Cloake, Samuel
(2023)
Naturalism in the Philosophy of Richard Rorty.
PhD thesis, University of Liverpool.
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Abstract
Rorty’s naturalism consists in the idea of a single universal framework of cause and effect, multiply-redescribable and encompassing human cognition. This naturalism informs a particular strand of argument found in his work against the meaningfulness of the ‘representationalist’ concerns of traditional philosophy. Rorty’s naturalism binds human beings, as cognitive agents, to the rest of the universe; it therefore problematizes the division of that universe into human representings and their representational ideal, nature ‘as it is in itself’. His argument is advanced principally through discussions of the thought of Donald Davidson and of Darwin. Rorty’s argument from naturalism broadly coincides with his endorsement of Davidson’s rejection of the ‘dualism of scheme and content,’ while the idea of naturalism as a single universal causal framework enters Rorty’s thought in ‘non-reductive’ form through Davidson’s ‘anomalous monism’. Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection, meanwhile, clears a path to incorporating human beings into the same causal framework as the rest of nature, thereby making naturalism plausible. I attempt to square the argument from naturalism, a conventionally philosophical one, with Rorty’s view that ideas are recommended by the desirability of their envisioned social consequences. Given the difficulty in doing this, I recommend that naturalism constitute a ‘modest,’ minimal, form of metaphysics characterised by its ontological monism. This minimal metaphysical naturalism is proposed as an amendment to Rorty’s position – one of which he would not have approved – rather than as an interpretation of his thought. Nevertheless, the resulting view still recommends Rortyan neglect of traditional philosophical topics and poses a challenge to the cultural hegemony of science.
| Item Type: | Thesis (PhD) |
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| Divisions: | Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences > School of the Arts |
| Depositing User: | Symplectic Admin |
| Date Deposited: | 10 Aug 2023 15:45 |
| Last Modified: | 10 Aug 2023 15:45 |
| DOI: | 10.17638/03171255 |
| Supervisors: |
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| URI: | https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3171255 |
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