Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature Themes

Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature Themes

Humans have no way to obtain "objective truth."

Instead of viewing truth as inherently subjective or objective, Rorty approaches truth from a completely different angle, explaining the phenomenon of feeling "right" as a kind of honor system where other people function as a jury for ideas. If that jury approves of an idea, the idea tends to be regarded as true.

Needless to say, that argument completely circumvents any claim for objectivity. In other words, Rorty believes that what we experience as "external reality" is just nature serving as a mirror to reflect our own minds back to us, because we are only experiencing reality through our perception.

Culture and society influence us absolutely.

Instead of saying that society and culture are partially responsible for our construction of "truth," Rorty suggests in this book that other people have way more to do with our senses for truth than we could ever imagine. Rorty's perspective on this type of communal subjectivity is heightened by his discussion of philosophical paradigm shifts. The argument basically goes like this: If we have all agreed to ideas in the past which ended up being scientifically false, what's to say that future knowledge won't undermine our current assumptions?

How to hold beliefs.

Rorty's work could be seen as an argument about how people hold their beliefs, especially their beliefs about their external reality and their internal thought life or "self." His main point is just that we should hold beliefs loosely, and to assume that regardless of how we feel about an idea emotionally, that we are probably wrong. Because our perspective is limited, we cannot make claims to objective truth.

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