The Rorty Discussion with Donald Davidson - Part 3 of 6

An interesting discussion between two great philosophers of the latter half of the 20th century, exploring topics such as truth, meaning and reference. I apologize for the audio sync. It was a problem with the original file (not that it matters much, the video is simply two old men talking).

Richard Rorty (1931-2007) developed a distinctive and controversial brand of pragmatism that expressed itself along two main axes. One is negative—a critical diagnosis of what Rorty takes to be defining projects of modern philosophy. The other is positive—an attempt to show what intellectual culture might look like, once we free ourselves from the governing metaphors of mind and knowledge in which the traditional problems of epistemology and metaphysics (and indeed, in Rorty's view, the self-conception of modern philosophy) are rooted.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rorty/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Rorty#Biography

Donald Davidson (1917-2003) was one of the most important philosophers of the latter half of the twentieth century. His ideas, presented in a series of essays from the 1960's onwards, have been influential across a range of areas from semantic theory through to epistemology and ethics. Davidson's work exhibits a breadth of approach, as well as a unitary and systematic character, which is unusual within twentieth century analytic philosophy.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/davidson/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Davidson_(philosopher)

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Richard
• Rorty
• Donald
• Davidson
• Quine
• Sellars
• Tarsky
• Dewey
• James
• philosophy
• pragmatism
• truth
• meaning
• reference
• discussion
• realism
• anti-realism
• relativism
• science

[soultorment27]

Around 8:30 Rorty says that he can't see in a situation whether he's being asked to pursue a question or fact versus a question of convention. This hinges on the distinction between fact of the matter/no fact of the matter. I'm not so sure that I understand what Rorty cannot see. Was Rorty simply referring to the fuzzy borderline cases where it becomes hard to tell what counts as a fact of the matter as opposed to convention? It seems that there are clear-cut paradigm cases of matters of fact...

[version191]

@polymath7 Physics has nothing to do with it you retard nerd

[polymath7]

@polymath7

Oops, careless slip of the finger.

*"doesn't vindicate you at all"

[polymath7]

@ 10:16

"It's a bad example, the sun *does* rise."

The fuck are you talking about Davidson? Is this an allusion the relativity of motion? If so, that doesn't vitiate you at all, kiddo.

*chortle*

But of course he's not going to do the coherent thing and actually start talking physics.

[shalimarite]

Rorty comes across as a little bit of a bully in this dialogue. He's smart and in charge, and he knows it. If the subject of conversation doesn't suit him, he simply changes it. He embodies and instantiates his own philosophic perspective: intellectual history as edified discourse amongst amongst a handful of smartypantses whom most people ignore anyways.

[overmanhasreturned]

@Shhboy No offense but how would you imagine I am doing metaphysics? Which version of metaphysics are you implying?

One way to see it is that there are Kant and then Hegel, and anyone in between them. The rest of them were only practicing for what later would become Philosophy.

If you're using wikipedia as a base for arguement, you're poorly informed. So too with most univ. Meta-meaning about. Physics meaning a whole range of matter and non matter notions. There are other definitions, pick