Mind-body, realism and Rorty's therapy. Review article on richard rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature

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MIND-BODY, REALISM AND RORTY'S THERAPY Review article on Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton University Press, 1979)* . One of the most important books in philosophy published recently, Richard Rorty's Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, is a monumental undertaking. It is a critical assessment and historical reconstruction of what philosophy has become today, from the perspective of someone well versed in both the analytic and the Continental traditions. Rorty argues that contemporary philosophy faces a serious crisis. Since Kant, philosophy has striven to become a professional discipline which sees itself as the foundation of the rest of culture. In fact, however, it has become increasingly isolated from the cultural and intellectual life of our society. According to Rorty, the problem is that our philosophical tradition is based on a fundamentally confused picture of man. From the Greeks, we inherited the notion that man has a Glassy Essence. Since Descartes, the Glassy Essence picture became dominated by a view which construes the mind as a mirror containing inner representations of an external reality and which understands knowledge in terms of the accuracy of these representations. The bulk of the book is concerned to show how the mirror imagery can be dismantled, thus freeing us from hopeless epistemological quests and our self-deceptive Kantian self-image. For, if the notion of knowledge as accurate representation of reality is dubious, so is the Kantian project which puts epistemology at the center of philosophy and philosophy at the center of culture. In its place, he advocates a pragmatic, hermeneutical and quasi-existential approach which aims to reintegrate philosophy with the rest of culture. In the Introduction, he states his objectives: . . . . to u n d e r m i n e the reader's confidence in " t h e m i n d " as s o m e t h i n g about which one * This e s s a y was partially supported by a grant from the University of Maryland Graduate R e s e a r c h Board. I wish to t h a n k R. Miller, J. L e v i n s o n and especially D. L u b a n for their helpful criticisms and suggestions.

Synthese 52 (1982) 515-541. 0039-7857/82/0523-0515 $02.70 Copyright © 1982 by D. Reidel Publishing Co., Dordrecht, Holland, and Boston, U.S.A.

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should have a "philosophical" view, in "knowledge" as something about which there ought to be a "theory" and which has "foundations," and in "philosophy" as it has been conceived since Kant. (p.7)

The book is accordingly divided into three parts, titled simply "Mind," "Knowledge" and "Philosophy." Part I attempts the dissolution of the mind-body problem, a problem we owe to Descartes who "invented" the mind and gave the mirror imagery one of its central themes. Part II attacks epistemology, the main concern of which is to refute radical skepticism and to ground empirical knowledge on a foundation of privileged representations. Rorty then impugns the validity of several current debates in philosophical psychology, the philosophy of language and the philosophy of science, which he considers to be merely 20th century attempts to revive old epistemological questions. In Chapter 4, by Rorty's admission the most important of all the chapters, he presents his own alternative: epistemological behaviorism, a holistic conception of language and of knowledge inspired by Sellars's attack on the myth of the given and Quine's rejection of the analytic-synthetic distinction. In Part III, Rorty attempts to construct a new self-image for philosophy. Borrowing from Kuhn's distinction, Rorty likens our epistemology centered philosophical tradition to normal science and enjoins philosophers to participate in abnormal discourse by rebelling against the current tradition. We are told to abandon academic philosophy and to pursue hermeneutics. Philosophers can serve as commentators on culture. They should be concerned to keep the conversation of the West going, rather than to preserve the traditional problematic of modern philosophy. Rorty describes his project as a blend of several themes borrowed from three philosophers he most admires: Wittgenstein's conception of philosophy as therapy, Heidegger's historicism, and Dewey's pragmatism. More specifically he aims at a Wittgensteinian "deconstruction" of our current philosophical tradition - to show that philosophers are deceiving themselves when they think that there are fundamental philosophical problems. The deconstruction is accomplished from a historicist's perspective: he wants to convince his readers both that these supposedly perennial problems really developed as historical accidents in our culture and that the themes and metaphors upon which our current philosophical problems rest have gone unredeemably stale.

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The deconstruction program supports and is in turn supported by the metaphilosophical theses he advances in the book. In addition to a commitment to historicism, he wants to tell us what philosophy is and is not; what philosophers should or should not do. Briefly, he rejects the view that philosophy is a professional discipline with perennial and fundamental problems of its own. Rather, philosophy is "a voice in the conversation of mankind." (p. 264) Its problems are merely "results of historical accident . . . . turns the conversation has taken." (p. 391) Borrowing form Heidegger and Gadamer who also see Western philosophy in a state of crisis, Rorty recommends that we abandon the epistemologically motivated projects of our current tradition. Recognizing that knowledge has no foundation and is never presupposition-free, we should adopt the hermeneutical approach and see knowing as similar to getting acquainted with a person or like entering into a conversation with a stranger. Finally, he argues that philosophy should be edifying rather than systematic. We should rebel against mainstream philosophy, reject its problematic and, instead, become commentators of our culture and Socratic intermediaries between various disciplines. Although Rorty insists that his book is "therapeutic rather than constructive," his message is not purely negative. Despite the protest throughout the book that he is not interested in putting forward new philosophical theories, Rorty is not anti-philosophical in the broad sense that he finds no philosophical comments or issues interesting, and it would be a mistake to suppose this carefully crafted and well thought out book opts for nihilism. Rather, Rorty rejects o u r philosophical tradition, but acknowledges that even this tradition initially developed in response to perfectly good questions (p. 33). More often than not, Rorty has substantive suggestions to make in response to these good questions. I shall summarize the main doctrines here. He accepts a Deweyan pragmatic conception of truth as whatever it is best or most useful for us to believe. Arguing that knowledge is a matter of social practice, he adopts a holistic theory of justification according to which a justified belief is one which coheres with the larger body of beliefs already accepted. He also accepts holism in the case of language, claiming that "words take their meanings from other words rather than by virtue of their representative character, and the corollary that vocabularies acquire their privileges from the men who use them rather than their transparency to the r e a l . . . " (p. 368) In

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addition, he denies that there is a real distinction of kind between values and facts, or between "Geisteswissenschaften" and "Naturwissenschaften," even though the former are not to be thought of as being "reducible" to the latter. Finally, in place of the Glassy Essence picture of man our philosophical tradition is wedded to, he ends the book by offering us a new picture - a quasi-existential view of men as the inventors of meanings and values, beings who are "generators of new descriptions rather than beings one hopes to be able to describe accurately." (p. 378) The historicist deconstruction program carried out in Parts I and II serve an important structural purpose. Rorty offers few direct arguments in support of his metaphilosophical and substantive theses. Instead, he relies almost completely on the power of historical criticism. He writes as if he thought these claims would be the only natural conclusions to draw, if we found his analysis of our philosophical tradition at all convincing. For instance, in Chapter 4, he offers us epistemological behaviorism, as if it is the only option, immediately following his historicist critique of the epistemological projects of foundationalism and the attempt to refute the radical skeptic. Later, directly after the attempt to deconstruct the current philosophical tradition in Parts I and II, without any reasoned transition, he presents his metaphilosophical view that philosophy is not a problem-solving discipline, but a "voice in the conversation of mankind," and then proceed to suggest new topics for this conversation. The problem is that in cases where the deconstruction seems weak or incomplete, the reader's confidence in Rorty's views is drastically undermined, for he is given few other reasons for accepting them. Furthermore, even where the critique of the tradition is convincing, it is not always obvious that Rorty's alternative is either the only or the best option. For instance, although showing that neither foundationalism nor radical skepticism should be taken seriously would undermine our confidence in some of the major enterprises within our epistemological tradition, this conclusion is considerably weaker than the one Rorty draws - that no epistemological projects are worthwhile and that the very idea of a "theory" of knowledge is meaningless. Rorty's extreme conclusion is unconvincing unless one assumes that the only philosophical interest in epistemology concerns radical skepticism, foundationalism and privileged representations. But this assumption is implausible. It is misleading to say that

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"(n)obody would want 'human k n o w l e d g e ' . . , justified unless he has been frightened by skepticism." (p. 229) Even someone committed to a pragmatic view of knowledge as social practice might find it interesting and important to critically examine and theorize about these social practices. Even if we admit that there are no a priori overarching principles of rationality governing theory building in science, or despair of ever being able to formulate the necessary and sufficient conditions applicable to all cases of knowledge, it does not follow that no fruitful and interesting questions about justification remain. However, to focus our attention on its structural weakness alone is to underestimate the strength and the value of this provocative and engaging book. The book should be commended for its impressive scope and its projects as well as the author's obvious command of his material. Rorty has certainly woven an interesting and plausible tale of the historical development of our philosophical tradition. With ease and competence, he moves in and out of almost every dispute of note within the empiricist and analytic tradition. Many well known philosophers are given a place within his big picture. There are a few glaring omissions - Berkeley and Hume, for instance, for which the author owes us an explanation, I believe. One can speculate, of course. Berkeley did not have to worry about radical skepticism and Hume ridiculed the search for a foundation of knowledge. Both, however, accepted sense data theories of perception and representational accounts of knowledge. These two philosophers, therefore, constitute exceptions to Rorty's theme that modern philosophy is obsessed with the impossible tasks of grounding knowledge in a foundation of privileged representations and refuting the radical skeptic. It would be more satisfying to have Rorty's own explanation, however. Other than failing to explain the absences of such figures as Berkeley and Hume, Rorty's story about modern philosophy, the development of the philosophy of mind and of epistemology seems believable, as far as modern philosophy goes. I add the emphasis on modern philosophy here since it is not clear whether the victim of Rorty's historical deconstruction is supposed to be 17th century epistemology alone or the entire Western philosophical tradition beginning with the Greeks. The actual historicist deconstruction carried out in Part I and Part II concerns 17th century epistemology and

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its contemporary descendents. However, in Part III, we are told that because the ocular imagery originated with the Greeks, we must give up not only the notion of knowledge as accurate representation, but the very notion of man as knower, a notion we owe to the Greeks. The problem here is that even if historicism is a valid deconstruction tool, the more ambitious conclusion is not justified. The projects carried out in Part I and Part II simply do not provide sufficient ammunition to cast doubt on the minimal notion of man as knower. The ocular imagery attributable to the Greeks is a far cry from the Cartesian mirror imagery which, according to Rorty, dominates modern philosophy and contemporary analytic philosophy. He himself spells out the differences between the Greeks and the moderns on pp. 46-51 arguing that the Greek version of the ocular imagery does not lead to radical skepticism and a mind-body problem. In any case, Rorty's main interest is in debunking the epistemology centered tradition we have inherited. He attacks all of the relevant concepts: mind, knowledge, ideas, inner representations, foundation of knowledge, the analytic-synthetic distinction, necessity, reference and truth. In this essay, I want to focus on his deconstruction project. In what follows, I shall first comment on Rorty's use of historicism as a deconstruction tool, and then examine his application of this strategy to dismantle two aspects of the mirror imagery: the mind, in section 3 and realism, in Section 4. . It is tempting, but a mistake, to think of Rorty's project as a grander version of the usual analytic philosopher's strategy: first, criticise current approaches to a particular philosophical problem and then argue for a better way to solve it, or, failing that, show how to dissolve it. This approach assumes that there is agreement in what counts as a philosophical problem and what counts an an adequate solution of it. The analytic philosopher's critical projects do not challenge the meaningfulness of the problem in question. Certainly theirs are not attempts at deconstructing the tradition. It is therefore important not to lose sight of Rorty's objective: what he rejects is not merely the solutions proposed for certain problems. He rejects the problems themselves as well as the context which gives sense to these problems. At the very least, what he wants to accomplish in his

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deconstruction of our philosophical tradition is to dismiss the family of problems associated with that tradition by showing that the very problematic comprising the tradition is bankrupt, fundamentally confused or, at least, no longer interesting. It is Rorty's use of historicism as a deconstruction tool which gives Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature its special flavor. Historicism is the thesis that all forms of knowledge, experience, projects or problems are merely products of particular historical eras. As such, they cannot be understood or evaluated except with reference to and in terms of the larger context within which they occur. The ahistoricist, by contrast, holds that (at least some) problems can be meaningfully expressed or successfully resolved independently of the historical context to which they belong. Because he is a historicist, Rorty believes that to dissolve a philosophical problem, it is not sufficient to rely on the usual analtyic strategies of exposing linguistic errors and conceptual confusions. To be free of the problem, we need, in addition, a historical understanding of its origin and its development. The historicist account is offered as a therapeutic cure: we are rid of, say, the mind-body problem, only if we come to understand that the problem is not a perennial problem but was itself the product of historical accidents and that it belongs to a historical milieu whose time has passed: . . . What the patient needs is not a list of his mistakes and confusions but rather an understanding of how he came to make these mistakes and become involved in these confusions... To answer (those good questions raised by the mind-body problem), nothing will serve save the history of ideas. Just as the patient needs to relive his past to answer his questions, so philosophy needs to relive its past in order to answer its questions. (p.33)

There are two steps to the historicist's argument. First, Rorty exposes the historical origin of the philosophical problem in question, and then he argues that the larger context, historical or cultural, with reference to which the problem is to be understood, has itself gone stale. This latter claim is usually offered as an explanation of the state of confusion the problem is initially found to be in, and as a reason for dismissing the problem from further consideration. Rorty's treatment of the mind-body problem illustrates how the historicist's argument is used. He begins by arguing that the mindbody problem is a consequence, jointly, of philosophers' acceptance of the Cartesian "invention" of the mind as an ontologically distinct

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category, and their hypostatization of phenomenal properties, properties peculiar to entities in that category. (p. 32) But, even though he locates the conceptual error in the reification of phenomenal properties, Rorty claims that we cannot get rid of the mind-body problem by endorsing nominalism, for the temptation to think that we have "intuitions about the mind" would remain. These intuitions include, for instance, the conviction that we are presented with "raw feels" or "phenomenal contents" of which we are directly aware, in perception. The historicist, however, hopes to show us that these so-called "intuitions about the mind" are nothing more than a learned ability to play the technical language game of the Cartesian tradition. And, the historicist argues, since this technical vocabulary is a product of a historical era, the mind-body problem, likewise, should be seen as a problem that makes sense only relative to that historical perspective. The 17th century Glassy Essence picture of man is optional both in the sense that this picture gained a hold of our attention as a matter of historical accidents, and because we can (at least in principle) reject this picture and hence the philosophical problems stemming from it, in favor of another picture,we hope a less confused and more fruitful one. Clearly, Rorty makes much of the therapeutic power of the historicist argument. It is therefore important to consider the effectiveness of historicism as a deconstruction tool. If, for instance, Rorty successfully dissolves a philosophical problem, should we credit the success to his historical account of how the problem arose and developed through the ages? How important is it that his historical account is accurate in details? Will another plausible, even if inaccurate, account have the same therapeutic effect? In what follows, I shall argue that historicism is not the powerful deconstruction tool Rorty imagines. The historicist's argument is not therapeutic in the strong sense that understanding the historical origin of the problem could free us from the problem in question. It is reasonable, however, to suppose that historicism is therapeutic in a weak sense. If we understand the historical origin of a philosophical problem we believe to be completely confused, we will not see it as a fundamental problem generated in response to natural and inevitable intuitions everyone has. We will be more willing to give it up. I shall argue that this weaker thesis is defensible. My misgivings about the therapeutic power of Rorty's historicist

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arguments can be explained very simply by posing the following dilemma for the historicist. Rorty tells us that exposing the historical origin of a philosophical problem is therapeutic because having this type of understanding liberates us from the neurotic need to solve the problem in question. Let us suppose his analogy between gaining historical understanding and therapy is apt. Still, one would not seek therapy unless one were convinced that there were neurotic symptoms in one's behavior. Thus, before applying the historicist's therapy, Rorty must first convince his readers that there is a need for therapy. Rorty is well aware of this requirement. For each philosophical problem he treats, before beginning his historicist account, he summarizes the current state of the art, scans the major solutions offered and then attempts to show that the problem has become hopelessly entangled and confused. Unfortunately, this move, while important for showing that therapy is needed, also undermines the significance of the historicist's strategy. For, if he succeeds in showing that the philosophical problem in question is internally incoherent or otherwise intrinsically confused, then we would have good reasons to drop the problem from consideration. Understanding the historical origin of the problem would seem unnecessary. This is the case even if one were convinced by the thesis of historicism and thought that all philosophical problems are products of particular historical eras and that none are perennial or fundamental. The thesis of historicism alone does not justify the historicist's deconstruction program. It does not follow from the admission that philosophical problems are merely historical products that, to dissolve a philosophical problem, it is either necessary or sufficient to provide a historical account of its origin and its development. The historicist is caught in a dilemma: either he shows us there is a need for deconstruction, or he fails to do so. If he fails to demonstrate that the problem in question should be dissolved, then a historical account of its origin is irrelevant to the problem's survival. If he succeeds in convincing us there is a need for therapy, then he would have succeeded in dissolving the problem without appealing to the historicist's argument. The historicist's strategy, therefore, is not therapeutic in the strong sense that gaining historical understanding is alone sufficient for dissolving problems. We don't stop asking questions about knowledge and justification just because we understand that these questions

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have, as their historical origin, Descartes's search for certainty. However, it is possible that Rorty has a weaker notion of therapy in mind. Gaining a historical understanding might be therapeutic in the weaker sense that it makes us "feel better" about giving up our familar old problems which we believe, on other grounds, to be non-genuine. If we understand that these problems are consequences of historical accidents, we would not be left with the nagging feeling that dropping them from consideration means we are ignoring intuitions which have prompted the questions in the first place. We would come to understand how these problems have managed to get a hold on us, impelling us to seek solutions, even though they are fundamentally confused. I think this weaker notion of historicism as therapy is defensible. It has the added advantage that it will allow Rorty to forstall some challenges concerning the accuracy of his historicist reconstructions. I think Rorty's historical accounts are, on the whole, both plausible and illuminating. It would be a mistake to be overly concerned with the question of whether Rorty's big picture is also accurate in details. If historicism has only a limited use in the deconstruction program, then a plausible historical reconstruction may have as much therapeutic power as one which is accurate in details. To push Rorty's analogy of philosophy and therapy further, what the therapist (and hence, the historicist) cares about is the elimination of neurotic behavior of the patient. If the patient believes he is responsible for his mother's early death because, as a disobedient child, he once caused his mother to chase him up a steep flight of stairs, then, reliving the memory of the chase might result in liberating the patient from years of frozen guilt caused by the mistaken belief that he was responsible for his mother's death. The inaccuracy of his memory as to whether the flight of stairs was in fact steep, is irrelevant to the therapeutic power of reliving his memory. Similarly, Rorty's therapy would work as long as the contemporary philosopher finds the historicist reconstruction of the "Cartesian" problems plausible. As far as therapy is concerned, the historicist's story need not be so exact as to satisfy a scholar. If the effectiveness of historicism as therapy is limited, does Rorty manage to achieve his deconstructionist objectives? In section 3, I shall argue that, in the case of the mind-body problem, his success is equally limited. I consider his discussion of the theory of reference

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and of scientific realism in section 4. In this case, the deconstruction fails from the very start, for he does not convince us that the theory of reference is the successor subject to 17th century epistemology, nor does he manage to show that the philosophy of language and the philosophy of science are in a state of crisis, requiring therapy. . The deconstruction of the mind-body problem begins, as I mentioned earlier, with an argument to show that the mind-body problem is a consequence of philosopher's hypostatization of phenomenal properties, those properties of which we are directly aware, in perceptual situations (p. 27). Tracing its historical development, Rorty shows that the mind-body problem did not arise before Descartes. These two conclusions taken together seems to suggest that a materialist can dismiss the mind-body problem altogether simply by refusing to hypostatize properties. According to Rorty, however, this suggestion is mistaken. We would still be left with the intuition that we are directly presented with "raw feels" - the phenomenal contents of our perceptual experiences. It is the chief function of chapter 2 to convince us that this assumption is unfounded. Chapter 2 begins with a story about the Antipodeans, creatures who behave like us, have a culture similar to ours, but whose language does not contain psychological expressions. Possessing highly advanced knowledge of physiology, they are able to differentiate and report the occurrences of their various neurological states with a great deal of accuracy. Although the Antipodeans can be mistaken in their reports of the occurrences of neurological states, their reports of, say, seeming to have one's C-fibres stimulated, are incorrigible. Because the Antipodeans behave otherwise just like us, Terran philosophers found themselves confronted with the question of whether or not, accompanying some of their neurological states, the Antipodeans have "raw feels" for which their language lack the appropriate terms. Focussing on this question, Rorty provides a brilliant summary of the development of the contemporary mind-body problem within the analytic tradition. He argues that, since Ryle's The Concept of Mind, the crucial question about the mind-body problem has become the question of whether raw feels can be analysed into dispositional behavior. There are three options: behaviorism, which

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claims that Ryle was right; skepticism about other minds, which implies that Ryle was wrong but leaves Cartesianism intact; and materialist identity theory, which argues that Ryle was wrong though Descartes is not vindicated. According to Rorty, none of these options is satisfactory because each position subscribes to a dubious principle: (P) W h e n e v e r we m a k e an incorrigible report on a state of ourselves, there m u s t be a property which we are presented with which induces us to m a k e the report. (p. 93)

The logical behaviorists attempt to analyse away our intensional idioms and psychological expressions, with little success. The neoCartesians accept the incorrigibility of sentences but assume that this entails a corresponding ontological dualism. They are left with solipsism. Because of (P), the materialist identity theorists attempt to relocate raw feels or phenomenal properties, the ontological correlates of our incorrigible reports of experiences, within the spatiotemporal world. They keep discussions of the mind-body problem alive. Rorty's own position stems from rejecting (P), arguing that if we view incorrigibility as a matter of social practice, there is no need to postulate dubious entities as the contents of incorrigible reports of inner states. The materialist position he characterizes in this book is substantially the same as the earlier one he put forward in 'Mind-Body Identity, Privacy and Categories.' 0965) There are some methodological differences. In the earlier article, he used an argument by analogy to justify eliminative materialism: sensation-talk is analogous to demon talk. When our neurological science becomes better developed, we will drop sensation talk just as we dropped demon talk in favor of references to viruses. Here, the analogy is only hinted at: the Antipodeans are our future selves. When our neurological theories are mature, we will discover that "(no) predictive or explanatory or descriptive power would be lost if we had spoken Antipodean all our lives." (p. 120) Secondly, he takes up a forceful objection raised against his earlier position. The eliminative materialist, according to this objection, is committed to the absurd claim that no sensation report is ever true, for he holds that there are no sensations, and so sensation terms do not refer. Here, Rorty offers a reply. His is not the implausible claim that no one ever feels pain. Rather, he claims that when neurophy-

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siology is perfected, we would say that what people used to call pain, or what people are really talking about when they say they are in pain, are just neurological states. The locution "used to call X " should not be treated as an extensional notion, however. Thus, sentences containing the "used to call X " phrase might be true even if there are no X's. Unlike other eliminative materialists, Rorty claims his statement of materialism does not have the absurd consequence that no sensation report is ever true. Finally, and most important, Rorty insists that his materialism is n o t philosophically interesting. It is not offered as yet another solution to the mind-body problem. For him, it is just good common sense to recognize that there is no Cartesian "mind stuff" and that, to acknowledge that our sensation reports are incorrigible is not reason enough for postulating mental entities. Incorrigibility, on Rorty's view, is a matter of social practice. It is not the intrinsic property of entities referred to by a special class of statements, as those philosophers who take the mind-body problem seriously have thought. I think Rorty's observation that the mind-body problem is being kept alive today largely through the effort of the reductive materialists is sound. However, I don't think it is principle (P) which is at issue. Some of these philosophers believe that mind-body identity is still a live issue n o t because they hold that sensation reports are incorrigible, nor because they think that incorrigibility must be explained by postulating private entities to which we have privileged access. Rather, they assume as their starting point, as part of their data, that experiences such as pains and mental images have phenomenal contents of which we are directly aware, and these must be adequately accounted for somehow. They fear, however, that the language of our future neurological sciences could never adequately describe the phenomenal contents of sensation reports. Sellars, for instance, agrees with Rorty that statements acquire epistemic status as a matter of social practice. However, he insists that a narrowly physical scientific language is inadequate for describing persons. Cornman also argues that although materialism is correct, phenomenal properties will block straight-forward identification of mental and neurological events for the materialist. These philosophers, then, would find it controversial and not simply good sense to admit that "(no) predictive or explanatory or descriptive power would be lost if we had spoken Antipodean all our lives," even if they agree

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with Rorty that incorrigibility is n o t a matter of having privileged access to private entities. Does Rorty's ingenious story about the Antipodeans have the therapeutic effect he hopes for? Does it liberate philosophers of mind from the need to relocate raw feels within the physical universe? I think not. The Antipodean story is supposed to help Rorty characterize recent controversies surrounding the mind-body problem within the analytic tradition. It is very effectively used by Rorty to illustrate and also to ridicule the various moves and arguments which have been made, as well as the positions which have been formulated within the analytic tradition. The ridicule works - at the end of the Antipodean story, it is a serious challenge to a reader to keep the many Terran philosophical theories and Antipodean philosophical theories straight without feeling extremely frustrated and confused. Since the Antipodeans are supposed to have gotten along just fine prior to the arrival of the Terran philosophers, it seems silly of the Terran philosophers to stir up (new) dust and "invent" an Antipodean mind-body problem for themselves. The Antipodean story therefore suggests that the entire mind-body debate in recent philosophical literature is equally frustrating and confusing to anyone not caught up in the mind-body language game. We are supposed to conclude that o u r mind-body problem is an equally silly "invention" of those philosophers caught up in this game. To those caught up in the game - presumably the people who need Rorty's therapy, however, the Antipodean story is much less helpful. If I am right in claiming that the materialists have kept the mind-body problem alive, n o t because they subscribe to principle (P), as Rorty suggests, but because they feel that the content of their experiences would not be adequately described by the narrowly physical language of projected neurophysiology, then the Antipodean story has no therapeutic effect. Effective therapy for these philosophers consists either in showing them that their "intuitions" about the phenomenal content of their experiences really are the result of having learnt to play the technical language game of the Cartesian tradition, or, in convincing them that our future neurological theories will be adequate at describing our experiences of pains and images. The Antipodean story fails at the former task, for these philosophers claim that the vague term "raw feels" refers to the content, in a pretechnical sense, of

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their ordinary experiences of pains and images. The data derived from their ordinary experiences are not inventions of their profession. The Antipodean story does not address the second option. The materialist is being asked to accept on faith, as a premise, that future neurological language will be adequate to describe the phenomenal content of his experiences. But it is precisely because he could not accept this proposition that the philosopher have kept the mind-body problem alive. Thus, it seems to me that Rorty's Antipodean story is successful only at instructing those outside the tradition how confusing discussions of the mind-body problem has become. He is, of course, correct in claiming that only philosophers within the tradition, if anyone, would "think of science's failure as a vindication of Descartes." (p. 125) However, it is the philosopher who needs Rorty's therapy, and this the Antipodean story fails to deliver. Since the deconstruction of the mind-body problem is Rorty's goal, it would have been more helpful if he had questioned the materialist's insistence on treating raw feels as part of his data. He might have asked whether this insistence betrays residual commitment to the myth of the given, for instance. Alternatively, he might go the route of Dennett (1978) who attempted to sketch a functionalist's account of brain operations in order to demonstrate how a neurological language could leave out pain predicates without losing any descriptive power. I conclude that Rorty fails to bury the the mind-body problem, even given the aid of his historical account of the origin of this problem. . Rorty presents his treatment of current controversies in the philosophy of language and the philosophy of science in chapter 6, "Epistemology and the Philosophy of Language." His goal is to dismantle yet another element of the mirror imagery - the realist's notion that reference and truth consist in the "correspondence" between words and sentences and an external world of objects. Similar to the strategy employed in the deconstruction of the mindbody problem, he attempts to show both that current controversies surrounding reference and realism are fundamentally confused, and that they are illicit epistemological problems in disguise. In this case, Rorty's therapy consists in showing that our so-called realist in-

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tuitions are the consequences of our having adopted a fundamentally incoherent distinction invented by philosophers - the distinction between a conceptual scheme (language) and its content (the world). Rorty argues that if we follow Davidson and give up the schemecontent distinction, we shall be free of the problems of realism and reference, the latest permutation of the Cartesian-Kantian search for certainty. A philosophy of language which has epistemological pretensions is "impure," according to Rorty. Problems belonging to impure philosophy of language should be repudiated along with other epistemological problems. Among those philosophers concerned with "impure" philosophy of language, Rorty cites Dummett (1973, 1975) for his claim that the philosophy of language is First Philosophy as well as Donnellan (1972), Kripke (1972) and Putnam (1975) for their discussions of reference. The objection to Dummett expresses Rorty's general abhorrance of foundationalism. Dummett, according to Rorty, attempts to replace epistemology with the philosophy of language as the foundational subject matter of philosophy. This is a mistake "because the notion of philosophy as having foundations is as mistaken as that of knowledge having foundations." (p. 264) The debates about reference, on the other hand, are exercises in impure philosophy of language because Rorty considers the attempt to formulate a general philosophical theory about the extensional notion of reference to be an attempt at the hopeless task of refuting the radical skeptic. The impure philosophers of language, according to Rorty, assume that because reference is a factual relation which connects bits of language with bits of the world, a general theory of reference could explain to the radical skeptic how we, as speakers, manage to "hook onto" the world. But, Rorty claims, there is no satisfying the radical skeptic without postulating privileged access to undesirable entities. The impure philosopher's epistemological quest is therefore doomed from the start. Moreover, their semantical project is hopeless. For, Rorty argues, this project rests on a conflation of "talking about X " , a common sense non-philosophical notion, with the philosophical notion of reference. The former is intensional, for we often talk about non-existent entities in ordinary discourse. The philosophical notion, however, is extensional. Impure philosophy of language therefore sets

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itself an impossible goal: to formulate a general philosophical theory about a notion of reference which is both extensional and which captures our common sense intuitions about talking about objects. Pure philosophy of language, on the hand, does not attempt to explain reference as a fundamental relation between language and the world. It is concerned only with the formal explication of the connection between such concepts as reference and meaning within semantical theory. Rorty considers the formal tasks attempted by, for instance, Davidson's semantics, perfectly respectable. Discussions of reference also arise within the context of the philosophy of science, in connection with controversies about conceptual change and scientific realism. For Rorty, these are merely further efforts at refuting the radical skeptic. They are pseudoproblems. They do not lend respectability to the theory of reference. However, despite Rorty's lucid account of the interrelated problems of reference, conceptual change and realism, I do not find the arguments in this chapter very convincing. It seems to me that the theory of reference should not be seen as an attempt to refute the radical skeptic. I suggest that the theory of reference is the wrong target for Rorty's deconstruction efforts, for it is the philosophy of science, not the philosophy of language, which can claim to be the successor subject to epistemology. In what follows, I shall argue that the distinction between pure and impure philosophies of language is untenable, and that his objections to the theory of reference are unjustified. I shall then examine in more detail his arguments against realism. Pure and impure philosophies of language could not be clearly distinguished on the basis of their differing epistemological objectives, as Rorty claims. To begin with, those pure philosophers of language Rorty cites on p. 257, Frege, Wittgenstein of the Traetatus and Carnap of Meaning and Necessity, all thought of reference as an extensional relation between words and objects. Their projects are therefore not obviously free from the epistemological concerns which characterize impure philosophy of language. Nor are there good reasons for supposing that these formal theories of reference are not meant to be used to explain the ordinary common sense activities of referring to objects. Yet, if this is the case, formal theories are equally susceptible to the charge of confusion Rorty levied against impure philosophies of language.

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On the other hand, with the exception of Putnam, those who Rorty cites as philosophers engaged in impure philosophy of language do not seem to be particularly concerned with the Cartesian projects of refuting the radical skeptic and locating an indubitable foundation for knowledge. Some of these philosophers have epistemological motives, but it is not clear if their motives are objectionable. Some, for instance, have thought that a theory of reference should help us account for how we understand language and how we acquire language. In this sense, a theory of reference is a theory about how speakers learn to represent the world. These objectives, whatever their own merits, are not attempts to refute the radical skeptic. Even if a general theory of reference is an account of how our language is hooked up to the world of objects, still a general theory of reference is not a general theory of knowledge. One would not think that having the proper referential relations to objects is guarantee that one has knowledge of these objects, unless one is engaged in a Tractarian project of formulating an ideal language which mirrors the world exactly as it is. The philosophers who practice impure philosophy of language cited by Rorty, however, are specifically not ideal language philosophers, for they insist that their theories must take into account ordinary intuitions about reference. It is also a mistake to think that impure philosophy of language is committed to a foundational rather than a holistic account of language. A holistic account of language cannot tolerate the assumption that by acquiring the use of a referring expression, a speaker can determine its meaning, without recourse to any other expressions in the language. On a holistic view, the meaning of a sentence is not analysable solely in terms of the meanings of its component parts. Rather, the meaning of a sentence depends on the role it plays in the whole network of sentences and its interrelations with the other sentences. One could therefore adopt a holistic view of meaning and still develop a theory of reference, provided one does not assume that the reference of an expression determines its meaning. The reference theorists Rorty objects to are precisely those who deny this latter claim. Kripke (1972) and Donnellan (1972), for instance, hold that proper names are paradigmatic referring expressions, but names don't have descriptive contents. Indeed, if knowledge is propositional and expressing propositions requires reference to objects, then reference plays a role in an account of how we gain knowledge of the world.

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Rorty should not object to this minimal connection between the theory of reference and epistemology. What is objectionable to Rorty is the supposition that a theory of reference, properly formulated, provides us with the indubitable foundation for knowledge Descartes was after. The mere construal of reference as a factual relation between words and objects would not get us such a grand supposition, however. Rorty's second objection to the theory of reference also seems unfounded. He argues that the theory of reference conflates the philosophical notion of reference with the common sense notion of talking about objects. The philosophical notion is an extensional notion. The common sense notion of "talking about" objects, on the other hand, is intensional. One theory cannot hope to accommodate both these notions. I agree with Rorty that the common sense notion of "talking about X " is intensional. I also agree with his claim that those philosophers concerned with formulating theories of reference often check their theories against ordinary intuitions about how names and descriptions are actually used in ordinary contexts. But, although these observations are sound, they do not warrant the rather drastic conclusion Rorty draws. Why assume that these philosophers are attempting to formulate an extensional theory about an intensional notion? This conclusion seems unwarranted unless we assume that all our ordinary intuitions about reference are intuitions about one single concept, the intensional notion, "talk about X." This is not the case, for there is an equally legitimate concept from which we derive some of our intuitions about reference. Referring is analogous to pointing, an extensional notion. Common sense notions are notoriously complex and ambiguous. Thus, even if the impure philosophers of language are concerned to formulate philosophical theories which capture our ordinary concept of 'refer,' there is no reason to suppose they should capture every ordinary intuition at work. Thus, Rorty's distinction between pure and impure philosophies of language seem untenable, and his objections to the theory of reference as a project of impure philosophy of language appear unjustified. But, problems about reference arise outside of the philosophy of language. Discussions of reference have figured significantly within the context of the philosophy of science. Unlike the philosophy of language, the philosophy of science does

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seem to be a plausible candidate to the title "successor subject to epistemology." Since Quine, philosophers have often assumed that a naturalized epistemology is continuous with science and that epistemological questions can be subsumed within the fabric of the philosophy of science. They reason that since science is the most reliable form of knowledge we have, to understand what knowledge is we should look at the relationship between evidence and theory in science; and, to understand rationality, we ought to examine scientific progress and theory choice in science. However, the views of Kuhn and Feyerabend seem to threaten these epistemic objectives of the philosophy of science. According to Rorty, Kuhn (1970) shows us that there is no theory-independent observation language common to all theories while Feyerabend (1965) advocates that scientific theories are incommensurable and hence incomparable with each other. These views suggest that truth and reference are relative notions. Relativism, however, threatens the plausibility of our intuitive distinction between science and non-science - that science, unlike culture, is the safeguard of objectivity and rationality. In reaction to Kuhn and Feyerabend, there is a resurgence of interest in defending the thesis of scientific realism. For, if the theoretical terms of our good theories refer to objects which exist, and if we have a theory of reference according to which reference can be fixed independently of meanings of terms, then there is a way out of the problem posed by Kuhn and Feyerabend. Even if incommensurable, two theories might refer to the same entities. Despite conceptual change, our theories do not lose their ability to "hook onto the real." (p. 274) Science is progressive because successive theories provide cumulative knowledge about the same entities. Some philosophers, Putnam (1978), for instance, argue for realism explicitly on epistemological grounds. Rorty considers and rejects two of these well known arguments for scientific realism. Boyd's argument (1973) claims that science progresses by the convergence of knowledge, and that this convergence cannot be explained if scientific realism were not true. Rorty dismisses this argument. Convergence, claims Rorty, is a pseudo issue, a consequence of Boyd's failure to note that checking new theories against old ones is a methodological policy we are stuck with, rather than a phenomenon which requires explanation. He takes the second argument for scientific realism, Putnam's meta-induction argument, more seriously. From the premise

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that many theoretical terms used in the past did not refer, this argument concludes that no theoretical term ever refers. The argument is a version of the radical skeptic's argument. It aims to make a case for the claim that the best of our beliefs, namely, the scientific ones, could all be wrong, and so we might have no knowledge whatsoever. While Putnam argues that only a scientific realist can block this disastrous meta-induction, Rorty claims that we should simply admit that the radical skeptic could never be satisfied, and so to block the meta-induction argument by assuming the truth of scientific realism is simply wasted effort. The problem is we can never step outside our own framework in order to verify whether or not the theories we now accept will be rejected in the future. Rorty's aim, however, is not to argue that the thesis of scientific realism is false. Rather, he wants to show that there is no point in arguing for or against realism in science, and, more importantly, that realism in science, true or false, does not lend respectability to the theory of reference. In urging us to dismiss scientific realism from consideration, Rorty cites several reasons. First, the thesis of scientific realism is not philosophically interesting. It cannot fulfil the epistemic functions assigned to it by Putnam and Boyd. It cannot underwrite the success of science, nor does its truth refute the radical skeptic. Secondly, scientific realism is not a thesis we need defend. Even if all our current theories turned out to be false, still, we are not "out of touch with the world." There is a perfectly innocent sense in which we are always in contact with reality: we are always interacting with our environment. Neither of these constitutes strong reasons for thinking that the problem of scientific realism is a pseudo-problem. Several philosophers have articulated convincing objections against the PutnamBoyd arguments for scientific realism, and Rorty is indeed correct in claiming that the hypothesis of scientific realism alone cannot underwrite the success of science. However, these are not the only arguments in support of scientific realism. Rorty's second objection that the scientific realists are motivated by the fear that science would otherwise lose touch with the world is surely a mistake. The third argument against scientific realism offered by Rorty is the serious one. Rorty argues that the claim that all our theories might turn out to be false is itself unintelligible, but realists in general and scientific realists in particular assume this claim makes sense. The

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realist views truth as a matter of correspondence with reality. Their notion of truth is a radically non-epistemic one. Maintaining that truth and justification are radically distinct notions, the realist is committed to the claim that even our very best and most successful theories might not correspond to reality, and hence be false. It is because of this latter claim that the realist must always contend with radical skepticism. From Rorty's pragmatist perspective, however, this claim is unintelligible, so realism is fundamentally mistaken. Following Davidson, Rorty argues that realism subscribes to the third dogma of empiricism according to which there is a real distinction to be drawn between conceptual schemes and their contents, that it makes sense to talk about how adequately a conceptual scheme fits its content, or to talk about alternative conceptual schemes. Davidson (1973) claims that if an alternative conceptual scheme is a set of beliefs which are largely true but which are not translatable into our own, then the notion of an alternative conceptual scheme is unintelligible to us. For, on Davidson's view, a theory of truth is a theory of translation. But, given a holistic view of meaning, we can translate some of the sentences of the alternative scheme into our own only if we can translate most of them. Hence it is impossible for there to be a set of beliefs which are both largely true and which are not translatable into our own language. Moreover, if it doesn't make sense to speak of alternative conceptual schemes, the question of how well our conceptual scheme fits its content also does not make sense. According to Rorty, Davidson wants us to give up the entire package: along with the notion of alternative schemes, we should also give up the notion of content as "uninterpreted reality, something outside all schemes and science." (p. 310) By giving up the scheme-content distinction, Davidson's alternative leaves no room to even state the realist's notion of truth. Rorty concludes from this that the radical skeptic's challenge is avoided altogether. For, if truth is not a matter of fitting scheme and content, then the question of whether we could be mistaken, in a wholescale manner, does not arise. We simply assume that most of our beliefs are true. Davidson, moreover, claims that he is not committed to relativism, for a coherent statement of conceptual relativism itself requires reference to alternative conceptual schemes. Most important, Davidson's theory of truth is not metaphysically interesting because it does not tell us anything about the "nature" of truth. It is simply a

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Tarski-type theory which allows us to generate truth conditions of sentences as they are ordinarily understood, from sentences whose truth conditions are non-controversial. Rorty endorses Davidson's claim that we do not need a notion of truth which is philosophically more potent. The philosopher's notion makes sense only when radical skepticism is taken seriously. Given an ordinary non-philosophical understanding of what is true, "the line between a beliefs being justified and its being true is very thin." (p. 308) Much of the force of Rorty's argument against realism rests on just this claim about the differences between our ordinary, common-sense use of "true" and the philosophical notion of truth. This claim, however, masks several dubious assumptions. Even if "we philosophy p r o f e s s o r s . . , have (trouble) explaining (the realist's notion of truth) to our freshmen," (p. 308), the problem may have to do with our freshmen rather than the concept. It is just not obvious that the nonphilosophical common-sense notion of truth is an anti-realist notion. On the contrary, it is often important in nonphilosophical contexts to distinguish between justified beliefs and true beliefs. For instance, it makes sense to say that scientists were justified to assert some of our past theories even though they turned out to be false. It also makes sense to say that there are true propositions or theories which we are not justified in asserting, for want of evidence. Rorty could perhaps offer the following reply. These supposed distinctions between truth and justification can be accommodated within the pragmatist's view so that we do not need a realist's notion of truth in addition to "warranted assertibility." The first case is simple: false theories are theories we w e r e warranted to assert, but they are no longer assertible, in light of either new evidence or new theories. In the second case, a true theory is one which, if not warrantedly assertible now, will be assertible in the future. As is, this latter claim is too weak to capture our ordinary intuitions about the difference between justification and truth. A question about the truth of a theory is not merely a question of whether or not that theory will be accepted at some time in the future, for this leaves open the option that the theory could be rejected at a still later date. In reply, a pragmatist might say that true theories are those which we accept at the end of inquiry. To make this move, however, is to admit that notions such as "warranted assertibility" could not take over the job of the nonepistemic notion of truth, without appealing to such vague concepts as

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"the end of inquiry." This move is counter-productive. Nor is it helpful to say that true theories are those which, once accepted, will never be rejected. The acceptances and rejections of theories depend on many factors some of which are irrelevant to the matter of truth. Unless we are talking about an ideal, perfectly rational community, we have no guarantee true theories will not be rejected. Finally, there is the well known objection to anti-realist accounts of truth. Most of us at least aknowledge the possibility of propositions which are true but are not provable, or are such that we lack evidence, one way or another, to support them at the end of inquiry. That it is possible that there are such propositions seems undeniable. But, even the acknowledgement of this possibility seems to require the availability of a non-epistemic notion of truth, in addition to the notion of warranted assertibility. It seems, therefore, we do have realist intuitions which resist being explained away as products of specific philosophical problems or concerns. In particular, it is a mistake to suppose that we have no reasons to adopt a realist's notion of truth if we were not concerned to refute the radical skeptic. Although Rorty is right in claiming that realists must always at least acknowledge the radical skeptic's challenge, it does not follow from this that realists must consider radical skepticism as a serious threat. There are good reasons for refusing to take on radical skepticism. For instance, although local skepticism makes sense, it does seem purposeless to ponder, outside of philosophical contexts, whether we could fail to have any knowledge at all. It seems equally meaningless to look for a logical guarantee that we do have knowledge. These reasons for dismissing radical skepticism as a serious challenge, however, are equally available to the realist and the anti-realist. Contrary to Rorty, both should admit that generalizing local skepticism to the extreme is intelligible, but it is not profitable in nonphilosophical contexts to entertain this possibility seriously. In most circumstances, we behave as if we assume that most of our beliefs are more or less true, but this is an assumption both realists and anti-realists make. Rorty is wrong in suggesting that all and only realists must contend with radical skepticism. Moreover, both realists and anti-realists must still address the same epistemic questions about justification, even if radical skepticism is not a threat. These are not questions of how we can be guaranteed of knowledge or certainty, but how, in fact, we come by our fallible

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knowledge of the world. Questions about the nature of evidence and the reliability of our scientific method also fall under this category. These questions need not be construed as ahistorical abstractions or a priori speculations. On the contrary, the question of how we in fact come to have knowledge suggests we should investigate actual processes of acquiring knowledge. Rorty seems to assume that by "epistemological questions," philosophers mean only those global, large-scale questions such as "what is knowledge? .... Does knowledge rest on an indubitable foundation? .... Are there universal overarching principles of rationality?" or "What is the scientific method?" In fact, however, not all epistemological questions are global questions. Wanting to understand such concepts as "knowledge," "justification" and "evidence" is compatible with the admission that we might have to contend with examining actual cases of justified beliefs. Thus, on the one hand, realism is not merely the product of philosophers' preoccupation with Cartesian projects, and, on the other, the pragmatist's view of knowledge as social practice is not in itself anti-epistemological. Hence, even if we give up realism, we are not thereby liberated from all epistemological considerations. Furthermore, Rorty's argument against the scheme-content distinction has problems of its own. The argument assumes that an alternate conceptual scheme is a body of beliefs which are largely true, but untranslateable into our own. However, the intelligibility of realism does not depend on there being alternate schemes in this sense. To make sense of the notion that most of our beliefs could be false, imagine an alternate scheme consisting of a large body of beliefs such that most of our beliefs are translateable into it, but from its perspective, most of our beliefs are false. Such a scheme is sufficiently unlike ours to merit being called an alternate conceptual scheme and this notion of an alternate conceptual scheme is sufficient for making sense of a minimal notion of realism. Can we formulate a philosophical theory of truth on the basis of just this minimal notion of realism, without recourse to the suspect notion of "correspondence"? Perhaps not. However, what is at issue here is not whether formulating philosophical theories about the nature of truth is a worthwhile project. The question is whether the realist's notion of truth is intelligible, and whether we have anything to lose if we were to abandon it altogether. I have argued that Rorty failed to substantiate either of these charges.

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In summary, the program of chapter 6 is to convince us that realism is part of the mirror image and that it is the philosopher's commitment to the realist's conception of truth which is responsible for current controversies concerning reference in the philosophy of language, and scientific realism, in the philosophy of science. Rorty tells us that realism is based on the untenable scheme-content distinction, a philosopher's invention. If we give up this distinction, we can dismiss problems about reference and scientific realism, the analytic philosopher's version of Cartesian problems. I argued that Rorty is wrong in supposing that problems about reference are epistemological problems in disguise, and that his objections against realism (and hence, against scientific realism) are unsuccessful. The deconstruction of these problems within the philosophy of language and the philosophy of science is unconvincing from the start, both because he is unable to show that these current problems are anything more than distant relatives of Cartesian projects and because he fails to demonstrate that they are in a state of crisis. Consequently, the therapy offered to abandon the realist's notion of truth altogether - seems pointless. VICTORIA CHOY

University o[ Maryland REFERENCES Boyd, Richard: 'Realism, Underdetermination and a Causal Theory of Evidence.' Norms 7 (1973). Davidson, Donald: 'On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme,' Proceedings o[ the American Philosophical Association 17 (1973-74). Davidson, Donald: 'In Defense of Convention T', in H. Leblanc (ed.), Truth Syntax and Modality (Amsterdam: North Holland, 1973). Dennett, Daniel C.: 'Why You Cannot Make a Computer Feel Pain," in Brainstorms (Montgomery, Vt: Bradford Books, 1978). Donnellan, Keith: 'Proper Names and Identifying Descriptions,' in D. Davidson and G. Harman (eds.), Semantics of Natural Languages (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1972). Feyerabend, Paul: 'Problems of Empiricism,' in R. Colodny (ed.), Beyond the Edge of Certainty (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1965). Kripke, Saul: 'Naming and Necessity,' in D. Davidson and G. Harman (eds.), Semantics of Natural Languages (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1972). Kuhn, Thomas: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1970). Putnam, Hilary: Mind, Language and Reality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975).

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Putnam, Hilary: 'Reference and Understanding,' in Meaning and the Moral Sciences (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978). Rorty, Richard: 'Mind-Body Identity, Privacy and Categories,' Review of Metaphysics 19 (1965), 25-54. Rorty, Richard: Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979).