Marcos Freitas Freitas থেকে Heritage of Hillsborough
I bought this book like I'd buy a candy bar while waiting in line at CVS. Except that I was in the Co-op. It's one of those enticing little books. It takes about 45 minutes to read. Here's the summary: Pascal Engel raises some legitimate concerns about Rorty's understanding of truth, like whether you can sustain a notion of justification without a notion of truth, or whether we can give up the idea that truth is a norm (a standard of correctness) for beliefs and assertions. Rorty says that he doesn't really care one way or the other. Disputes about truth are scholastic and boring. Engel accuses Rorty of having a conception of language and the world that is "smooth" and "homogenous" and that ignores traditional distinctions (he quotes Blackburn here). He says the role of philosophy should be to make distinctions. Rorty says he likes the idea that his view of language is smooth and homogenous, and embraces what was supposed to be a criticism. He says the traditional distinctions are worn out and need to be replaced. Engel gets mad and says Rorty's views aren't all that different from "King Carnap's". Note: The jacket blurb, from one Bruce Krajewski, says "Richard Rorty and Pascal Engel's exchange about truth starts out in university tweed and ends up in a street fight". That's true if comparing someone to Carnap constitutes a street fight, but false otherwise.