Episode 155: Richard Rorty Against Epistemology (Part Two)

Summary: Continuing on <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_and_the_Mirror_of_Nature" target="_blank">Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature</a>, Ch. 3–4.<br> Is Rorty right that post-Kantian philosophers were engaging in "revisionist history" in saying that the ancients too were concerned with the relation between the senses and reason? We discuss how Rorty makes use of Sellars's "epistemological behaviorism" and Quine's "web of belief" to argue for conversation (truth as determined by social agreement) over confrontation (where the object forces the subject to have some veridical belief).<br> We get Rorty's answer to one of the issues with Sellars that bugged us: if knowledge is "knowledge that," i.e., propositions, then were does that leave babies and animals? Are they mindless? Rorty's solution: There's a difference between knowing what something is like and knowing that something is the case; awareness (which babies and animals have) is not the same as knowledge. But this connection does mean that this pre-linguistic awareness has to be "language-like."<br> Listen to <a href="http://partiallyexaminedlife.com/2017/01/02/ep155-1-rorty-epistemology/" target="_blank">part 1</a> first, or get the unbroken, ad-free <a href="http://partiallyexaminedlife.com/2017/01/01/ep155-rorty-epistemology-citizen/" target="_blank">Citizen edition</a>. <a href="http://partiallyexaminedlife.com/support" target="_blank">Please support PEL</a>!<br> End song: "The Ghosts Are Alright" from The Bye-Bye Blackbirds (Houses and Homes, 2008), as discussed on <a href="http://partiallyexaminedlife.com/2016/12/27/nem32-bradley-skaught/" target="_blank">Nakedly Examined Music #32</a>.<br>