The World Is Ours: Richard Rorty on Normative Objectivity.

I investigate the evolution and improvement of Richard Rorty's conception of the objective, non-linguistic world. I track his appropriation of Donald Davidson's doctrine of triangulation, showing how Rorty develops his notion of the world to face Robert Brandom's criticisms and Bjørn Ramberg's David...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Dialogue (00122246) Vol. 68; no. 1; pp. 39 - 53
Main Author: Latour, Tristan
Format: Article
Published: Phi Sigma Tau Oct2025
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Online Access:View this record in EBSCOhost
Description
Summary:I investigate the evolution and improvement of Richard Rorty's conception of the objective, non-linguistic world. I track his appropriation of Donald Davidson's doctrine of triangulation, showing how Rorty develops his notion of the world to face Robert Brandom's criticisms and Bjørn Ramberg's Davidsonian suggestions. I argue Rorty's final position accounts better for the possibility of community-transcending norms than his initial anti-representationalism. I begin with the conclusions of "The World Well Lost," which constitute his basic stance on the intersubjectivity of the world and then examine how Rorty departs from attempts to preserve a sense of objectivity. Finally, I explain how Rorty's responses to Ramberg and to Brandom complement each other, strengthen, and expand his initial stance to a full-fledged, normative account of human talk about the world.