Representationalism and Antirepresentationalism - Kant, Davidson and Rorty :: Philosophy Philosophical Papers

Representationalism and Antirepresentationalism - Kant, Davidson and Rorty (1) ABSTRACT The looks of representationalism and antirepresentationalism are introduced and used in modern philosophic discussions by Richard Rorty to describe his and the neopragmatists attitude toward traditional problems of epistemology. Rorty means that the chronicle of philosophy shows that there are no concluding answers to the traditional questions or so 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 can non say anything about a mind-transcendent or language-transcendent, nonlocal or eternal reality. Hilary Putnam agrees with Rorty on this, but not with the ending that we should reject traditional philosophical questions. For Putnam, the epistemological questions are worthwhile petition and, although we cannot find the final cor rect answers, we should continue our investigations as if there were final answers. Our struggles with those problems can broaden to refinements of the formulations and to cognitive developments. Putnam proposes a quasi-realism which is often called internal realism. Rorty rejects each 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 edge 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 investiga te 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, whence 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 populace 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.