Rortian Realism

C 2018 Metaphilosophy LLC and John Wiley & Sons Ltd V METAPHILOSOPHY Vol. 49, Nos. 1–2, January 2018 0026-1068 RORTIAN REALISM JONATHAN KNOWLES Abstract: This paper motivates and defends “Rortian realism,” a position that is Rortian in respect of its underlying philosophical theses but non-Rortian in terms of the lessons it draws from these for cultural politics. The philosophical theses amount to what the paper calls Rortys “anti-representationalism” (AR), arguing that AR is robust to critique as being anti-realist, relativist, or sceptical, invoking Rortys historicism/ethnocentrism as part of the defence. The latter, however, creates problems for Rorty in so far as his reformative views on the nature of philosophical and academic activity are meant to be foisted on an academy that ex hypothesi holds views different from these. The paper suggests we can motivate a different conception of the consequences of AR more amenable to the academy: Rortian realism, a view that makes greater concessions to realism and a kind of scientific naturalism than Rorty would like, but that for those very reasons is more likely to allow AR to prevail. Keywords: anti-representationalism, cultural politics, edifying metaphor, ethnocentricism, historicism, humanities, realism, Rorty, science, truth. Introduction The aim of this paper is to motivate a combined philosophical and metaphilosophical position I call “Rortian realism.” Rortian realism follows Richard Rorty in rejecting the epistemological-metaphysical project of Western philosophy (Rorty 1979) but diverges from him when it comes to the lessons it draws from this for cultural politics. For Rorty the rejection should lead to our reconceiving the overarching aim of inquiry: we should renounce the search for objective truth— describing “reality,” “getting it right”—and embrace instead the goal of solidarity in opinion, extending the moral “we” to ever-wider swathes of the worlds population (cf. Rorty 1989). This reorientation may be hoped to induce a softening up of disciplinary boundaries, such as the boundary between the natural sciences and the humanities (Rorty 1991a; 1998); it also involves a reconceptualising of intellectual activity as providing, not true theory, but edifying metaphors to galvanize our efforts towards solving the problems of the contemporary world (Rorty 1979, chap. 8). For the Rortian realist, the rejection does C 2018 Metaphilosophy LLC and John Wiley & Sons Ltd V RORTIAN REALISM 91 not have such radical consequences; it allows us to uphold an ideal of theoretical scientific activity as the central, defining feature of the academy—assuming a slightly more realism-friendly understanding of truth than Rorty seems to want to endorse, but one he nevertheless would seem committed to. Rortian realism is not mandated by the rejection of the epistemological project, but I think it is a more plausible and reasonable reaction to it than Rortys own pragmatist one—by the very standards of Rortys own anti-representationalist position. Nevertheless, to those who hear “Rortian realism” as a kind of contradictio in adjecto, I can say that this is in a way the point—the aim being to draw attention to how different a picture from the one he actually recommends Rortys underlying philosophical commitments can accommodate.1 It has recently become fashionable for pragmatists to seek to overhaul Rortys anti-representationalism in the direction of more moderate views in epistemology and metaphysics, such as those espoused, apparently, by the original progenitors of the pragmatist movement. While I could perhaps be said to be doing something similar, I should stress that what I say here does not really line up alongside the ideas of these so-called new pragmatists (as Cheryl Misak [2007] dubs them), in so far as they question the cogency of Rortys rejectionist attitude towards, in particular, the notions of objective truth and distinctively epistemic rationality (cf., e.g., Putnam 1990, Brandom 1994, Ramberg 2000, Rorty 2000b, the papers in Misak 2007, and Rydenfelt 2013). My Rortian realism remains firmly wedded to Rortys contextualised, historicist conception of inquiry and hence does not involve a pragmatist reinvigoration of precisely these ideas (that is, objective truth and distinctively epistemic rationality). The rest of the paper is divided into three sections. In the first, I provide an outline of Rortys rejection of the epistemologicalmetaphysical project, taking up both first-order, philosophical and second-order, metaphilosophical components of Rortys argument. I also offer a brief defence of the resulting position—anti-representationalism—against charges of being (perniciously) anti-realistic, sceptical, and/or relativistic, though I also stress (as does Rorty) that, in virtue of its historicism, it does involve a kind of “arationalistic” ethnocentrism. In section 2, I identify and discuss various tensions in Rortys overall 1 In so far as you think Rorty without pragmatism is not Rorty full stop, the contradictory connotation may be insurmountable. If so, so be it, though at most I would have to apologize for inappropriate labelling (and perhaps marketing of my ideas!). But in any case, Rorty is a pragmatist in more than one way: for example, he is also a pragmatist about theory choice in Quines sense. Since my Rortian realism retains this idea (and other related ones), it still reasonably qualifies as a version of pragmatism. The papers title can also be seen as playing on a vernacular sense of “realism,” one that involves facing up to what is likely to happen (viz., “be realistic!”), which might be applied to the question of the reception of Rortys metaphilosophical views by the academy (see section 2). C 2018 Metaphilosophy LLC and John Wiley & Sons Ltd V 92 JONATHAN KNOWLES position. These are not things I think Rorty is unaware of, but nevertheless I cannot see how he can adequately resolve them. I start with a tension between the first- and second-order components of his antiepistemological line and then move on to another involving his response to this first one and his views on cultural politics, arguing that he does not convincingly manage to square his admiration of academic activity with his insistence on an essentially progressive role for this activity (a critique that draws in part on his commitment to historicism/ethnocentrism). Finally, in section 3 I develop Rortian realism as an alternative conception of academic activity that is nevertheless consistent with anti-representationalism. I argue first that Rortys semantic minimalism and quietism commit him to a fairly mundane but nevertheless more committed form of realism than he has explicitly avowed, which in turn allows for thinking of what I shall call theoretical science as the central, defining activity of the academy—an idea that harmonizes better with its own self-understanding than Rortys more purely pragmatist conception of its significance. 1. Rortys Anti-Epistemological Philosophy and Metaphilosophy Rorty famously seeks to reject the whole epistemological-metaphysical project of Western philosophy: vindicating our knowledge of a mindindependent world by giving an understanding of how that world might be such that we could know it. For him this project is inextricably tied up with the metaphor of “mirroring” or “representing” reality in thought or language—one that he thinks of (following Dewey) not so much as wrong but as having outlived its usefulness. Nevertheless, saying precisely why this is so and why we should replace it takes various forms in Rortys many writings (from Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature onwards). In many places the reasons given are, or at least seem to be, more or less straightforwardly philosophical, whereas in others they are metaphilosophical: methodological and/or culturalpolitical. Below I present Rortys thinking in relation to this distinction. (Some might regard this as an oversimplification; I am not sure it really is, but in any case a less “analytic” interpretation, though perhaps more faithful to Rortys rhetoric, would not, I believe, impact substantially on my ensuing critical discussion.) Starting with the metaphilosophical side, there would appear to be three distinguishable ideas relevant to the critique of the epistemological project. The first is that the Enlightenment idea of disenchanted, objective truth reflects an incomplete emancipation from an understanding of our cognitive achievements as in thrall to some external authority (viz., God)—something that served a purpose at the time of the scientific C 2018 Metaphilosophy LLC and John Wiley & Sons Ltd V RORTIAN REALISM 93 revolution but should now be relinquished as incompatible with the freedom inherent in human rationality (see, e.g., Rorty 1999). The second emerges from the defining moment of pragmatist philosophy: “Every difference must make a difference in practice” (see, e.g., Rorty 1998, 76). Philosophy in todays analytic mode fares badly by this criterion, for its typical controversies seem thoroughly devoid of practical significance, and so acquire an air of scholasticism, even aristocratic privilege. Thus: Imagine . . . that a few years from now you open your copy of the New York Times and discover that philosophers, in convention assembled, have unanimously agreed that values are objective, science rational, truth a matter of correspondence to reality, and so on. Recent breakthroughs in semantics and meta-ethics have caused the last remaining non-cognitivists to recant. Similar breakthroughs in philosophy of science have led Kuhn formally to abjure his claim that there is no theory-independent way to reconstruct statements about what is “really there.” . . . Surely the public reaction to this would not be “Saved!” but “Who on earth do these philosophers think they are?” It is one of the best things about the intellectual life we Western liberals lead that this would be our reaction. (Rorty 1991a, 43) These first two ideas are related: questions of analytic philosophy have the sophistical air they do today because, at least in part, they are a kind of “cultural lag” (1991a, 43): remnants of debates that only really make sense given the Enlightenment idea of objective reality. As the last sentence of the quote above might suggest, however, Rorty is nevertheless not simply a technocrat who wants to turn universities into training colleges. It is rather that he thinks that philosophy—at least in the classic Platonic, Western tradition—has run its course, and that it has no real impact on intellectual life today. The relation between this life and disputes in academic philosophy are what he calls “presuppositionless.” Thus, when neo-pragmatists and their ilk are . . . accused of endangering the traditions and practices that people have in mind when they speak of “academic freedom” or “scientific integrity” or “scholarly standards” . . . [t]he charge assumes that the relation between a belief about the nature of truth and certain social practices is presuppositional. [But] . . . philosophical debates about the nature of truth should become as irrelevant to academic practices as debates about the existence and forms of postmortem punishment are to present-day judicial practices. . . . [P]hilosophers who deny that there is any such thing as the correspondence of a belief to reality . . . are no more dangerous to the pursuit of truth than theologians who deny the existence of hellfire. (Rorty 1998, 63–66) C 2018 Metaphilosophy LLC and John Wiley & Sons Ltd V 94 JONATHAN KNOWLES These statements connect to the third and final metaphilosophical component: namely, quietism (see, e.g., Rorty 2010). As we have just seen, for Rorty the intellectual traditions of the academy are not ones that require explicit philosophical backing. But this fact (as Rorty sees it as being) is also reflected in the way in which the various different questions about the reality of morality, the rationality of science, and so on appear, on sustained prosecution, to be simply unreal or contrived. There is nothing to say here that is not a response to a made-up puzzle. For Rorty, however, this experience rests ultimately on the deeper fact that these questions no longer have any practical point. On the other hand—and having said all this—Rorty does take sides in a number of philosophical controversies about truth, progress, rationality, and the like. Thus at the most superordinate level we have the debate between atomists—those who want to see mind and language as susceptible to analysis into elements that represent a mindand language-independent world—and holists: those who deny atomism, seeing our linguistic and conceptual categories as denoting certain reason-giving, historically contingent practices which we humans go in for but which do not enunciate any significant metaphysical category set over and against a non-human “world” (Rorty 2010). Much of Rortys work then aims at interpreting, expounding, and where necessary nuancing or even correcting the views of his holistic heroes—most notably (at least from the analytic tradition) Wittgenstein, Quine, Kuhn, Sellars, Davidson, Arthur Fine, Brandom, Michael Williams, and Huw Price—and thereby defending them against the “atomistic” philosophers who still work within the mentalistic tradition established by Descartes and Locke, a class that includes the majority of contemporary analytic philosophers as well as many who today would rather call themselves “cognitive scientists.” What is the connection between these first-order philosophical stances and the metaphilosophical ideas mentioned above? Are they a stable package? To answer these questions, we can first formulate Rortys basic philosophical view more specifically as follows (it is this I call anti-representationlism, or AR): Our most distinctive cognitive activity as human beings—reflecting upon, propounding, and discussing with one another truth-evaluable statements in accord with various rational standards—should not be understood in terms of language (or mind) coming to represent (bits of) a non-mental, non-conceptual reality. That cognitive activity is answerable to a mind-independent world might seem merely commonsensical or even mandatory to a standard, educated Westerner, but various philosophical arguments—encapsulated most canonically in the work of Davidson—show the idea is not C 2018 Metaphilosophy LLC and John Wiley & Sons Ltd V RORTIAN REALISM 95 one we can really make sense of.2 Hence, both the idea of accurate representation and that of the “reality” that was meant to vindicate the former have to go. All we have to go on are our own and each others conceptions of what is true, which are thereby co-extensional with our conceptions of what is justified. Truth itself is no separate norm for belief from justification, though in addition to its commending and disquotational uses, “truth” has a cautionary function, witnessed in the idea that any claim may be fully justified but not true (Rorty 1986; 2000a). But that only means that while we might accept a claim now, our future selves, in a meeting with a future audience, may not.3 AR obviously has clear affinities with Rortys metaphilosophy. The connection to anti-authoritarianism (that is, Rortys rejection of “reality” along with “God” as the standard for us humans) speaks for itself. The relationship to quietism and pragmatism also seems clear: that the questions of theoretical philosophy lack pointfulness is hardly surprising when the framework for posing them deserves to be abandoned. This is, however, just a preliminary assessment; we shall return to a more in-depth discussion of the relationship between Rortys philosophy and metaphilosophy in the following section. There is also a wealth of philosophical material lurking beneath the summary presentation of AR given above, many aspects of which might be examined in detail both for their own sake and in relation to an inquiry into the coherence of Rortys overall project. Here—as the final part of this section—I want to focus on one general issue: whether AR gives rise to a pernicious form of idealism, relativism, and/or scepticism. I do this both because I think it is an issue that is commonly misunderstood or at least unfairly represented in discussions of Rorty and AR, but also because it will be integral to appreciating my case for Rortian realism. I think it is fair to say that most philosophers, including even many pragmatists, still react to AR with derision, seeing it as involving almost a direct endorsement of some form of anti-realism (or idealism), relativism, and/or scepticism, and therefore as incoherent or at least 2 The central Davidsonian insight for Rorty is Davidsons argument against schemecontent dualism from “On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme” (reprinted in Davidson 1984), though it is natural to see this as interlinked with other aspects of Davidsons views, most centrally perhaps the rejection of the correspondence theory of truth (cf., e.g., “True to the Facts” [reprinted in Davidson 1984], 1986; 1990). (Of course, Davidson did not himself see his work as leading to exactly the views Rorty propounded, but that is another issue.) 3 I underline that this is meant as a statement of AR (as Rorty understands it), not an argument for it. Though I am sympathetic towards AR, my chief aim here is not to motivate or defend it to any great extent but rather to explore its metaphilosophical implications. Further, though Davidsons arguments are important to AR, I think others are, or should be, part of the fuller case for it, as we shall soon see. C 2018 Metaphilosophy LLC and John Wiley & Sons Ltd V 96 JONATHAN KNOWLES unacceptable. These imputations are, however, simply a mistake, at least on the face of it—something that Rorty himself repeatedly pointed out but that still bears emphasis. To start with, AR does not rule out saying that things like dinosaurs, quarks, or black holes exist independently of—for example, aeons before and after—human beings, or that the truths about these things are independent of—may be other than— what we think they are at any time. Rather, it simply denies that this independence is underwritten by “reality”; at least in a sense the independence of other, more homely things—cups and saucers, art, politics, humour—is not. Indeed, it sidelines that whole way of drawing distinctions by rejecting the very idea of “objective” truth or reality and the correlative understandings of “mind” or “concept” that this is meant to be independent from. Of course, you might think questions posed in those terms are good ones, but ultimately that would simply be to beg the question against AR. (For further discussion of this point, see Knowles 2014, § 2.) Nor, for similar reasons, is AR appropriately seen as a relativistic or sceptical position (at least in any standard way). Just as it is not antirealistic, it is not ontologically relativistic, because it does not claim that discourses or cultures, however wildly varying in their “worldview,” actually thereby construct their own worlds or truths: the notions of “world” or “truth” at play here are no less inimical to AR than those in metaphysical realism. This point can also be put by stressing the deflationary attitude to truth that AR endorses: even if disagreement about an issue runs too deep for resolution, appealing to different notions of truth to vindicate our feeling of being right is otiose (cf. Blackburn 2006, chap. 3).4 As regards epistemic relativism, it is true for AR that the only standards of assessment are intra-societal, and these may vary from culture to culture in ways that admit of no direct commensuration. But these standards do not thereby enunciate relativistically correct norms. Indeed, in so far as we come into contact with others and discuss matters of common concern, we will—we do—tend to alter our norms as much as we do our first-order views. This point also relates to ARs take on scepticism. We cannot but think certain things in certain contexts, and thereby think they are true; moreover, we cannot but go in for reasoning to and from these to other beliefs, disagree with those who disagree with us on them, and so on. Commitment is part of what it is to believe and thus part of our nature; scepticism is simply not in the running. For AR it is only the idea of there being any real or 4 For an, in my view, egregious neglect of the deflationary theory of truth in evaluating charges of relativism against Rorty and other anti-representationalists, see Boghossian 2006. C 2018 Metaphilosophy LLC and John Wiley & Sons Ltd V RORTIAN REALISM 97 ultimate justification5 for what we believe or how we reason that is a chimera, something we should thus as far as we can rid ourselves of the urge to attempt to give (and to think is necessary). This last point is in turn, plausibly, closely related to what Rorty means by taking up a stance of irony towards our ultimate commitments (our “final vocabularies”) at any time in history (cf. Rorty 1989).6 What this brings out is that AR, though not anti-realistic, relativistic, or sceptical, might be termed (not anti- but) arationalistitic. That is, though not relativistic in the customary sense, it is, in a strong sense, historicist: just as we are condemned to believe, we are condemned, at least as a default, to ethnocentricity. Thus, for us Western liberal intellectuals there is “nothing to be said about either truth or rationality apart from descriptions of the familiar procedures of justification which a given society— ours—uses in one or another area of inquiry” (Rorty 1991a, 23); and hence “we must, in practice, privilege our own group, even though there can be no non-circular justification for doing so” (29). Of course, though meant provocatively, this also loops straightforwardly back to Rortys overarching take on cultural politics: that consensus must be based on “solidarity,” not “objectivity.” This tirade on behalf of Rorty against his critics should not be seen as foreclosing on a debate about the ultimate credentials AR or its various different aspects.7 Rather, it should be seen as indicating that at least it does not at all obviously commit any philosophical solecism, and that its various different components link up in what appears to be a coherent manner. Rortys historicist picture is nevertheless one that can give pause for thought, even when accepted on its own terms. If, say, your standard Western academic is de facto committed to representationalism, or even just to the centrality of systematic philosophical and scientific debate, then one can begin to wonder how likely it is that Rorty will be able to bring out the change in academic practice he is aiming at. Now as I see things representationalism is a defunct philosophical system that should be replaced by AR, for broadly the reasons Rorty and his favoured holistic philosophers give. These reasons, however, should and can in my view be seen as part of a (in a broad sense) scientific case for AR (cf. Price 2004), not (at least not merely) as a rhetorical device aimed at establishing a new edifying metaphor for 5 Or rather “real” or “ultimate,” since these are ideas of the opposition, ones that AR itself has no use for. 6 Here and elsewhere there seem to be interesting connections between Rortys approach to justification and Humes metaepistemological naturalism (on which see Gascoigne 2002 and Knowles, Skjei, and Amundsen 2013, § 2; for a suggestion as to such a connection, see Williams 2003). I hope to explore this issue in future work. 7 For example, Michael Williams (2003), though sympathetic to much of Rortys AR, rejects Rortys “irony” as enunciating scepticism when pragmatism should only embrace fallibilism. C 2018 Metaphilosophy LLC and John Wiley & Sons Ltd V 98 JONATHAN KNOWLES modern, secular society. In the following sections I elaborate on these points, taking up, first, tensions in Rortys overall intellectual position as motivation for, secondly, trying to identify an alternative conception of the impact of AR on cultural politics. 2. Tensions in Rortys Overall Intellectual Position It is not difficult (or unusual) to feel some discomfiture on reading Rortys critique of Western philosophy. Rorty adopts a rejectionist and/ or quietist stance towards most of its issues, seeing its role as essentially edifying, with social progress as its ultimate aim. At times the suggestion is simply that the traditional debates arent worth the candle: they are contrived, at best otiose, akin to outmoded theological disputes about the sacraments, transubstantiation, and so forth (cf. Rorty 1998). At other times, however, Rorty relies heavily on his philosophical heroes views to justify his quietism and consequent pragmatism. But surely, one might think, he cannot have it both ways. The dismissive attitude to the debates of analytic philosophy rests itself on substantive philosophical gambits, such as Davidsons rejection of scheme-content dualism (see my note 2). Yet these are gambits Rorty seems committed to seeing as merely further epicycles in a controversy itself of little wider significance, even for the academy (compare the thesis of “presuppositionless” above). If it is analytical philosophy as a whole that has been superseded, or should be, then surely Rortys holism also deserves to be left behind, by way of Rortys own insistence that “every difference must make a difference.” Rorty is aware of this “dissonance”: “So far I have argued that philosophy does not make much difference to our practices and that it should not be allowed to do so. But this may seem a strange position for somebody who calls himself a pragmatist. We pragmatists say that every difference must make a difference in practice. We think it is important to argue that the Western Rationalistic Tradition, as Searle defines it, is wrong. We insist on trying to develop another, better tradition. So how can we, without dishonesty, say that philosophical controversies do not matter all that much?” (Rorty 1998, 76). Rortys response is to say that though AR and the arguments for it may have no immediate consequences, they could have some in the long run. Thus: “Physicists whose rhetoric is pragmatist rather than Western Rationalistic might be better citizens of a better academic community” (76). Rorty also suggests that “one result of the adoption of our views might be that . . . physics envy will become less prevalent and that distinctions between disciplines will no longer be drawn in phallocentric terms, such as hard and soft” (69). And: “If all this happened, the term science, and thus the oppositions between the humanities, the arts and the sciences, might gradually fade away” (1991a, 44). Thus, C 2018 Metaphilosophy LLC and John Wiley & Sons Ltd V RORTIAN REALISM 99 Rorty envisages and hopes for a future in which invidious demarcation between academic disciplines will be superseded by a seamless pragmatism, with the overarching aim of furthering our humanity and solving our practical problems. AR is a metaphor that can serve to undergird this aim. Now one might take issue with this alleged consequence of AR; indeed, though I think adoption of AR would probably have some beneficial effects, I doubt it would have precisely those Rorty sketches (more on this in section 3). A prior issue, however, is whether what Rorty says here even begins to address the worry that there is a deep tension between his philosophical and metaphilosophical commitments. What he seems to be saying is that the adoption of AR—even if itself an edifying metaphor— can at least in part be the upshot of philosophical argument. But if so, then the systematic debate between representationalism and antirepresentationalism is presumably of the utmost significance. Moreover, it is surely a debate whose outcome we cannot prejudge as things stand: it may go against AR, and if so, levelling consequences Rorty sees as ensuant upon AR would presumably have to be foregone in favour of upholding the old “phallocentric” distinctions. The piecemeal debates within the representationalist paradigm that Rorty lampoons would also have to be regarded as significant, in so far as their capacity for resolution will suggest something about this paradigms viability (negative or positive). Of course, all of this will take time—but Rorty admits we are talking “in the long run,” and in any case, what is the academy for if not for allowing time for considering issues at a level of erudition and detail we cannot usually afford ourselves in everyday life? Rorty could perhaps say the debate has already gone on long enough to no avail, at least when it comes to resolving the many piecemeal issues. There is no doubt something to this, and indeed AR builds for some of its motivation on the repeated failures of representationalist philosophy to resolve its various flagship problematics. Whatever the problems for represenationalism, however, AR itself has in many ways a relatively short history and surely still needs time to develop— at least if it is going to be the basis of a pragmatist revolution in cultural politics. This is something that plausibly also requires that the alternative, representationalist paradigm coexist with it in order that we can properly appreciate their relative merits (we shouldnt here— though Rorty may—be over-impressed by Kuhnian talk of “revolutions” and the “one-paradigm-at-a-time” conception of intellectual progress).8 Even if we are fairly confident that AR ultimately will prevail, we still seem faced with doing a lot of philosophical 8 I take it in other words that this is no integral part of AR itself, nor, notwithstanding some notable examples that Kuhn probably put undue emphasis on, a faithful account of how scientific paradigms actually compete. See Lakatos 1970. C 2018 Metaphilosophy LLC and John Wiley & Sons Ltd V 100 JONATHAN KNOWLES groundwork involving debate with the opposition into the foreseeable future, of a kind Rorty presumably doesnt think we should bother with or really have time for. The most consistent alternative for Rorty in the face of this might seem to be to bite the bullet and see traditional philosophical debate across the board as at least of secondary significance and import. We can perhaps record some anti-representationalist victories in our manifestos, but the real point is to try to make the world a better place for all. I suspect this is closer to Rortys actual view, and though it doesnt really resolve the tension I have identified, I think it would find sympathy among many Western liberals. Rorty also declares admiration for specifically the academy, however, and thinks its ideals should be upheld; and it is not clear how he can maintain that view if the academys main function—besides giving us empirical control and prediction through technological science—is in fact meant to be providing edifying rhetoric. That is to say—given the historicist, ethnocentric presuppositions of AR—it is not clear how Rorty could get members of the academy rationally to embrace such an alternative conception of their remit, especially when it is, I take it—by their own current standards— so vaguely and unappealingly specified; and hence how his admiration could be upheld. Faced with Rortys arguments, academics might even, and perhaps reasonably in todays political climate, suspect that what is being foisted upon them is a mere rhetoric (a “rhetoric of rhetoric”) concealing plans to instrumentalise—and thereby dehumanise—their institutions. Of course, the latter is also something Rorty fervently opposes. But as things stand, it is very unclear on what grounds he can do this in practice except by admitting systematic philosophical debate in fact should have a central role in the academy, thereby contradicting his own expressed opinion and indeed much of the overall tenor of his view. His alternative seems not to be one that members of todays academy could—by Rortys own, historicist reckoning—reasonably embrace. In a word, it is just too radical for them. Perhaps at this juncture someone might object on behalf of Rorty (see Ramberg 2007, § 4.3, which inspires the following remarks) that what I have said is too crude in assuming that Rorty operates with a dichotomy between systematic, analytic philosophy, on the one hand, and edifying philosophy, on the other; whereas in fact he thinks analytical philosophy is in fact itself “edifying.” Thus: “Analytic philosophy has become, whether it likes it or not, the same sort of discipline as we find in the other humanities departments—departments where pretensions to rigor and to scientific status are less evident. The normal form of life in the humanities is the same as that in the arts and in belles-lettres; a genius does something new and interesting and persuasive, and his or her admirers begin to form a school or movement” (Rorty 1982, 217–18). C 2018 Metaphilosophy LLC and John Wiley & Sons Ltd V RORTIAN REALISM 101 It is not at all clear, however, that this response resolves the tension in Rortys position I have identified. Either the academy will accept the above claim or it will not. If it accepts it, coming to see perhaps its former self-understanding of philosophy as misguided, there would seem now to be a tension with the pragmatist idea that “every difference must make difference,” since Rortys point will not in fact be making but simply revealing a difference, and things will presumably go on just as they have always done (in a state of heightened understanding, perhaps, but whats the good of that in itself, for a pragmatist?). Couldnt Rorty say—as we have seen he does—that AR, now understood as an edifying metaphor, may serve to soften up disciplinary boundaries in the long run? But why should it actually have this influence in the academy? That is, why would academics assume the distinction we have today between (say) natural science and the humanities was the rational upshot (from their point of view) of an alternative edifying metaphor? Surely one who comes to accept that this is how philosophy is and relates to first-order disciplines could just as well say “so much for philosophy” and turn a deaf ear to AR. On the other hand, if the academy doesnt accept the claim but instead rejects it—as would seem more likely—then it seems we are simply returned to the dialectical situation identified above, just one level up, so to speak. Rortys historicism requires the view to chime to some extent with how the academy, at least on reflection, sees itself if it is to have any impact. A further reply on behalf of Rorty might be to say that there just has to be a very new and different conception of philosophy and academic activity in the offing if you accept AR, because AR is in reality not so much a paradigm as an anti-paradigm—an anti-philosophy, leaving us without meaningful work of the traditional sort to do (something that would also apply in science, beyond the activity of prediction and control). As far as conceptions of academic philosophy in the traditional sense are concerned, there really is only the representationalist paradigm. Reject that, and you will need to think radically anew. Thus, Rorty can be seen as presenting the academy with a challenge and then making some preliminary attempts to overcome it (via the idea of edifying philosophy).9 The point of the current paper, however, is precisely to suggest a conception of the academys activity upon which acceptance of AR 9 An anonymous referee made a different objection to my argument: though Rortys view might not be in a position to win over many academics as things stand, it could in principle, and then its impact might be significant. I am not sure whether in-principle arguments can play much of a role for a pragmatist, but in any case what I say in the following paragraph could also be a response to this objection (and is along lines the referee helpfully pointed out as a possible response to it). C 2018 Metaphilosophy LLC and John Wiley & Sons Ltd V 102 JONATHAN KNOWLES neednt entail such a challenge (or, at least, not such a radical one). Relatedly, I think, contra this last reply, that AR can in fact be construed as a kind of (certainly very high level but nevertheless recognisably) scientific hypothesis about the nature of language and cognition (cf. again Price 2004), and that there are good questions not only about how exactly to make sense of it as such a hypothesis but also about how we should conceive of the relation between AR and other branches and aspects of the empirical sciences of the mind.10 At the present moment, I take it that this view is sufficiently novel for the default assumption to be that AR is most naturally construed as, precisely, a Rortian rallying call to “think anew.” The rest of this paper can be seen as going some way towards vindicating the idea that the scientific construal can nevertheless be upheld—and hence, in view of what has been said so far by way of critique of Rorty, arguably should be (that is, if you are nevertheless sympathetic to AR). What I shall do in particular is sketch a conception of the academys self-understanding of its activities that is consistent with AR construed as a scientific position, and that I therefore think has a better chance of preserving the autonomy that Rorty wants for the academy than his own conception of this self-understanding (were it to accept AR). This selfunderstanding is what I call Rortian realism. 3. Rortian Realism We have been looking at how Rorty thinks of AR as serving to shift focus from objectivity to solidarity as our overarching intellectual goal: from a consensus based not on an assumed contact with a mindindependent reality but on a resoluteness in securing social progress. In so far as the aim of objectivity thus lapses, the distinction between natural science, on the one hand, and the humanities, arts, and other aspects of culture will also, Rorty avers, gradually soften, thus correcting what he sees as an existing but regrettable bias in favour of the former in todays academy and perhaps society more widely. We have also seen, however, that there are serious problems in squaring the different elements of his view with one another, rendering his view of cultural politics for the anti-representationalist age difficult to accept. Before proceeding, I should stress that I am in agreement with Rorty in so far as accepting AR might well succeed in deflating the metaphysical ambitions of contemporary science, to the extent it has these. That 10 Price develops his own brand of naturalistic anti-representationalism in his 2011 and 2013, but see also Knowles 2017 and forthcoming for discussion of an alternative conception of this combination of views. The account of the nature and scope of knowledge in the humanities offered in section 3 below is also a kind of anti-representationalist but naturalistic epistemology. C 2018 Metaphilosophy LLC and John Wiley & Sons Ltd V RORTIAN REALISM 103 is, in so far as scientists see their discipline in connection with the project of “limning the true and ultimate structure of reality,”11 AR may have some beneficial implications—in particular, that of wing-clipping certain philosopher-scientists who in seeing natural science as such a theory of “reality” see it also as the ultimate theory of everything, including everything human. I think, however, it is in fact somewhat doubtful that many scientists actually do care very much about metaphysics in this sense, or think they could qua scientists, even in principle, make some interesting contribution to it. (This is not to deny that some scientific questions in and of themselves may have a “metaphysical” air in virtue of their depth or history, such as those concerning the nature of time and space, or consciousness, but here I am thinking of metaphysics in the sense of something like a “theory of reality” or “theory of everything.”) As far as I am aware, this is Rortys view of the matter too, in so far as he accepts that science itself is substantially non-reductive, and applauds Arthur Fines attribution of a neither realistic nor anti-realistic “natural ontological attitude” to scientists (see Rorty 1991b; Fine 1986). Thus, Rorty seems to overplay his critique of a metaphysical kind of naturalism, erroneously taking it to extend to a much more quotidian, non-metaphysical conception of theoretical science and the distinction between it and other explanatory endeavours (within or outside the academy)—or so I shall argue. As we saw in the previous section, there is a general problem about the relevance of philosophy to cultural politics for Rorty. On the one hand, he is a philosophical quietist, a view based in part on his belief that the relationship between philosophy and academic practices is not “presuppositional.” On the other hand, he is a philosophical pragmatist. But if philosophy generally is ineffectual, then so in particular are the philosophical grounds for his pragmatism, that is, AR; and if AR is not ineffectual, then neither, surely, is philosophy generally. We have seen that neither horn is one Rorty can comfortably occupy, but that he would probably go for the first. In that case, however, given the lack of a clear alternative conception of their activities, universities presumably will tend—and reasonably so, assuming ARs ethnocentrism—to operate much as before, including continuing to valorise science (and parts of philosophy) in the way Rorty dislikes. What I want to do in the rest of the paper is flesh out how this valorising can be seen as meshing with an alternative overall philosophical-metaphilosophical viewpoint that nevertheless incorporates AR, at least when conceived as involving a slightly more realist position than Rorty seems to endorse. 11 This precise phrase is Quines (1960, 221), but I do not presuppose here that Quine himself is in fact a metaphysician in the sense AR is concerned to oppose (indeed, for some reasons to the contrary, see Price 2007). C 2018 Metaphilosophy LLC and John Wiley & Sons Ltd V 104 JONATHAN KNOWLES Let us start with the realism issue. It was never, as we have seen, part of Rortys remit to deviate from commonsensical realistic “platitudes,” such as that there were dinosaurs alive long before humans, and the like.12 What Rorty and AR give up is the metaphysical idea of a reality that is essentially independent of, but nevertheless sets a standard for, our beliefs—a view that seems to depend on the representationalist idea of the correspondence theory of truth. It is not clear that this is anything we are deeply committed to. It is arguable, however, that common sense and, perhaps more pertinently, AR nevertheless do involve further realistic (or “realism-like”) commitments beyond the kinds of platitude mentioned above—commitments that, though falling short of metaphysical realism, go beyond Rortys expressed views on justification and truth and would, I think, if only for that reason, be uncomfortable for him to acknowledge. I should stress that my point here will not concern whether truth or “getting things right”—saying “snow is white” when and only when snow is white, and the rest—can be seen as a distinctive norm of some kind, independent of the norm of justification (cf. Price 2003 and Rorty 1995; 2000a; and Rorty and Price 2010 for discussion). This has, as I suggested in the Introduction, been a central theme of the new pragmatists, some of whom think even Rorty himself, under pressure from Ramberg (2000), came over to the “forces of light” and accepted that it is (see Rorty 2000b, Sachs 2009, and Stout 2007, but also Levine 2010 and Knowles 2013 for less sanguine assessments). Now it may be that common sense involves this idea, although I suspect it is really quite indeterminate on it. That, however, is not vital: a supporter of AR is not committed to accepting everything common sense does (see my note 12). Moreover, I do not believe that Rorty himself needs to accept a distinct norm of truth (see again Knowles 2013). Sticking just with AR at any rate, it seems to me that we can and should insist that aiming to say “how things are”—to “get things right”—and simply saying something (that is, something “useful,” perhaps from a theoretical perspective) are not clearly distinguishable attitudes, and hence that questions of justification are also ineluctably context-dependent or “historicist.” Nevertheless, Rortys writings on justification and truth do obscure a further, moderately realistic idea that seems to be entailed by AR. As I have noted, Rorty admits that the truth of a claim may transcend the 12 For the record: Rorty has apparently declared common-sense realism to be as bad as metaphysical realism (see Putnam 2000, 87, n. 11), but the point here is not tied to what is involved in certain nameable positions. In so far as what might be termed “common-sense realism” per se does involve commitments to representationalism/metaphysical realism, it should of course be renounced by AR. The claim is just that these particular, very commonsensical ideas (and others of similar status) are not themselves things AR renounces or needs to. C 2018 Metaphilosophy LLC and John Wiley & Sons Ltd V RORTIAN REALISM 105 justification we have for it at any given time in so far as we sometimes caution others and ourselves by saying, “That is justified, but perhaps not true.” Other than that, however, the notions are to all pragmatist intents and purposes coincident: “The only difference between truth and justification that makes . . . a difference is, as far as I can see, the difference between old audiences and new audiences” (Rorty 2000a, 4). Though, however, this idea makes room for claims that are justified but not true, it is silent on the opposite combination: those that are not justified but true. But surely there are many claims that are not—or perhaps never will be—justified, one way or the other, but that nevertheless we take it are, determinately, true, or at least either true or false. That there can be such claims would seem to follow straightforwardly from ARs quietism and semantic deflationism. The latter involves the disquotational conception of truth—indeed, as we have seen, disquotation is one of the three “uses” Rorty identifies for “truth”—which in turn involves the Tarskian idea that we can provide a recursive theory for our language that specifies a “T-sentence” of the form “p is true iff p” for any (non-paradoxical) sentence of that language we can construct from the semantic primitives at our disposable. Thus, while the standard example is “Snow is white is true iff snow is white,” another is the less familiar “There is a boot-shaped rock on a planet in the Alpha Centauri solar system is true iff there is a boot-shaped rock on a planet in the Alpha Centauri solar system.” The latter is something for whose right-hand side I take it we have no justification, either for or against, but there is no reason to think it not determinately true or false. Indeed, this presumably is the status for the vast majority of all the possible claims our language permits us to formulate. Some of these we shall come to investigate the truth-value of, but most we shall never bother to, while others again we in all likelihood could never justify even if we tried.13 Nevertheless, all these claims are all either true or false (the paradoxical ones aside)—at least, this is presumably Rortys view, given his quietism (a fortiori, that he is not any kind of antirealist, like Dummett). We are in other words “arbitrarily ignorant of how the world is” (as Fodor likes to put it; see, e.g., Fodor and Lepore 2002, 142). Of course, for an anti-representationalist we should probably drop the “of how the world [viz., reality] is,” but the idea that we are ignorant about a whole lot of things in the sense of propositions of our language—presumably most of these, in fact—seems unimpeachable. This ignorance suggests, moreover, a more committed realistic position than Rorty standardly avows, for it is coordinate with the idea that, of all that is the case, there is on the one hand the truth (or truths) we know and 13 I do not mean to be endorsing in-principle unknowable claims; see below. C 2018 Metaphilosophy LLC and John Wiley & Sons Ltd V 106 JONATHAN KNOWLES on the other the vast tracts of truth about which we are ignorant, and about most of which we shall always remain so. Given AR, it is only language that allows talk of any truth at all; it is only our concepts that divide the world into its manifold categories. Thus, can we say with Wittgenstein that “language is the limit of my world” and disavow any interest in in-principle “unknowables” (with Rorty 2010, 63). But none of this amounts to saying that what is true is limited to what we in fact care to talk about, nor to what we do or might justify, now or at any time in the past or future.14 Of course, Rorty could claim that this difference between justification and truth is itself of no practical significance. Perhaps he might say that until a statement is one we have reasons to accept or reject, it is nothing to us. This might be the case on his view of academic activity. As I shall suggest, however, there is a view of the latter on which it definitely is not. Let us return now to Rortys view of the academy and cultural politics against this backdrop. Rorty says that AR can be hoped to bring about a loosening up of invidious disciplinary divides—centrally, that between natural science, on the one hand, and other intellectual activities, on the other, including much that would go under the heading “humanities/arts/social studies.” At the same time, he sees the academys autonomy as something worth preserving, even though it involves no presupposition of an objective reality to investigate. As we have seen, there is a potentially positive impact of rejecting the latter idea: physicists could not then pretend to be giving a theory of everything. As far as I can see, this is something Rorty in fact doubts most of them aim to do anyway. But in any case, we have seen that this rejection would probably not be sufficient to effect his envisaged change in our cultural politics given the centrality of the ideal of scientific activity in the academy. Perhaps, Rorty could say, we should consider things from the viewpoint of the “opposite camp”: the humanities, and so on. If there is no “world” that secures truth for some of our claims and not others, then surely what they have to say has as much claim to consideration as the 14 An anonymous referee wondered what this “Rortian realism” amounts to: to what extent it is just a veiled form of standard realism or instead a kind of coherentist antirealism in which, as it were, already written chapters constrain but are also answerable to later ones. The latter metaphor is certainly closer to what I have in mind, but as ever AR will want to deny that this involves a commitment to anti-realism in so far as it seeks to be a position that goes beyond the realist/anti-realist divide. I tried in the first section to motivate the idea that AR, understood thus, is at least a prima facie coherent position. But in any case my main aim here is to point to tensions in Rortys rendering of AR, here one in his understanding of truth that, when resolved, yields at least a somewhat more realistic-sounding position than Rorty explicitly propounded (and probably would have wanted to acknowledge). C 2018 Metaphilosophy LLC and John Wiley & Sons Ltd V RORTIAN REALISM 107 natural sciences (beyond control and prediction). Rorty still offers no alternative, however, to seeing academic activity in general in terms of engaging with social issues through developing edifying metaphors (again, control and prediction aside), and we have seen that it is unlikely that the academy as a whole will react sympathetically to this. The vision of the academy the Rortian realist recommends is more in line with its current practice and therefore—at least one can reasonably hope—more likely to be accepted. At the heart of academic activity, it says, we do indeed have something that can usefully be dignified by the title “science”—theoretical-cum-empirical science, in a sense shortly to be precisified—albeit not necessarily just natural science in the traditional sense. Thus, in line with AR, the Rortian realist understands science in roughly Quinean and/or Kuhnian terms. There is no theory-independent experiential bedrock that theory is responsive to, and intellectual progress is not a gradual approximation of theory to such “experience” or “reality” but rather a continual, situated attempt to reconceptualise and redescribe given certain preconceptions of how this can be done. However—and it is here that the realism described above makes a difference—this is consistent with the idea that this activity is in another sense constrained, in that we develop it in a dialectic with the as yet unknown. As we have just seen, AR is consistent with a realism that acknowledges there is much we never know at any given time, along with much we perhaps never shall. This picture also fits naturally with the possibility of testing theories against claims or propositions of whose truth we are initially ignorant. Developing theories in a genuine dialectic with the unknown—constrained erudition, as we might call it—is the kind of activity that I am claiming we can think of as theoretical-cum-empirical science (“theoretical science,” for short). This gives, of course, no blueprint, let alone algorithm, for scientific inquiry, and inquiries within different disciplines will take many different forms. These are, however, conclusions Kuhn and other philosophers of science have tried to show us are the only serious ones we can draw from a study of actual science, and they are certainly ones AR embraces. Nevertheless, the account just given, although pitched at a high level of abstraction, is one I believe academics could recognise as a minimally reasonable description of what scientific activity amounts to, on the one hand, and, on the other, how it differs from that of everyday life—as well as some research that goes under the banner “humanities/arts/social studies.” Thus, the former (everyday life) typically involves no theoretical elaboration, no “erudition,” while much of the latter involves this but lacks “empirical constraint” in the proper sense (more on this below). Traditionally, of course, theoretical science has been closely allied to the study of “nature,” but because with Rorty the Rortian realist thinks C 2018 Metaphilosophy LLC and John Wiley & Sons Ltd V 108 JONATHAN KNOWLES such notions are of dubious coherence, that will have to be dropped, along with the monolithic conception of scientific method. Thus, the view is open to the idea that humans, their language, conscious experience, societies, and so on can be usefully prosecuted in scientific ways, at least in principle, as much as the objects of physics, chemistry, and biology. Exactly where the line will go between what is usefully scientifically prosecutable and what is not is not something we can stipulate in advance. Nevertheless, I take it that at least not all academic endeavour can be seen as science in the sense I have been developing (and it is important that the characterisation is not so broad as to embrace any kind of intellectual pursuit).15 Much history, for example, is I take it, like everyday activity, concerned not to develop new theoretical vocabularies but simply to uncover the unknown against the backdrop of an assumed vocabulary (something like “the vocabulary of agency” or “common-sense psychology”). Something similar could be said about certain branches of social science, I think. On the other hand, certain humanistic inquiries will develop theory without resort to what is unknown in the ordinary sense, thereby seeking a kind of hermeneutic self-understanding. Only theoretical science combines the “virtues” of these two kinds of inquiry: develops its theories by relating them, in a genuine dialectic, to the unknown.16 Now—of course, as a follower of AR—I am not saying that this is what “genuine epistemic progress” consists in, or that science thus understood is of value because it is what gives true knowledge of reality. What I am saying is that in a society and an academy like ours that already valorises science, my characterization of this activity is something that plausibly has some chance of being recognised as what distinguishes it from other activities, and what confers upon it the kind of value the academy takes it to have—and at least considerably more chance than Rortys own characterisation in terms of edifying metaphors. The overarching issue of representationalism versus anti-representationalism is itself of great interest and import, but—apart from the fact that this issue itself needs resolving in an academically, presumably scientifically acceptable way—just accepting the anti-metaphysical consequences of AR does not go far 15 If it did, then it would fail to demarcate an activity peculiar to the academy and thus explain our admiration for it (as Rortys conception of it also failed to do). 16 The last two paragraphs also serve to answer a point that an anonymous referee had to the effect that since “constrained erudition” sounds very much like a synonym for “the scientific method” it could just as well be exchanged for the latter. I take it, then, on the contrary, that “scientific method” has traditionally suggested a much more specific idea than mere “constrained erudition”—and most likely one that draws its prime inspiration from natural scientific endeavour (and thereby even, perhaps, the kind of metaphysical understanding of science AR wants to get away from). My point is that even if we disavow the idea of such a universal method, we can uphold a distinction between disciplines that do and those that dont involve constrained erudition. C 2018 Metaphilosophy LLC and John Wiley & Sons Ltd V RORTIAN REALISM 109 enough if all that is left in its wake to do justice to the academys selfconception is the idea of a protracted conversation that might be turned to the aid of society. The Rortian realist idea of science I have sketched aims to be a virtuous middle way between representationalist realism, on the one hand, and edifying rhetoric, on the other. To all this it might be objected that the status quo I am assuming here and attempting to vindicate is hardly something I can take for granted. In particular, that humanistic inquiry (and so on) plays second fiddle to scientific theorizing is not simply a given in the twenty-firstcentury Western academy. To this I can first reply that in relation to precisely Rortys view, my argument has in any case cogency in so far as Rorty at least assumes there is de facto some such science/non-science asymmetry in todays academy. Maybe he is wrong about this, but that is hardly something one can just assume. It neednt of course be a distinction that all academics feel happy about, but as long as it exists, there is some case, given ARs ethnocentrism, for taking it to define a default position. Having said this, however, I think it is also important to stress exactly what the science/non-science dichotomy amounts to for the Rortian realist. First, as already noted, I am not understanding science as purely natural science, nor restricting it to what goes on in acknowledged scientific departments (for example, “social science” and “cognitive science” departments) around the globe today. There is in my view a lot more at least protoscience going on in universities than academics are perhaps aware of, and there could be more. Secondly, even non-scientific activities have their place in the academy for the Rortian realist, and the reasons for this can be explained, in my opinion, by reference to a scientific (if no doubt somewhat speculative) picture of human nature. On the one hand, much of history and social science can be seen as answering to essentially non-theoretical needs or interests we have to know about our society, past and present, that nevertheless requires a certain organization and systematicity in the research undertaken. On the other hand, I think there may be good scientific reasons why we do (and thus to an extent should) continue to theorize about certain topics that dont seem to fit the model of theoretical-cum-empirical science, such as beauty and morality. I take it that time has shown that such topics do not fit the “erudition with constraint” model but rather seem to present us with questions that both demand and yet defy resolution, though not because we have failed to examine the relevant “unknowns.” For Rortian realism this is not, however, because theorizing about these things does not “carve reality at its joints” or is not truth-apt but rather—it might be hypothesised, at any rate—because it springs from deep-seated features of our psychological make-up. These features are not propositional in nature (in line with what non-cognitivists have argued about ethics), but they C 2018 Metaphilosophy LLC and John Wiley & Sons Ltd V 110 JONATHAN KNOWLES are very integral to what we are and how we experience and react to our surroundings; hence the issues they cast us out into, though they seem to admit of no resolution, are not ones we can stop thinking about either; and hence there are in so far good practical reasons for continuing to think about them even though they do not constitute a science.17 Summa summarum, the science/non-science distinction in Rortian realism does not articulate a tacit wish to abandon humanistic research (that which isnt “scientific”)—the academy has place for more than our most basic knowledge-seeking and explanation-seeking activity; it wishes only that it be understood for what it is. Another objection, from the opposite camp, so to speak, might be that my Rortian realist account of science is too “thin” to be acknowledged by the academy, and indeed diverges too widely from the central conception of science the latter works with. “Erudition with constraint” is a catchy slogan, but ultimately anything could be subsumed by it, and it offers no substantial guide to research. Though I have tried to say why I would reject the first of these claims, the second is something I would admit. I dont see this as a drawback, however, given the failure of the positivist search for “the scientific method” (mentioned above). Remember also that what I am trying to do is construct a self-understanding of academic activity that is thin enough to be compatible with AR—a view that abjures monolithic and algorithmic conceptions of method—and yet thick enough to avert a total collapse of academic confidence. Whether I have succeeded in the latter project is no doubt still an open question; however, I do think, as noted, that what the Rortian realist offers is more promising in this respect than what Rorty himself offers. To summarize, then: Rorty thinks an acceptance of AR will gradually lead to an erosion of the divide between natural/empirical science and the humanities (and so forth), because science will then have no role in uncovering “the real”—there being no such thing. The problem is that this leaves no coherent or appealing self-conception of academic activity. Given, however, that we can draw the distinction between theoretical science and other activities in the way just demonstrated in relation to the modestly realist position sketched above, there seems at least some reason to hope AR could be accepted consistent with present academy practices (or at least with minor changes). 17 I hope it is clear from the above that the scientific account to be offered here would be ex post facto: my view is not that there are a priori limits on what might be pursued scientifically, given our psychological make-up; rather, given that certain areas seem not to have made progress but still engage us, we can look for an account of why this is so. This aspect of the naturalistic stance I propose is spelt out mostly clearly in Knowles forthcoming, § 5. C 2018 Metaphilosophy LLC and John Wiley & Sons Ltd V RORTIAN REALISM 111 Finally, I should stress how this conclusion bodes ill for Rortys overall pragmatist view of the remit of philosophy. For if I am right, AR wont be making the kind of difference in practice that philosophy for pragmatists should. On the other hand, if we antirepresentationalists are persistent and clever enough, AR will be figuring as a central theme for discussion in the philosophical debates of the future. This is bad news for pragmatism as an overall philosophical programme but good news for the narrower conception of pragmatism enshrined in AR. Making a direct practical difference is, contrary to much recent posturing by politicians, arguably not something the academy should generally strive for: philosophy—indeed, much of science—is rather first and foremost a matter of understanding whatever it is we wish to understand: our conscious minds, our language, our environment, planet earth, the universe, and perhaps if we are lucky how these things relate to one another (or dont, as they case may be). This kind of understanding is of vital significance, I take it most academics would agree, and at least one very central reason we have universities. The overall picture of the relationship between first-order philosophy and metaphilosophical issues that the Rortian realist recommends is, while deeply indebted to Rortys attack on representationalism, aimed at vindicating the central role of this kind understanding in the academy, inter alia by seeing anti-representationalism as a theoretical contender to the representationalist orthodoxy. Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies Norwegian University of Science and Technology 7491 Trondheim Norway jonathan.knowles@ntnu.no Acknowledgments Versions of or material from this paper were presented at Uppsala in June 2010 and Oslo in February 2016. Thanks to the audiences on those occasions for their feedback. Special thanks to Bjørn Ramberg and Henrik Rydenfelt for discussion of Rorty and pragmatism over the years. 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