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Rortian Realism
Author(s) -
Knowles Jonathan
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
metaphilosophy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.475
H-Index - 35
eISSN - 1467-9973
pISSN - 0026-1068
DOI - 10.1111/meta.12284
Subject(s) - epistemology , realism , skepticism , direct and indirect realism , philosophy , naturalism , relativism , historicism , scientific realism , externalism , philosophical realism , internalism and externalism
This paper motivates and defends “Rortian realism,” a position that is Rortian in respect of its underlying philosophical theses but non‐Rortian in terms of the lessons it draws from these for cultural politics. The philosophical theses amount to what the paper calls Rorty's “anti‐representationalism” (AR), arguing that AR is robust to critique as being anti‐realist, relativist, or sceptical, invoking Rorty's historicism/ethnocentrism as part of the defence. The latter, however, creates problems for Rorty in so far as his reformative views on the nature of philosophical and academic activity are meant to be foisted on an academy that ex hypothesi holds views different from these. The paper suggests we can motivate a different conception of the consequences of AR more amenable to the academy: Rortian realism, a view that makes greater concessions to realism and a kind of scientific naturalism than Rorty would like, but that for those very reasons is more likely to allow AR to prevail.