Hilary Putnam (Cambridge/Mass.

AHer Metaphysics,

what?1.

."
. .

.~: ,;"

. .~. .

The death of metapliYsics is a theme that enter~d philosophy with Kant. In our own ccnhlJ"yT'a"towering figure - Ludwig Wittgenstein - sound.. ed

that note both powerful1y ani1 in a uniquely personal way; and he

did not hesitate to IJ.1mp epist~m61ogy together with metaphysics. (Ac- \ what is today called "anacording to some of W iHgenstein's..interpreters, lytic philosophy" was, for Wittgenstein, the most confused form of \ metaphysics!) At tIfe same time, even the man on the street could see that ~netaphysica'l discussion did not abate. A simple Ipduction from the history of thought suggests that metaphysical discuss~(:m.is not going to disappear as long as reflective people remaip in""tlW"world. As Gilson said at the end of a famous hook; "Philosophy always buries its undertakers." The purpose of this lecture is not to engage in a further debate about the question "Is :(or: 'In what sense is') metaphysics dead." I take it as a fact of life that there is a sense in which the t;skof philosophy is to overcome metaphysics and a sense in vyhich Its task is to continue meta" physical discussio.n. In every philosopher there is a part that cries, "This" enterprise is .vain, frivoloUs, ~raiy -;-,we must say, 'Stop!''', and a part that cries, "This' enterprise is simply reflection at the most general and most abstract level;.- to put~~ stop ito'it would be a crime against reason." -Of coursc, philos"ophical problen3~ are unsolvablei but as Stanley Cavell once remarked, "Ther"~ -are better :and worse ways of thinking about
.

them.".
.

":: "

What I just said ;could have been said at virtually

beginning of modernity. .: also tak~"it and this too is something I am not going to argue~ but take as another fact of life, although I ,know that there are still th9sewho woui1- disagree - that the enterprises of
1. An anccstor of this papcr was read to a cOl\ference on ,,Newton al'\d..Realism" which took place at Tcl Aviv University and at the Van Leer-jerusafem Foundation under the IIponsorshlp of thc Institute for History and Philosophy of Science of Tcl Aviv University, April :1.987. 457.

any time since the

providing' a foulldatio11 for Being and Knowledge

a successful

des-

cription of the FurnituJe of the World or a successful description of the

Canons of Justification are enterprises that have disastrously failed, and this could not have been seen until these enterprises had been given time to prove their futility (although Kant did say something like this about the former enterprise long ago). There is a sense in which the futility of something that was called metaphysics and the futility of something that was called epistemology is a sharper,' more painful, problem for ollr period - a period that hankers to be called "PostModern" rather than modern. What I want to do is layout some principles that we sl,ould /lot abandon in our despair at the failure of something that was called metaphysics and something that was called epistemology. It will soon be evident that I have been inspired to do this, in large part, by a very fruitful ongoing exchange with my friend Richard Rorty, and this paper may be viewed as yet another contribution: to that e~change. For Rorty, as for the French thinkers that he admires, two ideas seem gripping: (:I.) the failure of our philosophi~al "foundations" is a failure of the whole culture, and accepting that we were wrong in wanting or think.
'.

,;

.',

. , . , ., . .~.. ,. ,.

ing we could

have

a "fOlU1'dalion"

requires

us to be I'hilosor,l,icnl

re-

visionists. Uy this I mean' that, for Rorty or Foucault or Dcrrida, the failure of foundationalism. makes a difference 10 how we are aHowed to talk in ordinary life -"a difference as to whether and when we are a\lowed to use words like "know", and "objective", and "fact", and "reason". The picture is that philosophy was not a reflection 011 the

phical revisionist. And I think that what is important in philosophy is not just to say, "1 reject the realist anti-realist controversy""but to show that (and 11010)both !;ides lIIisl:cpresellt the lives we live with our concepts. That a controversy is "futile" does not mean the rival pictures are unimportant. In~leed, to reject a controversy without examining the pic-' tures involved is almost always just a way of defending one of those pichires (usually the oi1e.that claims t~.be "anti-metaphysical"). In short, I think philosophy is both more j~portant and less important than Rorty does. It is not a pedestal on\vJ:iich we rest (or have rested until Rorty). The illusion:; t~~t .philosophy .spins are illusions that belong to the nature of human Ilfe itself, and that need to be illuminated. Just saying, "That's a pseu,c!9-:issue", is !Jot of itself therapeutic; it is an .aggressive form of the Inetaphysical disease itself. .These remarks are, 'of course, much,~oo general to serve as answers to .the question which titles.'thislectm'e. But no one philosopher can answer that question. "After metaphysics" there can only be pltilosopl1ers that is, there can only b,e the search for those "better and worse ways of thinking" that Cavell called for. In the rest of this lecture I want to begin 511Ch search by laying out some principles. I hope...that this may' a evcntllally provoke ~~orty to indicate yvhich of the pr~!1Ci~.lesI shall list he can accc'pt, "lid whic:h ~>I1CSis yhilo!1ophical rcvision!sm would lead h .

him to scorn.

Warrant

and communal agreement.;:

,..

culture, ~ reflection some of whose ambitious projects failed, but a basis,

a sort of pedestal, on which the culture rested, and which has been abruptly yanked out. Under the pretense that philosophy"i5 no longer "serious" there lies hidden a gigantic seriousness. If I am right, Rorty hope~. to be a doctor to the modern soul. (2) At the same time, Rorty's analytic past sho\",'s up in this: when he rejects a philosophical controversy, as, for example, he rejects the "realism anti-realism" controversy, or the "emotive cognitive" controversy, his rejection is expressed in a Carnapian tone of voice - he scorns, the controversy. . I . . '1 ~llh often asked, "Just where do you disagree with Rorty." Apart

I shall begin by laying out some prh~ciples ~oncerning w~rranted belief and assertion. Since"jllstifica~ion" i~' a notion that applies to only cer-

tain sorts of stateme~ts 2, I 'shall tj,seJphn Dewey's tedmcial term "war-

rantell assertability" (or just "~arra1}t'.~~ for short) instead of the term ... :.!, "justification". The first is the one with which ~or~y is certain to disagree; and it . seis the stage for all the othe,~.s:

(1) In ordinary circllmstances, there is usually n fnct of tI,e matter ns

.

to whetlzer the stcitemel1tspeople 1111l1ce are warranted or not.

Some of the principl!?s that' follow are like to puzzle or disquiet various philosophers (including Rorty); b~tt let me list the whole group before I deal with "disqu~.ets"~: ere are::the others 3: H

fr~m technical issues

tech~i~al disagreements

have a host of I think our disagreement concerns, at bottom, thes.e.two broad attitudes. I hope that philosophical reflection may b.e of some real cultural value; but I do not think it has been the pedestal on which the culture rested, and I do not think our reaction to the

- of course, any two philosophers

-

even a project as central as "meta, failure of a philosophical project physics" '- should be to abandon ways of talking and thinking which have practical and spiritual weight. I am not, in that ,sense, a philoso-

:':1

. :.'

,.

2. If I am sincerly convinced that I had eggs for breakfast, it 'makes sense to. ask if I am right, but no sense to ask if I have a "justification", for example.

3 Readers of Rcnson,

played a role In the argument of that book. 159

Tr"1I111

nnd Hislory will recognize that each of these principles

(2) WlleLller a slatemcm,1 is TVtIITtl1Ited or llOt is il1dcpendc?IIt of whether , 'tile IIIajority of Olle's c/lltllml peers wOllld say it is tVarrnllted or Il/Iwarrcmtecl. (3) Our norllls mid standards of tVt11Tmlted C/ssel'libility are 11istoricC/1 prodllcls; tlley enolve ill lillle., ' (4) 0111' norms and staudards always reflect 0111' illierests C/lld vallles. Our picl'llre of intellectual flourishillg is part of, tllld <Jllly /11akes , sense as Imrt ,of, 0111'pictllre of IIICl/UlI1flourishing ill geJlernl. (5) 0111' norl1ls and standards of ttllytlIil1g il1cludillg warrc1llied asser-

tability - (lTe capable of reform. Tlzerc are [Jetler tlnd worse 1101'/115 and standards. Although there is a tension - some will say, an unbearable tensionbetween these principles, I do not think I am the first to believe that they can and should be held jointly. From Peirce's earliest writing, they have, I believe been held by pragmatists, even if this particular formulation be new. However, my defense of them will not depend on the arguments of particular pragmatist predecessors. Lct me begin my discussion with the first two principles: the existence of stich a thing as "warrant" and its indcpcndence from the opinion of one's cultural peers. There is one way of defending these principles which is sure to provokec)bjections from anti-<lnd/or-non-realists: that is to posit the existence of trnns-historical"canons" of warranted belief which defiuc warmnt, inllependently of whcther <lny givcn person or culture is ,able to state those canons. But that is not the W<lYin which one should defend the independence of warrant horl1 majority opinion. Rather than viewing the fad that warrant is indcpcndcnt of majority opinion as a fact about a hansccntl(!11t re<llily, onc slwuhl rccogni7.e that it is nothing but a property of the concept of warrant itself; or, since talk of "properties of concepts~' has led somc philosophers to overwork the <\palytic/synthctic distinction, let mc say simply lhat it is a central part of our picture of warrant. To say that whelhcr or not it is warranted in a given problematical situation to accept a given judgmcnt is inde~)endent of whether a majority of one's peers would agree that it is warrfl,nted in that situation is just to show that one has the concept of WClr'rant. ,Indeed, that this is so is shown by the praxis of the Relativists themselv~!i. 'they know very well that the majority of their cultural peers are not convinced by Relativist arguments but they keep on 'argtJing because they think they are justificd (warranted) in doing so, and they share the picture of warrant as indepen~lent of majority opinion. But, it may he objected, surely the Relativist can rcformulate his vicw so as to avoid this argument? Instead of claiming that he is describing our ordinary notion of warrant, the careful Rclativist ought to say he
1/60

\
I

is propor.ing a uellel' c011cept. "Yes, this is a feature of our ordinary concept of warrant," the Relativist ought to admit, "but it is a bad feature." I3ut what can "bad" possibly mean here but "b<lsed on a wrong metaphysical picture"? And how can a Relativist speak Tiglzt (lnd wrol1g met<lphysical pictures? I am, of course, assuming the Relativist is a Relativist about lJotl1 tntth and warra~H; a Realist about truth who happens to be a Relativist about wa{r:a:l1t (there actually are such philosophers, I believe) cancpnsistently 11()ld that "1 can't justify this belief, but I nonethcless 1i>elicye: hat it is h'ile that a statement S is warranted t jf and only if the maj~rity of one's cultural peers would agree that it is warranted." Such a. phUosopher can hold without self-refutation that his own belief is true hut i;oLwarranted; but there is a kind of pragmatic ipc':bnsistency about 'his position. Th~ point I have just made is one that r have oflen made in' 'the past: Relgitivism, just as much as Realism, assumes that one can ~tand within one's language and outside it at the same time. In the case qf Realism this is not an immediate contradiction, since the whole content o( Rcalism lies in the claim that' it ma1<es sense to think of a God'r. Eyc View (or, bdtcr, of a "View fro"m,Nowhere"); but in the ci'lse (If Relativism it constitutes a self-refuta~i'on. Let mc now discuss the l<lst of Ihy five principles, a-hd in particular the cI<lil11, hich is the heart of tl~at in'incir1e, that "there are bettcr and w worse norms <Inti r.tandanls." And this time I slll1l1 discllss Rorty's position.: .,' : Superficially, it niight seem that Rorty and I agree OJ\ this. He often speaks of filllling bellcr ways of i1cling <lnd thinking, ways that enable ,us to "cope beUer." Why shoulcln't.chi'lllging ollr norms anti standards sometimes en<lble n,s to "cop~ bctter{'?

I3ut in one cruciaL place - I have \~ take the risk of quoting him from' memory - he spci1ks of reforms lr10t 'cnable us to cope better ill till! sClIse tlInt it will cO/llci"lo see,'11 I/~ t(wt we are cOl'illg /Jetter. It is at to precisely this point that I get the fe~lin'8 that we do not agree at all. 'The gloss Rody puts 011hIs own notion of "coping better" in the sense Illat it will com,e.1o,pci'!lllto tlzelll tlzat they are coping betteramounts to a rejection,' rather" than a clarification of the notion of "reforming" the ways we are ;doing ang. thinking invoked in my fifth principle. Indeed, for many statements:.p it may wen be the case that if those among us who wanf us" to allop(:;-standar~s according to which p is warranted win out, we will "cope better in the sense that it will come to seem to us that we are coping better" and if those among us who want tiS to adopt standards according to which -pis warranted win out, we will also "cope better" ill tlte scnse tllat it will come to seem to ',IS t"at we are coping [leUer. For example, since the community Rorty

speaks of is normally all of Weslern culLlIl'c, it could happcn that a lICOfascist tendency wins out, ,and people "cope' beUcr" in thc sense that it cOllles'to seem to thelll that they are copillg beller by dealil/g stlvngely with those terrible Jews, foreig/lers alld cO/ll/l1l/Ilists while if th~ forces of good win out it will also be the case that people "cope better" ill tl,c sellse that itcOIites fa seem to tl/em tlllli tllcy tire, Of course, Rorty himself woul~ not fecl"solidarity" with the cuJtme if it went the first way. But the point is that tbis concept of "coping better" isn't' the concept of there being better and worse norms and standards at all, Just as it is internal to our picture of warrant that warrant is logically independent of opinion of the majority of our cuJtmal peers, so- it is internal fo our picture of "reform" that whether the outcome of a change is good (a rdorm) 01' bild (lhe opposilc) is logically inde(JcndC'nt' of whether it seems good or bad. (That is why it makes sense Loargue that something most people take to be a reform in fact isn't one.) I beli.cve, thereforc, that Rorty rejects my fifth principle. Is Rorty trapped in the sillne bind as the Relativist, then? Well, his views are certainly much more nuanced lhan are typical Relativist views. I Ie has also changed tl1CI11, oflen in WilYS1 ilppl'OVe of. So I illn not surc just what he is prepar,cd to defend. Bnl I shall take lhc risk of putling forward an mnalgam of Rorty's published views ilS the Io'icwI l!lill/, hc

more lolcrant, 11'% prone to fall for various varietics of religious iI\tolerance and political totalil'ianism. If that is what is at stake, the issue is momenlous ind(!ed. nut (I fascist could well agree with Rorty at a very abstract level - IVlussolini, let us recan, supported pragmatisni} claiming lhat it 5il11clions unlhinking adivism.4 If our aim be lolerance and the open sociely, woirlr.\ it not be' bc.Her to argue for these ,directly, rather than lo hope thal lhese will cO!l1Efas the by-product of a change in our
mcta'physical pklme? !. ,,;
,

,:'

holds now.,

'

In 1'1lilosopilY 11111'1 Mirror nf Nail//'(' Rorty dislinguished hctwecn tfw "norlnill" and "he1'1l1al1culic" discoursc. Discourse is normal when the culture is in agreement on the relevant stimdards imd lIorms. Tillk aboul tables and dlairs is' normal discourse in our culture, we all have pretty 'Illll<:hthe same WilYSof answering such qucstions as "Are thcrc enough' chairs for the dinner party tonight?". When there is unrcsolvable dis, agreement, discourse which attempts to bridgc the paradigm-gap is forced to be "hermaneu tic". What happens when somcone criticizes fllC! accepted cultural norms and standards? Here, I think Rorty's answer is that I can say of the critic's views (I. assume, for the sake of the example, that I agree with the critic in question) that they are "true", "more rationill", or whatever seems appropriate, bU,t these seman tical and epistemic adjectives are really tlsed emotively. J am "complimenting" the critic's proposals, not say.. iI'Ig that they have particular attributes.
,
'

It scems morc likely to me that, most of the time anyway, Rorty really thinks th:lI ijl~t~rhysical r~alism is wrong. We will'be bctter off if we listen to hint"in the s,ense of having fewer, false beliefs; but this, of course, is something he cat:1nq,t admit he really thinks. I think, in short, that lhc allpl11pt' to SilY ihht f/'OIII n God's Elle View t'lC're is /10 God's I;ye View is slillthcrc, ql\d~r all that wi'appiI;g. ,The t'hird of my ~jvc jJl'inciples ;was that our norms and standards are ',islodc 017 jects; lhcy cvol ve anel change in time, and the fifth, and last, Wil!i thilt out nonw: <lnd'standards can be reformed. , Thc third and fifth principlcs must, of course, be tiildcrstood as con-, diliol1in~ one illHlther: lll<' faet is 110tjllst that we do ~hal1gc our norms and stilndill'ds. bllt that doil1g so is often an illlpro'/.)C?I!,iellt, improvcAn 111('l1ludged fWIII where? Fr~mi':,within o/lr picture of the world of j course'. Bllt from within that picture itsclf, we say that "better" isn't the silmc as "we think it's betler".'And if my "culhiral j5eers" don't agree
' ' ' ~

'r

'

with me, sometil11es I 81iJ1 say "bcttcr" (or "wor~'e"). There are times whcl1, as 5Ial1l(!)' Cavcll puls it, I "rcst on myself cis my fountlalion"."

HC;11ism with, a ~m~il i'r" (lnd with

, " "

<In "R"
1

~~~

,The attempt to S<lYthat wi:\rranf :(al\d truth) is just a matter of com:munal agrecment,O is~ then,: simul(an~ously a misdescription of the no,tions we aclually 'have;,ian~1 a self-refllting attempt to both have and
, ,

--------.--

, '
,: . .." " ,, , .

4 See Ralph Barto" Perry's "The Thal/gllf a/lll 'Character af William lames, Little, BrowlI, Bonlon '935, ':01. 2, 1'::,575. ror a:nilicism af Perry's partial concession 10 Mussolini's view' see Peler Skagestad's "Prilgmalism ilnd Ihe Closed Sociely: A ]uxtil!,osilion of Charles Peirce ilnd Gc'i?,rge Orwell" in I'l,i1asapl'Jf and Social

In particular, when Rorty argues that his own views are more helpful philosophically, have more content, than the views he criticizes, he is ,engaged in hermaneutic cliscoursc (which is to say, in rhetoric). But what is the purpose of his rhetoric?
It may be that we will behave better if wc become Rortyians

'

6 Something like Ihis view is ascribed fo tVittgenstein in Kripke's Wit/genstein on R//les antll'ritlale l,ll//gnngc, In conversation, Cavell has suggested to me that this

Criticislll, vol. 1" no. 1, Fn).I1986, PI'. 307;::;"329. 5 The Cillim af Reason. " ,.:'
"

'

he

makes it sound 'IS if Wil'l~cnsteln Ihought that truth and warrant arc matter of ctiql/clle wanlinG 10 (jnd a justified (or iI'true) hypothesis is like wanting to tlse the same Cork my "cullllral peers" tlse, on such a story. But Wlttgenstcin wouldn't have thought tllis is a description of Ollr form of life at all!

deny an "absolute perspective". Are we then forced to become "metaphysic<ll realists" - at the end of the d<lY, if not <It the beginning? Is there no middle way? If saying what we S<lYand doing what we do is being a "re<l1ist",. then we had better be re<llists - re;dists with a smi"lll"r". But mct<lphysie<ll versions of "realism" go beyond rei"llism with i"Isl11<1ll into cer"r" t<li" charucteristie kinds of philosophic<l1 fi"lntasy. Here I agree ~vith

. of
.

So it looks as if even something <ISparadigmatically "real" as a chair llns nspects tllnt. (/rccollve/ltiollnl. Tllat tIle cllltir is blue is paradigl11atically /t "1'et1!ity", m/ft yet t.1zni'he ellllir [is/is not/don't llaveoto decide]. t a space-time regio/l is a matter of cmmel/tion. And what of the sp<lce-time region itself? Some philosophers think
points
as .\ocillio!1.predicntes,

not

objects.

So <I space-lime

region

is

just a set of properties

(if these:philosophers

are right) <lnd not an ob-

Rorty.

Here is one feature of ollr intellectual pr<lctice that these versions have enormous difficulty in accomod<lling. On the one hand, trees and chairs the "thises and thats we c<ln poin t to" - <Ireparadigms of what we call "real", as Wittgenstein rema'fked.' But consider now a question <lbout which Quine, Lewis, Kripke <IIIdisagree: whi"lt is the rc1i"1tionbetween the tree or the d,air and the spi"lce-lime region it occupies? According to Quine the d,air and the electrom<lgnetic, etc., fields that make it up and the space-time region that cont<lins these fields are one and the s<lme: so the chair is a space-time region. According to Kripke, Quine is just wrong: the chair and the space-time region are Iwo nUl11eric<llly distinct objects. (They have the same mass, however!) The proof is that the chair cOllld ll/1v~ nCr./Ipiecl a l1iffen~lIt fol1l1ce-lilllc l"I'giclII.Al:conling to Quine, moeli"ll pi'edic<ltes arc hopelessly vaguc, so this "proof" is wor.thlcss. According to Lewis, Quine is right about the chair but wrong about the modal predicates: the correct answer to Lewis is that if the chair could have been in a different pli"lcc, as we Si"lY, hat that mei"lns w is thi"lt a counterpart of this chair couhl hi"lve been in thi"lt p1<:e;not Ihi"lt t.llis very chair (in the sense of the logical notion of iden tHy [=] ) could have been in that place. Well, who is right? Are chairs really irhmticlIl with their matter or does <I ch<lir somehow <;oe?<istin the S<lI1\C space-time region with its . matter while remaining numerically distinct from it? And is their matter

ject '(in the sense of concrete Q~Ject) at all, if this view is right. Again, it doesn't so 111uch.seem that' tl1cre is a "view" here at all, as yet anodlel'

way we c.Qulifreconstrucl

obr I<lnguage. But how (:an the existence

of i"I concrete objeot (the space-time region) be a matter of cOllvelltiO/l? And how can th.e"id~ntity of A (lhe ch<lir) and B (the space-time region)
; ..-

be a matter of ccmt;elll'iol/? The re<llist with a small "r" needn't have an answer to Ihese 'questions. It is t~.tst a fact of life, he may feel, that certain <lhernatives <Ire equally goo~l while others are visibly forced. But metaphysical realisin is not just ihe view th<lt there are, after alI, chairs, <lnd some of Ihem "re,.<lftel' all, blue, and we didn't just make all that III'. Meti'\ph ysical realism presen ts itself as a powerful transcendental picture: <Ipicture iri which there is. a fixed set of "Iangu<lge independent" objeclr. (i'llId SOllIe of them Me <lhstri'lct and others <1re concrete) and <I fixed "relalion'" b(~t\V(~en tCl'Ill's hnd theit. extensHm&; What I am saying

.'

., "

'. ','

really identic<ll with the fields? And <Irethe fields re<ll1yidentical with the sp<lce-time regions? To me it seems clear that at least the first, and probably all three, of these questions is nonsensical. We can formalize . t. our I<lnguage in the way Kripke would <lnd we can formalize our lan-

guage in the way Lewis would, and (thank Godl) we can leave it Ul1formalized and not pretend the ordinaryl<lngu<lge "is" obeys the same

:'.niles .

as the sign "=" in systems of formal logic. Not even God could teU us if the chair .is "identical" with its matter (or with the space-time region); and not because there is something He doesn't know :

is that the picture only parti'y agrees with the common sense view it purports to interpret; it has 'consequcnces which,..from a common sense view, arc quite ;:\bsmd. There is nothing wrong .at' all with holding on to our rei"llism \~ilh a smi"lll "r" <lnd jellisoning the.1~ig "R" Realism of the philosophers. . Although he was far from: being a Big "R" realist., Hans Reichenbi'lch had a conceptio.1l of the t.ask of~philosophy 8 which, if it h<ld succeeded, migh t weIl have sa ved Re<llisil1.:~ron1the objection Just raised: the task of philosophy, he wrote, is to tfistiltgllish what is fact 1lI\(1wl,at is convention (" definitio'j'," ill oi,y Syst~II.I'of lCl1owledge.The trouble, as Quine pointed out, is that the philos()'phk<ll distinction between "fact" and "definition" on whick:Re,ichenhad; depended has collapsed. As another eX<lmple, not dissin~iIar to the one I just used, consider the conventional ch<lructer of <lny possibl~:answer to the question, "Is a point identical with a series of spheres th<lt conveJ;",geto it?" We know th<lt we can take extended regions as the .primitivei :objects, and "identify" points with sets of concentric sl'fieres, amI i'lWgeome~ric facts are perfectly well represenled. We kno\V that wc,:caI1 also t<lke points as primitives and lake spheres to be sets of )Joints. But the very stcltement "we .can do
-----..---

7 Lecture XXV, WittgclIstein's I.eell/res 011MntllelJlnlics, cd. Cora Diamond. "Thiscs and thats we can point to" is from this lecture.

8 Rcichenhal'h's

PI,i/IISlltll,y

IIf SpllCC IlIld Tilllc.

either" assumes a diff~se background of empirical facts. Fundamental changes in the way we do physics could change the whole picture. So
"convention" does not mean absolute cOllvellHolI

. {r' :::. " : ~.

C. Kolloquien mit systematischen Themen

- truth

: '.. \
"

":".

by stipulation,

free of every element of "fact". And, on the other hand, even when we see such a "reality" as a tree, the possibility of that p~rception is dependent on a whole c~nceptual scheme, on a language in place. What is factual and :what is conventional is a matter of degree; we cannot say, "these and these elements of the world are the raw facts; ~he rest is convention, or a mixture of these raw facts with convention". What I am saying, then, is that elements of what we call "language" or "mind" penetrate so deeply into wllnt we call "reality" thnt the very project of representing ourselves ns beillg ."mappers" of sOlllc/llillg "Iallguage independent" is fatally compromised fr01l1 ti,e very start. Like Relativism, but in a different way, ReCllisJ1\is an impossible attempt to . view the world from Nowhere. In this si~uation it is a temptation to say, "So we make the world", or "our language makes up the world", or "our culture makes up the . world"; but this is just another form of the same mistake, If we succumb, once again we view the world

"
. ". . " -'
,.

'..

the ~nly'world

we know

as a

product. 011e kind of philQsopher views it as a product from a raw material: Unconceptualized ;R.eality. The other views it as a creation ex nihilo. But tIle world iSl1't a product. It's just the world.

Where are we then? Qn the one hand

this is where I hope Rorty

, .

." ~

will sympathize with what I am saying our image of the world cannot be "justified" by anything but its success as judged by the interests and values whid, evolve and get modified at .the same time and in interaction with our evolving image of the world itself. Just as the absolute "convention/fClct" dichofomy had to be abandoned, so (as Morton

'",

White 0 long ago urged) the absolute "fad/value" didiotomy has to be

abandoned,.and for similar reasons. On the other hand, it is part of
thaHmage dispositions itself that the world is not the product to talk in certain WClYS,either. of our will

or our
,

" ,.

9 Towards Rcullion in P/li/osap/IY.