Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature is a 1979 book by the American philosopher Richard Rorty, in which the author attempts to dissolve modern philosophical problems instead of solving them. Rorty does this by presenting them as pseudo-problems that only exist in the language-game of epistemological projects culminating in analytic philosophy. In a pragmatist gesture, Rorty suggests that philosophy must get past these pseudo-problems if it is to be productive.
The main influences on Rorty's work were John Dewey, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Willard Van Orman Quine, and Wilfrid Sellars.[1] By the mid 20th century interest in Dewey had significantly waned, he has been described as having been "passé in the minds of a preponderance of philosophers from approximately the 1940s through until the 1980s", the publication of Rorty's book played a role in the resurgence of interest in Dewey.[2] Rorty was rather interested in the history of philosophy and described the book as "very much the old McKeonite trick of taking the larger historical view".[3]
Summary
Rorty argues that philosophy has unduly relied on a representational theory of perception and a correspondence theory of truth, hoping our experience or language might mirror the way reality actually is. In doing so, he builds upon the work of philosophers such as Quine, Sellars, and Donald Davidson. Rorty opts out of the traditional objective/subjective dialogue in favor of a communal version of truth. For him, "true" is simply an honorific that knowers bestow upon claims, asserting that they are what "we" want to say about a particular matter.
Rorty explains how philosophical paradigm shifts and their associated philosophical "problems" can be considered the result of the new metaphors, vocabularies, and mistaken linguistic associations which are necessarily a part of those new paradigms.
Reception
Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature was seen to be somewhat controversial upon its publication. It had its greatest success outside analytic philosophy, despite its reliance on arguments by Quine and Sellars, and was widely influential in the humanities.
Although within analytic philosophy it has still had some influence. John McDowell, in a preface to his book Mind and World (1994), stated that the initial sketches of his ideas propounded in this work were made "during the winter of 1985-6, in an attempt to get under control my usual excited reaction to a reading—my third or fourth—of Richard Rorty's Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature." He added that it was "obvious that Rorty's work is in any case central for the way I define my stance here".[4]
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