Richard Rorty - The World Well Lost

[@andytaylor4138]

I saw a Rick Roderick lecture in which he summarised Rorty’s article as “well, any problem that’s been around in philosophy for 2500 years and we don’t have an answer for yet, well let’s forget about it “

[@VictorGijsbers]

I don't think it's fair towards this particular article, but Rorty certainly sometimes says things like that -- we've tried to solve this problem, didn't work out, maybe it's time to try something new.

[@JoePalau]

Can’t agree entirely. Rorty can be a bit haughty, sarcastic and dismissive when he thinks he is going the way o Wittgenstein or Dewey (and others) by urging us to give up the problems that cease to appear other philosophical outlooks. The so called Problems of Philosophy are Cartesian in origin. They largely concern the ramifications of the mind/body dualism, radical and methodic skepticism and the epistemic problems concerning veridical representations of the world beyond the ontic reach of mind. Dewey’s embrace of Pierce’s anti-Cartesian, and philosophical inspiration of Darwin’s vision of an organism and its ecology, take him directions that require concepts and categories quite different from Hume or Kant. Other problems arise but they don’t stem from Cartesian dualism. In this regard Rorty has a persuasive point to be made. I confess to getting heated reading Rorty’s seemingly glib dismissals. Dialectally, it’s a sucker punch bc there many solid arguments to support anti-Cartesian viewpoints. Dismissal is not one of them.

[@Caligulahahah]

hey man, which lecture was that? thanks in advance!!

[@mansivaish2984]

You have put this so well. Will request you to post some more content related to Rorty, especially Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature

[@justinslade1348]

So glad I found Victor on his own.......his Leiden Uni lectures are excellent!

[@TheExceptionalState]

Many thanks for the video. It is invigorating to hear thoughtful people talk. I do have some reservations about the relationship expressed between concepts and world and reality. consequently I let AI convert these reservations into a short story. It is certinaly a clunky story and needed considerable coaxing to make it vaguely human (no surprise there!!!). It is not AI at its finest, but it does elucidate the difficulties we humans can have with concepts, world and reality. This is the power of story Once upon a time, in a world just like ours, there lived a curious young girl named Lily. Lily was always asking questions about the world around her, eager to understand how everything worked. One day, while playing in the park, Lily noticed that whenever she threw her ball up in the air, it would always come back down. Intrigued, she asked her father, "Daddy, why does the ball always fall back to the ground?" Her father smiled and replied, "That's because of something called gravity, Lily. It's a force that pulls everything towards the center of the Earth." Lily's eyes widened. "Gravity?" she repeated, her voice trembling slightly. The word sounded strange and powerful, like a mysterious force that controlled everything. She imagined an invisible hand reaching out and pulling everything down, never letting go. Seeing the wonder and a hint of fear in his daughter's eyes, Lily's father added, "You know, Lily, you could think of it as 'the heaviness monster' if you like. It might seem a bit scary at first, but it's just a name for something that has always been there, whether we knew about it or not." Lily tilted her head, considering this new information. "So, gravity works even if we don't know about it?" "Exactly," her father said. "Gravity, or 'the heaviness monster,' is a force that exists in nature. It's not something that humans created or put there. It's an integral part of the truth about our world, regardless of what we choose to call it or whether we understand it." Lily nodded slowly, realizing that this mysterious force was not something to be feared, but rather a fundamental part of the world she lived in. It was there, working tirelessly, long before she or anyone else had even known of its existence. From that day on, Lily continued to explore the world around her, always eager to learn more. She knew that understanding concepts like gravity, or "the heaviness monster," was essential to grasping the truth about the universe, no matter what name they went by. And so, Lily grew up to be a curious and wise young woman, forever seeking to unravel the mysteries of the world, one question at a time. She never forgot the lesson her father taught her that day in the park - that the forces of nature, like gravity, work silently and tirelessly, shaping our world and keeping it in balance, regardless of our knowledge or understanding of them.

[@heirsir1904]

Hey I was writing a paper on WWL and thought it was exceptionally cryptic. I'm incredibly grateful for this summary, it cleared up alot, and gave me a jumping point for breaking it down.

[@pascalbercker7487]

I've always thought that if there's an alleged conceptual scheme that is otherwise completely incommensurate with yours, and admits of absolutely no translations into any terms of yours at all, wherefore can you even allege that it's a conceptual scheme to begin with? That seems to be Davidson's view which I must have read somewhere many years ago, if I've understood it correctly. Otherwise, who is to say that some random rock - just seemingly lying there, inert and doing nothing, is in fact using a conceptual scheme so different from my own that I mistake it for just an inert rock just sitting there doing nothing at all.

[@VictorGijsbers]

Yep, that's exactly (part of) Davidson's argument in On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme!

[@pascalbercker7487]

@@VictorGijsbers Does everyone in the Netherlands speak such clear English as you? I live in southern France, and not so many English speakers here! Will you be doing anything on Baysianism in the near future?

[@VictorGijsbers]

@@pascalbercker7487 Relatively speaking, the Dutch are good at English. I won't be ranking myself, but of course I spend a lot more time reading and speaking English than most. No plans to do lectures on Bayesianism at the moment -- I'm not too big a fan -- but it might happen.

[@TheExceptionalState]

@14:00. A person using a different conceptual scheme which we recognize as speech might make the following curious statement. It is raining outside so I am going to put on a loaf of bread.

[@suzettedarrow8739]

So far as Kant’s views about what follows from judgment (namely, that all things that judge have the same conceptual scheme), wouldn’t Kant run into the judgment/shmudgjment problem? Can’t there be things that, although they don’t have judgments, have shmudgments?

[@yuriarin3237]

Thanks for the video 🙂

[@williammcenaney1331]

Why not replace "the correspondence theory" with "the conformity theory?" Sometimes I wonder whether each truth theory is circular because you can ask whether it's true. Do we need to know what truth consists of to know what theory of truth is correct?

[@Jivansings]

A fairly honorable defeat

[@saimbhat6243]

Don't use so many air quotes dude. It is quite annoying.

[@VictorGijsbers]

Thanks for the tip, 'dude'.