficiently convinced me that the kinds of answers most of us wish to find just aren't possible. While this certainly doesn't make Philosophy pointless and uninteresting, I couldn't see myself continuing within the American tradition of analytic philosophy.

For the general reader, I recommend his Consequences of Pragmatism and Philosophy and Social Hope, neither of which require much previous exposure to philosophy to read.

Posted by brian | June 9, 2007 7:00 PM

The obvious recommendation is Achieving Our Country. It really straightened me out. I read it in 1999, and boy did it arm and inoculate me for the Nader temptation.

From that I become a Rorty fan and tried to get into him, but it seemed to me he was an anti-philosopher, and it didn't take long for him to convince me. The only philosophy that makes sense to me is skepticism, and just plain old science. So that makes three of us.

Posted by chris m. | June 9, 2007 7:05 PM

I find almost all of Rorty's more radical positions to be quite wrong-headed, but Rorty was, from what what people have told me, an excellent teacher, mentor, and person. And that's more important.

Posted by Patrick | June 9, 2007 7:19 PM

Matt,
Thanks for posting this. Rorty was a personal hero, though his name was mud in most philosophy departments due to his skeptical views about the whole metaphysical enterprise. Can't have anyone undermining the profession now, can we? The armchairs are awfully comfortable. Contingency is definitely the place to start, though the collections of philosophical essays are also sharp as well. He will be missed.

Posted by bpjetter | June 9, 2007 7:21 PM

My favorite Rorty quote is from his November 1999 Atlantic Monthly article "Phony Science Wars:"

"... 'the homosexual,' 'the Negro,' and 'the female' are best seen not as inevitable classifications of human beings but rather as inventions that have done more harm than good."

I've often reflected since then on how "the female" is not an inevitable classification of human beings.

http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/99nov/9911sciencewars.htm

Posted by Steve Sailer | June 9, 2007 7:34 PM

Rorty was indeed an interesting thinker - and even significantly moreso as a lecturer than in writing.

In response to bpjetter, Rorty had well-thought out reasons for thinking the "metaphysical enterprise" was a dead-end. Though he sometimes let himself slip into brash sociology-of-philosophy talk, he generally didn't. In particular, it is simply silly to think that Rorty was rejected by most analytic philosophers because he represented a threat to their cushy academic gigs. A much more plausible explanation is that they disagreed with him on substantive grounds, and the widespread agreement in the anti-Rorty sentiment is fully explained by the fact that... if you agree with Rorty, you probably don't end up wanting to be a professional philosopher. Case in point, our distinguished ex-philosopher host.

Posted by Matthew | June 9, 2007 7:34 PM

I've heard he was a nice guy. About his epistemology, he was in my opinion as it were born into a dead-end approach.

Posted by Gary Sugar | June 9, 2007 8:08 PM

Matt,
I fail to see the distinction between silly and substantive. If, like you and I, everyone agreed with Rorty, philosophy departments would soon disappear and college students would be reading more comparative literature and less high-minded theories about categorical imperatives and the conditions of possibility. If you enjoy the field in which you're engaged and the position you've worked hard to obtain, you do not take kindly to others who point out that the process is futile: ie., the 28% who continue to defend Bush. But perhaps you are right - there must be an environment of real substance, devoid of politics.
On a personal note, I discovered Rorty about 15 years ago meandering through the stacks while trying to figure out Derrida, whom I believed was a Transcendental Idealist ala Berkeley, but in disguise. And there was a Rorty essay outlining the same position. Perhaps we all look for like-minded thinkers, for someone who corroborates our view of the world with whom we can feel some solidarity. Certainly, filmmakers and authors who create art with which I can nod in agreement, no matter how dark the perspective, bring me great pleasure. I would also like to think this confluence is based upon "real" substance, but sometimes I think it is just silly, too.

Posted by bpjetter | June 9, 2007 8:10 PM

bpjetter -
Just to be clear, I am not Yglesias. I am a different Matthew, who is still in philosophy. Though I'd be happy to ride on Yglesias' coat-tails of credibility.

Posted by Matthew | June 9, 2007 8:23 PM

I've often reflected since then on how "the female" is not an inevitable classification of human beings.

Anti-foundationalism is a critique of reason, not observation. Rorty is not suggesting that there doesn't exist a physical difference between men and women, but rather that the cognitive baggage that comes with that designation-- the ideological, the intellectual, the social, the cultural-- are all finally products of social consensus. This does not make the feminine any more or less real; it simply reminds us that our ideas about femininity are human made.

The argument you are making, I think, is a form of the most boring and insipid "gotcha" attacks on post-whatever; "Are you saying this table isn't real? Is this table a social construct?" Yeah, bravo. You've cracked the case.

Posted by Freddie | June 9, 2007 8:30 PM

One Matt is as good as another. (A Rortyan joke, if ever there was one.) :>)

Posted by bpjetter | June 9, 2007 8:30 PM

Holyjesuscrap.

Are Brandom's remarks out yet?

Posted by sherifffruitfly | June 9, 2007 8:31 PM

Freddie -

I'm pretty sure Steve knows exactly what you just posted; he was just being...Steve Sailer, I guess. There's a reason Steve - who, after all, spends a lot of time thinking about race (ahem) - didn't comment on the Negro or the homosexual; he clearly gets the point, which means he can clearly see how it can be analogized to "the female". But if you spend some time developing the argument for them, most people can come around somewhat to the uninevitability of "the Negro" or "the homosexual," but "the female" would (will?) take a lot more persuading. I suppose I'm accusing Sailer of being intelligent and disingenuous, rather than unimaginative yet honest; I'm not sure which is the more charitable assumption to make.

Posted by Quarterican | June 9, 2007 8:41 PM

One way to enjoy philosophy while avoiding the tedious and pointless stuff is skip a lot of the 20th Century philosophers. I took some great classes in college about the work of Aristotle, Spinoza, Descartes, Leibniz.

Posted by Fred | June 9, 2007 8:42 PM

For a time I, and some of my friends, believed that Rorty's criticism might have changed what was being done in places called philosophy departments into something more interesting. Didn't happen and I'm still pissed.

Once someone is thoroughly socioglized in a discipline, and this includes having a job or hopes of a job and also includes enjoying working in the discipline, it's very hard for them to pay attention to criticisms.

Economists and philosophers seem to feel that calling criticisms "sociological" is a refutation.

Posted by John Emerson | June 9, 2007 8:48 PM

I'm sorry to hear about this. I do hope his death stirs some discussion about the more accessible books he published towards the end of his life--namely "Philosophy and Social Hope" and "Acheiving Our Country". Both were riveting reads for me and both seemed to consciously buck the current fashions in philosophy and comp lit. It is significant that he ended up in a Comp Lit department at Stanford, more or less out of professional philosophy.

A cosmopolitan from conviction (versed in continental traditions) whose voice remained distinctly American at the same time. He will be missed.

Posted by scott | June 9, 2007 9:04 PM

John,

"For a time I, and some of my friends, believed that Rorty's criticism might have changed what was being done in places called philosophy departments into something more interesting. Didn't happen and I'm still pissed."

False. It had radical repercussions at Pitt, and also with Putnam, Dummett, and other luminaries. They're of course fighting an uphill battle, against the "Princeton style", but hey - you fight the fights worth fighting, not necessarily those you think you can win.

Posted by sherifffruitfly | June 9, 2007 9:07 PM

And btw - any suggestion of reading anything before (stronger: other than) PMN is idiotic. Pandering to idiocy via "accessibility" of Rorty's works is pathetic. CIS is good too, as are many other works; but they all take place against the backdrop of PMN.

Posted by sherifffruitfly | June 9, 2007 9:10 PM

Putnam is 81 and won't be around long either, and I've heard people speak dismissively of him too. But I admit I'm not familiar with the biz.

Posted by John Emerson | June 9, 2007 9:16 PM

Yep, that's why I don't like Rorty. Because if I didn't think philosophy was worthwhile, then I would have to waste my life doing something that made a lot more money and garnered a lot more prestige. Clearly, it is only my double secret false consciousness that allows me to sincerely yet spuriously claim that one might reasonably think that many of Rorty's more radical claims about the discipline are overblown (and at worse, incoherent and self-refuting). Teh cognitive dissonance...it burns!

Of course, Rorty made quite a splash, collecting fame, prestige, and a "cushy" academic position by writing what he did, but I am certain he didn't have any double secret false consciousness. Creating just-so sociological arguments for people's positions in lieu of discussing the substance is fun!

Or perhaps...people might be engaging in good faith having reasonable disagreements about complex topics...

Nah, I have seen the light. Off to law school.

(Oh, and P.S., evolutionary biology would certainly disappear as an academic discipline if we were all Young Earth Creationists, does this mean that evolutionary biologists lack good reason to reject Young Earth Creationism?)

Posted by Patrick | June 9, 2007 9:38 PM

John, Putnam generally gets respect from professional philosophers that Rorty was denied, though the upshot of his philosophical positions probably isn't too far from that of Rorty's, or so I gather (I'm no expert in either). Some of this, I think, is a function of style, though I don't mean by saying that to excuse the sometimes ridiculously rude response Rorty garnered.

I had Rorty and Putnam and related figures, including some of their disciples, recommened and even assigned in graduate school. The discipline has changed in the last thirty years, and Rorty had a lot to do with that. I wouldn't argue with you that it needs to change more.

Posted by Brandon Claycomb | June 9, 2007 9:40 PM

Rorty wasn't trying to destroy philosophy or ruin your life, Patrick. In what I've read, he didn't even object to philosophy as it's done. He just thought it should be broader and less restrictive, and he was critical of specific tendencies.

"Sociological" is a smear word for you types, isn't it? And WTF does Young Earth Creationism have to do with anything? I thought you guys were specialists in argument.

Posted by John Emerson | June 9, 2007 9:46 PM

Patrick,

"Yep, that's why I don't like Rorty. Because if I didn't think philosophy was worthwhile, then I would have to waste my life doing something that made a lot more money and garnered a lot more prestige."

100% misses the point, which is: what *counts as* philosophy is what's under dispute.

Primarily under discussion are the primary ways of thinking about the philosphical landscape: the Carnap/Hempel.../Kripke/Lewis/Princeton style, and then there's the Hegel/Investigations-Wittgenstein/Kuhn/Rorty/Sellars/Brandom/McDowell style.

(Quine variously plays both sides, in case anyone wondered - but his unanimously agreed upon most important work is solidly on the Rorty side.)

The former style is dominant, and is what Rorty has in mind when he says things like "philsophers would find themselves with nothing to do". Rorty made explicit the desirability for a *reconstrual* of philosophy - *not* its eradication.

Posted by sherifffruitfly | June 9, 2007 9:54 PM

Hey Sherrif, I'm not familiar with the term "Princeton style." Could you elaborate?

Posted by Brandon Claycomb | June 9, 2007 10:23 PM

"
I've often reflected since then on how "the female" is not an inevitable classification of human beings.

Anti-foundationalism is a critique of reason, not observation. Rorty is not suggesting that there doesn't exist a physical difference between men and women, but rather that the cognitive baggage that comes with that designation-- the ideological, the intellectual, the social, the cultural-- are all finally products of social consensus. This does not make the feminine any more or less real; it simply reminds us that our ideas about femininity are human made.
"

I don't think this is quite acceptable.
What Rorty wants to say is that the difference between being man or being woman should imply as little as the difference between being left or right handed, or having brown vs green eyes.
The problem, of course, is that being a man or woman does NOT imply just that little. There are substantial biological differences between men and women, that would be apparent to Martians. Beyond the Martians, there are substantial differences in the way human brains are wired as to what these categories mean to us, in just the same way that, to our lives and minds, light is not just one more part of the electromagnetic spectrum, no different from teraherz radiation.

There is plenty of interesting work to be done in this field, for example it is interesting, if not practical, to try to figure out just what aspects of the man-woman distinction are hard-wired, which are learned through surrounding culture, which are learned through language, which are learned from family vs friends vs the media, etc etc. But stating a position that is clearly fallacious is not a useful way to start the discussion.
(I have, on the other hand, a whole lot more sympathy for the claim that "the negro" and "the homosexual" are cultural constructs; statements that I think can be justified simply within the western historical experience, without even bothering to examine other cultures.)

Posted by Maynard Handley | June 9, 2007 10:33 PM

I just made the term up, to describe the manner in which philosophizing is/was done and taught at Princeton (a la Kripke and Lewis). My (philosophy) grad schooling was about 10 years ago, so things may have changed (certainly Kripke is no longer there).

Possibly you've heard of terms like "systematic philosophy" or "analytic philosophy". That's more or less what I'm pointing at. Or, along another dimension, some examples would be the stylistic/methodological difference between either of:

Hempel/Kuhn
Kant/Hegel
Tractatus Wittgenstein/PI-Wittgenstein
Kripke/Sellars

Or along yet another dimension, the sort of philosopher who thinks in terms of "-isms" (foundationalISM, reductionISM, etc. ad nauseum) is almost certain (measure theory) to be a "Princeton style) philosopher. It doesn't especially matter what the *stance* is, but rather the manner in which one construes the conversation.

Or: The way philosophy is done in the bigtime American schools except for Pitt. (My knowledge might be dated on this, however.)

Posted by sherifffruitfly | June 9, 2007 10:39 PM

Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity . . . which poses the question, "What does it mean if it rains on Lech Walesa's wedding day?" . . .

Posted by rea | June 9, 2007 10:46 PM

Sherrifff, thanks.

Rea, kudos.

Posted by Brandon Claycomb | June 9, 2007 10:58 PM

False. It had radical repercussions at Pitt, and also with Putnam, Dummett, and other luminaries. They're of course fighting an uphill battle, against the "Princeton style", but hey - you fight the fights worth fighting, not necessarily those you think you can win.

The distinction between Pitt-style philosophy and Princeton-style philosophy is as overblown as the analytic/continental divide (well, there's probably more substance to the latter). The two coexist easily enough; Pitt has several very-Princeton-style recent Princeton grads on its faculty now, and they respect and admire and take seriously McDowell and Thompson and the Pitt-style folks, and indeed work on the same subjects and have little difficulty communicating across the so-called divide.

Indeed, Pitt has always been very strong in philosophy of science and philosophical logic, as it continues to be. Both as respectably "analytic" as you like. No one minds that there are also quietists, late-Wittgensteinians, pragmatists, etc. These are all just varieties of philosopher. If there is a substantive difference in Pitt and Princeton's programs, I would say that it is mainly that the history of philosophy receives more attention at Pitt (excepting the classical period), rather than that it receives attention of a qualitatively different sort. There is probably also a somewhat more congenial attitude to taking Hegel seriously than there is elsewhere. Pitt also had a professor in the 90s (now at Chicago) who liked to write about Heidegger, which was frowned upon by some of the older, German expatriate members of the faculty (for political reasons).

Nevertheless, there is a reason that Pitt is always near the top of the Leiter report rankings despite claims of "anti-continental bias" on the part of the report.

I don't deny that there is actually something of a self-conception, especially among students at Pitt, that there is a more fundamental difference. But I think it doesn't stand up to scrutiny, and that even many who go in for this self-conception would admit it (speaking as one of those...).

Posted by pgs | June 9, 2007 11:06 PM

P.S., sherifffruitfly lists Hempel on the Princeton side of the divide. Hempel was at Pitt from 1977-1985 (and at Princeton before then).

Posted by pgs | June 9, 2007 11:09 PM

pgs,

"The distinction between Pitt-style philosophy and Princeton-style philosophy is as overblown as the analytic/continental divide (well, there's probably more substance to the latter)."

LOL!

(1) Why did Rorty *leave* Princeton? (The answer is the primary reason I use the moniker "Princeton style").

(2) Puts me in mind of a talk I went to by David Lewis (back when his mereology book came out). Belnap asked him some question involving a conditional. Lewis began his answer by saying "Well, I'm in Pittsburgh now, so you had better tell me exactly what that conditional *means*". LOL!

(3) It's just a name for a distinction; if you don't like it, fine. To go further and reject the existence of the distinction *itself*, well, this is America I suppose.

(4) A single data point (Hempel's Pitt career) makes not one whit of difference when talking about an overall style/approach. The physical location is irrelevant - it's the mindset that I'm pointing at.

(5) I might be dated. My familiarity with these issues is from about a decade ago. It's perfectly possible that things have changed substantially since then. However, if Brandom and McDowell are still there, then there is a severe upper limit on just how much things could have changed there.

"Indeed, Pitt has always been very strong in philosophy of science and philosophical logic..."

Only if "always" means something like "since they raided Minnesota's department in the 60's".

Posted by sherifffruitfly | June 9, 2007 11:24 PM

I wasn't responding to you sheriff. I was responding to this:

"Rorty was a personal hero, though his name was mud in most philosophy departments due to his skeptical views about the whole metaphysical enterprise. Can't have anyone undermining the profession now, can we? The armchairs are awfully comfortable."

The same person then asserted in a later post that opposition to Rorty was merely the result of his challenge to the "comfortable" position of philosophers. That's what I was responding to, not your posts.

As for your history of philosophy, I don't quite get the claim you are making. It seems like you are construing Rorty's position so broadly that really it is anything that is not a particularly narrow subset of phil language/metaphysics. He is on the side of McDowell/Quine/kitchen sink. Quine's "Two Dogmas" was certainly more influential in the demise of conceptual analysis that anything Rorty wrote. Ordinary language philosophy was already dead.

Kuhn and Hempel were not particularly far apart, or at least Hempel didn't think so. There is a difference, but it is easily exaggerated. And Carnap's discussion of language games isn't that far off either, though I don't know too much about that I will readily admit.

And where would you put Harvard's department at the time with Putnam, Dreben, Quine, Cavell, Goldfarb, and Moran? On the "non-analytic" side? That would seem problematic.

All that said, I am sympathetic that there is a particularly "hardcore" kind of analytic philosophy that has a certain kind of cache, but I don't have a good definition.

As for you John, in the posts above someone was talking about how people who are convinced by Rorty would not become philosophers, and as a result, that might explain why there is a strong anti-Rorty bias. I wasn't saying "sociological" was a dirty word or anything like that. I was merely suggesting three things: a) the sociological explanation for anti-Rorty bias (that it was a self-interested move by philosophers, for example) was not particularly well-established b) could be equally turned against those who are pro-Rorty and c) didn't really get us anywhere at all since sociological discussions don't usually get at the soundness or unsoundness of the arguments.

"You only believe that because you are middle-class/black/gay/male/philosopher etc" might very well be true, but the arguments may be good nonetheless. And, que horror, people might just have reasonable disagreements that are a matter of substance and not of social position. Or more likely, disagreements are a combination of both.

This is where Young Earth Creationism comes in. The reasons for the rejection of Young Earth Creationism in biological circles almost certainly include "sociological ones." But that seems consistent with biologists having a good reasons for that rejection. Substantive and reasonable good faith disputes are consistent with their being sociological pressures. That's the point I was making.

Posted by Patrick | June 10, 2007 12:03 AM

The bit about Hempel wasn't really meant to be a significant piece of evidence, just some trivia...

By "always" I mean since Pitt has had a noteworthy philosophy department. Naturally I don't mean to imply that Pitt was great from the moment it was founded, or before.

Brandom and McDowell are both still at Pitt. McDowell certainly has an outsized influence on the perception of what goes on at Pitt. But he's just one man, and one who is thoroughly versed in "Princeton-style" philosophy. One of his current students (a friend of mine) is writing a dissertation that draws heavily on the work of both Michael Thompson (probably the best actual example of the "Pitt-style", such as it is) and Timothy Williamson, of all people. One of his other committee members is Cian Dorr, a relatively recent Princeton grad (tenured by now, though) who exemplifies the "Princeton-style" if anyone does. My point is that, insofar as there is a distinction, there isn't much tension there. The two aren't really set in opposition to one another, as your

They're of course fighting an uphill battle, against the "Princeton style", but hey - you fight the fights worth fighting, not necessarily those you think you can win.

makes it seem. Of course, some people disagree with some of McDowell's views, and McDowell disagrees with lots of people. I don't think very many people have a strong sense that what they're doing is substantively different, or that they are engaged in different projects, speaking very broadly (this is not to say that philosophers don't have different interests, like mereology or metaethics).

Brandom is much more Princeton-friendly than McDowell. I could say some things about why he might play up his reputation as something of an outsider who straddles the analytic/continental divide, but I don't want to speculate too much about the contents of other minds.

RE: Lewis's joke: it strikes me as just that, a joke. Belnap, of course, has done a lot of work on relevance logic, in which disjunctive syllogism (and hence even modus ponens) isn't valid, and in which the conditional isn't understood as the classical material conditional. I personally am not that well versed in the technical details. But surely Lewis was just making a joke about that. Again, I don't deny that there is a perceived difference and something of a friendly rivalry between Pitt and Princeton. But there just isn't much real tension there. The two departments have, I claim, no more difficulty understanding each other than is typical of any philosophical discussion.

Posted by pgs | June 10, 2007 12:20 AM

Patrick,

In the interests of heading off exponentially increasing post-length, I'll just say one thing.

"And where would you put Harvard's department at the time with Putnam, Dreben, Quine, Cavell, Goldfarb, and Moran? On the "non-analytic" side? That would seem problematic."

The very idea that for a concept to be useful, it is required, or even important, that one have "sharp" "necessary and sufficient" conditions for the application of the concept perfectly exemplifies one of the two mindsets I spoke of. Guess which one?

Grey is everywhere. Even with "table".

Posted by sherifffruitfly | June 10, 2007 12:21 AM

Quine's "Two Dogmas" was certainly more influential in the demise of conceptual analysis that anything Rorty wrote.

Patrick,

conceptual analysis isn't quite dead yet. See the recent buzz over "two-dimensionalism", propagated primarily by David Chalmers and Frank Jackson (in his Locke lectures, published as From Metaphysics to Ethics).

Posted by pgs | June 10, 2007 12:24 AM

My favorite memory of Richard Rorty was seeing him amidst a ramshackle group of students at a rally we were holding at Stanford to support workers on our campus in their efforts to get a wage increase. He looked out of place, but he was there.

Among other things, he should be remembered for playing a part in bringing the academy back to the cause of labor, and for crafting a political vision based in his philosophical views (in Achieving our Country).

Posted by eli | June 10, 2007 12:42 AM

pgs,

"Pitt-style" wasn't and won't be one of my words. For my part, I would use "Rorty-style" to contrast with "Princeton-style". Brandom's stlye-schizophrenia (made explicit in MIE - LOL!) furnishes an excellent example of why my preference is so.

I certainly didn't mean to imply that there was any sort of personal animosity between (adherents to) the two mindsets - well, at least not in general. But those who are unambiguous members of either camp certainly believe that members of the other are on a fool's errand. Of course, being on a fool's errand doesn't at all imply that one cannot find interesting and useful things along the way. We know that from Kuhn :).

RE: "just a joke". Yah, right. You say "but surely", I say: "I was there". It was a professional-zing-sans-personal-animosity - exactly equivalent to "You crazy Pitt logicians have all sorts of wacky ideas". It was hilarious though, for us students to see someone talk to Nuel that way. We were torn between flabergasted and kicking his ass. LOL!

Thompson certainly exemplifies one facet of Rorty-style thought. The biggest difference is that Thompson's interests are far narrower than Rorty's.

"contents of other minds" - heh. :)

Posted by sherifffruitfly | June 10, 2007 12:44 AM

pgs,

You are correct. You also have Michael Smith doing a brand of conceptual analysis in metaethics (and Peacocke in philosophy of perception). And I also think that Carnap's reply to Quine is pretty good, but certainly if we were to compare influence when it comes to criticism of conceptual analysis, Quine must be ranked ahead of Rorty.

And sheriff:

"The very idea that for a concept to be useful, it is required, or even important, that one have "sharp" "necessary and sufficient" conditions for the application of the concept perfectly exemplifies one of the two mindsets I spoke of. "

See, that's precisely what I mean. Who still thinks that we can come up with strict necessary and sufficient conditions for "chair" "table" or "game" for those concepts to be deployable or useful? Nobody as far as I can tell. Not Quine, Davidson, Putnam, Carnap, Hempel, Kuhn, Lewis or Rorty. Namely, not a single person on any side of the debate you mention holds that view.

But I wasn't suggesting that it was blurry I was suggesting that the way you setup the divide, you would have Harvard in the "non-analytic" camp, but was the philosophy being done in Harvard in the 70s, 80s, and today really all that different from the philosophy being done in Princeton or Pitt? Local variations sure, but some kind of meaningful split? I doubt it.

As I said before I am sympathetic to the idea that there is some kind of institutionally favored philosophy within the discipline, but I don't think it is geographically oriented. I think it is oriented more, these days, towards philosophy of science/language and ethics of a naturalistic bent (though Kantian ethics seems to be going very strong these days).

Posted by Patrick | June 10, 2007 1:12 AM

Alright, sherrifffruitfly.

I will grant you at least one direction of "But those who are unambiguous members of either camp certainly believe that members of the other are on a fool's errand." I'm beginning to feel uncomfortable speaking too much from personal knowledge of some of the philosophers in question, so I won't go on in that vein.

But I certainly never meant to be saying anything about who feels "personal animosity" towards whom. I just don't think there's any inherent tension between the "Princeton-style" and any other "style" of philosophy. It's true that anyone who is philosophically committed to quietism about philosophy will regard (other?) philosophers as engaged in a fruitless project, while those other philosophers will be inclined only to attempt a refutation of quietism if they don't just dismiss it and carry on. But that's just one philosophical dispute among many. Coherentists believe that foundationalists are on a fool's errand, etc., etc. Ultimately, even the quietists and their opponents can and do regard one another as fellow-travelers engaged in the same overall project, with perhaps a few exceptions.

Posted by pgs | June 10, 2007 1:22 AM

P.S. LOL-Quietism!

Posted by pgs | June 10, 2007 1:31 AM

pgs,

"... other philosophers will be inclined only to attempt a refutation of quietism..."
[snipped the rest of the -ist and -ism replete post]

No matter how much Princeton-style people think they've "gotten over" analytic philosopy, this is just more of the same. Ists and isms. Rorty-style thinking just doesn't carve the intellectual landscape up that way.

At a meta level though, I acknowledge that Princeton-style thinking has a great deal of trouble in seeing what the big hullabaloo is - LOL!

Awesome lolwittgenstein pic. A geek version of lolcats.

Somebody in this thread, I forget who, said something along the lines of there being little difference between Hempel and Kuhn. That's just plain asinine.

Posted by sherifffruitfly | June 10, 2007 2:12 AM

Then again, it is hard to carry on a meaningful discussion with someone who continually insists that you aren't speaking a meaningful language.

Posted by pgs | June 10, 2007 2:21 AM

Dick Rorty was one of my teachers in his Princeton years, when he was finishing Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. He kept copies of his chapter drafts in a file cabinet in the seminar room (in Firestone Library then), so everybody knew what he was up to. What impressed me most was the sheer Big-Picture scale of it, so different from anything else going on at the time. I wasn't quite buying it even then, and I've accumulated more doubts it since. But I kept reading his stuff, and it's always been a worthwhile challenge.

He was very modest, as you can see from his writing -- attributing his ideas to other people was almost a tic with him. And a good teacher, very considerate to students.

As for "Pitt-style" and "Princeton-style," the former has never been much more than Brandom and McDowell, though Haugeland and Conant (now gone) fit into that pretty well. Both of them genuflect regularly to Sellars, but their links to him are really pretty tenuous, since they pretty throw overboard his functionalism and scientific realism. As for the Princeton style, what was it but Kripke, Lewis, Fine (all gone now)? Harman? Not really. Of course, their style is all over the place now, but not much more at Princeton than lots of other places.

Posted by SqueakyRat | June 10, 2007 4:27 AM

Philosophy discussion on this blog always gets really strange. People are full of overblown opinions. Everyone should probably listen to pgs, who actually knows what he's talking about.

Posted by Saul Kripke | June 10, 2007 6:36 AM

From near the top of this thread:

"I fail to see the distinction between silly and substantive. If, like you and I, everyone agreed with Rorty, philosophy departments would soon disappear and college students would be reading more comparative literature and less high-minded theories about categorical imperatives and the conditions of possibility. If you enjoy the field in which you're engaged and the position you've worked hard to obtain, you do not take kindly to others who point out that the process is futile"

This was roughly my experience as an undergrad majoring in Philosophy in 1989-1990. I read Contigency and was bowled over by it. I saw it as an argument for the abandonment of the academic tradition in Philosophy; when I wrote about it my professors felt I was pushing the bounds of acceptible discourse within the department. (I was obliged to retake my senior comps, for example; my first effort was characterized as a "refusal to do philosophy.") A few points:

1) I (following Rorty) picked the fight, not them. Their response was reasonable.

2) My biggest defender and only fan was a new member of the dept brought in as the first specialist in the 20th century anglo-american tradition we'd had in years; the rest were classicists and Hegel-Nietzsche specialists.

3) For all of the overt apostasy of e.g. Derrida, at least one department absorbed him without fuss. OTOH, Rorty's work was seen as fighting words. I think both reactions were correct.

4) Analogous to Rorty's point about there not being much left to Aristotle's (epistemology?) once you discard the metaphysical froo-froo, I'm not sure what's left of post-1980 Rorty once you discard the parts that argue for abandoning the academic tradition of philosophy.

Posted by Sam Penrose | June 10, 2007 11:23 AM

Sheriff, I don't think you read my comments very charitably.

Hempel knew Kuhn, was friends with him, and helped him get published, if I remember correctly. They collaborated and co-taught courses together. I think that "Moderate Kuhn" is consistent with much of what Hempel said, though they clearly have differences in interests and emphases. I would agree that the more radical misappropriation of Kuhn's work is inconsistent with Hempel, but I don't think that Kuhn's actual position. At the very least, one doesn't have to read him that way.

The point is that separating them into these two radical and opposing camps is overblown. They aren't the same person, but they aren't avatars of radically opposed worldviews like you make them out to be.

I won't go so far as to say that Carnap's work is genial with Kuhn, but that claim has been made in the literature (Earman and Reisch, for example).

Posted by Patrick | June 10, 2007 12:15 PM

Hempel and Kuhn's friendship was purely sociological. Kuhn's importance comes in part from his differences with Hempel.

Posted by John Emerson | June 10, 2007 1:35 PM

The following claims are consistent:

1) Kuhn and Hempel's work have strong affinities and are broadly consonant with one another. Kuhn does not reflect are sharp or revolutionary break from

2) The differences between the two have been exaggerated by tendentious misreadings of Kuhn.

3) The most important and interesting elements of Kuhn lie in his differences with Hempel.

Posted by Patrick | June 10, 2007 1:57 PM

2) The differences between the two have been exaggerated by tendentious misreadings of Kuhn.

That's definitely true. However, there has been an equal and opposite move to dismiss anyone who has used Kuhn as a starting off point for a more radical theory of science. Essentially, if you mention TSOSR, and then proceed to offer a philosophy of science that goes farther than Kuhn, you are accused of misreading Kuhn. Kuhn wrote the book, it's true, but that doesn't mean that people can't add more chapters.

Posted by Freddie | June 10, 2007 2:29 PM

Rorty was a personal hero, though his name was mud in most philosophy departments due to his skeptical views about the whole metaphysical enterprise. Can't have anyone undermining the profession now, can we?

That was never my chief impression. An earlier generation of anti-metaphysical philosophers, the logical positivists, achieved quite a lot of success in the profession and won lots of converts. I think Rorty's name was mud among many professional philosophers because they weren't very impressed with the quality of his argumentation, his care and diligence, or his mastery of the relevant altrernatives. Philosophers tend to enjoy nothing so much as a good argument, but those who took positions opposed to Rorty's usually didn't find those arguments in Rorty himself. They just didn't find him very challenging, or a worthy adversary.

I think you have to couple an understanding of that attitude with an awareness of a general feeling that Rorty had a gift for self-promotion within the broader field of the humanities and among the lay public, and was the beneficiary of much unwarranted adulation, to understand the nature of the anti-Rorty feeling in the profession.

Posted by Dan Kervick | June 10, 2007 3:46 PM

Heh! Kripke telling other people they're strange. That's rich.

Posted by sherifffruitfly | June 10, 2007 4:47 PM

I disagree with Dan's assessment to a degree. Rorty angered most professional (analytic, esp) philosophers not because he didn't give them a good argument. they could have easily looked else ware for that.

but rorty angered them because he told them that their profession, their lifework, was useless (just a bunch of language games played by the educated).

Posted by thehova | June 10, 2007 7:46 PM

People have already said it, but the idea that Rorty rubbed academic philosophers the wrong way because "he told them that their profession, their lifework, was useless (just a bunch of language games played by the educated)" is incomplete at best.

Carnap is held in highest esteem by people who deal with questions in metaphysics and philosophy of math that he would have likely regarded as nonsensical. (see 'Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology') Quite thought that epistemology as done by traditional analytic philosophers was bankrupt, and needed to be stripped of all normative terms and replaced by empirical behaviorist psychology. And of course 'language game' isn't Rorty's term; it's Wittgenstein's.

All of these philosophers would probably be comfortable dismissing most of what is done in contemporary anglophone philosophy departments. But Quine, Carnap, and Wittgenstein are deeply respected by most contemporary philosophers. Dan Kervick is right--the best explanation of anti-Rorty sentiment in philosophy departments must appeal to more than just the substance of his views.

Posted by Daniel | June 10, 2007 8:36 PM

Daniel, your argument is fatally undermined by the word "would" in "All of these philosophers would probably be comfortable dismissing most of what is done in contemporary anglophone philosophy departments."

Quine, Wittgenstein, and Carnap are safely in the past and no threat. Furthermore, they all can be treated as forebears who have been superseded. Rorty was an active critical presence.

Posted by John Emerson | June 10, 2007 9:15 PM

John,

I don't think that distinction will explain the divergent attitudes towards Rorty on the one hand and the trio I mentioned on the other. There are analytic philosophers working today who are taken very seriously, and who make similar foundational criticisms. Paul and Patricia Churchland think folk psychology is as misguided as phlogiston theory, and they would reject all of contemporary philosophy of mind, epistemology, and much of contemporary ethics on the grounds that they trafic in stone-age concepts like beliefs and desires.

When it comes to metaphysics, there are people making criticisms similar to the ones that Carnap made. Lots of philosophers think that the debate about 'special composition' (roughly, whether composite objects exist) is a pseudo-debate, and would join Carnap and Wittgenstein in dismissing it. Eli Hirsch is a good example of someone who holds roughly this position. But people who work on the metaphysical questions that he thinks are non-questions are happy to engage him. There's now a cottage industry in 'meta-ontology', which deals with the question of whether debates in ontology are real debates at all.

Another example is Stephen Stich, who's argued against the thought experiment, armchair method popular among analytic philosophers on the grounds that the intuitions people have about these cases vary widely along national, ethnic, and socioeconomic lines, and that the method fails to deliver results that have nearly the sort of general interest that analytic philosophers seem to want to claim for it. There's now a movement of 'experimental philosophers' who think that philosophers should do empirical research (often of the gallup poll variety) to test their theories against the intuitions of speakers.

I think there's quite a lot of room for foundational criticism in analytic philosophy. Rorty's unpopularity cannot simply be attributed to his holding that the questions asked and methods used by most analytic philosophers are deeply misguided; lots of contemporary analytic philosophers think that about the majority of their peers.

Posted by Daniel | June 10, 2007 9:46 PM

The direction of Rorty's criticism is diametrically opposed to that of the Churchlands. Same for the others. It's not that fundamental criticism is excluded, but certain kinds of fundamental criticism. Quine, the Churchlands, and Carnap are internal criticisms. Wittgenstein is partly internal, and some (Soames) think that his time is past anyway. Rorty, and wittgenstein in part, wanted to expand philosophy and change its methods.

I spent some time recently with Wittgenstein's "Culture and Value" and some other things, and I think that his thinking here was deeply unformed and confused, but that if he had lived another 20 years we might have had a very interesting Wittgenstein 3.0.

I might like Stich.

Posted by John Emerson | June 10, 2007 9:52 PM

I found Rorty in CIS too quick to dismiss the advantages of a shared vocabulary, of working together to discover common truths, i.e., "metaphysics."

It's cool to be an ironist, sure, but not if you're trying to convince people with different beliefs to come together & work on a society. Rorty shrugs that values are incommensurable, and we either agree to disagree (pursuing our Private Projects in our fortuitously wealthy western nation), or we break out the guns.

The irony about the ironist is that, rhetorically, the metaphysician has the better game; so who's the pragmatist, really? As Nietzsche says, the free spirit is not well-advised to rid the masses of their religion; far from it.

Posted by Anderson | June 10, 2007 11:49 PM

Probably no one is reading this thread anymore, but when I read Daniel's

Lots of philosophers think that the debate about 'special composition' (roughly, whether composite objects exist) is a pseudo-debate, and would join Carnap and Wittgenstein in dismissing it.

I thought I'd mention one more anecdote. When Cian Dorr (previously mentioned as an exemplar of "Princeton-style") gave his job talk at Pitt, the paper he presented was an argument that philosophers who think mereologists are engaged in a pseudo-debate should actually not only find it substantive, but should in fact be nihilists (i.e., they should believe that there are no composite objects).

It was poorly understood by most of the department's graduate students (it's usually very hard to follow such a complicated argument in a talk format without having examined it beforehand or being familiar with similar literature, as few if any of us grad students were--people here are much more likely to have read Rorty than Ted Sider). It was even made fun of, precisely as an example of "that crazy analytic metaphysics they do at Princeton." (I should mention that the overall reaction of the faculty was by no means the same.) And yet, hardly anyone would deny, if pressed, that the paper was worth taking seriously, and when some of us did make an effort to understand it in more depth, others were happy to listen to our explanations and engage with the argument.

Just saying. Even if Lewis really was making fun of Belnap's "crazy ideas", I don't think we should take it to be even a conversational implicature that they aren't worthy of due consideration. Lewis himself is no stranger to the incredulous stare, after all.

Posted by pgs | June 11, 2007 3:02 AM