Richard Rorty's anti-representationism

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Hilary Putnam has said that it is the besetting sin of philosophers to throw the baby out with the bathwater.1 By this he means that each new philosophical movement is often so antithetical to the last that any kernel of truth that might be carried over is continually lost. Over the central issue of realism we swing back and forth from some version of antirealism and appear incapable of capturing the whole truth in a single vision. This study of Richard Rorty is, to a large extent, a description of this pattern of recoil. This is not to diminish Rorty's contribution to the debate. Rorty has done a lot to convince us of the contingency of many of our philosophical convictions. Indeed, it is his refreshing determination to pull the plug on some of the least helpful that advances the debate and draws many to his writing. The problem is that some of this old metaphysical bathwater distorts his own vision to the extent that he ends up advocating something very close to idealism. Rorty describes himself as a pragmatist philosopher so by way of introduction I would like to say something about this connection. To my mind the defining attribute of Rorty's position is his antirepresentationalism - which is his claim that our beliefs and our language do not represent anything. This assertion can be traced back to its roots in pragmatism by considering how that movement was characterized by a suspicion of certain metaphors that we tritely employ when describing the relationship that our true beliefs have to reality