METAPHILOSOPHY Vol. 19, No. 2, April 1988 0026-1068 $2.00

RORTY’S NEW MYTH OF THE GIVEN

MICHAEL GOLDMAN

But the dangers to abnormal discourse do not come from science or naturalistic philosophy. They come from the scarcity of food and from the secret police. Given leisure and libraries, the conversation which Plato began will not end in self-objectification - not because aspects of the world, or of human beings, escape being objects of scientific inquiry, but simply because free and leisured conversation generates abnormal discourse as the sparks fly upward (Rorty 1979, 389).

Abnormal discourse is the name that Rorty gives to that activity which challenges systematic discourse, the discourse created in the “systematic” theory-building of scientists and most philosophers, discourse he feels it is the proper job of philosophers continually to deconstruct. Such deconstruction is necessary because no system mirrors nature - that is, captures a truth about the world in such a way as to be invulnerable to alternative ways of describing the world, and the “conversation of the West” requires that we be frequently reminded of that fact. The “myth of the given” (as Sellars calls it), has characterized much of the system building philosophy since Descartes. It consists in the assumption that certain elements of perception - those “given” in uninterpreted experience - reflect real features of the world, so that proper attention to those elements and the legitimate forms of inference from them can create a compelling epistemology. Rorty is merciless in his attack on this epistemological orientation, and suggests, with Sellars, that truth is not a matter of mirroring, reflecting, or “hooking on” to some external reality but of having what count as persuasive reasons in the cultural context in which the reasons are offered. It must be understood that no reasons are ahistorically persuasive: it is the success of some particular theory (be it scientific, philosophical, literary, or whatever) which defines the parameters for good reasons, but that success must not be interpreted as some sort of correspondence or “hooking up” of theory with some extra-linguistic reality. It is important to mention that while Rorty does not take up as one of his problems the sociological question his position naturally raises - under what conditions do new sets of reasons replace old ones - he does warn us against writing “Whiggish” histories in which such replacements are seen as objectively progressive events leading to the current state of relative enlightenment. The most he offers, and this is pretty much in passing, are remarks to the effect that systems are used for “coping” (with what is not exactly clear), so perhaps (though only perhaps) a system replaces another because it or its practitioners can “cope” better. On the other hand replacements may

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occur simply as a matter of fashion: this year’s or this decade’s scientific, literary, or philosophical theory may be just too boring to go on with, or may leave little room for younger practitioners to make their reputa- tions or establish footholds in their professions. Of course regardless of what reasons we now decide are the correct ones for explaining these transitions we must remember that it is likely, indeed virtually certain, that new systems of thought will eventually emerge which offer very different accounts of them. Rorty, then, does not say what the reasons for such change are, though he is quite clear about what they are not.

What I wish to take up in this paper is the rather remarkable and cavalier observation quoted above: “Given leisure and libraries , . .” the conversation of the West can continue. The observation is remarkable in that a book so dependent in its central thesis on destroying the epistemologist’s myth of the given can revert without any apparent embarrassment to an even more mythological given: the givenness of the wherewithal for intellectual activity. The observation is cavalier in that it assumes that such wherewithal will exist independently of any of the intellectual system-buiiding which it is purportedly the job of edifying philosophy to deconstruct. It is my position that this is not the case, and precisely because it is not the case Rorty’s thesis, and the thesis of many of the philosophers he identifies as “heroes” of his book must be severely modified.

It is important to be clear about what it is to which Rorty is committed. Science and “naturalistic philosophy” are systems of thought which define not only what propositions are true but also what are to count as good reasons for believing those propositions to be true. Contrary to the pretentions both of science and naturalistic philosophy there is no radical distinction between a proposition being true and there being what a community of speakers has agreed are good reasons for accepting that proposition. Truth is a relationship between a proposition, the reasons given for it, and the community of speakers who define what are to count as good reasons, not a relationship between propositions and the world-in-itself. It is not Rorty’s point merely that good reasons define truth; in addition he insists that they do so only insofar as a community has agreed what are to count as good reasons. Because they do not hook up to a world beyond themselves, scientific and natural-philosophical systems are primarily linguistic systems, and it is appropriate to describe their interactions as conversa- tions. As with any conversation, the point of engaging in these can be varied: to understand our interlocutor, to persuade him or her, to create new systems as syntheses of or reactions to existing ones, or perhaps simply to take delight in the conversation itself. (It is never, of course, to come to a better understanding of the Truth). The “edifying” philosopher “hosts” this conversation (the image of the salon, whether

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intended or not, is unavoidable), introducing new participants to each other, making sure the conversation gets going and stays lively, poking and prodding when necessary, pointing to connections, apparent disagreements and agreements, etc. All of this is to take place, as Rorty tells us, in a context - given to us - which facilitates such delightful

The unmistakable presupposition of this is that none of the systems of thought which are invited to this conversation are in any way essential to maintaining that context, the context which includes political freedom and material abundance, “libraries and leisure”. For if some were essential in that way then their positions would be privileged, like that of the patron who enjoys the power struggles of his proteges but who is not himself drawn into the struggle by them for fear of losing patronage. But it is precisely Rorty’s point that there are no privileged systems and that the insistence upon, and search for them is merely a characteristic of recent system building. Therefore he is committed to the position that none of the systems are essential, and it remains a mystery how the context comes to be “given”. Rorty, not unlike some recent philosophers of science, presents us with a picture of intellectual activity divorced in all essential ways from its context. The irony is that Rorty claims that it is context, social context, through the medium of linguistic communities, which creates the conditions which make intellectual activity possible. Yet it is only the intellectual context that Rorty considers; the political and material contexts are posited as “givens”.

colloquy.

Rorty, then must be committed to one of two theses:

(1) The activities of philosophers and scientists are completely irrelevant to the creation and maintenance of the material and political context; or

(2) The activities of philosophers and scientists are necessary for the creation and maintenance of the material and political context, but no particular philosophical or scientific system is so necessary.

If he opts for the first of these theses his position is that philosophical and scientific activities are purely parasitical upon the materially and politically productive activity of others in that this activity provides the wherewithal for philosophy and science (abundance of food, libraries, leisure, and political freedom) while philosophy and science provide nothing in return - at least nothing that those activities can not do without. Of course they may provide entertainment, but not, by hypothesis, the kind of entertainment which is “re-creational” of materially productive and politically fruitful activity. It remains an open question, also, whether these activities - the materially productive and politically fruitful ones - are subject to the kinds of criticism Rorty levels against traditional science and philosophy. Perhaps there is a sense of

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“hooking-up to reality” which is appropriate to materially or politically productive activity but is not appropriate to science or philosophy. In any case this is not something Rorty tells us. Be that as it may, the thesis is itself extraordinary. It is not completely implausible (though I think it is false) to suppose that philosophy is irrelevant to materially productive activity, and as far as political activity is concerned, at least Karl Marx felt that philosophy had merely interpreted the world, not contributed in any important way to changing it. But it is wildly implausible to make a similar claim about science. Even granting the distinction between science and technology, it is hard to maintain that the current level of intellectual discourse could be maintained without any of the techno- logical “spin-offs” of science.

Unfortunately the second option open to Rorty is no more plausible than the first. For here i t would have to be shown that it is the activity of philosophical or scientific system building as such that is necessary for maintaining the material and political wherewithal for continued “conversation”, quite independent of the particular content exhibited by any such system. Again it would be necessary to discount the identifiable technological and political dimensions of particular scientific theories and maintain that those same or at least equally as sustaining practices would have been available regardless of the specific system that developed.

The source of Rorty’s problem is not difficult to identify. First, Rorty understands, in a way that recent writers on foundationalism seem not to understand, that the point of foundational epistemologies is not merely to defeat skepticism while avoiding the “regress” argument, but to explain the possibility of the sort of cognitive agreement which appears to be required for us to make collective progress in under- standing and explaining our world. Cognitive relativism as much as cognitive skepticism must be defeated. To do that, however, it appears to be necessary for some elements of our cognitive system, presumably, but not necessarily, the foundational elements, in some way to reach beyond themselves to a shared or at least shareable world, and to be known to do so. But Rorty is also persuaded by recent arguments in epistemology and in philosophy of science that the search for a foundational epistemology which can assure this is hopelessly misguided. Rorty naturally, but mistakenly, takes that position as entailing another one, viz., that nothing external to a system of thought as a system of thought can have any bearing on the epistemological status of that system, can refute (or confirm) it. That is not merely Rorty’s error, since implicit in recent discussions of foundationalism and coherentism is the assumption that the only way to refer to elements not internal to a system of thought to justify that thought is to view knowledge as resting on a “foundation” in the “traditional” sense, that is, wherein the foundational elements of the system of thought guarantee access to a

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commonly shared world beyond ourselves.’ That is a mistake, for as I have indicated, the ability of a system of thought to sustain itself through the material and political dimensions of its practice is confirmation, and is confirmation of a sort which is neither internal to the system of thought itself nor vulnerable to the criticisms directed against traditional foundationalism. Similarly the inability of a system of thought to sustain itself in that way is disconfirmation of it. Rorty’s error, and the error of at least some of his “heroes” rests in supposing that the only way to escape the arbitrariness of coherentism is to accept a foundational epistemology, in particular one which displays features of traditional foundationalism.* Since there are no foundations of this sort he concludes that there are no foundations at all, and in the absence of foundations, nothing but relatively arbitrary features (like fashion- ability) can affect the choice of a preferable ~ y s t e m . ~

Among the features of traditionally proposed epistemologies, there are two which have not been widely mentioned in recent discussion but which stand out as significant for the challenge I am trying to pose to Rorty’s position: the first is that the basis for deciding whether a proposition is justified must be either propositional, or at least wholly “intellectual-spiritual’’ and the second is that to avoid arbitrariness that basis must be ahistorical. My own suggestion -that a system of thought can be justified in terms of its materially productive and politically liberating practice, does not meet either of these conditions and seems to be neither a species of “foundationalism”, nor of “coherentism”. Rather, the proposal is in the spirit of the “problem-solving’’ approach of Laudan (1977), but with one very major difference: while Laudan insists that systems of thought must be judged by their ability to solve a wide variety of intellectual problems, my own suggestion is that they must primarily solve material, and, to some extent, political problems. What I intend to do in the rest of this paper is consider the two features of epistemologies, mentioned above, and explain why I think they can be legitimately ignored in this context. It will be apparent how the approach I suggest violates them.

( 1 ) All of the foundations of knowledge considered by Rorty are either propositional or at least wholly intellectual. By this I mean that

I This is not meant to imply that if we do not make such an appeal we necessarily abandon foundationalism. One of the consequences of recent thinking about founda- tionalism is that, from a strictly formal point of view, one can define that kind of epistemology without being committed to any assumption about the nature of the foundational elements. But to do so is to abandon one of the major purposes of foundational epistemology.

* A discussion of some of these features begins below. Presumably not even “coherence”, the only popular alternative to foundationalism,

need be demanded, but even if it is the arbitrary character of coherence theories is notorious and still leaves plenty of room for epistemological “playfulncss”.

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the elements which need no further justification and which serve as ultimate justifiers for other propositions are themselves either proposi- tions, or if not propositions are nevertheless “mental” (to the extent that anything is mental), available only to or through the-intellect. Rorty mentions a variety of familiar candidates which appear in the history of modern philosophy, and which need not be rehearsed here. Coherentism is even more obviously committed to the propositional or intellectual ground of justification. (And as I noted above, even the post-Kuhnian approach of Laudan remains wedded to this notion.) My own suggestion is of a different sort but one which ought to be congenial to Rorty given his behaviorist orientation. If it is the case that systems of thought have some degree of internal coherence, and if, further, systems of “thought” are behavioral systems, it does not seem wholly implausible to suppose that those systems can include (or of course fail to include) materially productive and politically liberating practices or activities which can p.rovide the wherewithal for further “conversation”, including, of course, the conversation which Rorty urges us to nourish. If we do include such activity as part of the system then the system can be more or less “confirmed” vis a vis other contending systems to the extent that it is more or less successful in providing the wherewithal for its continued activity. Thus, at least in the context created by Rorty, there can be no objection to turning to social practice to find a ground for the justification of belief. (In another context I have argued that a similar approach can be used to combat Feyerabend’s epistemological anarchism (Goldman, 1980) .)

(2) Epistemological justification must be either arbitrary or ahis- torical. This is certainly a central assumption in recent epistemological thought (though again it is not usually mentioned), for it is the failure of any proposed foundation of knowledge to be ahistorical, as well as the existence of various theoretical reasons for doubting that any of them can be, which leads Rorty and others to abandon the search for foundations of knowledge, and leads Rorty, at least, to settle for what can only be described as a certain epistemological “arbitrariness”. Recent discussion has focussed on foundationalism as an answer either to the epistemic regress argument or, more basically, to the problem of skepticism. But as I noted above foundationalism is meant to defeat not merely skepticism but relativism as well. What Descartes claimed to know was not merely “knowledge for Descartes” but knowledge, and what he claimed to have discovered was not merely a “method for Descartes” but a method of knowing. Indeed, it is in large part in response to the (alleged) failure to defeat relativism by coming up with an ahistorical method for identifying basic beliefs or accounting for the (apparent) growth of human knowledge that Rorty abandons founda- tionalism. Eric Stiffler correctly notes that “[f]oundationalists do assume that the aim of epistemology is ‘to find the maximum amount of

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common ground with others’ [Rorty, p. 3161 and think that this aim is best achieved by showing how the contributions to a given discourse can be ‘brought under a set of rules which will tell us how rational agreement call be reached’. . .” (2&21).4

The concept of ahistoricity is a fascinating and difficult one, too intractable to be unpacked in this paper. Two different features are sometimes thought to characterize an (alleged) ahistorical foundation of knowledge (I will speak here in foundationalist terms since only foundationalism aspires to ahistoricism): (1) the method by which we come to be justified in believing propositions (including the method by which basic beliefs are identified) must not be one which changes with changes in the values, language, or world-view of any particular culture; it must be defined philosophically, not ~ul tura l ly .~ (2) the method must be such that any proposition which qualifies as a basic proposition on the basis of it at one time will qualify as a basic proposition on the basis of it at another time. (To assure that science can be progressive it is never required that non-basic beliefs meet this condition.) These two features are sometimes taken to be co-extensional because if (2) is met then (1) will be also; that is, if the set of basic propositions never changes then they clearly are not identified on the basis of values, language or world-view. Moreover, meeting (1) appears also to assure that (2) will be met. The reason for this “appearance” is that the most plausible reason for supposing that (2) can never be satisfied is the supposed impossibility of satisfying (1); that is, the most common reason for thinking that a proposition which is basic belief on the basis of some criterion, C, at one time but not on the basis of criterion C at another time is the belief that any plausible C makes essential reference to values, language, world-view or other culturally defined charac- teristics which change over time.

It is crucial for my purposes, however, to point out that (1) and (2) are not co-extensional. (1) can be met even though (2) may not be. In particular, the criterion for justification that I suggest, the ability of a system of “thought” - understood to include the practices and activities which are an integral part of that system - to provide the material and political wherewithal for its own survival, meets condition (1) but does not meet condition (2). It meets condition (1) because the criterion is supposed to apply regardless of any idiosyncratic cultural circumstances, including even the culture’s explicit denial of the criterion. It fails to meet condition (2) because some system of thought - again, including the practices and activities which are an integral part of the system -

Ernest Sosa is therefore off target when he identifies Rorty’s position as a foundational position (1983).

If we use Ernest Sosa’s language, “if a belief is justified then any belief similar to it in all relevant respects is equally justified” (1983, 50), then a “relevant respect” will not include values, language, or world-view of the individuals who believe it.

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may provide the wherewithal for its own survival at one time but not at another, and consequently the propositions which are basic within that system at one time need not be basic within it at another time. This is because “objective” circumstances change. These may change because of events external to the system, but more interestingly, they may change because of circumstances brought about by the system itself. It may be the case that the practices and activities associated with a system of thought when successfully implemented over a period of time are such as eventually to require their own replacement. This is surely implicit in Hegel and explicit in Marx.

It is not clear, then, whether the criterion I suggest should count as historical or ahistorical. The answer depends upon a more intensive analysis of historicity than is possible here. What is important, though, is that it suggests a way of “grounding” a system of thought substantially different from the sorts of grounding Rorty has considered and rejected. Moreover it is a ground which can be used to judge “abnormal” as well as “systematic” discourse. If abnormal discourse is successful in deconstructing all systematic discourse then it will have undermined not only systematic discourse but the very possibility of further abnormal discourse. For certain systematic discourse provides the wherewithal not only for its own continued activity but for the activity of less “productive” discourse, including abnormal discourse. Rorty is not wholly correct, then, when he warns that the greatest danger to abnormal discourse is scarcity of food and the secret police; a danger at least as great is abnormal discourse itself.

Miami University Oxford, Ohio 45056

References

Goldman, Michael. “Against Feyerabend: The Meaning of Progress in Science.” Research in Philosophy and Technology. Volume 3 (1980). Ed. Paul T. Durbin. Official Annual Publication of the Society fo Philosophy and Technology. Greenwich Connecticut: JAI P r e s l 28-38.

Laudan, Larry. Progress and Its Problems: Towards a Theory of Scientific Growth. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of Cali- fornia Press, 1977.

Rorty, Richard. Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979.

Sosa Ernest. “Nature Unmirrored, Epistemology Naturalized.” Synthese 55 (1983): 49-72.

Stiffler, Eric. “A Definition of Foundationalism.” Metaphilosophy 15 (1984): 16-25.