Rorty QOTD

ALT It is not that we first spoke a language that simply reported what was going on around us and later enlarged this language by imaginative redescription. Rather, imaginativeness goes all the way down. The concepts of redness and roundness are as much imaginative creations as those of God, of the positron, and of constitutional democracy. Getting the word “red” into circulation was a feat on a par with Newton’s persuading people to use the term “gravity.” For nobody knew what redness was before some early hominids began talking about the differences in the colors of things, just as nobody knew what gravity was before Newton began describing an occult force responsible for both ballistic trajectories and planetary orbits. It took imaginative genius to suggest that everybody make the same noise at the sight of blood, of maple leaves in autumn, and of the western sky at sunset. It was only when such suggestions were taken seriously and put into practice that hominids began to have minds.

ALT On the romantic view I am commending, the imagination is the source of freedom because it is the source of language. It is, as Shelley put it, root as well as blossom. It is not that we first spoke a language that simply reported what was going on around us and later enlarged this language by imaginative redescription. Rather, imaginativeness goes all the way down. The concepts of redness and roundness are as much imaginative creations as those of God, of the positron, and of constitutional democracy. Getting the word “red” into circulation was a feat on a par with Newton’s persuading people to use the term “gravity.” For nobody knew what redness was before some early hominids began talking about the differences in the colors of things, just as nobody knew what gravity was before Newton began describing an occult force responsible for both ballistic trajectories and planetary orbits.

ALT Before there were conversational exchanges, on this view, there were neither concepts nor beliefs nor knowledge. For to say that a dog knows its master, or a baby its mother, is like saying that a lock knows when the right key has been inserted, or that a computer knows when it has been given the right password. To say that the frog’s eye tells something to the frog’s brain is like saying that the screwdriver tells something to the screw. The line between mechanism and something categorically distinct from mechanism comes when organisms develop social practices— uses of words—that permit those organisms to consider the relative advantages and disadvantages of alternative descriptions of things. Mechanism stops, and freedom begins, at the point at which we can discuss which words best describe a given situation. Knowledge and freedom are coeval.

ALT Before there were conversational exchanges, on this view, there were neither concepts nor beliefs nor knowledge. For to say that a dog knows its master, or a baby its mother, is like saying that a lock knows when the right key has been inserted, or that a computer knows when it has been given the right password. To say that the frog’s eye tells something to the frog’s brain is like saying that the screwdriver tells something to the screw. The line between mechanism and something categorically distinct from mechanism comes when organisms develop social practices— uses of words—that permit those organisms to consider the relative advantages and disadvantages of alternative descriptions of things. Mechanism stops, and freedom begins, at the point at which we can discuss which words best describe a given situation. Knowledge and freedom are coeval.

ALT On the view common to Sellars and Wittgenstein, to possess a concept is to be familiar with the use of a linguistic expression. Whereas empiricists think of concepts as mental representations, Sellars and Wittgenstein have no use for what Willard Van Orman Quine called "the idea idea." Philosophers who still adhere to this idea are forced to take on the well-nigh-impossible burden of explaining the relations between neural process and the various representations that make up this realm. Abandoning the idea idea means treating the possession of a mind as the possession of certain social skills—the skills required to give and ask for reasons. To have a mind is not to have a movie theater inside the skull, with successive representations of the surroundings flashing on the screen. It is the ability to use persuasion to get what one wants.

ALT On the view common to Sellars and Wittgenstein, to possess a concept is to be familiar with the use of a linguistic expression. Whereas empiricists think of concepts as mental representations, Sellars and Wittgenstein have no use for what Willard Van Orman Quine called "the idea idea." Philosophers who still adhere to this idea are forced to take on the well-nigh-impossible burden of explaining the relations between neural process and the various representations that make up this realm. Abandoning the idea idea means treating the possession of a mind as the possession of certain social skills—the skills required to give and ask for reasons. To have a mind is not to have a movie theater inside the skull, with successive representations of the surroundings flashing on the screen. It is the ability to use persuasion to get what one wants.

ALT The most important claim Emerson makes in this essay is that there is no "inclosing wall" called "the Real." There is nothing outside language to which language attempts to become adequate. Every human achievement is simply a launching pad for a greater achievement. We shall never find descriptions so perfect that imaginative redescription will become pointless. There is no destined terminus to inquiry. There are only larger human lives to be lived.

ALT The most important claim Emerson makes in this essay is that there is no "inclosing wall" called "the Real." There is nothing outside language to which language attempts to become adequate. Every human achievement is simply a launching pad for a greater achievement. We shall never find descriptions so perfect that imaginative redescription will become pointless. There is no destined terminus to inquiry. There are only larger human lives to be lived.

ALT Intellectual and moral progress is not a matter of getting closer to an antecedent goal but of surpassing the past. Beaver dams improved over the millennia as gifted beavers did novel things with sticks and mud, things that were then incorporated into standard dambuilding practice. The arts and the sciences improved over the millennia because our more ingenious ancestors did novel things not only with seeds, clay, and metallic ores but also with noises and marks. What we call "increased knowledge" should not be thought of as increased access to the Real but as increased ability to do things—to take part in social practices that make possible richer and fuller human lives. This increased richness is not the effect of a magnetic attraction exerted on the human mind by the really real, nor by that mind's innate ability to penetrate the veil of appearance. It is a relation between the human present and the human past, not a relation between the human and the nonhuman.

ALT Intellectual and moral progress is not a matter of getting closer to an antecedent goal but of surpassing the past. Beaver dams improved over the millennia as gifted beavers did novel things with sticks and mud, things that were then incorporated into standard dambuilding practice. The arts and the sciences improved over the millennia because our more ingenious ancestors did novel things not only with seeds, clay, and metallic ores but also with noises and marks. What we call "increased knowledge" should not be thought of as increased access to the Real but as increased ability to do things—to take part in social practices that make possible richer and fuller human lives. This increased richness is not the effect of a magnetic attraction exerted on the human mind by the really real, nor by that mind's innate ability to penetrate the veil of appearance. It is a relation between the human present and the human past, not a relation between the human and the nonhuman.

ALT Intellectual and moral progress is not a matter of getting closer to an antecedent goal but of surpassing the past. Beaver dams improved over the millennia as gifted beavers did novel things with sticks and mud, things that were then incorporated into standard dambuilding practice. The arts and the sciences improved over the millennia because our more ingenious ancestors did novel things not only with seeds, clay, and metallic ores but also with noises and marks. What we call "increased knowledge" should not be thought of as increased access to the Real but as increased ability to do things—to take part in social practices that make possible richer and fuller human lives. This increased richness is not the effect of a magnetic attraction exerted on the human mind by the really real, nor by that mind's innate ability to penetrate the veil of appearance. It is a relation between the human present and the human past, not a relation between the human and the nonhuman.

ALT Intellectual and moral progress is not a matter of getting closer to an antecedent goal but of surpassing the past. Beaver dams improved over the millennia as gifted beavers did novel things with sticks and mud, things that were then incorporated into standard dambuilding practice. The arts and the sciences improved over the millennia because our more ingenious ancestors did novel things not only with seeds, clay, and metallic ores but also with noises and marks. What we call "increased knowledge" should not be thought of as increased access to the Real but as increased ability to do things—to take part in social practices that make possible richer and fuller human lives. This increased richness is not the effect of a magnetic attraction exerted on the human mind by the really real, nor by that mind's innate ability to penetrate the veil of appearance. It is a relation between the human present and the human past, not a relation between the human and the nonhuman.

ALT Intellectual and moral progress is not a matter of getting closer to an antecedent goal but of surpassing the past. Beaver dams improved over the millennia as gifted beavers did novel things with sticks and mud, things that were then incorporated into standard dambuilding practice. The arts and the sciences improved over the millennia because our more ingenious ancestors did novel things not only with seeds, clay, and metallic ores but also with noises and marks. What we call "increased knowledge" should not be thought of as increased access to the Real but as increased ability to do things—to take part in social practices that make possible richer and fuller human lives. This increased richness is not the effect of a magnetic attraction exerted on the human mind by the really real, nor by that mind's innate ability to penetrate the veil of appearance. It is a relation between the human present and the human past, not a relation between the human and the nonhuman.

ALT On the account of human abilities I am suggesting, the use of persuasion rather than force is an innovation comparable to the beaver’s dam. Like the beavers’ collaboration in getting the dam built, it is a social practice. It was initiated by the novel suggestion that we might use noises rather than physical compulsion to get other humans to cooperate with us. That suggestion gave rise to language. Rationality, thought, and cognition all began when language did. Language gets off the ground not by people giving names to things they were already thinking about but by proto-humans using noises in innovative ways, just as the proto-beavers got the practice of building dams off the ground by using sticks and mud in innovative ways.

ALT On the account of human abilities I am suggesting, the use of persuasion rather than force is an innovation comparable to the beaver’s dam. Like the beavers’ collaboration in getting the dam built, it is a social practice. It was initiated by the novel suggestion that we might use noises rather than physical compulsion to get other humans to cooperate with us. That suggestion gave rise to language. Rationality, thought, and cognition all began when language did. Language gets off the ground not by people giving names to things they were already thinking about but by proto-humans using noises in innovative ways, just as the proto-beavers got the practice of building dams off the ground by using sticks and mud in innovative ways.

ALT On the account of human abilities I am suggesting, the use of persuasion rather than force is an innovation comparable to the beaver’s dam. Like the beavers’ collaboration in getting the dam built, it is a social practice. It was initiated by the novel suggestion that we might use noises rather than physical compulsion to get other humans to cooperate with us. That suggestion gave rise to language. Rationality, thought, and cognition all began when language did. Language gets off the ground not by people giving names to things they were already thinking about but by proto-humans using noises in innovative ways, just as the proto-beavers got the practice of building dams off the ground by using sticks and mud in innovative ways.

ALT On the account of human abilities I am suggesting, the use of persuasion rather than force is an innovation comparable to the beaver’s dam. Like the beavers’ collaboration in getting the dam built, it is a social practice. It was initiated by the novel suggestion that we might use noises rather than physical compulsion to get other humans to cooperate with us. That suggestion gave rise to language. Rationality, thought, and cognition all began when language did. Language gets off the ground not by people giving names to things they were already thinking about but by proto-humans using noises in innovative ways, just as the proto-beavers got the practice of building dams off the ground by using sticks and mud in innovative ways.

ALT To get rid of this cluster of bad ideas we need to think of reason not as a truth-tracking faculty but as a social practice—the practice of enforcing social norms on the use of marks and noises, thereby making it possible to use words rather than blows as a way of getting things done. We need to think of imagination not as the faculty that produces visual or auditory images but as a combination of novelty and luck. To be imaginative, as opposed to being merely fantastical, is to do something new and to be lucky enough to have that novelty be adopted by one's fellow humans, incorporated into their social practices. The distinction between fantasy and imagination is between novelties that do not get taken up and put to use by one's fellows and those that do. People whose novelties we cannot appropriate and utilize we call foolish, or perhaps insane. Those whose ideas strike us as useful we hail as geniuses.

ALT To get rid of this cluster of bad ideas we need to think of reason not as a truth-tracking faculty but as a social practice—the practice of enforcing social norms on the use of marks and noises, thereby making it possible to use words rather than blows as a way of getting things done. We need to think of imagination not as the faculty that produces visual or auditory images but as a combination of novelty and luck. To be imaginative, as opposed to being merely fantastical, is to do something new and to be lucky enough to have that novelty be adopted by one's fellow humans, incorporated into their social practices. The distinction between fantasy and imagination is between novelties that do not get taken up and put to use by one's fellows and those that do. People whose novelties we cannot appropriate and utilize we call foolish, or perhaps insane. Those whose ideas strike us as useful we hail as geniuses.

ALT To get rid of this cluster of bad ideas we need to think of reason not as a truth-tracking faculty but as a social practice—the practice of enforcing social norms on the use of marks and noises, thereby making it possible to use words rather than blows as a way of getting things done. We need to think of imagination not as the faculty that produces visual or auditory images but as a combination of novelty and luck. To be imaginative, as opposed to being merely fantastical, is to do something new and to be lucky enough to have that novelty be adopted by one's fellow humans, incorporated into their social practices. The distinction between fantasy and imagination is between novelties that do not get taken up and put to use by one's fellows and those that do. People whose novelties we cannot appropriate and utilize we call foolish, or perhaps insane. Those whose ideas strike us as useful we hail as geniuses.