Chapter 5.3: Richard Rorty, language as a tool 

You are an excellent lecturer!! You drew me in and held my attention for the entire lecture. The way that you paced yourself and spoke with such clarity and precision has really helped me grasp some very difficult concepts. Bravo!!😊

The final sentence is a riot! Still laughing. Thanks Mr. Gijsbers.

This is brilliantly put.

In 2022, the idea of multiple and incompatible "truths" seems pretty accurate.

There's an obvious problem here though. Our goals are also constituted by language. In this presentation at least, Rorty does not account for the origins of these goals, of named desires. You need something like psychoanalysis to explain how you can posit a goal, aim for it, miss the target, reconstitute the goal, etc etc I appreciated your video, very clear and gives you something to think about

You are really BRILLIANT .

Could it be possible to include a bibliography in the description/ the video itself? It would be quite helpful to find my way in Rorty's (and in addition all the other treated philosophers/theorists) works.

We see our world simultaneously BOTH 'through our language' AND beside our language. The ABSOLUTE collapsing of our relationship to the world into our [active] relation with language is yet another reduction - one which pretends to correct earlier, for instance, enlightenment/scientistic reductions.

Thank you so much Victor. I love your lectures.

Brilliantly explained. Thanks

Yes, you are a good lecturer. I am enjoying your series, very much. I will recommend people to Watch them in order.

These are excellent, thank you young man

It’s a sumptuous video, really helpful.

Milton wrote in Areopagitica that while truth came whole into the world it was subsequently fragmented. The concept of disunity of truth predates post-modernism.

They way you ended it was so emphatic that I will never forget Rowrty theory of Truth.

Best teacher that I have ever seen💪💪❤

Great series of lectures about great concepts. Thank you

Excellent!

Well, the cat is still on the table. Take that, Rorty! ;)

"The world cannot contradict itself." Sure it can, just add time.

how he kept a straight face after that joke at the end is beyond me 🤣

Thank you!

The question of whether the world has a structure 'just like language' - or vice versa, for that matter - is importantly different from the intuitive-if-careful notion that we can meaningfully observe in regards to [real] states of affairs (and may do so more or less truthfully/accurately).

In the final analysis, we all go out into the world, go about our business and act as if the cat is on the table. :)

A kind of pure instrumentalizing of language may significantly insulate it from its richly intuitive role/s - those that arguably, meaningfully connect better observations, actively clarified states of affairs, and effective/'effectual' Communication ...'active relation-as-mediation,' say. In critically and instructionally 'enforcing' boldly counter-intuitive theses, one (possibly including Rorty himself) may finally seem hypocritical - TO THE DEGREE that his lectures/writings effectively describe "the way language/observation/truth 'really work'."

Meet Schrödinger's elephants. 😉

a lot of explanation. thanks

I like Rorty very much. In this particular case, I find Rorty's view on language to be somewhat impoverished. That is to say, it is a "tool" but, in fact, it's much more than that. Pragmatists like Rorty see language in somewhat utilitartian terms but I think there is a line of attack that is based on phenomenological philosophy, biology, and linguistics that couches language in terms that are both broader and more fundamental than a mere tool used by humans. Language really is part of us, inextricably linked to our own biology and our (phenomenological) reality.

Aristotle - "The earth is standing still because you can't feel it." Galelieo - "The earth is moving and rotating around the sun because it is mathematically elegant."

Can't stop looking for that elephant

His view is similar to Wittgenstein's later philosophy. Thanks.

Jesus is that u ?

Lol, it is totally true that there is an elephant behind me, as well as in front of me.... We live on a spherical planet.

No better than The Sophists. Notice, dispite the fact that Rorty tries to avoid all over the place to say that his account of knowledge is "correct" or true, when Rorty argues we can never get ouside language and compare our ideas with reality, and what is true depends upon the conceptual scheme is embedded in. In asserting that he's making himslelf a "trasendental knower" , ie he's attempting to step ouside his own theory and gives him an special cognitive status, namely, he makes his own theory fully independent of the languague in which is asserted, that is, I'm not allowed to say he wants his theory to be true, but he offers it as a description of how things really are, of an actual description of the way human languague and the world are related and work. However, that is incompatible with what he tries to show, otherwise he had to concede his argument depends on he's believing it, meaning, the argument is not offered as justificatory practice in a given society or tool to get what he wants, but as a real matter of fact! So the whole argument is self refuting ie it's a self contradition. Now, the whole thing depends on a view of concepts called extreme nominalism which says that concepts are merely arbitrary human constructs or arbitrary groupings of things based rough resembles not based on facts, but on convinece (whatever that might be), such view has been throughly refuted by Ayn Rand in her book Introduction to objectivist epistemology. But of course the whole argument depends on Humen-Kantian premises as wel as of those of logical positivism (the implicit or explicit primacy of consciousness view, forgive me RR for talking about consciuossnes lol) which are false. I just want to point out however, that If concepts are merely formed on the basis of human naming human procedures, all arguments are made of concepts and if concepts are arbitrary human constructs all arguments are arbitrary and therefore invalided out of hand, because they would rely on nothing, but human invention, just as the Rorty's argument would be meaningless (which btw it is) whatever even if he thinks that by some miracle a given consensus can save him from such an undesireble state of affairs.

there is a probability of truth for everything short of infinity, absolute truth has to be infinite and only god is infinite

Is there a Philosopher opposing or challenging Rorty's ideas? Thanks.

I consider myself many things, a pragmatist is one of them.however, I wonder if it's just a matter of how we define the terms. For instance, I can say it's an objective truth that 1 plus 1 equals 2 or that I am some sort of being that exists right now. So in that sense pragmatism and realism are compatible. Even if we don't have an all knowing perception of things, we can still know things that we can call true. We just have to have a certain level of skepticism.

Like a composite eye.

Reminds me a lot of Protagoras

Truth may finally yet be both real and 'one' despite the deep disunity of observations, goals, and communications. Varieties of the latter do not 'of necessity' have to be seen as equidistant to reality or validity. Similarly, the one-ness of truth constantly demands nuanced qualification and negotiation - meaningful if ongoing 'Socratic [re-]searches.' Now the absolute unity or wholeness of grasps - or, even, of a given grasp - of the True or Real indeed seems more complex ...so much so that the systematic false humility that one might associate with certain pragmatisms may seem little less suspect than 'moments' from the realm of ?? 'explicitly absolute/ist senses of knowledge.'

I don't mind Rorty's view too much, but I'm not sure it's not vulnerable to accusations of being circular.

But back to the cat on the table, I assume Rorty would agree that is the case. I wish Rorty was alive for the Trump presidency since given Rorty’s political views, he would be against Trump’s words and actions so would like to know how a pragmatist would argue against it. Chomsky mentions how that sort of philosophy has been terrible for countries experiencing dictatorships which seems like would be the case. BTW, I like Rorty and his lectures but wish he and a worthy adversary (Putnam?) had battled it out by essays until both agreed who won.

Bery good batman

🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏

I don't understand the point, that if the structure of the world is constituted by the structure of language, truth cannot consist in corrispondence. Why? A specific claim about the structure of the world as it is punctually expressed in a specific sentence is a specific claim. Can't that still be true or false, that is, in correspondence with the world or not ? The idea that langauge constitutes the structure of the world doesn't claim it does so in every single utterance...

I'm not sure what to make of Rorty's argument. On one hand, what he is claiming seems obvious. On the other, I'm not what he is talking about I would call "truth", but rather something like modeling with vocabularies with a purpose in mind.

Can someone help me in my project Cuz my major is western and contemporary philosophy I will work on Rorty if somone want help with even little I will be appreciated for him/her.

theory of jargon

Just in the mind of intellectuals. That's exactly what I would say If I wanted to be a Pharaoh and fool people to obey me... In other words... "People, listen to me, obey me because the reality is not what you can perceive with your eyes. It is what I am telling you. Now get quiet, you are too stupid to understand what I am saying. Obey me. You are inferior"... For God sake. That's How polititians are having good lifes while people are suffering... Pharaohs are back...

a lion talks about words and animals and the universe

And then, you want me to BELIEVE what you've talked about in this video is TRUE?

The speaking of a particular language cannot be shown to be the sole generator of naggingly intuitive senses regarding 'correspondence.' We should maintain some respect for the latter, furthermore; but - of course - 'progressivist' modern dogma won't have it.

Nah