So Rorty is a pragmatist?

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
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Hello all,

As far as I understand it, Rorty is (or at least considers himself) a pragmatist. Yet, when you look at the details, it’s obvious that his semiotic foundations are founded more on Saussure and less on Pierce, which I find a little strange, seeing as how Pierce was a seminal pragmatist.

Is Rorty’s position based on post-structuralism - that signs are completely arbitrary? It seems that it is. If it is, that’s much removed from Pierce’s triadic which lends importance to the pragmatic prong of semiotics, which (as far as I know) establishes that a sign’s meaning is a ‘two way street’.

Any, absolutely any help would be greatly appreciated!

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Funny you should ask. Check out the “Difference between Metaphysics and Ontology” thread on this board, and read everything written by a certain “Dunamis” character.

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faust,

Thanks for the quick reply and good direction. Yes, that was a really good overview on Rorty provided by Dumanis. Very concise, jeez.

After having read it, I guess my question from above is more specific and fundamental to Rorty’s assumptions than I thought. I’ll try and ask it a different way, and give a little background to frame it properly:

As I understand it, semiotics went one of two ways about a hundred years or so ago. On one side there was Saussare who established semiology - an anthropological approach to understanding sign use involving syntax and semantics, signified and signifier… here, the sign is totally arbitrary. A common example is that c/a/r is arbitrary when referring to “car”.

Then there was Pierce who distinguished between three types of signs: icons, indices, and symbols. Each type of sign lends itself to degrees of ‘situational usefulness’. Icons are obvious (like pointing to something when speaking about it); an index is cause/effect (like a storm cloud means imminent rain); and symbols (which are arbitrary, like letters).

The main difference between Saussure and Pierce is that in Saussure’s semiology signs are totally arbitrary, whereas in Pierce’s semiotics, sign divisions are only conditionally arbitrary.

It makes a big difference when considering Pierce’s semiotic pragmatics (literal meaning vs. ‘speaker’ meaning), and also in the larger arena of pragmatism.

So, I’m a little confounded that Rorty (a pragmatist?) would find comfort in Saussure’s semiology as opposed to Pierce’s semiotics.

I don’t know what implications all this has for Rorty’s Mirror, but I would think that Pierce’s all-encompassing semiotics would offer greater scope for Rorty, than the more-limited anthropocentric semiology of Saussure (which grew into the pervasive poststructuralism that we all love).

Sorry if that wasn’t clear, but I wonder if Rorty has steered pragmatism in the wrong direction.

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My answer to you is that it is Pierce that went awry. In two ways.

Firstly, pointing to a fire hydrant and saying “there’s a fire hydrant in front of you” are not logically different. Each act must be understood, of course. But there is no reason to take a pointed hand as a symbol in a way that is different from spoken or written language. Perhaps Pierce knew nothing of sign-language.

Secondly, a thundercloud is a symbol only if you want it to be one. It’s difficult to say the same about the written letter “a”. It’s possible, but I’m not sure what use that would have, other than some artistic instance.

Greater scope is only useful if the then-expanded model is still pertinent to the task. The fact is, that symbols are arbitrary insofar as they are symbols. By definition.

Tell me if I understand your difficulty.

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faust wrote:

Ok, I think I see where you’re going here: Pierce’s triadic distinctions are ultimately derivative of symbols, hence the arbitrariness of the sign. Yes?

But it begs the question: where’s the meaning in all this form? I know that structuralism is about how text means and not what it means. Pragmatism is more concerned with meaning, as in: structure is a by-product of meaning.

In other words, the meaning can be expressed in a particular structure, but the structure can be replaced by another structure without a change in the meaning: “It’s pouring cats and dogs outside” vs. “Rain is falling hard on the ground.” The form is totally different, but the meaning remains the same. Meaning is not in the symbols. Similarly, the form is just useful (which is the point!). Meaning however, can be in icons and (to a lesser extent), indices. (But not in symbols). This sort of stance is fundamental to pragmatic thought.

I don’t want to go around in circles about semiotics vs. semiology, but want to know Rorty’s justification (as a ‘pragmatist’) for choosing to side with Saussure. It seems that your answer is that “major tradition semiotics is an untenable position.” But, what I suspect is that pragmatics (the relationship between the sign and the subject) is fundamental to all truly pragmatic thought, and, coincidentally, is not untenable.

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Well, you’ll have to tell me what “truly” pragmatic thinking is. Pragmatism is a term that covers a lot of ground. I am also not convinced that Rorty has to make this justification to you. He was eclectic and selective about his influences. I’m not sure why it boils down to Pierce or Saucerre. And, to be honest, I don’t recall Rorty specifically making this choice, overtly, I mean. But it’s been a while. I think his choice really came more from Wittgenstein’s logic of language, than from Saucerre directly. Again, I don’t usually sweat the small stuff, and I honestly can’t recall. perhaps Dunamis will come to your rescue, with his encyclopedic knowledge.

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faust wrote:

Granted, that was silly of me to put it like that. And, you’re right - I don’t think he consciously made the choice. Having said that, I just don’t understand how Rorty can marry poststructuralism with pragmatism without some fundamental contradictions developing within his semiosis.

I’ve got to think about it some more and elucidate my thoughts. I’ll be back with something more concrete.

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Okay. Either that’s a different question, or I understand it better, or both. In general, I don’t think Rorty is the kind of thinker that lends himself to “equations” - like Poststructuralism + Pragmatism = Rorty. I’m also not so sure that the left side of that equation makes sense to begin with, because the terms are so broad, by themselves. Just plugging in “schools of thought” and precursor philosophers is a kind of paint-by-number approach to philosophy. Any thinker can be seen in an historical context, but must also be evaluated on the merits of his own argument. It might be helpful to do the latter.

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Ok, I think I’ve got a better grip on my admittedly vague initial question. For anyone who might care, I’ll briefly explain what I found out and how it might apply to Rorty. Otherwise just skip down to the bottom.

Saussure’s and Pierce’s projects and goals are different: Saussure’s semiology deals only with human signs and discourse (conventional signs) and Pierce’s semiotics deals with all possible signs (natural and conventional signs).

As far as I can tell, there’s no overt conflict between them, but each is better suited to its ultimate aim: Saussure for examining language and writing, and Pierce for exploring biological/animal communication/body language. Some have made the argument that Pierce’s approach is more comprehensive than Saussure’s, in that language ultimately falls under the pretense of our neurological physiology (but that’s a whole other topic).

Anyway, it seems that structuralism grew out of Saussure’s concept of langue, which stands for ‘difference between arbitrary signs’ without giving proper attention to parole, which is the ‘individual, contextual use of signs’, which Pierce’s approach would be more concerned about.

Poststructuralism arose out of frustration with structuralism’s seeming obsession with langue, but it backfired. Poststructuralism resulted in (1) the realization of an inseperable signified and signifier, and (2) arbitrary signification (unchanged from struturalism). Deconstruction attempts to take this to the ultimate conclusion, where Saussure’s 'difference’ comes full circle as Derrida’s ‘differAnce’ where it resembles Pierce’s unlimited semiosis (in Saussurian terms, “unlimited connotation”). So it’s kind of a long way around back to Square One.

Originally my feeling/misunderstanding went something like:
Rorty, an American ‘pragmatist’, rejects American pragmatic linguistics by basing his theories on Saussure’s semiology instead of Pierce’s semiotics (which all pragmatists have adopted as far as I know: James, Mead, Morris, etc.).

I found that, as the situation now stands, many philosophers including Jakobson and Eco have mended the two semiotic approaches by arguing that signs are not completely arbitrary – signs work because they’re useful and that language is ‘motivated’ to some extent, again showing that all signification is not arbitrary.

If all signification is not arbitrary as many claim, this exposes major inherent weakness in structuralist (and post-structuralist) positions. The thing is, I can’t tell if Rorty is implicated here. It seems like he uses structuralist techniques in formulating his positions and observations, but I keep reading that he’s post-analytic, so I get confused. faust makes a good point that Rorty is hard to pin down, and Lord knows I’m having a hell of a time of it.

What I suspect is that language itself is not the only tool we have to formulate philosophical thought. Other signs, inherent to our experience, provide material for contemplation and carry meaning outside of (and in addition to) language. I know that this may seem oblique to Rorty’s main project, but as a neopragmatist, he’s gotta land somewhere, right?

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More of a neo-pragmatist is what Rorty is.Pierce use the instrument of skepticism as an means for pragmatic ends into any given inquiry,whether it be on methods,principles,criterion of validitity in deductive and inductive reasonings.

Rorty is an pragmatist only as an application for prescribing skepticism for reason to combat the trend in analytical philosophy of our days,especially philosophy of linguistics.To me,he seems to question of why these schools of thought or doctrines are of any practical uses since the result does not prove adequate for problems of meaning and truth.Sometimes my impression of what i’ve read of him is that he takes fallibist to the conclusion too early in his questioning which i find that it is erroneous and fruitless cause it does not reach any conclusion at all that is akin to modern logic.

Try not to understand post-structuralism in the very way that Pierce eluciation on semiotics.Most post-structuralist authors use Pierce writing for different reason.Most of them use Pierce’s writings out of context.

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my take on Richard Rorty, which is based on limited readings, is he is a pragmatist in the sense that he dispences with true skepticism.

So from that, I see him as starting off somewhere between Hume and Kant and then progressing into progressive democratic and Deweyan arguments for the most part.

It’s perhaps that I have read him talk about Dewey, and as such noting upon duality in society and such that he ends up seeming Kantian to me at times.

Pegging him on the structuralist scale would seem to miss the point, imho.