The Truth About Rorty -- Yes, Even That Exists
So, in the first chapter, Rorty begins with the view that there can be no truth outside of man. In other words, big-"T" Truth can not exist unless you believe in God, that is; he does not believe there is reason to believe in Him, however (and neither do I).

"To say that truth is not out there is simply to say that where there are no sentences there is no truth, that sentences are elements of human languages, and that human languages are human creations.

"Truth cannot be out there - cannot exist independently of the human mind -- because sentences cannot so exist, or be out there. The world is out there, but descriptions of the world are not. Only descriptions of the world can be true or false. The world on its own -- unaided by the describing activities of human beings -- cannot." (pg. 5)

This is a very tempting argument. It is logically consistent and appears correct. There is one flaw here, however. Rorty uses two different definitions of truth. When he talks about true/false assignments applying only to sentences and descriptions, he actually means logical truth. Yes, that kind of truth applies only to sentences and descriptions. One first needs a language and any new utterance or description in that language is compared to the other ones. If that sentence is consistent with the previous ones, it is logically true. Else, it is false. Think of this in terms of mathematics. If I have already proven that the sum of squares of the lengths of the legs in a right triangle is equal to the square of the length of the hypothenuse, I can prove, given the language of arithmetic, that the length of the hypothenuse is the square root of the sum of the squares of the lengths of the legs. (Say that 10 times fast!) Are you following me?

On the other hand, when people say that there is big-"T" Truth "out there," what they mean is not that somehow one built-in description of the world is consistent with all the others. Of course it is! Would it not be useless to even try to understand the world if it were not? What they mean is: "Does my sentence about the world actually describe the world." In essence, logical truth deals with internal consistency of utterances given a certain language. Big-"T" Truth deals with external consistency regardless of language. In other words, is an utterance, belief, idea, etc. consistent with the actual world? We are not just pawns in some language game, for there are many facets to our existence (ie: seeing, smelling, tasting) which one might not be able to put into words. Regardless of the language we speak, if I say, "There is no window in front of me" and proceed to walk through the non-existant window, I will pay for my consequences. Even if this statement may be consistent with the rest of my world-view (eg: say I believe that nothing exists), it is not externally consistent with the world as it is. Big-"T" Truth is a much bigger category than logical truth. Knowing logical truth can be quite helpful, but it is not the end all and be all of knowledge.

Some Notes On Rorty
I suppose I will begin a long series on Richard Rorty's "classic", Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, which I am in the process of reading right now. He's kind of interesting, especially for a lefty post-modernist type. He also quotes Harold Bloom, which is always a plus. Interesting book. Changed the way I want to talk about the intellectual history of the West, for example.

It's Johnny!
Yeah, I'm back, after a long absense. The fact that I had a semester's worth of school work and work on the YFP made it hard to do anything here. But, yeah, that's not an excuse.