Philosophy and Social Hope, by Richard Rorty

For the final Reading Network meeting of 2020 we were delighted to welcome Paul Showler from the University of Oregon to open the discussion. Paul is a PhD candidate in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Oregon where he explores philosophical issues in ethics, pragmatism, and the history of philosophy. He is currently co-editing a volume on the ethical thought of Richard Rorty, and his paper, “Why Subject Naturalists Need Pragmatic Genealogy” is forthcoming in the journal Synthese. Before beginning his doctoral studies at Oregon, Paul earned an MA in Philosophy from the University of Alberta, where he wrote a master’s thesis comparing the philosophical and political writings of Richard Rorty and Michel Foucault. He currently holds a doctoral fellowship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

His opening questions and their context are here. We’d love to hear your thoughts!

[1] How do we understand Rorty's pragmatist slogan: "hope in the place of knowledge"? What do we make of it? And how is this slogan exemplified in the essays from sections III-V of the book?

[2] How might Rorty's philosophical perspective help us (as educators, citizens, philosophers, etc.) confront contemporary challenges involving disinformation?

The "common sense" philosophical response to, for example, anti-vaxxers, climate change deniers, or 2020 US presidential election conspiracy theorists, is to reach for a set of distinctions (e.g., appearance versus reality, knowledge versus opinion) which Rorty is urging us to relinquish.

What is Rorty's alternative to philosophical common sense?

How would he encourage us to think about and respond to a world in which widespread disinformation has become a serious social problem?