Representationalism And Antirepresentationalism - Kant, Davidson And Rorty (1)

Representationalism and Antirepresentationalism - Kant, Davidson and Rorty (1)

ABSTRACT: The notions of representationalism and antirepresentationalism are introduced and used in contemporary philosophical discussions by Richard Rorty to describe his and the neopragmatists' attitude toward traditional problems of epistemology. Rorty means that the history of philosophy shows that there are no final answers to the traditional questions about knowledge, truth, and representation; consequently, they should be rejected. Rorty thinks such questions should be eliminated from philosophy since there is no possibility to get outside of our mind and language. We cannot say anything about a mind-transcendent or language-transcendent, nonlocal or eternal reality. Hilary Putnam agrees with Rorty on this, but not with the conclusion that we should reject traditional philosophical questions. For Putnam, the epistemological questions are worthwhile asking and, although we cannot find the final correct answers, we should continue our investigations as if there were final answers. Our struggles with those problems can lead to refinements of the formulations and to cognitive developments. Putnam proposes a quasi-realism which is often called "internal realism." Rorty rejects every refinement of realism as still realism and believes that the questions of knowledge, truth, and representation lead to regresses ad infinitum or to circular reasoning.

Probably few philosophers influenced so decisively the development of epistemology as Kant. Without him it is not possible to describe the last two hundred years of the history of philosophy as well as contemporary philosophy in general. On the other "end of the line" one of the most influential contemporary American philosophers Richard Rorty proposes that we should abandon epistemology and Kantian picture of representation. In this paper I pose the question, whether Rorty is thorougly succesful in his abandomnent. I try to investigate the differences and similarities of Kantian and Rortyan thinking with the help of the epistemological notion of representationalism and of the antiepistemological notion of antirepresentationalism. If it is possible to find crucial overlapping areas of both thinking, then there arises a dilemma: either Kant himself is a "Rortyan", postepistemological thinker, and this would be a surprizing new idea about Kantian philosophy or Rorty succeeds not completely to overcome the structures of Kantian-epistemological thinking.

The notions representationalism and antirepresentationalism are introduced and used in contemporary philosophical discussions by Richard Rorty, to describe his and the neopragmatists attitude towards traditional problems of epistemology and "to make safe the world" for a "postepistemological" thinking. Rorty means, the history of philosophy showed, that there are no final answers to the traditional questions about "knowledge," "truth" and "representation"; (2) consequently they should be rejected.

But contrary to Rorty, most of the contemporary American philosophers in the analytic tradition mean, philosophical questions about truth and knowledge are worth while to investigate. For example Thomas Nagel accepts what Kant said, that it is not possible to know the subject-transcendent reality as such, but he suggests that since there is a "nonlocal", "eternal" reality, which transcends our mind, knowledge and language, it should be taken as the never knowable and eternal framework of our investigations. (3) Hence for him the philosophical questions are legitimate, but perhaps they will have never a satisfying final answer. Rorty thinks such questions should be eliminated from philosophy since there is no possibility to get outside of our mind and language, we cannot say anything about a mind-transcendent or language-transcendent, nonlocal or eternal reality. (4) Hilary Putnam agrees with Rorty on this but on the conclusion that we should reject traditional philosophical questions. For Putnam the epistemological questions worth while to ask, and although we cannot find the final correct answers, we should continue our investigations as if there would be a final answer. Our struggles with those problems can lead to refinements of the formulations and to cognitive developments. Putnam proposes a quasi-realism, a (refined and raffinate) realism which is called by Putnam himself "internal realism". (5) Rorty rejects every refinement of realism as still realism and means, the question of knowledge, truth and representation lead to "pyrrhonian" style regresses ad infinitum or to circular reasoning. (6)

For antirepresentationalism the "causal interaction" of the subject with the ("outside") world, the "coping with the world" is a broader term then the "receptivity and spontaneity" of Kantian thinkers. Antirepresentationalism does not try to see the world as it is, it does not investigate knowledge or accurate representation of reality, since in every statement about the world there is an inseparable "mixture" and "cohabitation" of the subject and the object. That means if we think that we know something about the world, we can never exactly make a distinction, what part of it comes from us and what part comes from the "outside world". Consequently, it has no sense to make investigations about the epistemological presuppositions of the possibility of knowledge, it has no sense to research "the idea of knowledge of, or successful linguistic reference to, a reality underlying the appearances that nature presents." (7) Since in the model of Rorty there is no distinction between the objects as they appear and as they are in themselves, it has no sense to think substantially about the things and consequently Rorty argues for an anti-essential view of the world.

The impossibility of the subject-object separation is seemingly similarly recognized by such philosophers as McDowell, who is in Rorty's vocabulary representationalist. McDowell suggests that "empirical knowledge results from a co-operation between receptivity and spontaneity ... receptivity does not make an even notionally separable contribution to the co-operation." (8) Receptivity is of course not the outside world and not the object of knowledge, it is "only" the capability to receive sensual impression from the world. Representationalists as McDowell do not think that co-operation of receptivity and spontaneity would make possible to think a co-operation as "continuity" of object and subject, nature and mind. That is one reason why representationalists must maintain the "visual"