holla

How's everyone doing on the reading? Still pluggin? I just finished section 1. I felt confident in Rorty's positioning up until he started introducing Davidson, at which point I started fading in and out. I'm finding his language and arguments to be simultaneously simple and convoluted. Simple in language and sentence structure, but convoluted in constant sudden self-referential shifts of thought that shifts between glossing previous thinkers, stating his own position, and conceiving of possibles. I'm happy to find that he isn't simply doing a relativist/reductionist hand gesture and calling it a day; rather, he seems to be fully aware of himself as philosopher who utilizes a specific language in a specific point in time, and is aiming to push the bounds of this "reality" through language—and more precisely, sentences. I see his contingency of language argument wrapped up in this sentence: "only sentences can be true, and human beings make truths by making languages in which to phrase sentences" (9). I see this idea visualized as a mirror looking into a mirror where reflection is doubled or made infinite. I see this as the reason he wants to side step the usage of terms like "Truth/truth" "essential" "intrinsic/human nature". Because they are traps of self-fulfilling sentences and reflections. The difficulty then, in writing about Rorty's arguments, is to avoid these traps of language, i.e. how do I know if I'm speaking/writing in the directionless method of binaries/representation/expression, and how do I avoid that. He seems to have latched on to the old "make it new" adage in an effort to push language, and philosophy by extension, to places unimagined. I suppose this is what I'm most curious about. Is Rorty simply looking for new territory? Creating new methods of thinking, new languages, new maps?

What are your thoughts?

p.s. I feel the need to make visuals for his arguments in order to make his transitions comprehensible. Anyone want visual aids? It would be interesting to see his arguments traced out, or would this risk looking back into the mirror of reductionist language games?

"Truth cannot be out there - cannot exist independently of the human mind - because sentences cannot so exist, or be out there. The world is out there, but descriptions of the world are not. Only descriptions of the world can be true or false. The world on its own - unaided by the describing activities of human beings - cannot." (p5)