Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth: Philosophical Papers

by Richard Rorty

Overview

In this volume Rorty offers a Deweyan account of objectivity as intersubjectivity, one that drops claims about universal validity and instead focuses on utility for the purposes of a community. The sense in which the natural sciences are exemplary for inquiry is explicated in terms of the moral virtues of scientific communities rather than in terms of a special scientific method. The volume concludes with reflections on the relation of social democratic politics to philosophy.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521358774
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	11/30/1990
Series:	Philosophical Papers Series , #1
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	238
Product dimensions:	5.91(w) x 8.94(h) x 0.75(d)

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments; Introduction: antirepresentationalism, ethnocentrism, and liberalism; Part I. Solidarity or Objectivity?: 1. Science as solidarity; 2. Is natural science a natural kind?; 3. Pragmatism without method; 4. Texts and lumps; 5. Inquiry as recontextualization: an anti-dualist account of interpretation; Part II. Non-Reductive Physicalism: 5. Pragmatism, Davidson and truth; 6. Representation, social practice, and truth; 7. Unfamiliar noises: Hesse and Davidson on metaphor; PART III. The Priority of Democracy to Philosophy: 8. Postmodernist bourgeois liberalism; 9. On ethnocentrism: a reply to Clifford Geertz; 10. Cosmopolitanism without emancipation: a response to Jean-Francois Lyotard; Index of names.

Editorial Reviews

"This book is stimulating and challenging. The topics covered are diverse enough to capture the attention of almost any academic audience. Rorty introduces a variety of fresh and exciting ideas." Arnold Lorenzo Farr, disClosure

From the Publisher