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http://www.jstor.org Recovering Philosophy from Rorty Author(s): Steve Fuller Source: PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association, Vol. 1982, Volume One: Contributed Papers, (1982), pp. 373-383 Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Philosophy of Science Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/192680 Accessed: 27/05/2008 19:41 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ucpress. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship. We enable the scholarly community to preserve their work and the materials they rely upon, and to build a common research platform that promotes the discovery and use of these resources. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].
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Page 1: Fuller, S., Recovering Philosphy From Rorty

http://www.jstor.org

Recovering Philosophy from RortyAuthor(s): Steve FullerSource: PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association,Vol. 1982, Volume One: Contributed Papers, (1982), pp. 373-383Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Philosophy of ScienceAssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/192680Accessed: 27/05/2008 19:41

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless

you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you

may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.

Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ucpress.

Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed

page of such transmission.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship. We enable the

scholarly community to preserve their work and the materials they rely upon, and to build a common research platform that

promotes the discovery and use of these resources. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

Page 2: Fuller, S., Recovering Philosphy From Rorty

Recovering Philosophy from Rorty Recovering Philosophy from Rorty Recovering Philosophy from Rorty Recovering Philosophy from Rorty Recovering Philosophy from Rorty Recovering Philosophy from Rorty Recovering Philosophy from Rorty Recovering Philosophy from Rorty Recovering Philosophy from Rorty Recovering Philosophy from Rorty Recovering Philosophy from Rorty Recovering Philosophy from Rorty Recovering Philosophy from Rorty Recovering Philosophy from Rorty Recovering Philosophy from Rorty Recovering Philosophy from Rorty Recovering Philosophy from Rorty Recovering Philosophy from Rorty Recovering Philosophy from Rorty Recovering Philosophy from Rorty Recovering Philosophy from Rorty Recovering Philosophy from Rorty Recovering Philosophy from Rorty Recovering Philosophy from Rorty Recovering Philosophy from Rorty Recovering Philosophy from Rorty Recovering Philosophy from Rorty Recovering Philosophy from Rorty Recovering Philosophy from Rorty Recovering Philosophy from Rorty Recovering Philosophy from Rorty Recovering Philosophy from Rorty Recovering Philosophy from Rorty

Steve Fuller

Dept. of Hist. & Phil. of Science

University of Pittsburgh

There have been many responses to Richard Rorty's Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, but none of them have said why philosophers should be

assigned a unique set of offices within the halls of academe rather than

simply be distributed among the offices already provided for practicion- ers of the special disciplines (which, after the German Wissenschaften, will henceforth be referred to as the "sciences")--with logicians situa- ted among the mathematicians, epistemologists among the psychologists, and so forth. And ultimately the challenge of Rorty's book boils down to this bureaucratic question. We may not be convinced by his story of how philosophers, starting with Descartes and Locke, unwittingly came to raise the sciences of their day to the status of metaphysics. Nor may we find very illuminating his suggestion that philosophers now join the ranks of cultural critics. Yet whatever his failures in diagnosing and

curing, Rorty has certainly isolated a disease peculiar to philosophy. At first approximation, we may say that philosophy suffers from what Habermas would call a "legitimation crisis". However, to stop here would not do justice to the depth of Rorty's analysis, for he is not

arguing that philosophy is, as it were, "between paradigms"--no longer able to justify itself as it once did (namely, as "queen of the sci- ences") and hence in search of some other means of justification. Too

many readers of Rorty, I fear, interpret his preference for continental-

style hermeneutics over Anglo-American analysis in just this manner: a

paradigm shift. However, the legitimation crisis that Rorty divines in the history of modern philosophy more resembles the gradual withering away of the state according to Marx: Here is a discipline that slowly but surely loses its problems to the sciences, such that by the end of the twentieth century philosophers are at a loss to specify what it is that they do that nobody else does. In other words, philosophy suffers from a radical identity crisis. It is not a matter of whether we should do philosophy in one way rather than in another, but whether we are

doing anything in particular when we do "philosophy".

It is easy to see what Rorty finds attractive in continental philoso-

PSA 1982, Volume 1, pp. 373-383

Copyright Q 1982 by the Philosophy of Science Association

Steve Fuller

Dept. of Hist. & Phil. of Science

University of Pittsburgh

There have been many responses to Richard Rorty's Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, but none of them have said why philosophers should be

assigned a unique set of offices within the halls of academe rather than

simply be distributed among the offices already provided for practicion- ers of the special disciplines (which, after the German Wissenschaften, will henceforth be referred to as the "sciences")--with logicians situa- ted among the mathematicians, epistemologists among the psychologists, and so forth. And ultimately the challenge of Rorty's book boils down to this bureaucratic question. We may not be convinced by his story of how philosophers, starting with Descartes and Locke, unwittingly came to raise the sciences of their day to the status of metaphysics. Nor may we find very illuminating his suggestion that philosophers now join the ranks of cultural critics. Yet whatever his failures in diagnosing and

curing, Rorty has certainly isolated a disease peculiar to philosophy. At first approximation, we may say that philosophy suffers from what Habermas would call a "legitimation crisis". However, to stop here would not do justice to the depth of Rorty's analysis, for he is not

arguing that philosophy is, as it were, "between paradigms"--no longer able to justify itself as it once did (namely, as "queen of the sci- ences") and hence in search of some other means of justification. Too

many readers of Rorty, I fear, interpret his preference for continental-

style hermeneutics over Anglo-American analysis in just this manner: a

paradigm shift. However, the legitimation crisis that Rorty divines in the history of modern philosophy more resembles the gradual withering away of the state according to Marx: Here is a discipline that slowly but surely loses its problems to the sciences, such that by the end of the twentieth century philosophers are at a loss to specify what it is that they do that nobody else does. In other words, philosophy suffers from a radical identity crisis. It is not a matter of whether we should do philosophy in one way rather than in another, but whether we are

doing anything in particular when we do "philosophy".

It is easy to see what Rorty finds attractive in continental philoso-

PSA 1982, Volume 1, pp. 373-383

Copyright Q 1982 by the Philosophy of Science Association

Steve Fuller

Dept. of Hist. & Phil. of Science

University of Pittsburgh

There have been many responses to Richard Rorty's Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, but none of them have said why philosophers should be

assigned a unique set of offices within the halls of academe rather than

simply be distributed among the offices already provided for practicion- ers of the special disciplines (which, after the German Wissenschaften, will henceforth be referred to as the "sciences")--with logicians situa- ted among the mathematicians, epistemologists among the psychologists, and so forth. And ultimately the challenge of Rorty's book boils down to this bureaucratic question. We may not be convinced by his story of how philosophers, starting with Descartes and Locke, unwittingly came to raise the sciences of their day to the status of metaphysics. Nor may we find very illuminating his suggestion that philosophers now join the ranks of cultural critics. Yet whatever his failures in diagnosing and

curing, Rorty has certainly isolated a disease peculiar to philosophy. At first approximation, we may say that philosophy suffers from what Habermas would call a "legitimation crisis". However, to stop here would not do justice to the depth of Rorty's analysis, for he is not

arguing that philosophy is, as it were, "between paradigms"--no longer able to justify itself as it once did (namely, as "queen of the sci- ences") and hence in search of some other means of justification. Too

many readers of Rorty, I fear, interpret his preference for continental-

style hermeneutics over Anglo-American analysis in just this manner: a

paradigm shift. However, the legitimation crisis that Rorty divines in the history of modern philosophy more resembles the gradual withering away of the state according to Marx: Here is a discipline that slowly but surely loses its problems to the sciences, such that by the end of the twentieth century philosophers are at a loss to specify what it is that they do that nobody else does. In other words, philosophy suffers from a radical identity crisis. It is not a matter of whether we should do philosophy in one way rather than in another, but whether we are

doing anything in particular when we do "philosophy".

It is easy to see what Rorty finds attractive in continental philoso-

PSA 1982, Volume 1, pp. 373-383

Copyright Q 1982 by the Philosophy of Science Association

Steve Fuller

Dept. of Hist. & Phil. of Science

University of Pittsburgh

There have been many responses to Richard Rorty's Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, but none of them have said why philosophers should be

assigned a unique set of offices within the halls of academe rather than

simply be distributed among the offices already provided for practicion- ers of the special disciplines (which, after the German Wissenschaften, will henceforth be referred to as the "sciences")--with logicians situa- ted among the mathematicians, epistemologists among the psychologists, and so forth. And ultimately the challenge of Rorty's book boils down to this bureaucratic question. We may not be convinced by his story of how philosophers, starting with Descartes and Locke, unwittingly came to raise the sciences of their day to the status of metaphysics. Nor may we find very illuminating his suggestion that philosophers now join the ranks of cultural critics. Yet whatever his failures in diagnosing and

curing, Rorty has certainly isolated a disease peculiar to philosophy. At first approximation, we may say that philosophy suffers from what Habermas would call a "legitimation crisis". However, to stop here would not do justice to the depth of Rorty's analysis, for he is not

arguing that philosophy is, as it were, "between paradigms"--no longer able to justify itself as it once did (namely, as "queen of the sci- ences") and hence in search of some other means of justification. Too

many readers of Rorty, I fear, interpret his preference for continental-

style hermeneutics over Anglo-American analysis in just this manner: a

paradigm shift. However, the legitimation crisis that Rorty divines in the history of modern philosophy more resembles the gradual withering away of the state according to Marx: Here is a discipline that slowly but surely loses its problems to the sciences, such that by the end of the twentieth century philosophers are at a loss to specify what it is that they do that nobody else does. In other words, philosophy suffers from a radical identity crisis. It is not a matter of whether we should do philosophy in one way rather than in another, but whether we are

doing anything in particular when we do "philosophy".

It is easy to see what Rorty finds attractive in continental philoso-

PSA 1982, Volume 1, pp. 373-383

Copyright Q 1982 by the Philosophy of Science Association

Steve Fuller

Dept. of Hist. & Phil. of Science

University of Pittsburgh

There have been many responses to Richard Rorty's Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, but none of them have said why philosophers should be

assigned a unique set of offices within the halls of academe rather than

simply be distributed among the offices already provided for practicion- ers of the special disciplines (which, after the German Wissenschaften, will henceforth be referred to as the "sciences")--with logicians situa- ted among the mathematicians, epistemologists among the psychologists, and so forth. And ultimately the challenge of Rorty's book boils down to this bureaucratic question. We may not be convinced by his story of how philosophers, starting with Descartes and Locke, unwittingly came to raise the sciences of their day to the status of metaphysics. Nor may we find very illuminating his suggestion that philosophers now join the ranks of cultural critics. Yet whatever his failures in diagnosing and

curing, Rorty has certainly isolated a disease peculiar to philosophy. At first approximation, we may say that philosophy suffers from what Habermas would call a "legitimation crisis". However, to stop here would not do justice to the depth of Rorty's analysis, for he is not

arguing that philosophy is, as it were, "between paradigms"--no longer able to justify itself as it once did (namely, as "queen of the sci- ences") and hence in search of some other means of justification. Too

many readers of Rorty, I fear, interpret his preference for continental-

style hermeneutics over Anglo-American analysis in just this manner: a

paradigm shift. However, the legitimation crisis that Rorty divines in the history of modern philosophy more resembles the gradual withering away of the state according to Marx: Here is a discipline that slowly but surely loses its problems to the sciences, such that by the end of the twentieth century philosophers are at a loss to specify what it is that they do that nobody else does. In other words, philosophy suffers from a radical identity crisis. It is not a matter of whether we should do philosophy in one way rather than in another, but whether we are

doing anything in particular when we do "philosophy".

It is easy to see what Rorty finds attractive in continental philoso-

PSA 1982, Volume 1, pp. 373-383

Copyright Q 1982 by the Philosophy of Science Association

Steve Fuller

Dept. of Hist. & Phil. of Science

University of Pittsburgh

There have been many responses to Richard Rorty's Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, but none of them have said why philosophers should be

assigned a unique set of offices within the halls of academe rather than

simply be distributed among the offices already provided for practicion- ers of the special disciplines (which, after the German Wissenschaften, will henceforth be referred to as the "sciences")--with logicians situa- ted among the mathematicians, epistemologists among the psychologists, and so forth. And ultimately the challenge of Rorty's book boils down to this bureaucratic question. We may not be convinced by his story of how philosophers, starting with Descartes and Locke, unwittingly came to raise the sciences of their day to the status of metaphysics. Nor may we find very illuminating his suggestion that philosophers now join the ranks of cultural critics. Yet whatever his failures in diagnosing and

curing, Rorty has certainly isolated a disease peculiar to philosophy. At first approximation, we may say that philosophy suffers from what Habermas would call a "legitimation crisis". However, to stop here would not do justice to the depth of Rorty's analysis, for he is not

arguing that philosophy is, as it were, "between paradigms"--no longer able to justify itself as it once did (namely, as "queen of the sci- ences") and hence in search of some other means of justification. Too

many readers of Rorty, I fear, interpret his preference for continental-

style hermeneutics over Anglo-American analysis in just this manner: a

paradigm shift. However, the legitimation crisis that Rorty divines in the history of modern philosophy more resembles the gradual withering away of the state according to Marx: Here is a discipline that slowly but surely loses its problems to the sciences, such that by the end of the twentieth century philosophers are at a loss to specify what it is that they do that nobody else does. In other words, philosophy suffers from a radical identity crisis. It is not a matter of whether we should do philosophy in one way rather than in another, but whether we are

doing anything in particular when we do "philosophy".

It is easy to see what Rorty finds attractive in continental philoso-

PSA 1982, Volume 1, pp. 373-383

Copyright Q 1982 by the Philosophy of Science Association

Steve Fuller

Dept. of Hist. & Phil. of Science

University of Pittsburgh

There have been many responses to Richard Rorty's Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, but none of them have said why philosophers should be

assigned a unique set of offices within the halls of academe rather than

simply be distributed among the offices already provided for practicion- ers of the special disciplines (which, after the German Wissenschaften, will henceforth be referred to as the "sciences")--with logicians situa- ted among the mathematicians, epistemologists among the psychologists, and so forth. And ultimately the challenge of Rorty's book boils down to this bureaucratic question. We may not be convinced by his story of how philosophers, starting with Descartes and Locke, unwittingly came to raise the sciences of their day to the status of metaphysics. Nor may we find very illuminating his suggestion that philosophers now join the ranks of cultural critics. Yet whatever his failures in diagnosing and

curing, Rorty has certainly isolated a disease peculiar to philosophy. At first approximation, we may say that philosophy suffers from what Habermas would call a "legitimation crisis". However, to stop here would not do justice to the depth of Rorty's analysis, for he is not

arguing that philosophy is, as it were, "between paradigms"--no longer able to justify itself as it once did (namely, as "queen of the sci- ences") and hence in search of some other means of justification. Too

many readers of Rorty, I fear, interpret his preference for continental-

style hermeneutics over Anglo-American analysis in just this manner: a

paradigm shift. However, the legitimation crisis that Rorty divines in the history of modern philosophy more resembles the gradual withering away of the state according to Marx: Here is a discipline that slowly but surely loses its problems to the sciences, such that by the end of the twentieth century philosophers are at a loss to specify what it is that they do that nobody else does. In other words, philosophy suffers from a radical identity crisis. It is not a matter of whether we should do philosophy in one way rather than in another, but whether we are

doing anything in particular when we do "philosophy".

It is easy to see what Rorty finds attractive in continental philoso-

PSA 1982, Volume 1, pp. 373-383

Copyright Q 1982 by the Philosophy of Science Association

Steve Fuller

Dept. of Hist. & Phil. of Science

University of Pittsburgh

There have been many responses to Richard Rorty's Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, but none of them have said why philosophers should be

assigned a unique set of offices within the halls of academe rather than

simply be distributed among the offices already provided for practicion- ers of the special disciplines (which, after the German Wissenschaften, will henceforth be referred to as the "sciences")--with logicians situa- ted among the mathematicians, epistemologists among the psychologists, and so forth. And ultimately the challenge of Rorty's book boils down to this bureaucratic question. We may not be convinced by his story of how philosophers, starting with Descartes and Locke, unwittingly came to raise the sciences of their day to the status of metaphysics. Nor may we find very illuminating his suggestion that philosophers now join the ranks of cultural critics. Yet whatever his failures in diagnosing and

curing, Rorty has certainly isolated a disease peculiar to philosophy. At first approximation, we may say that philosophy suffers from what Habermas would call a "legitimation crisis". However, to stop here would not do justice to the depth of Rorty's analysis, for he is not

arguing that philosophy is, as it were, "between paradigms"--no longer able to justify itself as it once did (namely, as "queen of the sci- ences") and hence in search of some other means of justification. Too

many readers of Rorty, I fear, interpret his preference for continental-

style hermeneutics over Anglo-American analysis in just this manner: a

paradigm shift. However, the legitimation crisis that Rorty divines in the history of modern philosophy more resembles the gradual withering away of the state according to Marx: Here is a discipline that slowly but surely loses its problems to the sciences, such that by the end of the twentieth century philosophers are at a loss to specify what it is that they do that nobody else does. In other words, philosophy suffers from a radical identity crisis. It is not a matter of whether we should do philosophy in one way rather than in another, but whether we are

doing anything in particular when we do "philosophy".

It is easy to see what Rorty finds attractive in continental philoso-

PSA 1982, Volume 1, pp. 373-383

Copyright Q 1982 by the Philosophy of Science Association

Steve Fuller

Dept. of Hist. & Phil. of Science

University of Pittsburgh

There have been many responses to Richard Rorty's Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, but none of them have said why philosophers should be

assigned a unique set of offices within the halls of academe rather than

simply be distributed among the offices already provided for practicion- ers of the special disciplines (which, after the German Wissenschaften, will henceforth be referred to as the "sciences")--with logicians situa- ted among the mathematicians, epistemologists among the psychologists, and so forth. And ultimately the challenge of Rorty's book boils down to this bureaucratic question. We may not be convinced by his story of how philosophers, starting with Descartes and Locke, unwittingly came to raise the sciences of their day to the status of metaphysics. Nor may we find very illuminating his suggestion that philosophers now join the ranks of cultural critics. Yet whatever his failures in diagnosing and

curing, Rorty has certainly isolated a disease peculiar to philosophy. At first approximation, we may say that philosophy suffers from what Habermas would call a "legitimation crisis". However, to stop here would not do justice to the depth of Rorty's analysis, for he is not

arguing that philosophy is, as it were, "between paradigms"--no longer able to justify itself as it once did (namely, as "queen of the sci- ences") and hence in search of some other means of justification. Too

many readers of Rorty, I fear, interpret his preference for continental-

style hermeneutics over Anglo-American analysis in just this manner: a

paradigm shift. However, the legitimation crisis that Rorty divines in the history of modern philosophy more resembles the gradual withering away of the state according to Marx: Here is a discipline that slowly but surely loses its problems to the sciences, such that by the end of the twentieth century philosophers are at a loss to specify what it is that they do that nobody else does. In other words, philosophy suffers from a radical identity crisis. It is not a matter of whether we should do philosophy in one way rather than in another, but whether we are

doing anything in particular when we do "philosophy".

It is easy to see what Rorty finds attractive in continental philoso-

PSA 1982, Volume 1, pp. 373-383

Copyright Q 1982 by the Philosophy of Science Association

Steve Fuller

Dept. of Hist. & Phil. of Science

University of Pittsburgh

There have been many responses to Richard Rorty's Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, but none of them have said why philosophers should be

assigned a unique set of offices within the halls of academe rather than

simply be distributed among the offices already provided for practicion- ers of the special disciplines (which, after the German Wissenschaften, will henceforth be referred to as the "sciences")--with logicians situa- ted among the mathematicians, epistemologists among the psychologists, and so forth. And ultimately the challenge of Rorty's book boils down to this bureaucratic question. We may not be convinced by his story of how philosophers, starting with Descartes and Locke, unwittingly came to raise the sciences of their day to the status of metaphysics. Nor may we find very illuminating his suggestion that philosophers now join the ranks of cultural critics. Yet whatever his failures in diagnosing and

curing, Rorty has certainly isolated a disease peculiar to philosophy. At first approximation, we may say that philosophy suffers from what Habermas would call a "legitimation crisis". However, to stop here would not do justice to the depth of Rorty's analysis, for he is not

arguing that philosophy is, as it were, "between paradigms"--no longer able to justify itself as it once did (namely, as "queen of the sci- ences") and hence in search of some other means of justification. Too

many readers of Rorty, I fear, interpret his preference for continental-

style hermeneutics over Anglo-American analysis in just this manner: a

paradigm shift. However, the legitimation crisis that Rorty divines in the history of modern philosophy more resembles the gradual withering away of the state according to Marx: Here is a discipline that slowly but surely loses its problems to the sciences, such that by the end of the twentieth century philosophers are at a loss to specify what it is that they do that nobody else does. In other words, philosophy suffers from a radical identity crisis. It is not a matter of whether we should do philosophy in one way rather than in another, but whether we are

doing anything in particular when we do "philosophy".

It is easy to see what Rorty finds attractive in continental philoso-

PSA 1982, Volume 1, pp. 373-383

Copyright Q 1982 by the Philosophy of Science Association

Steve Fuller

Dept. of Hist. & Phil. of Science

University of Pittsburgh

There have been many responses to Richard Rorty's Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, but none of them have said why philosophers should be

assigned a unique set of offices within the halls of academe rather than

simply be distributed among the offices already provided for practicion- ers of the special disciplines (which, after the German Wissenschaften, will henceforth be referred to as the "sciences")--with logicians situa- ted among the mathematicians, epistemologists among the psychologists, and so forth. And ultimately the challenge of Rorty's book boils down to this bureaucratic question. We may not be convinced by his story of how philosophers, starting with Descartes and Locke, unwittingly came to raise the sciences of their day to the status of metaphysics. Nor may we find very illuminating his suggestion that philosophers now join the ranks of cultural critics. Yet whatever his failures in diagnosing and

curing, Rorty has certainly isolated a disease peculiar to philosophy. At first approximation, we may say that philosophy suffers from what Habermas would call a "legitimation crisis". However, to stop here would not do justice to the depth of Rorty's analysis, for he is not

arguing that philosophy is, as it were, "between paradigms"--no longer able to justify itself as it once did (namely, as "queen of the sci- ences") and hence in search of some other means of justification. Too

many readers of Rorty, I fear, interpret his preference for continental-

style hermeneutics over Anglo-American analysis in just this manner: a

paradigm shift. However, the legitimation crisis that Rorty divines in the history of modern philosophy more resembles the gradual withering away of the state according to Marx: Here is a discipline that slowly but surely loses its problems to the sciences, such that by the end of the twentieth century philosophers are at a loss to specify what it is that they do that nobody else does. In other words, philosophy suffers from a radical identity crisis. It is not a matter of whether we should do philosophy in one way rather than in another, but whether we are

doing anything in particular when we do "philosophy".

It is easy to see what Rorty finds attractive in continental philoso-

PSA 1982, Volume 1, pp. 373-383

Copyright Q 1982 by the Philosophy of Science Association

Steve Fuller

Dept. of Hist. & Phil. of Science

University of Pittsburgh

There have been many responses to Richard Rorty's Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, but none of them have said why philosophers should be

assigned a unique set of offices within the halls of academe rather than

simply be distributed among the offices already provided for practicion- ers of the special disciplines (which, after the German Wissenschaften, will henceforth be referred to as the "sciences")--with logicians situa- ted among the mathematicians, epistemologists among the psychologists, and so forth. And ultimately the challenge of Rorty's book boils down to this bureaucratic question. We may not be convinced by his story of how philosophers, starting with Descartes and Locke, unwittingly came to raise the sciences of their day to the status of metaphysics. Nor may we find very illuminating his suggestion that philosophers now join the ranks of cultural critics. Yet whatever his failures in diagnosing and

curing, Rorty has certainly isolated a disease peculiar to philosophy. At first approximation, we may say that philosophy suffers from what Habermas would call a "legitimation crisis". However, to stop here would not do justice to the depth of Rorty's analysis, for he is not

arguing that philosophy is, as it were, "between paradigms"--no longer able to justify itself as it once did (namely, as "queen of the sci- ences") and hence in search of some other means of justification. Too

many readers of Rorty, I fear, interpret his preference for continental-

style hermeneutics over Anglo-American analysis in just this manner: a

paradigm shift. However, the legitimation crisis that Rorty divines in the history of modern philosophy more resembles the gradual withering away of the state according to Marx: Here is a discipline that slowly but surely loses its problems to the sciences, such that by the end of the twentieth century philosophers are at a loss to specify what it is that they do that nobody else does. In other words, philosophy suffers from a radical identity crisis. It is not a matter of whether we should do philosophy in one way rather than in another, but whether we are

doing anything in particular when we do "philosophy".

It is easy to see what Rorty finds attractive in continental philoso-

PSA 1982, Volume 1, pp. 373-383

Copyright Q 1982 by the Philosophy of Science Association

Steve Fuller

Dept. of Hist. & Phil. of Science

University of Pittsburgh

There have been many responses to Richard Rorty's Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, but none of them have said why philosophers should be

assigned a unique set of offices within the halls of academe rather than

simply be distributed among the offices already provided for practicion- ers of the special disciplines (which, after the German Wissenschaften, will henceforth be referred to as the "sciences")--with logicians situa- ted among the mathematicians, epistemologists among the psychologists, and so forth. And ultimately the challenge of Rorty's book boils down to this bureaucratic question. We may not be convinced by his story of how philosophers, starting with Descartes and Locke, unwittingly came to raise the sciences of their day to the status of metaphysics. Nor may we find very illuminating his suggestion that philosophers now join the ranks of cultural critics. Yet whatever his failures in diagnosing and

curing, Rorty has certainly isolated a disease peculiar to philosophy. At first approximation, we may say that philosophy suffers from what Habermas would call a "legitimation crisis". However, to stop here would not do justice to the depth of Rorty's analysis, for he is not

arguing that philosophy is, as it were, "between paradigms"--no longer able to justify itself as it once did (namely, as "queen of the sci- ences") and hence in search of some other means of justification. Too

many readers of Rorty, I fear, interpret his preference for continental-

style hermeneutics over Anglo-American analysis in just this manner: a

paradigm shift. However, the legitimation crisis that Rorty divines in the history of modern philosophy more resembles the gradual withering away of the state according to Marx: Here is a discipline that slowly but surely loses its problems to the sciences, such that by the end of the twentieth century philosophers are at a loss to specify what it is that they do that nobody else does. In other words, philosophy suffers from a radical identity crisis. It is not a matter of whether we should do philosophy in one way rather than in another, but whether we are

doing anything in particular when we do "philosophy".

It is easy to see what Rorty finds attractive in continental philoso-

PSA 1982, Volume 1, pp. 373-383

Copyright Q 1982 by the Philosophy of Science Association

Steve Fuller

Dept. of Hist. & Phil. of Science

University of Pittsburgh

There have been many responses to Richard Rorty's Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, but none of them have said why philosophers should be

assigned a unique set of offices within the halls of academe rather than

simply be distributed among the offices already provided for practicion- ers of the special disciplines (which, after the German Wissenschaften, will henceforth be referred to as the "sciences")--with logicians situa- ted among the mathematicians, epistemologists among the psychologists, and so forth. And ultimately the challenge of Rorty's book boils down to this bureaucratic question. We may not be convinced by his story of how philosophers, starting with Descartes and Locke, unwittingly came to raise the sciences of their day to the status of metaphysics. Nor may we find very illuminating his suggestion that philosophers now join the ranks of cultural critics. Yet whatever his failures in diagnosing and

curing, Rorty has certainly isolated a disease peculiar to philosophy. At first approximation, we may say that philosophy suffers from what Habermas would call a "legitimation crisis". However, to stop here would not do justice to the depth of Rorty's analysis, for he is not

arguing that philosophy is, as it were, "between paradigms"--no longer able to justify itself as it once did (namely, as "queen of the sci- ences") and hence in search of some other means of justification. Too

many readers of Rorty, I fear, interpret his preference for continental-

style hermeneutics over Anglo-American analysis in just this manner: a

paradigm shift. However, the legitimation crisis that Rorty divines in the history of modern philosophy more resembles the gradual withering away of the state according to Marx: Here is a discipline that slowly but surely loses its problems to the sciences, such that by the end of the twentieth century philosophers are at a loss to specify what it is that they do that nobody else does. In other words, philosophy suffers from a radical identity crisis. It is not a matter of whether we should do philosophy in one way rather than in another, but whether we are

doing anything in particular when we do "philosophy".

It is easy to see what Rorty finds attractive in continental philoso-

PSA 1982, Volume 1, pp. 373-383

Copyright Q 1982 by the Philosophy of Science Association

Steve Fuller

Dept. of Hist. & Phil. of Science

University of Pittsburgh

There have been many responses to Richard Rorty's Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, but none of them have said why philosophers should be

assigned a unique set of offices within the halls of academe rather than

simply be distributed among the offices already provided for practicion- ers of the special disciplines (which, after the German Wissenschaften, will henceforth be referred to as the "sciences")--with logicians situa- ted among the mathematicians, epistemologists among the psychologists, and so forth. And ultimately the challenge of Rorty's book boils down to this bureaucratic question. We may not be convinced by his story of how philosophers, starting with Descartes and Locke, unwittingly came to raise the sciences of their day to the status of metaphysics. Nor may we find very illuminating his suggestion that philosophers now join the ranks of cultural critics. Yet whatever his failures in diagnosing and

curing, Rorty has certainly isolated a disease peculiar to philosophy. At first approximation, we may say that philosophy suffers from what Habermas would call a "legitimation crisis". However, to stop here would not do justice to the depth of Rorty's analysis, for he is not

arguing that philosophy is, as it were, "between paradigms"--no longer able to justify itself as it once did (namely, as "queen of the sci- ences") and hence in search of some other means of justification. Too

many readers of Rorty, I fear, interpret his preference for continental-

style hermeneutics over Anglo-American analysis in just this manner: a

paradigm shift. However, the legitimation crisis that Rorty divines in the history of modern philosophy more resembles the gradual withering away of the state according to Marx: Here is a discipline that slowly but surely loses its problems to the sciences, such that by the end of the twentieth century philosophers are at a loss to specify what it is that they do that nobody else does. In other words, philosophy suffers from a radical identity crisis. It is not a matter of whether we should do philosophy in one way rather than in another, but whether we are

doing anything in particular when we do "philosophy".

It is easy to see what Rorty finds attractive in continental philoso-

PSA 1982, Volume 1, pp. 373-383

Copyright Q 1982 by the Philosophy of Science Association

Steve Fuller

Dept. of Hist. & Phil. of Science

University of Pittsburgh

There have been many responses to Richard Rorty's Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, but none of them have said why philosophers should be

assigned a unique set of offices within the halls of academe rather than

simply be distributed among the offices already provided for practicion- ers of the special disciplines (which, after the German Wissenschaften, will henceforth be referred to as the "sciences")--with logicians situa- ted among the mathematicians, epistemologists among the psychologists, and so forth. And ultimately the challenge of Rorty's book boils down to this bureaucratic question. We may not be convinced by his story of how philosophers, starting with Descartes and Locke, unwittingly came to raise the sciences of their day to the status of metaphysics. Nor may we find very illuminating his suggestion that philosophers now join the ranks of cultural critics. Yet whatever his failures in diagnosing and

curing, Rorty has certainly isolated a disease peculiar to philosophy. At first approximation, we may say that philosophy suffers from what Habermas would call a "legitimation crisis". However, to stop here would not do justice to the depth of Rorty's analysis, for he is not

arguing that philosophy is, as it were, "between paradigms"--no longer able to justify itself as it once did (namely, as "queen of the sci- ences") and hence in search of some other means of justification. Too

many readers of Rorty, I fear, interpret his preference for continental-

style hermeneutics over Anglo-American analysis in just this manner: a

paradigm shift. However, the legitimation crisis that Rorty divines in the history of modern philosophy more resembles the gradual withering away of the state according to Marx: Here is a discipline that slowly but surely loses its problems to the sciences, such that by the end of the twentieth century philosophers are at a loss to specify what it is that they do that nobody else does. In other words, philosophy suffers from a radical identity crisis. It is not a matter of whether we should do philosophy in one way rather than in another, but whether we are

doing anything in particular when we do "philosophy".

It is easy to see what Rorty finds attractive in continental philoso-

PSA 1982, Volume 1, pp. 373-383

Copyright Q 1982 by the Philosophy of Science Association

Steve Fuller

Dept. of Hist. & Phil. of Science

University of Pittsburgh

There have been many responses to Richard Rorty's Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, but none of them have said why philosophers should be

assigned a unique set of offices within the halls of academe rather than

simply be distributed among the offices already provided for practicion- ers of the special disciplines (which, after the German Wissenschaften, will henceforth be referred to as the "sciences")--with logicians situa- ted among the mathematicians, epistemologists among the psychologists, and so forth. And ultimately the challenge of Rorty's book boils down to this bureaucratic question. We may not be convinced by his story of how philosophers, starting with Descartes and Locke, unwittingly came to raise the sciences of their day to the status of metaphysics. Nor may we find very illuminating his suggestion that philosophers now join the ranks of cultural critics. Yet whatever his failures in diagnosing and

curing, Rorty has certainly isolated a disease peculiar to philosophy. At first approximation, we may say that philosophy suffers from what Habermas would call a "legitimation crisis". However, to stop here would not do justice to the depth of Rorty's analysis, for he is not

arguing that philosophy is, as it were, "between paradigms"--no longer able to justify itself as it once did (namely, as "queen of the sci- ences") and hence in search of some other means of justification. Too

many readers of Rorty, I fear, interpret his preference for continental-

style hermeneutics over Anglo-American analysis in just this manner: a

paradigm shift. However, the legitimation crisis that Rorty divines in the history of modern philosophy more resembles the gradual withering away of the state according to Marx: Here is a discipline that slowly but surely loses its problems to the sciences, such that by the end of the twentieth century philosophers are at a loss to specify what it is that they do that nobody else does. In other words, philosophy suffers from a radical identity crisis. It is not a matter of whether we should do philosophy in one way rather than in another, but whether we are

doing anything in particular when we do "philosophy".

It is easy to see what Rorty finds attractive in continental philoso-

PSA 1982, Volume 1, pp. 373-383

Copyright Q 1982 by the Philosophy of Science Association

Steve Fuller

Dept. of Hist. & Phil. of Science

University of Pittsburgh

There have been many responses to Richard Rorty's Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, but none of them have said why philosophers should be

assigned a unique set of offices within the halls of academe rather than

simply be distributed among the offices already provided for practicion- ers of the special disciplines (which, after the German Wissenschaften, will henceforth be referred to as the "sciences")--with logicians situa- ted among the mathematicians, epistemologists among the psychologists, and so forth. And ultimately the challenge of Rorty's book boils down to this bureaucratic question. We may not be convinced by his story of how philosophers, starting with Descartes and Locke, unwittingly came to raise the sciences of their day to the status of metaphysics. Nor may we find very illuminating his suggestion that philosophers now join the ranks of cultural critics. Yet whatever his failures in diagnosing and

curing, Rorty has certainly isolated a disease peculiar to philosophy. At first approximation, we may say that philosophy suffers from what Habermas would call a "legitimation crisis". However, to stop here would not do justice to the depth of Rorty's analysis, for he is not

arguing that philosophy is, as it were, "between paradigms"--no longer able to justify itself as it once did (namely, as "queen of the sci- ences") and hence in search of some other means of justification. Too

many readers of Rorty, I fear, interpret his preference for continental-

style hermeneutics over Anglo-American analysis in just this manner: a

paradigm shift. However, the legitimation crisis that Rorty divines in the history of modern philosophy more resembles the gradual withering away of the state according to Marx: Here is a discipline that slowly but surely loses its problems to the sciences, such that by the end of the twentieth century philosophers are at a loss to specify what it is that they do that nobody else does. In other words, philosophy suffers from a radical identity crisis. It is not a matter of whether we should do philosophy in one way rather than in another, but whether we are

doing anything in particular when we do "philosophy".

It is easy to see what Rorty finds attractive in continental philoso-

PSA 1982, Volume 1, pp. 373-383

Copyright Q 1982 by the Philosophy of Science Association

Steve Fuller

Dept. of Hist. & Phil. of Science

University of Pittsburgh

There have been many responses to Richard Rorty's Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, but none of them have said why philosophers should be

assigned a unique set of offices within the halls of academe rather than

simply be distributed among the offices already provided for practicion- ers of the special disciplines (which, after the German Wissenschaften, will henceforth be referred to as the "sciences")--with logicians situa- ted among the mathematicians, epistemologists among the psychologists, and so forth. And ultimately the challenge of Rorty's book boils down to this bureaucratic question. We may not be convinced by his story of how philosophers, starting with Descartes and Locke, unwittingly came to raise the sciences of their day to the status of metaphysics. Nor may we find very illuminating his suggestion that philosophers now join the ranks of cultural critics. Yet whatever his failures in diagnosing and

curing, Rorty has certainly isolated a disease peculiar to philosophy. At first approximation, we may say that philosophy suffers from what Habermas would call a "legitimation crisis". However, to stop here would not do justice to the depth of Rorty's analysis, for he is not

arguing that philosophy is, as it were, "between paradigms"--no longer able to justify itself as it once did (namely, as "queen of the sci- ences") and hence in search of some other means of justification. Too

many readers of Rorty, I fear, interpret his preference for continental-

style hermeneutics over Anglo-American analysis in just this manner: a

paradigm shift. However, the legitimation crisis that Rorty divines in the history of modern philosophy more resembles the gradual withering away of the state according to Marx: Here is a discipline that slowly but surely loses its problems to the sciences, such that by the end of the twentieth century philosophers are at a loss to specify what it is that they do that nobody else does. In other words, philosophy suffers from a radical identity crisis. It is not a matter of whether we should do philosophy in one way rather than in another, but whether we are

doing anything in particular when we do "philosophy".

It is easy to see what Rorty finds attractive in continental philoso-

PSA 1982, Volume 1, pp. 373-383

Copyright Q 1982 by the Philosophy of Science Association

Steve Fuller

Dept. of Hist. & Phil. of Science

University of Pittsburgh

There have been many responses to Richard Rorty's Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, but none of them have said why philosophers should be

assigned a unique set of offices within the halls of academe rather than

simply be distributed among the offices already provided for practicion- ers of the special disciplines (which, after the German Wissenschaften, will henceforth be referred to as the "sciences")--with logicians situa- ted among the mathematicians, epistemologists among the psychologists, and so forth. And ultimately the challenge of Rorty's book boils down to this bureaucratic question. We may not be convinced by his story of how philosophers, starting with Descartes and Locke, unwittingly came to raise the sciences of their day to the status of metaphysics. Nor may we find very illuminating his suggestion that philosophers now join the ranks of cultural critics. Yet whatever his failures in diagnosing and

curing, Rorty has certainly isolated a disease peculiar to philosophy. At first approximation, we may say that philosophy suffers from what Habermas would call a "legitimation crisis". However, to stop here would not do justice to the depth of Rorty's analysis, for he is not

arguing that philosophy is, as it were, "between paradigms"--no longer able to justify itself as it once did (namely, as "queen of the sci- ences") and hence in search of some other means of justification. Too

many readers of Rorty, I fear, interpret his preference for continental-

style hermeneutics over Anglo-American analysis in just this manner: a

paradigm shift. However, the legitimation crisis that Rorty divines in the history of modern philosophy more resembles the gradual withering away of the state according to Marx: Here is a discipline that slowly but surely loses its problems to the sciences, such that by the end of the twentieth century philosophers are at a loss to specify what it is that they do that nobody else does. In other words, philosophy suffers from a radical identity crisis. It is not a matter of whether we should do philosophy in one way rather than in another, but whether we are

doing anything in particular when we do "philosophy".

It is easy to see what Rorty finds attractive in continental philoso-

PSA 1982, Volume 1, pp. 373-383

Copyright Q 1982 by the Philosophy of Science Association

Steve Fuller

Dept. of Hist. & Phil. of Science

University of Pittsburgh

There have been many responses to Richard Rorty's Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, but none of them have said why philosophers should be

assigned a unique set of offices within the halls of academe rather than

simply be distributed among the offices already provided for practicion- ers of the special disciplines (which, after the German Wissenschaften, will henceforth be referred to as the "sciences")--with logicians situa- ted among the mathematicians, epistemologists among the psychologists, and so forth. And ultimately the challenge of Rorty's book boils down to this bureaucratic question. We may not be convinced by his story of how philosophers, starting with Descartes and Locke, unwittingly came to raise the sciences of their day to the status of metaphysics. Nor may we find very illuminating his suggestion that philosophers now join the ranks of cultural critics. Yet whatever his failures in diagnosing and

curing, Rorty has certainly isolated a disease peculiar to philosophy. At first approximation, we may say that philosophy suffers from what Habermas would call a "legitimation crisis". However, to stop here would not do justice to the depth of Rorty's analysis, for he is not

arguing that philosophy is, as it were, "between paradigms"--no longer able to justify itself as it once did (namely, as "queen of the sci- ences") and hence in search of some other means of justification. Too

many readers of Rorty, I fear, interpret his preference for continental-

style hermeneutics over Anglo-American analysis in just this manner: a

paradigm shift. However, the legitimation crisis that Rorty divines in the history of modern philosophy more resembles the gradual withering away of the state according to Marx: Here is a discipline that slowly but surely loses its problems to the sciences, such that by the end of the twentieth century philosophers are at a loss to specify what it is that they do that nobody else does. In other words, philosophy suffers from a radical identity crisis. It is not a matter of whether we should do philosophy in one way rather than in another, but whether we are

doing anything in particular when we do "philosophy".

It is easy to see what Rorty finds attractive in continental philoso-

PSA 1982, Volume 1, pp. 373-383

Copyright Q 1982 by the Philosophy of Science Association

Steve Fuller

Dept. of Hist. & Phil. of Science

University of Pittsburgh

There have been many responses to Richard Rorty's Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, but none of them have said why philosophers should be

assigned a unique set of offices within the halls of academe rather than

simply be distributed among the offices already provided for practicion- ers of the special disciplines (which, after the German Wissenschaften, will henceforth be referred to as the "sciences")--with logicians situa- ted among the mathematicians, epistemologists among the psychologists, and so forth. And ultimately the challenge of Rorty's book boils down to this bureaucratic question. We may not be convinced by his story of how philosophers, starting with Descartes and Locke, unwittingly came to raise the sciences of their day to the status of metaphysics. Nor may we find very illuminating his suggestion that philosophers now join the ranks of cultural critics. Yet whatever his failures in diagnosing and

curing, Rorty has certainly isolated a disease peculiar to philosophy. At first approximation, we may say that philosophy suffers from what Habermas would call a "legitimation crisis". However, to stop here would not do justice to the depth of Rorty's analysis, for he is not

arguing that philosophy is, as it were, "between paradigms"--no longer able to justify itself as it once did (namely, as "queen of the sci- ences") and hence in search of some other means of justification. Too

many readers of Rorty, I fear, interpret his preference for continental-

style hermeneutics over Anglo-American analysis in just this manner: a

paradigm shift. However, the legitimation crisis that Rorty divines in the history of modern philosophy more resembles the gradual withering away of the state according to Marx: Here is a discipline that slowly but surely loses its problems to the sciences, such that by the end of the twentieth century philosophers are at a loss to specify what it is that they do that nobody else does. In other words, philosophy suffers from a radical identity crisis. It is not a matter of whether we should do philosophy in one way rather than in another, but whether we are

doing anything in particular when we do "philosophy".

It is easy to see what Rorty finds attractive in continental philoso-

PSA 1982, Volume 1, pp. 373-383

Copyright Q 1982 by the Philosophy of Science Association

Steve Fuller

Dept. of Hist. & Phil. of Science

University of Pittsburgh

There have been many responses to Richard Rorty's Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, but none of them have said why philosophers should be

assigned a unique set of offices within the halls of academe rather than

simply be distributed among the offices already provided for practicion- ers of the special disciplines (which, after the German Wissenschaften, will henceforth be referred to as the "sciences")--with logicians situa- ted among the mathematicians, epistemologists among the psychologists, and so forth. And ultimately the challenge of Rorty's book boils down to this bureaucratic question. We may not be convinced by his story of how philosophers, starting with Descartes and Locke, unwittingly came to raise the sciences of their day to the status of metaphysics. Nor may we find very illuminating his suggestion that philosophers now join the ranks of cultural critics. Yet whatever his failures in diagnosing and

curing, Rorty has certainly isolated a disease peculiar to philosophy. At first approximation, we may say that philosophy suffers from what Habermas would call a "legitimation crisis". However, to stop here would not do justice to the depth of Rorty's analysis, for he is not

arguing that philosophy is, as it were, "between paradigms"--no longer able to justify itself as it once did (namely, as "queen of the sci- ences") and hence in search of some other means of justification. Too

many readers of Rorty, I fear, interpret his preference for continental-

style hermeneutics over Anglo-American analysis in just this manner: a

paradigm shift. However, the legitimation crisis that Rorty divines in the history of modern philosophy more resembles the gradual withering away of the state according to Marx: Here is a discipline that slowly but surely loses its problems to the sciences, such that by the end of the twentieth century philosophers are at a loss to specify what it is that they do that nobody else does. In other words, philosophy suffers from a radical identity crisis. It is not a matter of whether we should do philosophy in one way rather than in another, but whether we are

doing anything in particular when we do "philosophy".

It is easy to see what Rorty finds attractive in continental philoso-

PSA 1982, Volume 1, pp. 373-383

Copyright Q 1982 by the Philosophy of Science Association

Steve Fuller

Dept. of Hist. & Phil. of Science

University of Pittsburgh

There have been many responses to Richard Rorty's Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, but none of them have said why philosophers should be

assigned a unique set of offices within the halls of academe rather than

simply be distributed among the offices already provided for practicion- ers of the special disciplines (which, after the German Wissenschaften, will henceforth be referred to as the "sciences")--with logicians situa- ted among the mathematicians, epistemologists among the psychologists, and so forth. And ultimately the challenge of Rorty's book boils down to this bureaucratic question. We may not be convinced by his story of how philosophers, starting with Descartes and Locke, unwittingly came to raise the sciences of their day to the status of metaphysics. Nor may we find very illuminating his suggestion that philosophers now join the ranks of cultural critics. Yet whatever his failures in diagnosing and

curing, Rorty has certainly isolated a disease peculiar to philosophy. At first approximation, we may say that philosophy suffers from what Habermas would call a "legitimation crisis". However, to stop here would not do justice to the depth of Rorty's analysis, for he is not

arguing that philosophy is, as it were, "between paradigms"--no longer able to justify itself as it once did (namely, as "queen of the sci- ences") and hence in search of some other means of justification. Too

many readers of Rorty, I fear, interpret his preference for continental-

style hermeneutics over Anglo-American analysis in just this manner: a

paradigm shift. However, the legitimation crisis that Rorty divines in the history of modern philosophy more resembles the gradual withering away of the state according to Marx: Here is a discipline that slowly but surely loses its problems to the sciences, such that by the end of the twentieth century philosophers are at a loss to specify what it is that they do that nobody else does. In other words, philosophy suffers from a radical identity crisis. It is not a matter of whether we should do philosophy in one way rather than in another, but whether we are

doing anything in particular when we do "philosophy".

It is easy to see what Rorty finds attractive in continental philoso-

PSA 1982, Volume 1, pp. 373-383

Copyright Q 1982 by the Philosophy of Science Association

Steve Fuller

Dept. of Hist. & Phil. of Science

University of Pittsburgh

There have been many responses to Richard Rorty's Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, but none of them have said why philosophers should be

assigned a unique set of offices within the halls of academe rather than

simply be distributed among the offices already provided for practicion- ers of the special disciplines (which, after the German Wissenschaften, will henceforth be referred to as the "sciences")--with logicians situa- ted among the mathematicians, epistemologists among the psychologists, and so forth. And ultimately the challenge of Rorty's book boils down to this bureaucratic question. We may not be convinced by his story of how philosophers, starting with Descartes and Locke, unwittingly came to raise the sciences of their day to the status of metaphysics. Nor may we find very illuminating his suggestion that philosophers now join the ranks of cultural critics. Yet whatever his failures in diagnosing and

curing, Rorty has certainly isolated a disease peculiar to philosophy. At first approximation, we may say that philosophy suffers from what Habermas would call a "legitimation crisis". However, to stop here would not do justice to the depth of Rorty's analysis, for he is not

arguing that philosophy is, as it were, "between paradigms"--no longer able to justify itself as it once did (namely, as "queen of the sci- ences") and hence in search of some other means of justification. Too

many readers of Rorty, I fear, interpret his preference for continental-

style hermeneutics over Anglo-American analysis in just this manner: a

paradigm shift. However, the legitimation crisis that Rorty divines in the history of modern philosophy more resembles the gradual withering away of the state according to Marx: Here is a discipline that slowly but surely loses its problems to the sciences, such that by the end of the twentieth century philosophers are at a loss to specify what it is that they do that nobody else does. In other words, philosophy suffers from a radical identity crisis. It is not a matter of whether we should do philosophy in one way rather than in another, but whether we are

doing anything in particular when we do "philosophy".

It is easy to see what Rorty finds attractive in continental philoso-

PSA 1982, Volume 1, pp. 373-383

Copyright Q 1982 by the Philosophy of Science Association

Steve Fuller

Dept. of Hist. & Phil. of Science

University of Pittsburgh

There have been many responses to Richard Rorty's Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, but none of them have said why philosophers should be

assigned a unique set of offices within the halls of academe rather than

simply be distributed among the offices already provided for practicion- ers of the special disciplines (which, after the German Wissenschaften, will henceforth be referred to as the "sciences")--with logicians situa- ted among the mathematicians, epistemologists among the psychologists, and so forth. And ultimately the challenge of Rorty's book boils down to this bureaucratic question. We may not be convinced by his story of how philosophers, starting with Descartes and Locke, unwittingly came to raise the sciences of their day to the status of metaphysics. Nor may we find very illuminating his suggestion that philosophers now join the ranks of cultural critics. Yet whatever his failures in diagnosing and

curing, Rorty has certainly isolated a disease peculiar to philosophy. At first approximation, we may say that philosophy suffers from what Habermas would call a "legitimation crisis". However, to stop here would not do justice to the depth of Rorty's analysis, for he is not

arguing that philosophy is, as it were, "between paradigms"--no longer able to justify itself as it once did (namely, as "queen of the sci- ences") and hence in search of some other means of justification. Too

many readers of Rorty, I fear, interpret his preference for continental-

style hermeneutics over Anglo-American analysis in just this manner: a

paradigm shift. However, the legitimation crisis that Rorty divines in the history of modern philosophy more resembles the gradual withering away of the state according to Marx: Here is a discipline that slowly but surely loses its problems to the sciences, such that by the end of the twentieth century philosophers are at a loss to specify what it is that they do that nobody else does. In other words, philosophy suffers from a radical identity crisis. It is not a matter of whether we should do philosophy in one way rather than in another, but whether we are

doing anything in particular when we do "philosophy".

It is easy to see what Rorty finds attractive in continental philoso-

PSA 1982, Volume 1, pp. 373-383

Copyright Q 1982 by the Philosophy of Science Association

Steve Fuller

Dept. of Hist. & Phil. of Science

University of Pittsburgh

There have been many responses to Richard Rorty's Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, but none of them have said why philosophers should be

assigned a unique set of offices within the halls of academe rather than

simply be distributed among the offices already provided for practicion- ers of the special disciplines (which, after the German Wissenschaften, will henceforth be referred to as the "sciences")--with logicians situa- ted among the mathematicians, epistemologists among the psychologists, and so forth. And ultimately the challenge of Rorty's book boils down to this bureaucratic question. We may not be convinced by his story of how philosophers, starting with Descartes and Locke, unwittingly came to raise the sciences of their day to the status of metaphysics. Nor may we find very illuminating his suggestion that philosophers now join the ranks of cultural critics. Yet whatever his failures in diagnosing and

curing, Rorty has certainly isolated a disease peculiar to philosophy. At first approximation, we may say that philosophy suffers from what Habermas would call a "legitimation crisis". However, to stop here would not do justice to the depth of Rorty's analysis, for he is not

arguing that philosophy is, as it were, "between paradigms"--no longer able to justify itself as it once did (namely, as "queen of the sci- ences") and hence in search of some other means of justification. Too

many readers of Rorty, I fear, interpret his preference for continental-

style hermeneutics over Anglo-American analysis in just this manner: a

paradigm shift. However, the legitimation crisis that Rorty divines in the history of modern philosophy more resembles the gradual withering away of the state according to Marx: Here is a discipline that slowly but surely loses its problems to the sciences, such that by the end of the twentieth century philosophers are at a loss to specify what it is that they do that nobody else does. In other words, philosophy suffers from a radical identity crisis. It is not a matter of whether we should do philosophy in one way rather than in another, but whether we are

doing anything in particular when we do "philosophy".

It is easy to see what Rorty finds attractive in continental philoso-

PSA 1982, Volume 1, pp. 373-383

Copyright Q 1982 by the Philosophy of Science Association

Steve Fuller

Dept. of Hist. & Phil. of Science

University of Pittsburgh

There have been many responses to Richard Rorty's Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, but none of them have said why philosophers should be

assigned a unique set of offices within the halls of academe rather than

simply be distributed among the offices already provided for practicion- ers of the special disciplines (which, after the German Wissenschaften, will henceforth be referred to as the "sciences")--with logicians situa- ted among the mathematicians, epistemologists among the psychologists, and so forth. And ultimately the challenge of Rorty's book boils down to this bureaucratic question. We may not be convinced by his story of how philosophers, starting with Descartes and Locke, unwittingly came to raise the sciences of their day to the status of metaphysics. Nor may we find very illuminating his suggestion that philosophers now join the ranks of cultural critics. Yet whatever his failures in diagnosing and

curing, Rorty has certainly isolated a disease peculiar to philosophy. At first approximation, we may say that philosophy suffers from what Habermas would call a "legitimation crisis". However, to stop here would not do justice to the depth of Rorty's analysis, for he is not

arguing that philosophy is, as it were, "between paradigms"--no longer able to justify itself as it once did (namely, as "queen of the sci- ences") and hence in search of some other means of justification. Too

many readers of Rorty, I fear, interpret his preference for continental-

style hermeneutics over Anglo-American analysis in just this manner: a

paradigm shift. However, the legitimation crisis that Rorty divines in the history of modern philosophy more resembles the gradual withering away of the state according to Marx: Here is a discipline that slowly but surely loses its problems to the sciences, such that by the end of the twentieth century philosophers are at a loss to specify what it is that they do that nobody else does. In other words, philosophy suffers from a radical identity crisis. It is not a matter of whether we should do philosophy in one way rather than in another, but whether we are

doing anything in particular when we do "philosophy".

It is easy to see what Rorty finds attractive in continental philoso-

PSA 1982, Volume 1, pp. 373-383

Copyright Q 1982 by the Philosophy of Science Association

Steve Fuller

Dept. of Hist. & Phil. of Science

University of Pittsburgh

There have been many responses to Richard Rorty's Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, but none of them have said why philosophers should be

assigned a unique set of offices within the halls of academe rather than

simply be distributed among the offices already provided for practicion- ers of the special disciplines (which, after the German Wissenschaften, will henceforth be referred to as the "sciences")--with logicians situa- ted among the mathematicians, epistemologists among the psychologists, and so forth. And ultimately the challenge of Rorty's book boils down to this bureaucratic question. We may not be convinced by his story of how philosophers, starting with Descartes and Locke, unwittingly came to raise the sciences of their day to the status of metaphysics. Nor may we find very illuminating his suggestion that philosophers now join the ranks of cultural critics. Yet whatever his failures in diagnosing and

curing, Rorty has certainly isolated a disease peculiar to philosophy. At first approximation, we may say that philosophy suffers from what Habermas would call a "legitimation crisis". However, to stop here would not do justice to the depth of Rorty's analysis, for he is not

arguing that philosophy is, as it were, "between paradigms"--no longer able to justify itself as it once did (namely, as "queen of the sci- ences") and hence in search of some other means of justification. Too

many readers of Rorty, I fear, interpret his preference for continental-

style hermeneutics over Anglo-American analysis in just this manner: a

paradigm shift. However, the legitimation crisis that Rorty divines in the history of modern philosophy more resembles the gradual withering away of the state according to Marx: Here is a discipline that slowly but surely loses its problems to the sciences, such that by the end of the twentieth century philosophers are at a loss to specify what it is that they do that nobody else does. In other words, philosophy suffers from a radical identity crisis. It is not a matter of whether we should do philosophy in one way rather than in another, but whether we are

doing anything in particular when we do "philosophy".

It is easy to see what Rorty finds attractive in continental philoso-

PSA 1982, Volume 1, pp. 373-383

Copyright Q 1982 by the Philosophy of Science Association

Steve Fuller

Dept. of Hist. & Phil. of Science

University of Pittsburgh

There have been many responses to Richard Rorty's Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, but none of them have said why philosophers should be

assigned a unique set of offices within the halls of academe rather than

simply be distributed among the offices already provided for practicion- ers of the special disciplines (which, after the German Wissenschaften, will henceforth be referred to as the "sciences")--with logicians situa- ted among the mathematicians, epistemologists among the psychologists, and so forth. And ultimately the challenge of Rorty's book boils down to this bureaucratic question. We may not be convinced by his story of how philosophers, starting with Descartes and Locke, unwittingly came to raise the sciences of their day to the status of metaphysics. Nor may we find very illuminating his suggestion that philosophers now join the ranks of cultural critics. Yet whatever his failures in diagnosing and

curing, Rorty has certainly isolated a disease peculiar to philosophy. At first approximation, we may say that philosophy suffers from what Habermas would call a "legitimation crisis". However, to stop here would not do justice to the depth of Rorty's analysis, for he is not

arguing that philosophy is, as it were, "between paradigms"--no longer able to justify itself as it once did (namely, as "queen of the sci- ences") and hence in search of some other means of justification. Too

many readers of Rorty, I fear, interpret his preference for continental-

style hermeneutics over Anglo-American analysis in just this manner: a

paradigm shift. However, the legitimation crisis that Rorty divines in the history of modern philosophy more resembles the gradual withering away of the state according to Marx: Here is a discipline that slowly but surely loses its problems to the sciences, such that by the end of the twentieth century philosophers are at a loss to specify what it is that they do that nobody else does. In other words, philosophy suffers from a radical identity crisis. It is not a matter of whether we should do philosophy in one way rather than in another, but whether we are

doing anything in particular when we do "philosophy".

It is easy to see what Rorty finds attractive in continental philoso-

PSA 1982, Volume 1, pp. 373-383

Copyright Q 1982 by the Philosophy of Science Association

Steve Fuller

Dept. of Hist. & Phil. of Science

University of Pittsburgh

There have been many responses to Richard Rorty's Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, but none of them have said why philosophers should be

assigned a unique set of offices within the halls of academe rather than

simply be distributed among the offices already provided for practicion- ers of the special disciplines (which, after the German Wissenschaften, will henceforth be referred to as the "sciences")--with logicians situa- ted among the mathematicians, epistemologists among the psychologists, and so forth. And ultimately the challenge of Rorty's book boils down to this bureaucratic question. We may not be convinced by his story of how philosophers, starting with Descartes and Locke, unwittingly came to raise the sciences of their day to the status of metaphysics. Nor may we find very illuminating his suggestion that philosophers now join the ranks of cultural critics. Yet whatever his failures in diagnosing and

curing, Rorty has certainly isolated a disease peculiar to philosophy. At first approximation, we may say that philosophy suffers from what Habermas would call a "legitimation crisis". However, to stop here would not do justice to the depth of Rorty's analysis, for he is not

arguing that philosophy is, as it were, "between paradigms"--no longer able to justify itself as it once did (namely, as "queen of the sci- ences") and hence in search of some other means of justification. Too

many readers of Rorty, I fear, interpret his preference for continental-

style hermeneutics over Anglo-American analysis in just this manner: a

paradigm shift. However, the legitimation crisis that Rorty divines in the history of modern philosophy more resembles the gradual withering away of the state according to Marx: Here is a discipline that slowly but surely loses its problems to the sciences, such that by the end of the twentieth century philosophers are at a loss to specify what it is that they do that nobody else does. In other words, philosophy suffers from a radical identity crisis. It is not a matter of whether we should do philosophy in one way rather than in another, but whether we are

doing anything in particular when we do "philosophy".

It is easy to see what Rorty finds attractive in continental philoso-

PSA 1982, Volume 1, pp. 373-383

Copyright Q 1982 by the Philosophy of Science Association

Steve Fuller

Dept. of Hist. & Phil. of Science

University of Pittsburgh

There have been many responses to Richard Rorty's Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, but none of them have said why philosophers should be

assigned a unique set of offices within the halls of academe rather than

simply be distributed among the offices already provided for practicion- ers of the special disciplines (which, after the German Wissenschaften, will henceforth be referred to as the "sciences")--with logicians situa- ted among the mathematicians, epistemologists among the psychologists, and so forth. And ultimately the challenge of Rorty's book boils down to this bureaucratic question. We may not be convinced by his story of how philosophers, starting with Descartes and Locke, unwittingly came to raise the sciences of their day to the status of metaphysics. Nor may we find very illuminating his suggestion that philosophers now join the ranks of cultural critics. Yet whatever his failures in diagnosing and

curing, Rorty has certainly isolated a disease peculiar to philosophy. At first approximation, we may say that philosophy suffers from what Habermas would call a "legitimation crisis". However, to stop here would not do justice to the depth of Rorty's analysis, for he is not

arguing that philosophy is, as it were, "between paradigms"--no longer able to justify itself as it once did (namely, as "queen of the sci- ences") and hence in search of some other means of justification. Too

many readers of Rorty, I fear, interpret his preference for continental-

style hermeneutics over Anglo-American analysis in just this manner: a

paradigm shift. However, the legitimation crisis that Rorty divines in the history of modern philosophy more resembles the gradual withering away of the state according to Marx: Here is a discipline that slowly but surely loses its problems to the sciences, such that by the end of the twentieth century philosophers are at a loss to specify what it is that they do that nobody else does. In other words, philosophy suffers from a radical identity crisis. It is not a matter of whether we should do philosophy in one way rather than in another, but whether we are

doing anything in particular when we do "philosophy".

It is easy to see what Rorty finds attractive in continental philoso-

PSA 1982, Volume 1, pp. 373-383

Copyright Q 1982 by the Philosophy of Science Association

Steve Fuller

Dept. of Hist. & Phil. of Science

University of Pittsburgh

There have been many responses to Richard Rorty's Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, but none of them have said why philosophers should be

assigned a unique set of offices within the halls of academe rather than

simply be distributed among the offices already provided for practicion- ers of the special disciplines (which, after the German Wissenschaften, will henceforth be referred to as the "sciences")--with logicians situa- ted among the mathematicians, epistemologists among the psychologists, and so forth. And ultimately the challenge of Rorty's book boils down to this bureaucratic question. We may not be convinced by his story of how philosophers, starting with Descartes and Locke, unwittingly came to raise the sciences of their day to the status of metaphysics. Nor may we find very illuminating his suggestion that philosophers now join the ranks of cultural critics. Yet whatever his failures in diagnosing and

curing, Rorty has certainly isolated a disease peculiar to philosophy. At first approximation, we may say that philosophy suffers from what Habermas would call a "legitimation crisis". However, to stop here would not do justice to the depth of Rorty's analysis, for he is not

arguing that philosophy is, as it were, "between paradigms"--no longer able to justify itself as it once did (namely, as "queen of the sci- ences") and hence in search of some other means of justification. Too

many readers of Rorty, I fear, interpret his preference for continental-

style hermeneutics over Anglo-American analysis in just this manner: a

paradigm shift. However, the legitimation crisis that Rorty divines in the history of modern philosophy more resembles the gradual withering away of the state according to Marx: Here is a discipline that slowly but surely loses its problems to the sciences, such that by the end of the twentieth century philosophers are at a loss to specify what it is that they do that nobody else does. In other words, philosophy suffers from a radical identity crisis. It is not a matter of whether we should do philosophy in one way rather than in another, but whether we are

doing anything in particular when we do "philosophy".

It is easy to see what Rorty finds attractive in continental philoso-

PSA 1982, Volume 1, pp. 373-383

Copyright Q 1982 by the Philosophy of Science Association

Page 3: Fuller, S., Recovering Philosphy From Rorty

374 374 374 374 374 374 374 374 374 374 374 374 374 374 374 374 374 374 374 374 374 374 374 374 374 374 374 374 374 374 374 374 374

phy: not so much its actual practice (which he all too eagerly reduces to his home-grown pragmatism) but the history of philosophy that those practices presuppose--notoriously thematized as "the end of philosophy" by Nietzsche and Heidegger. The Greeks started to philo- sophize when they conceived of single problem whose solution would encompass the very nature of "Being", or reality understood as the integration of fact and value, a hint of which is still preserved by the ambiguous interrogative "Why?" But since Galileo, the modern period has been marked by the attempt to tackle the big "Why?" by breaking it down into little "Hows", methods designed for studying specific kinds of entities; hence, the rise of the special sciences. In the midst of this cognitive division of labor and proliferation of scientific methods, the big problem got lost (or "forgotten", as Hei- degger would say). In fact, it has gotten so lost that it is now im- possible to pose the problem intelligibly. Heidegger conceived of his task as uprooting centuries of philosophical discourse to discover just exactly what that problem was--not in order to reassert the uniqueness of philosophical inquiry, but to show just how alien the big problem is to the current scientific temper, which Heidegger saw as irreversible. Rorty himself is somewhat more cheerful--more Nietzschean perhaps--in that he has no regrets about the passing away of philosophy. As a pragmatist, he agrees with his more positivistic antagonists that big questions arise only when our imaginations outstrip our techniques, such that there is no way that our minds can be laid to rest, no defi- nitive test to which our speculations can be put. In effect, philoso- phy is the disease of the Western mind for which science is the cure.

But even given the above account of the history of modern philoso- phy , philosophical problems are pathological only if we assume that "normal" problems are defined by their solubility. Perhaps this is not too much to ask. However, I disagree, for I would like to think that the moral of Rorty's history is that philosophy has little to do with solving problems but a lot to do with creating them. More impor- tantly, the latter is (at least) as "wholesome" as the former. Logi- cal positivism and computer science notwithstanding, a "well-formed" philosophical problem does not suggest a means toward its own solution, but, rather, deprives us of the means that we would most naturally turn to in attempting a solution. And here we should recall how, in denying the adequacy of conventional answers to apparently simple questions, Socrates generated the deep problems of metaphysics. Today there are philosophers who continue to cultivate a sense of the problematic--but in monologue rather than dialogue. I am thinking especially of those willfully obscure stylists Jacques Derrida and Stanley Cavell. Why they write as they do will provide the first clue in recovering philo- sophical inquiry from Rorty's critique.

You do not have to be a literary critic to find Of Grammatology and The Claim of Reason unusually discursive and unmotivated. After a few moments with either text, were I to ask for your impression of the per- son who wrote it, you would perhaps say that the author is someone who has nothing in particular to talk about, but nevertheless feels that he must talk about something, and so he ends up talking about every-

phy: not so much its actual practice (which he all too eagerly reduces to his home-grown pragmatism) but the history of philosophy that those practices presuppose--notoriously thematized as "the end of philosophy" by Nietzsche and Heidegger. The Greeks started to philo- sophize when they conceived of single problem whose solution would encompass the very nature of "Being", or reality understood as the integration of fact and value, a hint of which is still preserved by the ambiguous interrogative "Why?" But since Galileo, the modern period has been marked by the attempt to tackle the big "Why?" by breaking it down into little "Hows", methods designed for studying specific kinds of entities; hence, the rise of the special sciences. In the midst of this cognitive division of labor and proliferation of scientific methods, the big problem got lost (or "forgotten", as Hei- degger would say). In fact, it has gotten so lost that it is now im- possible to pose the problem intelligibly. Heidegger conceived of his task as uprooting centuries of philosophical discourse to discover just exactly what that problem was--not in order to reassert the uniqueness of philosophical inquiry, but to show just how alien the big problem is to the current scientific temper, which Heidegger saw as irreversible. Rorty himself is somewhat more cheerful--more Nietzschean perhaps--in that he has no regrets about the passing away of philosophy. As a pragmatist, he agrees with his more positivistic antagonists that big questions arise only when our imaginations outstrip our techniques, such that there is no way that our minds can be laid to rest, no defi- nitive test to which our speculations can be put. In effect, philoso- phy is the disease of the Western mind for which science is the cure.

But even given the above account of the history of modern philoso- phy , philosophical problems are pathological only if we assume that "normal" problems are defined by their solubility. Perhaps this is not too much to ask. However, I disagree, for I would like to think that the moral of Rorty's history is that philosophy has little to do with solving problems but a lot to do with creating them. More impor- tantly, the latter is (at least) as "wholesome" as the former. Logi- cal positivism and computer science notwithstanding, a "well-formed" philosophical problem does not suggest a means toward its own solution, but, rather, deprives us of the means that we would most naturally turn to in attempting a solution. And here we should recall how, in denying the adequacy of conventional answers to apparently simple questions, Socrates generated the deep problems of metaphysics. Today there are philosophers who continue to cultivate a sense of the problematic--but in monologue rather than dialogue. I am thinking especially of those willfully obscure stylists Jacques Derrida and Stanley Cavell. Why they write as they do will provide the first clue in recovering philo- sophical inquiry from Rorty's critique.

You do not have to be a literary critic to find Of Grammatology and The Claim of Reason unusually discursive and unmotivated. After a few moments with either text, were I to ask for your impression of the per- son who wrote it, you would perhaps say that the author is someone who has nothing in particular to talk about, but nevertheless feels that he must talk about something, and so he ends up talking about every-

phy: not so much its actual practice (which he all too eagerly reduces to his home-grown pragmatism) but the history of philosophy that those practices presuppose--notoriously thematized as "the end of philosophy" by Nietzsche and Heidegger. The Greeks started to philo- sophize when they conceived of single problem whose solution would encompass the very nature of "Being", or reality understood as the integration of fact and value, a hint of which is still preserved by the ambiguous interrogative "Why?" But since Galileo, the modern period has been marked by the attempt to tackle the big "Why?" by breaking it down into little "Hows", methods designed for studying specific kinds of entities; hence, the rise of the special sciences. In the midst of this cognitive division of labor and proliferation of scientific methods, the big problem got lost (or "forgotten", as Hei- degger would say). In fact, it has gotten so lost that it is now im- possible to pose the problem intelligibly. Heidegger conceived of his task as uprooting centuries of philosophical discourse to discover just exactly what that problem was--not in order to reassert the uniqueness of philosophical inquiry, but to show just how alien the big problem is to the current scientific temper, which Heidegger saw as irreversible. Rorty himself is somewhat more cheerful--more Nietzschean perhaps--in that he has no regrets about the passing away of philosophy. As a pragmatist, he agrees with his more positivistic antagonists that big questions arise only when our imaginations outstrip our techniques, such that there is no way that our minds can be laid to rest, no defi- nitive test to which our speculations can be put. In effect, philoso- phy is the disease of the Western mind for which science is the cure.

But even given the above account of the history of modern philoso- phy , philosophical problems are pathological only if we assume that "normal" problems are defined by their solubility. Perhaps this is not too much to ask. However, I disagree, for I would like to think that the moral of Rorty's history is that philosophy has little to do with solving problems but a lot to do with creating them. More impor- tantly, the latter is (at least) as "wholesome" as the former. Logi- cal positivism and computer science notwithstanding, a "well-formed" philosophical problem does not suggest a means toward its own solution, but, rather, deprives us of the means that we would most naturally turn to in attempting a solution. And here we should recall how, in denying the adequacy of conventional answers to apparently simple questions, Socrates generated the deep problems of metaphysics. Today there are philosophers who continue to cultivate a sense of the problematic--but in monologue rather than dialogue. I am thinking especially of those willfully obscure stylists Jacques Derrida and Stanley Cavell. Why they write as they do will provide the first clue in recovering philo- sophical inquiry from Rorty's critique.

You do not have to be a literary critic to find Of Grammatology and The Claim of Reason unusually discursive and unmotivated. After a few moments with either text, were I to ask for your impression of the per- son who wrote it, you would perhaps say that the author is someone who has nothing in particular to talk about, but nevertheless feels that he must talk about something, and so he ends up talking about every-

phy: not so much its actual practice (which he all too eagerly reduces to his home-grown pragmatism) but the history of philosophy that those practices presuppose--notoriously thematized as "the end of philosophy" by Nietzsche and Heidegger. The Greeks started to philo- sophize when they conceived of single problem whose solution would encompass the very nature of "Being", or reality understood as the integration of fact and value, a hint of which is still preserved by the ambiguous interrogative "Why?" But since Galileo, the modern period has been marked by the attempt to tackle the big "Why?" by breaking it down into little "Hows", methods designed for studying specific kinds of entities; hence, the rise of the special sciences. In the midst of this cognitive division of labor and proliferation of scientific methods, the big problem got lost (or "forgotten", as Hei- degger would say). In fact, it has gotten so lost that it is now im- possible to pose the problem intelligibly. Heidegger conceived of his task as uprooting centuries of philosophical discourse to discover just exactly what that problem was--not in order to reassert the uniqueness of philosophical inquiry, but to show just how alien the big problem is to the current scientific temper, which Heidegger saw as irreversible. Rorty himself is somewhat more cheerful--more Nietzschean perhaps--in that he has no regrets about the passing away of philosophy. As a pragmatist, he agrees with his more positivistic antagonists that big questions arise only when our imaginations outstrip our techniques, such that there is no way that our minds can be laid to rest, no defi- nitive test to which our speculations can be put. In effect, philoso- phy is the disease of the Western mind for which science is the cure.

But even given the above account of the history of modern philoso- phy , philosophical problems are pathological only if we assume that "normal" problems are defined by their solubility. Perhaps this is not too much to ask. However, I disagree, for I would like to think that the moral of Rorty's history is that philosophy has little to do with solving problems but a lot to do with creating them. More impor- tantly, the latter is (at least) as "wholesome" as the former. Logi- cal positivism and computer science notwithstanding, a "well-formed" philosophical problem does not suggest a means toward its own solution, but, rather, deprives us of the means that we would most naturally turn to in attempting a solution. And here we should recall how, in denying the adequacy of conventional answers to apparently simple questions, Socrates generated the deep problems of metaphysics. Today there are philosophers who continue to cultivate a sense of the problematic--but in monologue rather than dialogue. I am thinking especially of those willfully obscure stylists Jacques Derrida and Stanley Cavell. Why they write as they do will provide the first clue in recovering philo- sophical inquiry from Rorty's critique.

You do not have to be a literary critic to find Of Grammatology and The Claim of Reason unusually discursive and unmotivated. After a few moments with either text, were I to ask for your impression of the per- son who wrote it, you would perhaps say that the author is someone who has nothing in particular to talk about, but nevertheless feels that he must talk about something, and so he ends up talking about every-

phy: not so much its actual practice (which he all too eagerly reduces to his home-grown pragmatism) but the history of philosophy that those practices presuppose--notoriously thematized as "the end of philosophy" by Nietzsche and Heidegger. The Greeks started to philo- sophize when they conceived of single problem whose solution would encompass the very nature of "Being", or reality understood as the integration of fact and value, a hint of which is still preserved by the ambiguous interrogative "Why?" But since Galileo, the modern period has been marked by the attempt to tackle the big "Why?" by breaking it down into little "Hows", methods designed for studying specific kinds of entities; hence, the rise of the special sciences. In the midst of this cognitive division of labor and proliferation of scientific methods, the big problem got lost (or "forgotten", as Hei- degger would say). In fact, it has gotten so lost that it is now im- possible to pose the problem intelligibly. Heidegger conceived of his task as uprooting centuries of philosophical discourse to discover just exactly what that problem was--not in order to reassert the uniqueness of philosophical inquiry, but to show just how alien the big problem is to the current scientific temper, which Heidegger saw as irreversible. Rorty himself is somewhat more cheerful--more Nietzschean perhaps--in that he has no regrets about the passing away of philosophy. As a pragmatist, he agrees with his more positivistic antagonists that big questions arise only when our imaginations outstrip our techniques, such that there is no way that our minds can be laid to rest, no defi- nitive test to which our speculations can be put. In effect, philoso- phy is the disease of the Western mind for which science is the cure.

But even given the above account of the history of modern philoso- phy , philosophical problems are pathological only if we assume that "normal" problems are defined by their solubility. Perhaps this is not too much to ask. However, I disagree, for I would like to think that the moral of Rorty's history is that philosophy has little to do with solving problems but a lot to do with creating them. More impor- tantly, the latter is (at least) as "wholesome" as the former. Logi- cal positivism and computer science notwithstanding, a "well-formed" philosophical problem does not suggest a means toward its own solution, but, rather, deprives us of the means that we would most naturally turn to in attempting a solution. And here we should recall how, in denying the adequacy of conventional answers to apparently simple questions, Socrates generated the deep problems of metaphysics. Today there are philosophers who continue to cultivate a sense of the problematic--but in monologue rather than dialogue. I am thinking especially of those willfully obscure stylists Jacques Derrida and Stanley Cavell. Why they write as they do will provide the first clue in recovering philo- sophical inquiry from Rorty's critique.

You do not have to be a literary critic to find Of Grammatology and The Claim of Reason unusually discursive and unmotivated. After a few moments with either text, were I to ask for your impression of the per- son who wrote it, you would perhaps say that the author is someone who has nothing in particular to talk about, but nevertheless feels that he must talk about something, and so he ends up talking about every-

phy: not so much its actual practice (which he all too eagerly reduces to his home-grown pragmatism) but the history of philosophy that those practices presuppose--notoriously thematized as "the end of philosophy" by Nietzsche and Heidegger. The Greeks started to philo- sophize when they conceived of single problem whose solution would encompass the very nature of "Being", or reality understood as the integration of fact and value, a hint of which is still preserved by the ambiguous interrogative "Why?" But since Galileo, the modern period has been marked by the attempt to tackle the big "Why?" by breaking it down into little "Hows", methods designed for studying specific kinds of entities; hence, the rise of the special sciences. In the midst of this cognitive division of labor and proliferation of scientific methods, the big problem got lost (or "forgotten", as Hei- degger would say). In fact, it has gotten so lost that it is now im- possible to pose the problem intelligibly. Heidegger conceived of his task as uprooting centuries of philosophical discourse to discover just exactly what that problem was--not in order to reassert the uniqueness of philosophical inquiry, but to show just how alien the big problem is to the current scientific temper, which Heidegger saw as irreversible. Rorty himself is somewhat more cheerful--more Nietzschean perhaps--in that he has no regrets about the passing away of philosophy. As a pragmatist, he agrees with his more positivistic antagonists that big questions arise only when our imaginations outstrip our techniques, such that there is no way that our minds can be laid to rest, no defi- nitive test to which our speculations can be put. In effect, philoso- phy is the disease of the Western mind for which science is the cure.

But even given the above account of the history of modern philoso- phy , philosophical problems are pathological only if we assume that "normal" problems are defined by their solubility. Perhaps this is not too much to ask. However, I disagree, for I would like to think that the moral of Rorty's history is that philosophy has little to do with solving problems but a lot to do with creating them. More impor- tantly, the latter is (at least) as "wholesome" as the former. Logi- cal positivism and computer science notwithstanding, a "well-formed" philosophical problem does not suggest a means toward its own solution, but, rather, deprives us of the means that we would most naturally turn to in attempting a solution. And here we should recall how, in denying the adequacy of conventional answers to apparently simple questions, Socrates generated the deep problems of metaphysics. Today there are philosophers who continue to cultivate a sense of the problematic--but in monologue rather than dialogue. I am thinking especially of those willfully obscure stylists Jacques Derrida and Stanley Cavell. Why they write as they do will provide the first clue in recovering philo- sophical inquiry from Rorty's critique.

You do not have to be a literary critic to find Of Grammatology and The Claim of Reason unusually discursive and unmotivated. After a few moments with either text, were I to ask for your impression of the per- son who wrote it, you would perhaps say that the author is someone who has nothing in particular to talk about, but nevertheless feels that he must talk about something, and so he ends up talking about every-

phy: not so much its actual practice (which he all too eagerly reduces to his home-grown pragmatism) but the history of philosophy that those practices presuppose--notoriously thematized as "the end of philosophy" by Nietzsche and Heidegger. The Greeks started to philo- sophize when they conceived of single problem whose solution would encompass the very nature of "Being", or reality understood as the integration of fact and value, a hint of which is still preserved by the ambiguous interrogative "Why?" But since Galileo, the modern period has been marked by the attempt to tackle the big "Why?" by breaking it down into little "Hows", methods designed for studying specific kinds of entities; hence, the rise of the special sciences. In the midst of this cognitive division of labor and proliferation of scientific methods, the big problem got lost (or "forgotten", as Hei- degger would say). In fact, it has gotten so lost that it is now im- possible to pose the problem intelligibly. Heidegger conceived of his task as uprooting centuries of philosophical discourse to discover just exactly what that problem was--not in order to reassert the uniqueness of philosophical inquiry, but to show just how alien the big problem is to the current scientific temper, which Heidegger saw as irreversible. Rorty himself is somewhat more cheerful--more Nietzschean perhaps--in that he has no regrets about the passing away of philosophy. As a pragmatist, he agrees with his more positivistic antagonists that big questions arise only when our imaginations outstrip our techniques, such that there is no way that our minds can be laid to rest, no defi- nitive test to which our speculations can be put. In effect, philoso- phy is the disease of the Western mind for which science is the cure.

But even given the above account of the history of modern philoso- phy , philosophical problems are pathological only if we assume that "normal" problems are defined by their solubility. Perhaps this is not too much to ask. However, I disagree, for I would like to think that the moral of Rorty's history is that philosophy has little to do with solving problems but a lot to do with creating them. More impor- tantly, the latter is (at least) as "wholesome" as the former. Logi- cal positivism and computer science notwithstanding, a "well-formed" philosophical problem does not suggest a means toward its own solution, but, rather, deprives us of the means that we would most naturally turn to in attempting a solution. And here we should recall how, in denying the adequacy of conventional answers to apparently simple questions, Socrates generated the deep problems of metaphysics. Today there are philosophers who continue to cultivate a sense of the problematic--but in monologue rather than dialogue. I am thinking especially of those willfully obscure stylists Jacques Derrida and Stanley Cavell. Why they write as they do will provide the first clue in recovering philo- sophical inquiry from Rorty's critique.

You do not have to be a literary critic to find Of Grammatology and The Claim of Reason unusually discursive and unmotivated. After a few moments with either text, were I to ask for your impression of the per- son who wrote it, you would perhaps say that the author is someone who has nothing in particular to talk about, but nevertheless feels that he must talk about something, and so he ends up talking about every-

phy: not so much its actual practice (which he all too eagerly reduces to his home-grown pragmatism) but the history of philosophy that those practices presuppose--notoriously thematized as "the end of philosophy" by Nietzsche and Heidegger. The Greeks started to philo- sophize when they conceived of single problem whose solution would encompass the very nature of "Being", or reality understood as the integration of fact and value, a hint of which is still preserved by the ambiguous interrogative "Why?" But since Galileo, the modern period has been marked by the attempt to tackle the big "Why?" by breaking it down into little "Hows", methods designed for studying specific kinds of entities; hence, the rise of the special sciences. In the midst of this cognitive division of labor and proliferation of scientific methods, the big problem got lost (or "forgotten", as Hei- degger would say). In fact, it has gotten so lost that it is now im- possible to pose the problem intelligibly. Heidegger conceived of his task as uprooting centuries of philosophical discourse to discover just exactly what that problem was--not in order to reassert the uniqueness of philosophical inquiry, but to show just how alien the big problem is to the current scientific temper, which Heidegger saw as irreversible. Rorty himself is somewhat more cheerful--more Nietzschean perhaps--in that he has no regrets about the passing away of philosophy. As a pragmatist, he agrees with his more positivistic antagonists that big questions arise only when our imaginations outstrip our techniques, such that there is no way that our minds can be laid to rest, no defi- nitive test to which our speculations can be put. In effect, philoso- phy is the disease of the Western mind for which science is the cure.

But even given the above account of the history of modern philoso- phy , philosophical problems are pathological only if we assume that "normal" problems are defined by their solubility. Perhaps this is not too much to ask. However, I disagree, for I would like to think that the moral of Rorty's history is that philosophy has little to do with solving problems but a lot to do with creating them. More impor- tantly, the latter is (at least) as "wholesome" as the former. Logi- cal positivism and computer science notwithstanding, a "well-formed" philosophical problem does not suggest a means toward its own solution, but, rather, deprives us of the means that we would most naturally turn to in attempting a solution. And here we should recall how, in denying the adequacy of conventional answers to apparently simple questions, Socrates generated the deep problems of metaphysics. Today there are philosophers who continue to cultivate a sense of the problematic--but in monologue rather than dialogue. I am thinking especially of those willfully obscure stylists Jacques Derrida and Stanley Cavell. Why they write as they do will provide the first clue in recovering philo- sophical inquiry from Rorty's critique.

You do not have to be a literary critic to find Of Grammatology and The Claim of Reason unusually discursive and unmotivated. After a few moments with either text, were I to ask for your impression of the per- son who wrote it, you would perhaps say that the author is someone who has nothing in particular to talk about, but nevertheless feels that he must talk about something, and so he ends up talking about every-

phy: not so much its actual practice (which he all too eagerly reduces to his home-grown pragmatism) but the history of philosophy that those practices presuppose--notoriously thematized as "the end of philosophy" by Nietzsche and Heidegger. The Greeks started to philo- sophize when they conceived of single problem whose solution would encompass the very nature of "Being", or reality understood as the integration of fact and value, a hint of which is still preserved by the ambiguous interrogative "Why?" But since Galileo, the modern period has been marked by the attempt to tackle the big "Why?" by breaking it down into little "Hows", methods designed for studying specific kinds of entities; hence, the rise of the special sciences. In the midst of this cognitive division of labor and proliferation of scientific methods, the big problem got lost (or "forgotten", as Hei- degger would say). In fact, it has gotten so lost that it is now im- possible to pose the problem intelligibly. Heidegger conceived of his task as uprooting centuries of philosophical discourse to discover just exactly what that problem was--not in order to reassert the uniqueness of philosophical inquiry, but to show just how alien the big problem is to the current scientific temper, which Heidegger saw as irreversible. Rorty himself is somewhat more cheerful--more Nietzschean perhaps--in that he has no regrets about the passing away of philosophy. As a pragmatist, he agrees with his more positivistic antagonists that big questions arise only when our imaginations outstrip our techniques, such that there is no way that our minds can be laid to rest, no defi- nitive test to which our speculations can be put. In effect, philoso- phy is the disease of the Western mind for which science is the cure.

But even given the above account of the history of modern philoso- phy , philosophical problems are pathological only if we assume that "normal" problems are defined by their solubility. Perhaps this is not too much to ask. However, I disagree, for I would like to think that the moral of Rorty's history is that philosophy has little to do with solving problems but a lot to do with creating them. More impor- tantly, the latter is (at least) as "wholesome" as the former. Logi- cal positivism and computer science notwithstanding, a "well-formed" philosophical problem does not suggest a means toward its own solution, but, rather, deprives us of the means that we would most naturally turn to in attempting a solution. And here we should recall how, in denying the adequacy of conventional answers to apparently simple questions, Socrates generated the deep problems of metaphysics. Today there are philosophers who continue to cultivate a sense of the problematic--but in monologue rather than dialogue. I am thinking especially of those willfully obscure stylists Jacques Derrida and Stanley Cavell. Why they write as they do will provide the first clue in recovering philo- sophical inquiry from Rorty's critique.

You do not have to be a literary critic to find Of Grammatology and The Claim of Reason unusually discursive and unmotivated. After a few moments with either text, were I to ask for your impression of the per- son who wrote it, you would perhaps say that the author is someone who has nothing in particular to talk about, but nevertheless feels that he must talk about something, and so he ends up talking about every-

phy: not so much its actual practice (which he all too eagerly reduces to his home-grown pragmatism) but the history of philosophy that those practices presuppose--notoriously thematized as "the end of philosophy" by Nietzsche and Heidegger. The Greeks started to philo- sophize when they conceived of single problem whose solution would encompass the very nature of "Being", or reality understood as the integration of fact and value, a hint of which is still preserved by the ambiguous interrogative "Why?" But since Galileo, the modern period has been marked by the attempt to tackle the big "Why?" by breaking it down into little "Hows", methods designed for studying specific kinds of entities; hence, the rise of the special sciences. In the midst of this cognitive division of labor and proliferation of scientific methods, the big problem got lost (or "forgotten", as Hei- degger would say). In fact, it has gotten so lost that it is now im- possible to pose the problem intelligibly. Heidegger conceived of his task as uprooting centuries of philosophical discourse to discover just exactly what that problem was--not in order to reassert the uniqueness of philosophical inquiry, but to show just how alien the big problem is to the current scientific temper, which Heidegger saw as irreversible. Rorty himself is somewhat more cheerful--more Nietzschean perhaps--in that he has no regrets about the passing away of philosophy. As a pragmatist, he agrees with his more positivistic antagonists that big questions arise only when our imaginations outstrip our techniques, such that there is no way that our minds can be laid to rest, no defi- nitive test to which our speculations can be put. In effect, philoso- phy is the disease of the Western mind for which science is the cure.

But even given the above account of the history of modern philoso- phy , philosophical problems are pathological only if we assume that "normal" problems are defined by their solubility. Perhaps this is not too much to ask. However, I disagree, for I would like to think that the moral of Rorty's history is that philosophy has little to do with solving problems but a lot to do with creating them. More impor- tantly, the latter is (at least) as "wholesome" as the former. Logi- cal positivism and computer science notwithstanding, a "well-formed" philosophical problem does not suggest a means toward its own solution, but, rather, deprives us of the means that we would most naturally turn to in attempting a solution. And here we should recall how, in denying the adequacy of conventional answers to apparently simple questions, Socrates generated the deep problems of metaphysics. Today there are philosophers who continue to cultivate a sense of the problematic--but in monologue rather than dialogue. I am thinking especially of those willfully obscure stylists Jacques Derrida and Stanley Cavell. Why they write as they do will provide the first clue in recovering philo- sophical inquiry from Rorty's critique.

You do not have to be a literary critic to find Of Grammatology and The Claim of Reason unusually discursive and unmotivated. After a few moments with either text, were I to ask for your impression of the per- son who wrote it, you would perhaps say that the author is someone who has nothing in particular to talk about, but nevertheless feels that he must talk about something, and so he ends up talking about every-

phy: not so much its actual practice (which he all too eagerly reduces to his home-grown pragmatism) but the history of philosophy that those practices presuppose--notoriously thematized as "the end of philosophy" by Nietzsche and Heidegger. The Greeks started to philo- sophize when they conceived of single problem whose solution would encompass the very nature of "Being", or reality understood as the integration of fact and value, a hint of which is still preserved by the ambiguous interrogative "Why?" But since Galileo, the modern period has been marked by the attempt to tackle the big "Why?" by breaking it down into little "Hows", methods designed for studying specific kinds of entities; hence, the rise of the special sciences. In the midst of this cognitive division of labor and proliferation of scientific methods, the big problem got lost (or "forgotten", as Hei- degger would say). In fact, it has gotten so lost that it is now im- possible to pose the problem intelligibly. Heidegger conceived of his task as uprooting centuries of philosophical discourse to discover just exactly what that problem was--not in order to reassert the uniqueness of philosophical inquiry, but to show just how alien the big problem is to the current scientific temper, which Heidegger saw as irreversible. Rorty himself is somewhat more cheerful--more Nietzschean perhaps--in that he has no regrets about the passing away of philosophy. As a pragmatist, he agrees with his more positivistic antagonists that big questions arise only when our imaginations outstrip our techniques, such that there is no way that our minds can be laid to rest, no defi- nitive test to which our speculations can be put. In effect, philoso- phy is the disease of the Western mind for which science is the cure.

But even given the above account of the history of modern philoso- phy , philosophical problems are pathological only if we assume that "normal" problems are defined by their solubility. Perhaps this is not too much to ask. However, I disagree, for I would like to think that the moral of Rorty's history is that philosophy has little to do with solving problems but a lot to do with creating them. More impor- tantly, the latter is (at least) as "wholesome" as the former. Logi- cal positivism and computer science notwithstanding, a "well-formed" philosophical problem does not suggest a means toward its own solution, but, rather, deprives us of the means that we would most naturally turn to in attempting a solution. And here we should recall how, in denying the adequacy of conventional answers to apparently simple questions, Socrates generated the deep problems of metaphysics. Today there are philosophers who continue to cultivate a sense of the problematic--but in monologue rather than dialogue. I am thinking especially of those willfully obscure stylists Jacques Derrida and Stanley Cavell. Why they write as they do will provide the first clue in recovering philo- sophical inquiry from Rorty's critique.

You do not have to be a literary critic to find Of Grammatology and The Claim of Reason unusually discursive and unmotivated. After a few moments with either text, were I to ask for your impression of the per- son who wrote it, you would perhaps say that the author is someone who has nothing in particular to talk about, but nevertheless feels that he must talk about something, and so he ends up talking about every-

phy: not so much its actual practice (which he all too eagerly reduces to his home-grown pragmatism) but the history of philosophy that those practices presuppose--notoriously thematized as "the end of philosophy" by Nietzsche and Heidegger. The Greeks started to philo- sophize when they conceived of single problem whose solution would encompass the very nature of "Being", or reality understood as the integration of fact and value, a hint of which is still preserved by the ambiguous interrogative "Why?" But since Galileo, the modern period has been marked by the attempt to tackle the big "Why?" by breaking it down into little "Hows", methods designed for studying specific kinds of entities; hence, the rise of the special sciences. In the midst of this cognitive division of labor and proliferation of scientific methods, the big problem got lost (or "forgotten", as Hei- degger would say). In fact, it has gotten so lost that it is now im- possible to pose the problem intelligibly. Heidegger conceived of his task as uprooting centuries of philosophical discourse to discover just exactly what that problem was--not in order to reassert the uniqueness of philosophical inquiry, but to show just how alien the big problem is to the current scientific temper, which Heidegger saw as irreversible. Rorty himself is somewhat more cheerful--more Nietzschean perhaps--in that he has no regrets about the passing away of philosophy. As a pragmatist, he agrees with his more positivistic antagonists that big questions arise only when our imaginations outstrip our techniques, such that there is no way that our minds can be laid to rest, no defi- nitive test to which our speculations can be put. In effect, philoso- phy is the disease of the Western mind for which science is the cure.

But even given the above account of the history of modern philoso- phy , philosophical problems are pathological only if we assume that "normal" problems are defined by their solubility. Perhaps this is not too much to ask. However, I disagree, for I would like to think that the moral of Rorty's history is that philosophy has little to do with solving problems but a lot to do with creating them. More impor- tantly, the latter is (at least) as "wholesome" as the former. Logi- cal positivism and computer science notwithstanding, a "well-formed" philosophical problem does not suggest a means toward its own solution, but, rather, deprives us of the means that we would most naturally turn to in attempting a solution. And here we should recall how, in denying the adequacy of conventional answers to apparently simple questions, Socrates generated the deep problems of metaphysics. Today there are philosophers who continue to cultivate a sense of the problematic--but in monologue rather than dialogue. I am thinking especially of those willfully obscure stylists Jacques Derrida and Stanley Cavell. Why they write as they do will provide the first clue in recovering philo- sophical inquiry from Rorty's critique.

You do not have to be a literary critic to find Of Grammatology and The Claim of Reason unusually discursive and unmotivated. After a few moments with either text, were I to ask for your impression of the per- son who wrote it, you would perhaps say that the author is someone who has nothing in particular to talk about, but nevertheless feels that he must talk about something, and so he ends up talking about every-

phy: not so much its actual practice (which he all too eagerly reduces to his home-grown pragmatism) but the history of philosophy that those practices presuppose--notoriously thematized as "the end of philosophy" by Nietzsche and Heidegger. The Greeks started to philo- sophize when they conceived of single problem whose solution would encompass the very nature of "Being", or reality understood as the integration of fact and value, a hint of which is still preserved by the ambiguous interrogative "Why?" But since Galileo, the modern period has been marked by the attempt to tackle the big "Why?" by breaking it down into little "Hows", methods designed for studying specific kinds of entities; hence, the rise of the special sciences. In the midst of this cognitive division of labor and proliferation of scientific methods, the big problem got lost (or "forgotten", as Hei- degger would say). In fact, it has gotten so lost that it is now im- possible to pose the problem intelligibly. Heidegger conceived of his task as uprooting centuries of philosophical discourse to discover just exactly what that problem was--not in order to reassert the uniqueness of philosophical inquiry, but to show just how alien the big problem is to the current scientific temper, which Heidegger saw as irreversible. Rorty himself is somewhat more cheerful--more Nietzschean perhaps--in that he has no regrets about the passing away of philosophy. As a pragmatist, he agrees with his more positivistic antagonists that big questions arise only when our imaginations outstrip our techniques, such that there is no way that our minds can be laid to rest, no defi- nitive test to which our speculations can be put. In effect, philoso- phy is the disease of the Western mind for which science is the cure.

But even given the above account of the history of modern philoso- phy , philosophical problems are pathological only if we assume that "normal" problems are defined by their solubility. Perhaps this is not too much to ask. However, I disagree, for I would like to think that the moral of Rorty's history is that philosophy has little to do with solving problems but a lot to do with creating them. More impor- tantly, the latter is (at least) as "wholesome" as the former. Logi- cal positivism and computer science notwithstanding, a "well-formed" philosophical problem does not suggest a means toward its own solution, but, rather, deprives us of the means that we would most naturally turn to in attempting a solution. And here we should recall how, in denying the adequacy of conventional answers to apparently simple questions, Socrates generated the deep problems of metaphysics. Today there are philosophers who continue to cultivate a sense of the problematic--but in monologue rather than dialogue. I am thinking especially of those willfully obscure stylists Jacques Derrida and Stanley Cavell. Why they write as they do will provide the first clue in recovering philo- sophical inquiry from Rorty's critique.

You do not have to be a literary critic to find Of Grammatology and The Claim of Reason unusually discursive and unmotivated. After a few moments with either text, were I to ask for your impression of the per- son who wrote it, you would perhaps say that the author is someone who has nothing in particular to talk about, but nevertheless feels that he must talk about something, and so he ends up talking about every-

phy: not so much its actual practice (which he all too eagerly reduces to his home-grown pragmatism) but the history of philosophy that those practices presuppose--notoriously thematized as "the end of philosophy" by Nietzsche and Heidegger. The Greeks started to philo- sophize when they conceived of single problem whose solution would encompass the very nature of "Being", or reality understood as the integration of fact and value, a hint of which is still preserved by the ambiguous interrogative "Why?" But since Galileo, the modern period has been marked by the attempt to tackle the big "Why?" by breaking it down into little "Hows", methods designed for studying specific kinds of entities; hence, the rise of the special sciences. In the midst of this cognitive division of labor and proliferation of scientific methods, the big problem got lost (or "forgotten", as Hei- degger would say). In fact, it has gotten so lost that it is now im- possible to pose the problem intelligibly. Heidegger conceived of his task as uprooting centuries of philosophical discourse to discover just exactly what that problem was--not in order to reassert the uniqueness of philosophical inquiry, but to show just how alien the big problem is to the current scientific temper, which Heidegger saw as irreversible. Rorty himself is somewhat more cheerful--more Nietzschean perhaps--in that he has no regrets about the passing away of philosophy. As a pragmatist, he agrees with his more positivistic antagonists that big questions arise only when our imaginations outstrip our techniques, such that there is no way that our minds can be laid to rest, no defi- nitive test to which our speculations can be put. In effect, philoso- phy is the disease of the Western mind for which science is the cure.

But even given the above account of the history of modern philoso- phy , philosophical problems are pathological only if we assume that "normal" problems are defined by their solubility. Perhaps this is not too much to ask. However, I disagree, for I would like to think that the moral of Rorty's history is that philosophy has little to do with solving problems but a lot to do with creating them. More impor- tantly, the latter is (at least) as "wholesome" as the former. Logi- cal positivism and computer science notwithstanding, a "well-formed" philosophical problem does not suggest a means toward its own solution, but, rather, deprives us of the means that we would most naturally turn to in attempting a solution. And here we should recall how, in denying the adequacy of conventional answers to apparently simple questions, Socrates generated the deep problems of metaphysics. Today there are philosophers who continue to cultivate a sense of the problematic--but in monologue rather than dialogue. I am thinking especially of those willfully obscure stylists Jacques Derrida and Stanley Cavell. Why they write as they do will provide the first clue in recovering philo- sophical inquiry from Rorty's critique.

You do not have to be a literary critic to find Of Grammatology and The Claim of Reason unusually discursive and unmotivated. After a few moments with either text, were I to ask for your impression of the per- son who wrote it, you would perhaps say that the author is someone who has nothing in particular to talk about, but nevertheless feels that he must talk about something, and so he ends up talking about every-

phy: not so much its actual practice (which he all too eagerly reduces to his home-grown pragmatism) but the history of philosophy that those practices presuppose--notoriously thematized as "the end of philosophy" by Nietzsche and Heidegger. The Greeks started to philo- sophize when they conceived of single problem whose solution would encompass the very nature of "Being", or reality understood as the integration of fact and value, a hint of which is still preserved by the ambiguous interrogative "Why?" But since Galileo, the modern period has been marked by the attempt to tackle the big "Why?" by breaking it down into little "Hows", methods designed for studying specific kinds of entities; hence, the rise of the special sciences. In the midst of this cognitive division of labor and proliferation of scientific methods, the big problem got lost (or "forgotten", as Hei- degger would say). In fact, it has gotten so lost that it is now im- possible to pose the problem intelligibly. Heidegger conceived of his task as uprooting centuries of philosophical discourse to discover just exactly what that problem was--not in order to reassert the uniqueness of philosophical inquiry, but to show just how alien the big problem is to the current scientific temper, which Heidegger saw as irreversible. Rorty himself is somewhat more cheerful--more Nietzschean perhaps--in that he has no regrets about the passing away of philosophy. As a pragmatist, he agrees with his more positivistic antagonists that big questions arise only when our imaginations outstrip our techniques, such that there is no way that our minds can be laid to rest, no defi- nitive test to which our speculations can be put. In effect, philoso- phy is the disease of the Western mind for which science is the cure.

But even given the above account of the history of modern philoso- phy , philosophical problems are pathological only if we assume that "normal" problems are defined by their solubility. Perhaps this is not too much to ask. However, I disagree, for I would like to think that the moral of Rorty's history is that philosophy has little to do with solving problems but a lot to do with creating them. More impor- tantly, the latter is (at least) as "wholesome" as the former. Logi- cal positivism and computer science notwithstanding, a "well-formed" philosophical problem does not suggest a means toward its own solution, but, rather, deprives us of the means that we would most naturally turn to in attempting a solution. And here we should recall how, in denying the adequacy of conventional answers to apparently simple questions, Socrates generated the deep problems of metaphysics. Today there are philosophers who continue to cultivate a sense of the problematic--but in monologue rather than dialogue. I am thinking especially of those willfully obscure stylists Jacques Derrida and Stanley Cavell. Why they write as they do will provide the first clue in recovering philo- sophical inquiry from Rorty's critique.

You do not have to be a literary critic to find Of Grammatology and The Claim of Reason unusually discursive and unmotivated. After a few moments with either text, were I to ask for your impression of the per- son who wrote it, you would perhaps say that the author is someone who has nothing in particular to talk about, but nevertheless feels that he must talk about something, and so he ends up talking about every-

phy: not so much its actual practice (which he all too eagerly reduces to his home-grown pragmatism) but the history of philosophy that those practices presuppose--notoriously thematized as "the end of philosophy" by Nietzsche and Heidegger. The Greeks started to philo- sophize when they conceived of single problem whose solution would encompass the very nature of "Being", or reality understood as the integration of fact and value, a hint of which is still preserved by the ambiguous interrogative "Why?" But since Galileo, the modern period has been marked by the attempt to tackle the big "Why?" by breaking it down into little "Hows", methods designed for studying specific kinds of entities; hence, the rise of the special sciences. In the midst of this cognitive division of labor and proliferation of scientific methods, the big problem got lost (or "forgotten", as Hei- degger would say). In fact, it has gotten so lost that it is now im- possible to pose the problem intelligibly. Heidegger conceived of his task as uprooting centuries of philosophical discourse to discover just exactly what that problem was--not in order to reassert the uniqueness of philosophical inquiry, but to show just how alien the big problem is to the current scientific temper, which Heidegger saw as irreversible. Rorty himself is somewhat more cheerful--more Nietzschean perhaps--in that he has no regrets about the passing away of philosophy. As a pragmatist, he agrees with his more positivistic antagonists that big questions arise only when our imaginations outstrip our techniques, such that there is no way that our minds can be laid to rest, no defi- nitive test to which our speculations can be put. In effect, philoso- phy is the disease of the Western mind for which science is the cure.

But even given the above account of the history of modern philoso- phy , philosophical problems are pathological only if we assume that "normal" problems are defined by their solubility. Perhaps this is not too much to ask. However, I disagree, for I would like to think that the moral of Rorty's history is that philosophy has little to do with solving problems but a lot to do with creating them. More impor- tantly, the latter is (at least) as "wholesome" as the former. Logi- cal positivism and computer science notwithstanding, a "well-formed" philosophical problem does not suggest a means toward its own solution, but, rather, deprives us of the means that we would most naturally turn to in attempting a solution. And here we should recall how, in denying the adequacy of conventional answers to apparently simple questions, Socrates generated the deep problems of metaphysics. Today there are philosophers who continue to cultivate a sense of the problematic--but in monologue rather than dialogue. I am thinking especially of those willfully obscure stylists Jacques Derrida and Stanley Cavell. Why they write as they do will provide the first clue in recovering philo- sophical inquiry from Rorty's critique.

You do not have to be a literary critic to find Of Grammatology and The Claim of Reason unusually discursive and unmotivated. After a few moments with either text, were I to ask for your impression of the per- son who wrote it, you would perhaps say that the author is someone who has nothing in particular to talk about, but nevertheless feels that he must talk about something, and so he ends up talking about every-

phy: not so much its actual practice (which he all too eagerly reduces to his home-grown pragmatism) but the history of philosophy that those practices presuppose--notoriously thematized as "the end of philosophy" by Nietzsche and Heidegger. The Greeks started to philo- sophize when they conceived of single problem whose solution would encompass the very nature of "Being", or reality understood as the integration of fact and value, a hint of which is still preserved by the ambiguous interrogative "Why?" But since Galileo, the modern period has been marked by the attempt to tackle the big "Why?" by breaking it down into little "Hows", methods designed for studying specific kinds of entities; hence, the rise of the special sciences. In the midst of this cognitive division of labor and proliferation of scientific methods, the big problem got lost (or "forgotten", as Hei- degger would say). In fact, it has gotten so lost that it is now im- possible to pose the problem intelligibly. Heidegger conceived of his task as uprooting centuries of philosophical discourse to discover just exactly what that problem was--not in order to reassert the uniqueness of philosophical inquiry, but to show just how alien the big problem is to the current scientific temper, which Heidegger saw as irreversible. Rorty himself is somewhat more cheerful--more Nietzschean perhaps--in that he has no regrets about the passing away of philosophy. As a pragmatist, he agrees with his more positivistic antagonists that big questions arise only when our imaginations outstrip our techniques, such that there is no way that our minds can be laid to rest, no defi- nitive test to which our speculations can be put. In effect, philoso- phy is the disease of the Western mind for which science is the cure.

But even given the above account of the history of modern philoso- phy , philosophical problems are pathological only if we assume that "normal" problems are defined by their solubility. Perhaps this is not too much to ask. However, I disagree, for I would like to think that the moral of Rorty's history is that philosophy has little to do with solving problems but a lot to do with creating them. More impor- tantly, the latter is (at least) as "wholesome" as the former. Logi- cal positivism and computer science notwithstanding, a "well-formed" philosophical problem does not suggest a means toward its own solution, but, rather, deprives us of the means that we would most naturally turn to in attempting a solution. And here we should recall how, in denying the adequacy of conventional answers to apparently simple questions, Socrates generated the deep problems of metaphysics. Today there are philosophers who continue to cultivate a sense of the problematic--but in monologue rather than dialogue. I am thinking especially of those willfully obscure stylists Jacques Derrida and Stanley Cavell. Why they write as they do will provide the first clue in recovering philo- sophical inquiry from Rorty's critique.

You do not have to be a literary critic to find Of Grammatology and The Claim of Reason unusually discursive and unmotivated. After a few moments with either text, were I to ask for your impression of the per- son who wrote it, you would perhaps say that the author is someone who has nothing in particular to talk about, but nevertheless feels that he must talk about something, and so he ends up talking about every-

phy: not so much its actual practice (which he all too eagerly reduces to his home-grown pragmatism) but the history of philosophy that those practices presuppose--notoriously thematized as "the end of philosophy" by Nietzsche and Heidegger. The Greeks started to philo- sophize when they conceived of single problem whose solution would encompass the very nature of "Being", or reality understood as the integration of fact and value, a hint of which is still preserved by the ambiguous interrogative "Why?" But since Galileo, the modern period has been marked by the attempt to tackle the big "Why?" by breaking it down into little "Hows", methods designed for studying specific kinds of entities; hence, the rise of the special sciences. In the midst of this cognitive division of labor and proliferation of scientific methods, the big problem got lost (or "forgotten", as Hei- degger would say). In fact, it has gotten so lost that it is now im- possible to pose the problem intelligibly. Heidegger conceived of his task as uprooting centuries of philosophical discourse to discover just exactly what that problem was--not in order to reassert the uniqueness of philosophical inquiry, but to show just how alien the big problem is to the current scientific temper, which Heidegger saw as irreversible. Rorty himself is somewhat more cheerful--more Nietzschean perhaps--in that he has no regrets about the passing away of philosophy. As a pragmatist, he agrees with his more positivistic antagonists that big questions arise only when our imaginations outstrip our techniques, such that there is no way that our minds can be laid to rest, no defi- nitive test to which our speculations can be put. In effect, philoso- phy is the disease of the Western mind for which science is the cure.

But even given the above account of the history of modern philoso- phy , philosophical problems are pathological only if we assume that "normal" problems are defined by their solubility. Perhaps this is not too much to ask. However, I disagree, for I would like to think that the moral of Rorty's history is that philosophy has little to do with solving problems but a lot to do with creating them. More impor- tantly, the latter is (at least) as "wholesome" as the former. Logi- cal positivism and computer science notwithstanding, a "well-formed" philosophical problem does not suggest a means toward its own solution, but, rather, deprives us of the means that we would most naturally turn to in attempting a solution. And here we should recall how, in denying the adequacy of conventional answers to apparently simple questions, Socrates generated the deep problems of metaphysics. Today there are philosophers who continue to cultivate a sense of the problematic--but in monologue rather than dialogue. I am thinking especially of those willfully obscure stylists Jacques Derrida and Stanley Cavell. Why they write as they do will provide the first clue in recovering philo- sophical inquiry from Rorty's critique.

You do not have to be a literary critic to find Of Grammatology and The Claim of Reason unusually discursive and unmotivated. After a few moments with either text, were I to ask for your impression of the per- son who wrote it, you would perhaps say that the author is someone who has nothing in particular to talk about, but nevertheless feels that he must talk about something, and so he ends up talking about every-

phy: not so much its actual practice (which he all too eagerly reduces to his home-grown pragmatism) but the history of philosophy that those practices presuppose--notoriously thematized as "the end of philosophy" by Nietzsche and Heidegger. The Greeks started to philo- sophize when they conceived of single problem whose solution would encompass the very nature of "Being", or reality understood as the integration of fact and value, a hint of which is still preserved by the ambiguous interrogative "Why?" But since Galileo, the modern period has been marked by the attempt to tackle the big "Why?" by breaking it down into little "Hows", methods designed for studying specific kinds of entities; hence, the rise of the special sciences. In the midst of this cognitive division of labor and proliferation of scientific methods, the big problem got lost (or "forgotten", as Hei- degger would say). In fact, it has gotten so lost that it is now im- possible to pose the problem intelligibly. Heidegger conceived of his task as uprooting centuries of philosophical discourse to discover just exactly what that problem was--not in order to reassert the uniqueness of philosophical inquiry, but to show just how alien the big problem is to the current scientific temper, which Heidegger saw as irreversible. Rorty himself is somewhat more cheerful--more Nietzschean perhaps--in that he has no regrets about the passing away of philosophy. As a pragmatist, he agrees with his more positivistic antagonists that big questions arise only when our imaginations outstrip our techniques, such that there is no way that our minds can be laid to rest, no defi- nitive test to which our speculations can be put. In effect, philoso- phy is the disease of the Western mind for which science is the cure.

But even given the above account of the history of modern philoso- phy , philosophical problems are pathological only if we assume that "normal" problems are defined by their solubility. Perhaps this is not too much to ask. However, I disagree, for I would like to think that the moral of Rorty's history is that philosophy has little to do with solving problems but a lot to do with creating them. More impor- tantly, the latter is (at least) as "wholesome" as the former. Logi- cal positivism and computer science notwithstanding, a "well-formed" philosophical problem does not suggest a means toward its own solution, but, rather, deprives us of the means that we would most naturally turn to in attempting a solution. And here we should recall how, in denying the adequacy of conventional answers to apparently simple questions, Socrates generated the deep problems of metaphysics. Today there are philosophers who continue to cultivate a sense of the problematic--but in monologue rather than dialogue. I am thinking especially of those willfully obscure stylists Jacques Derrida and Stanley Cavell. Why they write as they do will provide the first clue in recovering philo- sophical inquiry from Rorty's critique.

You do not have to be a literary critic to find Of Grammatology and The Claim of Reason unusually discursive and unmotivated. After a few moments with either text, were I to ask for your impression of the per- son who wrote it, you would perhaps say that the author is someone who has nothing in particular to talk about, but nevertheless feels that he must talk about something, and so he ends up talking about every-

phy: not so much its actual practice (which he all too eagerly reduces to his home-grown pragmatism) but the history of philosophy that those practices presuppose--notoriously thematized as "the end of philosophy" by Nietzsche and Heidegger. The Greeks started to philo- sophize when they conceived of single problem whose solution would encompass the very nature of "Being", or reality understood as the integration of fact and value, a hint of which is still preserved by the ambiguous interrogative "Why?" But since Galileo, the modern period has been marked by the attempt to tackle the big "Why?" by breaking it down into little "Hows", methods designed for studying specific kinds of entities; hence, the rise of the special sciences. In the midst of this cognitive division of labor and proliferation of scientific methods, the big problem got lost (or "forgotten", as Hei- degger would say). In fact, it has gotten so lost that it is now im- possible to pose the problem intelligibly. Heidegger conceived of his task as uprooting centuries of philosophical discourse to discover just exactly what that problem was--not in order to reassert the uniqueness of philosophical inquiry, but to show just how alien the big problem is to the current scientific temper, which Heidegger saw as irreversible. Rorty himself is somewhat more cheerful--more Nietzschean perhaps--in that he has no regrets about the passing away of philosophy. As a pragmatist, he agrees with his more positivistic antagonists that big questions arise only when our imaginations outstrip our techniques, such that there is no way that our minds can be laid to rest, no defi- nitive test to which our speculations can be put. In effect, philoso- phy is the disease of the Western mind for which science is the cure.

But even given the above account of the history of modern philoso- phy , philosophical problems are pathological only if we assume that "normal" problems are defined by their solubility. Perhaps this is not too much to ask. However, I disagree, for I would like to think that the moral of Rorty's history is that philosophy has little to do with solving problems but a lot to do with creating them. More impor- tantly, the latter is (at least) as "wholesome" as the former. Logi- cal positivism and computer science notwithstanding, a "well-formed" philosophical problem does not suggest a means toward its own solution, but, rather, deprives us of the means that we would most naturally turn to in attempting a solution. And here we should recall how, in denying the adequacy of conventional answers to apparently simple questions, Socrates generated the deep problems of metaphysics. Today there are philosophers who continue to cultivate a sense of the problematic--but in monologue rather than dialogue. I am thinking especially of those willfully obscure stylists Jacques Derrida and Stanley Cavell. Why they write as they do will provide the first clue in recovering philo- sophical inquiry from Rorty's critique.

You do not have to be a literary critic to find Of Grammatology and The Claim of Reason unusually discursive and unmotivated. After a few moments with either text, were I to ask for your impression of the per- son who wrote it, you would perhaps say that the author is someone who has nothing in particular to talk about, but nevertheless feels that he must talk about something, and so he ends up talking about every-

phy: not so much its actual practice (which he all too eagerly reduces to his home-grown pragmatism) but the history of philosophy that those practices presuppose--notoriously thematized as "the end of philosophy" by Nietzsche and Heidegger. The Greeks started to philo- sophize when they conceived of single problem whose solution would encompass the very nature of "Being", or reality understood as the integration of fact and value, a hint of which is still preserved by the ambiguous interrogative "Why?" But since Galileo, the modern period has been marked by the attempt to tackle the big "Why?" by breaking it down into little "Hows", methods designed for studying specific kinds of entities; hence, the rise of the special sciences. In the midst of this cognitive division of labor and proliferation of scientific methods, the big problem got lost (or "forgotten", as Hei- degger would say). In fact, it has gotten so lost that it is now im- possible to pose the problem intelligibly. Heidegger conceived of his task as uprooting centuries of philosophical discourse to discover just exactly what that problem was--not in order to reassert the uniqueness of philosophical inquiry, but to show just how alien the big problem is to the current scientific temper, which Heidegger saw as irreversible. Rorty himself is somewhat more cheerful--more Nietzschean perhaps--in that he has no regrets about the passing away of philosophy. As a pragmatist, he agrees with his more positivistic antagonists that big questions arise only when our imaginations outstrip our techniques, such that there is no way that our minds can be laid to rest, no defi- nitive test to which our speculations can be put. In effect, philoso- phy is the disease of the Western mind for which science is the cure.

But even given the above account of the history of modern philoso- phy , philosophical problems are pathological only if we assume that "normal" problems are defined by their solubility. Perhaps this is not too much to ask. However, I disagree, for I would like to think that the moral of Rorty's history is that philosophy has little to do with solving problems but a lot to do with creating them. More impor- tantly, the latter is (at least) as "wholesome" as the former. Logi- cal positivism and computer science notwithstanding, a "well-formed" philosophical problem does not suggest a means toward its own solution, but, rather, deprives us of the means that we would most naturally turn to in attempting a solution. And here we should recall how, in denying the adequacy of conventional answers to apparently simple questions, Socrates generated the deep problems of metaphysics. Today there are philosophers who continue to cultivate a sense of the problematic--but in monologue rather than dialogue. I am thinking especially of those willfully obscure stylists Jacques Derrida and Stanley Cavell. Why they write as they do will provide the first clue in recovering philo- sophical inquiry from Rorty's critique.

You do not have to be a literary critic to find Of Grammatology and The Claim of Reason unusually discursive and unmotivated. After a few moments with either text, were I to ask for your impression of the per- son who wrote it, you would perhaps say that the author is someone who has nothing in particular to talk about, but nevertheless feels that he must talk about something, and so he ends up talking about every-

phy: not so much its actual practice (which he all too eagerly reduces to his home-grown pragmatism) but the history of philosophy that those practices presuppose--notoriously thematized as "the end of philosophy" by Nietzsche and Heidegger. The Greeks started to philo- sophize when they conceived of single problem whose solution would encompass the very nature of "Being", or reality understood as the integration of fact and value, a hint of which is still preserved by the ambiguous interrogative "Why?" But since Galileo, the modern period has been marked by the attempt to tackle the big "Why?" by breaking it down into little "Hows", methods designed for studying specific kinds of entities; hence, the rise of the special sciences. In the midst of this cognitive division of labor and proliferation of scientific methods, the big problem got lost (or "forgotten", as Hei- degger would say). In fact, it has gotten so lost that it is now im- possible to pose the problem intelligibly. Heidegger conceived of his task as uprooting centuries of philosophical discourse to discover just exactly what that problem was--not in order to reassert the uniqueness of philosophical inquiry, but to show just how alien the big problem is to the current scientific temper, which Heidegger saw as irreversible. Rorty himself is somewhat more cheerful--more Nietzschean perhaps--in that he has no regrets about the passing away of philosophy. As a pragmatist, he agrees with his more positivistic antagonists that big questions arise only when our imaginations outstrip our techniques, such that there is no way that our minds can be laid to rest, no defi- nitive test to which our speculations can be put. In effect, philoso- phy is the disease of the Western mind for which science is the cure.

But even given the above account of the history of modern philoso- phy , philosophical problems are pathological only if we assume that "normal" problems are defined by their solubility. Perhaps this is not too much to ask. However, I disagree, for I would like to think that the moral of Rorty's history is that philosophy has little to do with solving problems but a lot to do with creating them. More impor- tantly, the latter is (at least) as "wholesome" as the former. Logi- cal positivism and computer science notwithstanding, a "well-formed" philosophical problem does not suggest a means toward its own solution, but, rather, deprives us of the means that we would most naturally turn to in attempting a solution. And here we should recall how, in denying the adequacy of conventional answers to apparently simple questions, Socrates generated the deep problems of metaphysics. Today there are philosophers who continue to cultivate a sense of the problematic--but in monologue rather than dialogue. I am thinking especially of those willfully obscure stylists Jacques Derrida and Stanley Cavell. Why they write as they do will provide the first clue in recovering philo- sophical inquiry from Rorty's critique.

You do not have to be a literary critic to find Of Grammatology and The Claim of Reason unusually discursive and unmotivated. After a few moments with either text, were I to ask for your impression of the per- son who wrote it, you would perhaps say that the author is someone who has nothing in particular to talk about, but nevertheless feels that he must talk about something, and so he ends up talking about every-

phy: not so much its actual practice (which he all too eagerly reduces to his home-grown pragmatism) but the history of philosophy that those practices presuppose--notoriously thematized as "the end of philosophy" by Nietzsche and Heidegger. The Greeks started to philo- sophize when they conceived of single problem whose solution would encompass the very nature of "Being", or reality understood as the integration of fact and value, a hint of which is still preserved by the ambiguous interrogative "Why?" But since Galileo, the modern period has been marked by the attempt to tackle the big "Why?" by breaking it down into little "Hows", methods designed for studying specific kinds of entities; hence, the rise of the special sciences. In the midst of this cognitive division of labor and proliferation of scientific methods, the big problem got lost (or "forgotten", as Hei- degger would say). In fact, it has gotten so lost that it is now im- possible to pose the problem intelligibly. Heidegger conceived of his task as uprooting centuries of philosophical discourse to discover just exactly what that problem was--not in order to reassert the uniqueness of philosophical inquiry, but to show just how alien the big problem is to the current scientific temper, which Heidegger saw as irreversible. Rorty himself is somewhat more cheerful--more Nietzschean perhaps--in that he has no regrets about the passing away of philosophy. As a pragmatist, he agrees with his more positivistic antagonists that big questions arise only when our imaginations outstrip our techniques, such that there is no way that our minds can be laid to rest, no defi- nitive test to which our speculations can be put. In effect, philoso- phy is the disease of the Western mind for which science is the cure.

But even given the above account of the history of modern philoso- phy , philosophical problems are pathological only if we assume that "normal" problems are defined by their solubility. Perhaps this is not too much to ask. However, I disagree, for I would like to think that the moral of Rorty's history is that philosophy has little to do with solving problems but a lot to do with creating them. More impor- tantly, the latter is (at least) as "wholesome" as the former. Logi- cal positivism and computer science notwithstanding, a "well-formed" philosophical problem does not suggest a means toward its own solution, but, rather, deprives us of the means that we would most naturally turn to in attempting a solution. And here we should recall how, in denying the adequacy of conventional answers to apparently simple questions, Socrates generated the deep problems of metaphysics. Today there are philosophers who continue to cultivate a sense of the problematic--but in monologue rather than dialogue. I am thinking especially of those willfully obscure stylists Jacques Derrida and Stanley Cavell. Why they write as they do will provide the first clue in recovering philo- sophical inquiry from Rorty's critique.

You do not have to be a literary critic to find Of Grammatology and The Claim of Reason unusually discursive and unmotivated. After a few moments with either text, were I to ask for your impression of the per- son who wrote it, you would perhaps say that the author is someone who has nothing in particular to talk about, but nevertheless feels that he must talk about something, and so he ends up talking about every-

phy: not so much its actual practice (which he all too eagerly reduces to his home-grown pragmatism) but the history of philosophy that those practices presuppose--notoriously thematized as "the end of philosophy" by Nietzsche and Heidegger. The Greeks started to philo- sophize when they conceived of single problem whose solution would encompass the very nature of "Being", or reality understood as the integration of fact and value, a hint of which is still preserved by the ambiguous interrogative "Why?" But since Galileo, the modern period has been marked by the attempt to tackle the big "Why?" by breaking it down into little "Hows", methods designed for studying specific kinds of entities; hence, the rise of the special sciences. In the midst of this cognitive division of labor and proliferation of scientific methods, the big problem got lost (or "forgotten", as Hei- degger would say). In fact, it has gotten so lost that it is now im- possible to pose the problem intelligibly. Heidegger conceived of his task as uprooting centuries of philosophical discourse to discover just exactly what that problem was--not in order to reassert the uniqueness of philosophical inquiry, but to show just how alien the big problem is to the current scientific temper, which Heidegger saw as irreversible. Rorty himself is somewhat more cheerful--more Nietzschean perhaps--in that he has no regrets about the passing away of philosophy. As a pragmatist, he agrees with his more positivistic antagonists that big questions arise only when our imaginations outstrip our techniques, such that there is no way that our minds can be laid to rest, no defi- nitive test to which our speculations can be put. In effect, philoso- phy is the disease of the Western mind for which science is the cure.

But even given the above account of the history of modern philoso- phy , philosophical problems are pathological only if we assume that "normal" problems are defined by their solubility. Perhaps this is not too much to ask. However, I disagree, for I would like to think that the moral of Rorty's history is that philosophy has little to do with solving problems but a lot to do with creating them. More impor- tantly, the latter is (at least) as "wholesome" as the former. Logi- cal positivism and computer science notwithstanding, a "well-formed" philosophical problem does not suggest a means toward its own solution, but, rather, deprives us of the means that we would most naturally turn to in attempting a solution. And here we should recall how, in denying the adequacy of conventional answers to apparently simple questions, Socrates generated the deep problems of metaphysics. Today there are philosophers who continue to cultivate a sense of the problematic--but in monologue rather than dialogue. I am thinking especially of those willfully obscure stylists Jacques Derrida and Stanley Cavell. Why they write as they do will provide the first clue in recovering philo- sophical inquiry from Rorty's critique.

You do not have to be a literary critic to find Of Grammatology and The Claim of Reason unusually discursive and unmotivated. After a few moments with either text, were I to ask for your impression of the per- son who wrote it, you would perhaps say that the author is someone who has nothing in particular to talk about, but nevertheless feels that he must talk about something, and so he ends up talking about every-

phy: not so much its actual practice (which he all too eagerly reduces to his home-grown pragmatism) but the history of philosophy that those practices presuppose--notoriously thematized as "the end of philosophy" by Nietzsche and Heidegger. The Greeks started to philo- sophize when they conceived of single problem whose solution would encompass the very nature of "Being", or reality understood as the integration of fact and value, a hint of which is still preserved by the ambiguous interrogative "Why?" But since Galileo, the modern period has been marked by the attempt to tackle the big "Why?" by breaking it down into little "Hows", methods designed for studying specific kinds of entities; hence, the rise of the special sciences. In the midst of this cognitive division of labor and proliferation of scientific methods, the big problem got lost (or "forgotten", as Hei- degger would say). In fact, it has gotten so lost that it is now im- possible to pose the problem intelligibly. Heidegger conceived of his task as uprooting centuries of philosophical discourse to discover just exactly what that problem was--not in order to reassert the uniqueness of philosophical inquiry, but to show just how alien the big problem is to the current scientific temper, which Heidegger saw as irreversible. Rorty himself is somewhat more cheerful--more Nietzschean perhaps--in that he has no regrets about the passing away of philosophy. As a pragmatist, he agrees with his more positivistic antagonists that big questions arise only when our imaginations outstrip our techniques, such that there is no way that our minds can be laid to rest, no defi- nitive test to which our speculations can be put. In effect, philoso- phy is the disease of the Western mind for which science is the cure.

But even given the above account of the history of modern philoso- phy , philosophical problems are pathological only if we assume that "normal" problems are defined by their solubility. Perhaps this is not too much to ask. However, I disagree, for I would like to think that the moral of Rorty's history is that philosophy has little to do with solving problems but a lot to do with creating them. More impor- tantly, the latter is (at least) as "wholesome" as the former. Logi- cal positivism and computer science notwithstanding, a "well-formed" philosophical problem does not suggest a means toward its own solution, but, rather, deprives us of the means that we would most naturally turn to in attempting a solution. And here we should recall how, in denying the adequacy of conventional answers to apparently simple questions, Socrates generated the deep problems of metaphysics. Today there are philosophers who continue to cultivate a sense of the problematic--but in monologue rather than dialogue. I am thinking especially of those willfully obscure stylists Jacques Derrida and Stanley Cavell. Why they write as they do will provide the first clue in recovering philo- sophical inquiry from Rorty's critique.

You do not have to be a literary critic to find Of Grammatology and The Claim of Reason unusually discursive and unmotivated. After a few moments with either text, were I to ask for your impression of the per- son who wrote it, you would perhaps say that the author is someone who has nothing in particular to talk about, but nevertheless feels that he must talk about something, and so he ends up talking about every-

phy: not so much its actual practice (which he all too eagerly reduces to his home-grown pragmatism) but the history of philosophy that those practices presuppose--notoriously thematized as "the end of philosophy" by Nietzsche and Heidegger. The Greeks started to philo- sophize when they conceived of single problem whose solution would encompass the very nature of "Being", or reality understood as the integration of fact and value, a hint of which is still preserved by the ambiguous interrogative "Why?" But since Galileo, the modern period has been marked by the attempt to tackle the big "Why?" by breaking it down into little "Hows", methods designed for studying specific kinds of entities; hence, the rise of the special sciences. In the midst of this cognitive division of labor and proliferation of scientific methods, the big problem got lost (or "forgotten", as Hei- degger would say). In fact, it has gotten so lost that it is now im- possible to pose the problem intelligibly. Heidegger conceived of his task as uprooting centuries of philosophical discourse to discover just exactly what that problem was--not in order to reassert the uniqueness of philosophical inquiry, but to show just how alien the big problem is to the current scientific temper, which Heidegger saw as irreversible. Rorty himself is somewhat more cheerful--more Nietzschean perhaps--in that he has no regrets about the passing away of philosophy. As a pragmatist, he agrees with his more positivistic antagonists that big questions arise only when our imaginations outstrip our techniques, such that there is no way that our minds can be laid to rest, no defi- nitive test to which our speculations can be put. In effect, philoso- phy is the disease of the Western mind for which science is the cure.

But even given the above account of the history of modern philoso- phy , philosophical problems are pathological only if we assume that "normal" problems are defined by their solubility. Perhaps this is not too much to ask. However, I disagree, for I would like to think that the moral of Rorty's history is that philosophy has little to do with solving problems but a lot to do with creating them. More impor- tantly, the latter is (at least) as "wholesome" as the former. Logi- cal positivism and computer science notwithstanding, a "well-formed" philosophical problem does not suggest a means toward its own solution, but, rather, deprives us of the means that we would most naturally turn to in attempting a solution. And here we should recall how, in denying the adequacy of conventional answers to apparently simple questions, Socrates generated the deep problems of metaphysics. Today there are philosophers who continue to cultivate a sense of the problematic--but in monologue rather than dialogue. I am thinking especially of those willfully obscure stylists Jacques Derrida and Stanley Cavell. Why they write as they do will provide the first clue in recovering philo- sophical inquiry from Rorty's critique.

You do not have to be a literary critic to find Of Grammatology and The Claim of Reason unusually discursive and unmotivated. After a few moments with either text, were I to ask for your impression of the per- son who wrote it, you would perhaps say that the author is someone who has nothing in particular to talk about, but nevertheless feels that he must talk about something, and so he ends up talking about every-

phy: not so much its actual practice (which he all too eagerly reduces to his home-grown pragmatism) but the history of philosophy that those practices presuppose--notoriously thematized as "the end of philosophy" by Nietzsche and Heidegger. The Greeks started to philo- sophize when they conceived of single problem whose solution would encompass the very nature of "Being", or reality understood as the integration of fact and value, a hint of which is still preserved by the ambiguous interrogative "Why?" But since Galileo, the modern period has been marked by the attempt to tackle the big "Why?" by breaking it down into little "Hows", methods designed for studying specific kinds of entities; hence, the rise of the special sciences. In the midst of this cognitive division of labor and proliferation of scientific methods, the big problem got lost (or "forgotten", as Hei- degger would say). In fact, it has gotten so lost that it is now im- possible to pose the problem intelligibly. Heidegger conceived of his task as uprooting centuries of philosophical discourse to discover just exactly what that problem was--not in order to reassert the uniqueness of philosophical inquiry, but to show just how alien the big problem is to the current scientific temper, which Heidegger saw as irreversible. Rorty himself is somewhat more cheerful--more Nietzschean perhaps--in that he has no regrets about the passing away of philosophy. As a pragmatist, he agrees with his more positivistic antagonists that big questions arise only when our imaginations outstrip our techniques, such that there is no way that our minds can be laid to rest, no defi- nitive test to which our speculations can be put. In effect, philoso- phy is the disease of the Western mind for which science is the cure.

But even given the above account of the history of modern philoso- phy , philosophical problems are pathological only if we assume that "normal" problems are defined by their solubility. Perhaps this is not too much to ask. However, I disagree, for I would like to think that the moral of Rorty's history is that philosophy has little to do with solving problems but a lot to do with creating them. More impor- tantly, the latter is (at least) as "wholesome" as the former. Logi- cal positivism and computer science notwithstanding, a "well-formed" philosophical problem does not suggest a means toward its own solution, but, rather, deprives us of the means that we would most naturally turn to in attempting a solution. And here we should recall how, in denying the adequacy of conventional answers to apparently simple questions, Socrates generated the deep problems of metaphysics. Today there are philosophers who continue to cultivate a sense of the problematic--but in monologue rather than dialogue. I am thinking especially of those willfully obscure stylists Jacques Derrida and Stanley Cavell. Why they write as they do will provide the first clue in recovering philo- sophical inquiry from Rorty's critique.

You do not have to be a literary critic to find Of Grammatology and The Claim of Reason unusually discursive and unmotivated. After a few moments with either text, were I to ask for your impression of the per- son who wrote it, you would perhaps say that the author is someone who has nothing in particular to talk about, but nevertheless feels that he must talk about something, and so he ends up talking about every-

phy: not so much its actual practice (which he all too eagerly reduces to his home-grown pragmatism) but the history of philosophy that those practices presuppose--notoriously thematized as "the end of philosophy" by Nietzsche and Heidegger. The Greeks started to philo- sophize when they conceived of single problem whose solution would encompass the very nature of "Being", or reality understood as the integration of fact and value, a hint of which is still preserved by the ambiguous interrogative "Why?" But since Galileo, the modern period has been marked by the attempt to tackle the big "Why?" by breaking it down into little "Hows", methods designed for studying specific kinds of entities; hence, the rise of the special sciences. In the midst of this cognitive division of labor and proliferation of scientific methods, the big problem got lost (or "forgotten", as Hei- degger would say). In fact, it has gotten so lost that it is now im- possible to pose the problem intelligibly. Heidegger conceived of his task as uprooting centuries of philosophical discourse to discover just exactly what that problem was--not in order to reassert the uniqueness of philosophical inquiry, but to show just how alien the big problem is to the current scientific temper, which Heidegger saw as irreversible. Rorty himself is somewhat more cheerful--more Nietzschean perhaps--in that he has no regrets about the passing away of philosophy. As a pragmatist, he agrees with his more positivistic antagonists that big questions arise only when our imaginations outstrip our techniques, such that there is no way that our minds can be laid to rest, no defi- nitive test to which our speculations can be put. In effect, philoso- phy is the disease of the Western mind for which science is the cure.

But even given the above account of the history of modern philoso- phy , philosophical problems are pathological only if we assume that "normal" problems are defined by their solubility. Perhaps this is not too much to ask. However, I disagree, for I would like to think that the moral of Rorty's history is that philosophy has little to do with solving problems but a lot to do with creating them. More impor- tantly, the latter is (at least) as "wholesome" as the former. Logi- cal positivism and computer science notwithstanding, a "well-formed" philosophical problem does not suggest a means toward its own solution, but, rather, deprives us of the means that we would most naturally turn to in attempting a solution. And here we should recall how, in denying the adequacy of conventional answers to apparently simple questions, Socrates generated the deep problems of metaphysics. Today there are philosophers who continue to cultivate a sense of the problematic--but in monologue rather than dialogue. I am thinking especially of those willfully obscure stylists Jacques Derrida and Stanley Cavell. Why they write as they do will provide the first clue in recovering philo- sophical inquiry from Rorty's critique.

You do not have to be a literary critic to find Of Grammatology and The Claim of Reason unusually discursive and unmotivated. After a few moments with either text, were I to ask for your impression of the per- son who wrote it, you would perhaps say that the author is someone who has nothing in particular to talk about, but nevertheless feels that he must talk about something, and so he ends up talking about every-

phy: not so much its actual practice (which he all too eagerly reduces to his home-grown pragmatism) but the history of philosophy that those practices presuppose--notoriously thematized as "the end of philosophy" by Nietzsche and Heidegger. The Greeks started to philo- sophize when they conceived of single problem whose solution would encompass the very nature of "Being", or reality understood as the integration of fact and value, a hint of which is still preserved by the ambiguous interrogative "Why?" But since Galileo, the modern period has been marked by the attempt to tackle the big "Why?" by breaking it down into little "Hows", methods designed for studying specific kinds of entities; hence, the rise of the special sciences. In the midst of this cognitive division of labor and proliferation of scientific methods, the big problem got lost (or "forgotten", as Hei- degger would say). In fact, it has gotten so lost that it is now im- possible to pose the problem intelligibly. Heidegger conceived of his task as uprooting centuries of philosophical discourse to discover just exactly what that problem was--not in order to reassert the uniqueness of philosophical inquiry, but to show just how alien the big problem is to the current scientific temper, which Heidegger saw as irreversible. Rorty himself is somewhat more cheerful--more Nietzschean perhaps--in that he has no regrets about the passing away of philosophy. As a pragmatist, he agrees with his more positivistic antagonists that big questions arise only when our imaginations outstrip our techniques, such that there is no way that our minds can be laid to rest, no defi- nitive test to which our speculations can be put. In effect, philoso- phy is the disease of the Western mind for which science is the cure.

But even given the above account of the history of modern philoso- phy , philosophical problems are pathological only if we assume that "normal" problems are defined by their solubility. Perhaps this is not too much to ask. However, I disagree, for I would like to think that the moral of Rorty's history is that philosophy has little to do with solving problems but a lot to do with creating them. More impor- tantly, the latter is (at least) as "wholesome" as the former. Logi- cal positivism and computer science notwithstanding, a "well-formed" philosophical problem does not suggest a means toward its own solution, but, rather, deprives us of the means that we would most naturally turn to in attempting a solution. And here we should recall how, in denying the adequacy of conventional answers to apparently simple questions, Socrates generated the deep problems of metaphysics. Today there are philosophers who continue to cultivate a sense of the problematic--but in monologue rather than dialogue. I am thinking especially of those willfully obscure stylists Jacques Derrida and Stanley Cavell. Why they write as they do will provide the first clue in recovering philo- sophical inquiry from Rorty's critique.

You do not have to be a literary critic to find Of Grammatology and The Claim of Reason unusually discursive and unmotivated. After a few moments with either text, were I to ask for your impression of the per- son who wrote it, you would perhaps say that the author is someone who has nothing in particular to talk about, but nevertheless feels that he must talk about something, and so he ends up talking about every-

phy: not so much its actual practice (which he all too eagerly reduces to his home-grown pragmatism) but the history of philosophy that those practices presuppose--notoriously thematized as "the end of philosophy" by Nietzsche and Heidegger. The Greeks started to philo- sophize when they conceived of single problem whose solution would encompass the very nature of "Being", or reality understood as the integration of fact and value, a hint of which is still preserved by the ambiguous interrogative "Why?" But since Galileo, the modern period has been marked by the attempt to tackle the big "Why?" by breaking it down into little "Hows", methods designed for studying specific kinds of entities; hence, the rise of the special sciences. In the midst of this cognitive division of labor and proliferation of scientific methods, the big problem got lost (or "forgotten", as Hei- degger would say). In fact, it has gotten so lost that it is now im- possible to pose the problem intelligibly. Heidegger conceived of his task as uprooting centuries of philosophical discourse to discover just exactly what that problem was--not in order to reassert the uniqueness of philosophical inquiry, but to show just how alien the big problem is to the current scientific temper, which Heidegger saw as irreversible. Rorty himself is somewhat more cheerful--more Nietzschean perhaps--in that he has no regrets about the passing away of philosophy. As a pragmatist, he agrees with his more positivistic antagonists that big questions arise only when our imaginations outstrip our techniques, such that there is no way that our minds can be laid to rest, no defi- nitive test to which our speculations can be put. In effect, philoso- phy is the disease of the Western mind for which science is the cure.

But even given the above account of the history of modern philoso- phy , philosophical problems are pathological only if we assume that "normal" problems are defined by their solubility. Perhaps this is not too much to ask. However, I disagree, for I would like to think that the moral of Rorty's history is that philosophy has little to do with solving problems but a lot to do with creating them. More impor- tantly, the latter is (at least) as "wholesome" as the former. Logi- cal positivism and computer science notwithstanding, a "well-formed" philosophical problem does not suggest a means toward its own solution, but, rather, deprives us of the means that we would most naturally turn to in attempting a solution. And here we should recall how, in denying the adequacy of conventional answers to apparently simple questions, Socrates generated the deep problems of metaphysics. Today there are philosophers who continue to cultivate a sense of the problematic--but in monologue rather than dialogue. I am thinking especially of those willfully obscure stylists Jacques Derrida and Stanley Cavell. Why they write as they do will provide the first clue in recovering philo- sophical inquiry from Rorty's critique.

You do not have to be a literary critic to find Of Grammatology and The Claim of Reason unusually discursive and unmotivated. After a few moments with either text, were I to ask for your impression of the per- son who wrote it, you would perhaps say that the author is someone who has nothing in particular to talk about, but nevertheless feels that he must talk about something, and so he ends up talking about every-

phy: not so much its actual practice (which he all too eagerly reduces to his home-grown pragmatism) but the history of philosophy that those practices presuppose--notoriously thematized as "the end of philosophy" by Nietzsche and Heidegger. The Greeks started to philo- sophize when they conceived of single problem whose solution would encompass the very nature of "Being", or reality understood as the integration of fact and value, a hint of which is still preserved by the ambiguous interrogative "Why?" But since Galileo, the modern period has been marked by the attempt to tackle the big "Why?" by breaking it down into little "Hows", methods designed for studying specific kinds of entities; hence, the rise of the special sciences. In the midst of this cognitive division of labor and proliferation of scientific methods, the big problem got lost (or "forgotten", as Hei- degger would say). In fact, it has gotten so lost that it is now im- possible to pose the problem intelligibly. Heidegger conceived of his task as uprooting centuries of philosophical discourse to discover just exactly what that problem was--not in order to reassert the uniqueness of philosophical inquiry, but to show just how alien the big problem is to the current scientific temper, which Heidegger saw as irreversible. Rorty himself is somewhat more cheerful--more Nietzschean perhaps--in that he has no regrets about the passing away of philosophy. As a pragmatist, he agrees with his more positivistic antagonists that big questions arise only when our imaginations outstrip our techniques, such that there is no way that our minds can be laid to rest, no defi- nitive test to which our speculations can be put. In effect, philoso- phy is the disease of the Western mind for which science is the cure.

But even given the above account of the history of modern philoso- phy , philosophical problems are pathological only if we assume that "normal" problems are defined by their solubility. Perhaps this is not too much to ask. However, I disagree, for I would like to think that the moral of Rorty's history is that philosophy has little to do with solving problems but a lot to do with creating them. More impor- tantly, the latter is (at least) as "wholesome" as the former. Logi- cal positivism and computer science notwithstanding, a "well-formed" philosophical problem does not suggest a means toward its own solution, but, rather, deprives us of the means that we would most naturally turn to in attempting a solution. And here we should recall how, in denying the adequacy of conventional answers to apparently simple questions, Socrates generated the deep problems of metaphysics. Today there are philosophers who continue to cultivate a sense of the problematic--but in monologue rather than dialogue. I am thinking especially of those willfully obscure stylists Jacques Derrida and Stanley Cavell. Why they write as they do will provide the first clue in recovering philo- sophical inquiry from Rorty's critique.

You do not have to be a literary critic to find Of Grammatology and The Claim of Reason unusually discursive and unmotivated. After a few moments with either text, were I to ask for your impression of the per- son who wrote it, you would perhaps say that the author is someone who has nothing in particular to talk about, but nevertheless feels that he must talk about something, and so he ends up talking about every-

phy: not so much its actual practice (which he all too eagerly reduces to his home-grown pragmatism) but the history of philosophy that those practices presuppose--notoriously thematized as "the end of philosophy" by Nietzsche and Heidegger. The Greeks started to philo- sophize when they conceived of single problem whose solution would encompass the very nature of "Being", or reality understood as the integration of fact and value, a hint of which is still preserved by the ambiguous interrogative "Why?" But since Galileo, the modern period has been marked by the attempt to tackle the big "Why?" by breaking it down into little "Hows", methods designed for studying specific kinds of entities; hence, the rise of the special sciences. In the midst of this cognitive division of labor and proliferation of scientific methods, the big problem got lost (or "forgotten", as Hei- degger would say). In fact, it has gotten so lost that it is now im- possible to pose the problem intelligibly. Heidegger conceived of his task as uprooting centuries of philosophical discourse to discover just exactly what that problem was--not in order to reassert the uniqueness of philosophical inquiry, but to show just how alien the big problem is to the current scientific temper, which Heidegger saw as irreversible. Rorty himself is somewhat more cheerful--more Nietzschean perhaps--in that he has no regrets about the passing away of philosophy. As a pragmatist, he agrees with his more positivistic antagonists that big questions arise only when our imaginations outstrip our techniques, such that there is no way that our minds can be laid to rest, no defi- nitive test to which our speculations can be put. In effect, philoso- phy is the disease of the Western mind for which science is the cure.

But even given the above account of the history of modern philoso- phy , philosophical problems are pathological only if we assume that "normal" problems are defined by their solubility. Perhaps this is not too much to ask. However, I disagree, for I would like to think that the moral of Rorty's history is that philosophy has little to do with solving problems but a lot to do with creating them. More impor- tantly, the latter is (at least) as "wholesome" as the former. Logi- cal positivism and computer science notwithstanding, a "well-formed" philosophical problem does not suggest a means toward its own solution, but, rather, deprives us of the means that we would most naturally turn to in attempting a solution. And here we should recall how, in denying the adequacy of conventional answers to apparently simple questions, Socrates generated the deep problems of metaphysics. Today there are philosophers who continue to cultivate a sense of the problematic--but in monologue rather than dialogue. I am thinking especially of those willfully obscure stylists Jacques Derrida and Stanley Cavell. Why they write as they do will provide the first clue in recovering philo- sophical inquiry from Rorty's critique.

You do not have to be a literary critic to find Of Grammatology and The Claim of Reason unusually discursive and unmotivated. After a few moments with either text, were I to ask for your impression of the per- son who wrote it, you would perhaps say that the author is someone who has nothing in particular to talk about, but nevertheless feels that he must talk about something, and so he ends up talking about every-

phy: not so much its actual practice (which he all too eagerly reduces to his home-grown pragmatism) but the history of philosophy that those practices presuppose--notoriously thematized as "the end of philosophy" by Nietzsche and Heidegger. The Greeks started to philo- sophize when they conceived of single problem whose solution would encompass the very nature of "Being", or reality understood as the integration of fact and value, a hint of which is still preserved by the ambiguous interrogative "Why?" But since Galileo, the modern period has been marked by the attempt to tackle the big "Why?" by breaking it down into little "Hows", methods designed for studying specific kinds of entities; hence, the rise of the special sciences. In the midst of this cognitive division of labor and proliferation of scientific methods, the big problem got lost (or "forgotten", as Hei- degger would say). In fact, it has gotten so lost that it is now im- possible to pose the problem intelligibly. Heidegger conceived of his task as uprooting centuries of philosophical discourse to discover just exactly what that problem was--not in order to reassert the uniqueness of philosophical inquiry, but to show just how alien the big problem is to the current scientific temper, which Heidegger saw as irreversible. Rorty himself is somewhat more cheerful--more Nietzschean perhaps--in that he has no regrets about the passing away of philosophy. As a pragmatist, he agrees with his more positivistic antagonists that big questions arise only when our imaginations outstrip our techniques, such that there is no way that our minds can be laid to rest, no defi- nitive test to which our speculations can be put. In effect, philoso- phy is the disease of the Western mind for which science is the cure.

But even given the above account of the history of modern philoso- phy , philosophical problems are pathological only if we assume that "normal" problems are defined by their solubility. Perhaps this is not too much to ask. However, I disagree, for I would like to think that the moral of Rorty's history is that philosophy has little to do with solving problems but a lot to do with creating them. More impor- tantly, the latter is (at least) as "wholesome" as the former. Logi- cal positivism and computer science notwithstanding, a "well-formed" philosophical problem does not suggest a means toward its own solution, but, rather, deprives us of the means that we would most naturally turn to in attempting a solution. And here we should recall how, in denying the adequacy of conventional answers to apparently simple questions, Socrates generated the deep problems of metaphysics. Today there are philosophers who continue to cultivate a sense of the problematic--but in monologue rather than dialogue. I am thinking especially of those willfully obscure stylists Jacques Derrida and Stanley Cavell. Why they write as they do will provide the first clue in recovering philo- sophical inquiry from Rorty's critique.

You do not have to be a literary critic to find Of Grammatology and The Claim of Reason unusually discursive and unmotivated. After a few moments with either text, were I to ask for your impression of the per- son who wrote it, you would perhaps say that the author is someone who has nothing in particular to talk about, but nevertheless feels that he must talk about something, and so he ends up talking about every-

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thing. Indeed, if the author took Heidegger's view of the history of philosophy seriously, then that would seem to be the only way he could legitimately write. Now the fate of my argument turns on the weight that the word "legitimately" can support. At first glance, style seems to be one of the few things that a writer has total control over, and we quickly become impatient with an obscure writer precisely because it is within his power to write more clearly. But this intuition rests on a naive aesthetic, namely, that there is an ideal prose style--the one whose anatomy is dissected in writing manuals--able to accomodate any- thing worth saying and to which any right-minded author should aspire. Such a style clearly reveals the structure of the text so that the reader may easily identify its arguments in order to see how adequately they account for the phenomena in question. Writing manuals consequent- ly drive home the point that the stylistically acceptable article in philosophy differs from one in, say, history or psychology only in terms pf subject-matter and not in terms of genre. I call this aesthetic "naive" because it fails to recognize that the question of style arises not in trying to package a finished product of thought, but, rather, in actually producing the thought. Indeed, a method is nothing more than a canonical style, and a style no more than a personal method. (Needless to say, there is more similarity between schools of painting and schools of philosophy than meets the eye.) And a parallel relation can be drawn between what I shall call "legitimacy" and "authenticity". A method is "legitimate" if it accounts for its own presence; hence, the Cartesian method is legitimate insofar as part of practicing it involves showing why it is able to succeed as it does where other methods have failed. Likewise, a style is "authentic" if it reveals the presence of the author; hence, Descartes' style is authentic insofar as it offers some clues as to the uniqueness of his enterprise, or why his text should be written. (Notice that we have not taken sides on whether legitimacy or authenticity is ever fully realized.)

When a scientist senses the need to make his method legitimate (or his style authentic), he is responding to a distinctly philosophical impulse, for as a scientist his ability to reveal the structure of some well-defined set of phenomena is not problematic but expected. And he displays this competence insofar as his observations are amenable to the ideal prose style. Admittedly, the scientist may turn out to be guilty of error, but there is no a priori reason to think that he will be: The presumption of innocence is the presumption of access to reali- ty. In principle, science can reflect the structure of phenomena with- out distortion. The fact that one scientist rather than another may have the last word is irrelevant. What Wittgenstein claimed of philo- sophy can certainly be claimed of science's self-image. It leaves the world as it is. We shall explore in more detail how philosophical con- cerns for legitimacy transform this notion, as we now try to draw the ideal line between linguistics and the philosophy of language.

At first glance, the genesis of the philosophy of language at Oxford in the 1940s seems to fit Rorty's thesis that philosophy is proto- science. All of Ryle's and Austin's careful talk about "what we would

thing. Indeed, if the author took Heidegger's view of the history of philosophy seriously, then that would seem to be the only way he could legitimately write. Now the fate of my argument turns on the weight that the word "legitimately" can support. At first glance, style seems to be one of the few things that a writer has total control over, and we quickly become impatient with an obscure writer precisely because it is within his power to write more clearly. But this intuition rests on a naive aesthetic, namely, that there is an ideal prose style--the one whose anatomy is dissected in writing manuals--able to accomodate any- thing worth saying and to which any right-minded author should aspire. Such a style clearly reveals the structure of the text so that the reader may easily identify its arguments in order to see how adequately they account for the phenomena in question. Writing manuals consequent- ly drive home the point that the stylistically acceptable article in philosophy differs from one in, say, history or psychology only in terms pf subject-matter and not in terms of genre. I call this aesthetic "naive" because it fails to recognize that the question of style arises not in trying to package a finished product of thought, but, rather, in actually producing the thought. Indeed, a method is nothing more than a canonical style, and a style no more than a personal method. (Needless to say, there is more similarity between schools of painting and schools of philosophy than meets the eye.) And a parallel relation can be drawn between what I shall call "legitimacy" and "authenticity". A method is "legitimate" if it accounts for its own presence; hence, the Cartesian method is legitimate insofar as part of practicing it involves showing why it is able to succeed as it does where other methods have failed. Likewise, a style is "authentic" if it reveals the presence of the author; hence, Descartes' style is authentic insofar as it offers some clues as to the uniqueness of his enterprise, or why his text should be written. (Notice that we have not taken sides on whether legitimacy or authenticity is ever fully realized.)

When a scientist senses the need to make his method legitimate (or his style authentic), he is responding to a distinctly philosophical impulse, for as a scientist his ability to reveal the structure of some well-defined set of phenomena is not problematic but expected. And he displays this competence insofar as his observations are amenable to the ideal prose style. Admittedly, the scientist may turn out to be guilty of error, but there is no a priori reason to think that he will be: The presumption of innocence is the presumption of access to reali- ty. In principle, science can reflect the structure of phenomena with- out distortion. The fact that one scientist rather than another may have the last word is irrelevant. What Wittgenstein claimed of philo- sophy can certainly be claimed of science's self-image. It leaves the world as it is. We shall explore in more detail how philosophical con- cerns for legitimacy transform this notion, as we now try to draw the ideal line between linguistics and the philosophy of language.

At first glance, the genesis of the philosophy of language at Oxford in the 1940s seems to fit Rorty's thesis that philosophy is proto- science. All of Ryle's and Austin's careful talk about "what we would

thing. Indeed, if the author took Heidegger's view of the history of philosophy seriously, then that would seem to be the only way he could legitimately write. Now the fate of my argument turns on the weight that the word "legitimately" can support. At first glance, style seems to be one of the few things that a writer has total control over, and we quickly become impatient with an obscure writer precisely because it is within his power to write more clearly. But this intuition rests on a naive aesthetic, namely, that there is an ideal prose style--the one whose anatomy is dissected in writing manuals--able to accomodate any- thing worth saying and to which any right-minded author should aspire. Such a style clearly reveals the structure of the text so that the reader may easily identify its arguments in order to see how adequately they account for the phenomena in question. Writing manuals consequent- ly drive home the point that the stylistically acceptable article in philosophy differs from one in, say, history or psychology only in terms pf subject-matter and not in terms of genre. I call this aesthetic "naive" because it fails to recognize that the question of style arises not in trying to package a finished product of thought, but, rather, in actually producing the thought. Indeed, a method is nothing more than a canonical style, and a style no more than a personal method. (Needless to say, there is more similarity between schools of painting and schools of philosophy than meets the eye.) And a parallel relation can be drawn between what I shall call "legitimacy" and "authenticity". A method is "legitimate" if it accounts for its own presence; hence, the Cartesian method is legitimate insofar as part of practicing it involves showing why it is able to succeed as it does where other methods have failed. Likewise, a style is "authentic" if it reveals the presence of the author; hence, Descartes' style is authentic insofar as it offers some clues as to the uniqueness of his enterprise, or why his text should be written. (Notice that we have not taken sides on whether legitimacy or authenticity is ever fully realized.)

When a scientist senses the need to make his method legitimate (or his style authentic), he is responding to a distinctly philosophical impulse, for as a scientist his ability to reveal the structure of some well-defined set of phenomena is not problematic but expected. And he displays this competence insofar as his observations are amenable to the ideal prose style. Admittedly, the scientist may turn out to be guilty of error, but there is no a priori reason to think that he will be: The presumption of innocence is the presumption of access to reali- ty. In principle, science can reflect the structure of phenomena with- out distortion. The fact that one scientist rather than another may have the last word is irrelevant. What Wittgenstein claimed of philo- sophy can certainly be claimed of science's self-image. It leaves the world as it is. We shall explore in more detail how philosophical con- cerns for legitimacy transform this notion, as we now try to draw the ideal line between linguistics and the philosophy of language.

At first glance, the genesis of the philosophy of language at Oxford in the 1940s seems to fit Rorty's thesis that philosophy is proto- science. All of Ryle's and Austin's careful talk about "what we would

thing. Indeed, if the author took Heidegger's view of the history of philosophy seriously, then that would seem to be the only way he could legitimately write. Now the fate of my argument turns on the weight that the word "legitimately" can support. At first glance, style seems to be one of the few things that a writer has total control over, and we quickly become impatient with an obscure writer precisely because it is within his power to write more clearly. But this intuition rests on a naive aesthetic, namely, that there is an ideal prose style--the one whose anatomy is dissected in writing manuals--able to accomodate any- thing worth saying and to which any right-minded author should aspire. Such a style clearly reveals the structure of the text so that the reader may easily identify its arguments in order to see how adequately they account for the phenomena in question. Writing manuals consequent- ly drive home the point that the stylistically acceptable article in philosophy differs from one in, say, history or psychology only in terms pf subject-matter and not in terms of genre. I call this aesthetic "naive" because it fails to recognize that the question of style arises not in trying to package a finished product of thought, but, rather, in actually producing the thought. Indeed, a method is nothing more than a canonical style, and a style no more than a personal method. (Needless to say, there is more similarity between schools of painting and schools of philosophy than meets the eye.) And a parallel relation can be drawn between what I shall call "legitimacy" and "authenticity". A method is "legitimate" if it accounts for its own presence; hence, the Cartesian method is legitimate insofar as part of practicing it involves showing why it is able to succeed as it does where other methods have failed. Likewise, a style is "authentic" if it reveals the presence of the author; hence, Descartes' style is authentic insofar as it offers some clues as to the uniqueness of his enterprise, or why his text should be written. (Notice that we have not taken sides on whether legitimacy or authenticity is ever fully realized.)

When a scientist senses the need to make his method legitimate (or his style authentic), he is responding to a distinctly philosophical impulse, for as a scientist his ability to reveal the structure of some well-defined set of phenomena is not problematic but expected. And he displays this competence insofar as his observations are amenable to the ideal prose style. Admittedly, the scientist may turn out to be guilty of error, but there is no a priori reason to think that he will be: The presumption of innocence is the presumption of access to reali- ty. In principle, science can reflect the structure of phenomena with- out distortion. The fact that one scientist rather than another may have the last word is irrelevant. What Wittgenstein claimed of philo- sophy can certainly be claimed of science's self-image. It leaves the world as it is. We shall explore in more detail how philosophical con- cerns for legitimacy transform this notion, as we now try to draw the ideal line between linguistics and the philosophy of language.

At first glance, the genesis of the philosophy of language at Oxford in the 1940s seems to fit Rorty's thesis that philosophy is proto- science. All of Ryle's and Austin's careful talk about "what we would

thing. Indeed, if the author took Heidegger's view of the history of philosophy seriously, then that would seem to be the only way he could legitimately write. Now the fate of my argument turns on the weight that the word "legitimately" can support. At first glance, style seems to be one of the few things that a writer has total control over, and we quickly become impatient with an obscure writer precisely because it is within his power to write more clearly. But this intuition rests on a naive aesthetic, namely, that there is an ideal prose style--the one whose anatomy is dissected in writing manuals--able to accomodate any- thing worth saying and to which any right-minded author should aspire. Such a style clearly reveals the structure of the text so that the reader may easily identify its arguments in order to see how adequately they account for the phenomena in question. Writing manuals consequent- ly drive home the point that the stylistically acceptable article in philosophy differs from one in, say, history or psychology only in terms pf subject-matter and not in terms of genre. I call this aesthetic "naive" because it fails to recognize that the question of style arises not in trying to package a finished product of thought, but, rather, in actually producing the thought. Indeed, a method is nothing more than a canonical style, and a style no more than a personal method. (Needless to say, there is more similarity between schools of painting and schools of philosophy than meets the eye.) And a parallel relation can be drawn between what I shall call "legitimacy" and "authenticity". A method is "legitimate" if it accounts for its own presence; hence, the Cartesian method is legitimate insofar as part of practicing it involves showing why it is able to succeed as it does where other methods have failed. Likewise, a style is "authentic" if it reveals the presence of the author; hence, Descartes' style is authentic insofar as it offers some clues as to the uniqueness of his enterprise, or why his text should be written. (Notice that we have not taken sides on whether legitimacy or authenticity is ever fully realized.)

When a scientist senses the need to make his method legitimate (or his style authentic), he is responding to a distinctly philosophical impulse, for as a scientist his ability to reveal the structure of some well-defined set of phenomena is not problematic but expected. And he displays this competence insofar as his observations are amenable to the ideal prose style. Admittedly, the scientist may turn out to be guilty of error, but there is no a priori reason to think that he will be: The presumption of innocence is the presumption of access to reali- ty. In principle, science can reflect the structure of phenomena with- out distortion. The fact that one scientist rather than another may have the last word is irrelevant. What Wittgenstein claimed of philo- sophy can certainly be claimed of science's self-image. It leaves the world as it is. We shall explore in more detail how philosophical con- cerns for legitimacy transform this notion, as we now try to draw the ideal line between linguistics and the philosophy of language.

At first glance, the genesis of the philosophy of language at Oxford in the 1940s seems to fit Rorty's thesis that philosophy is proto- science. All of Ryle's and Austin's careful talk about "what we would

thing. Indeed, if the author took Heidegger's view of the history of philosophy seriously, then that would seem to be the only way he could legitimately write. Now the fate of my argument turns on the weight that the word "legitimately" can support. At first glance, style seems to be one of the few things that a writer has total control over, and we quickly become impatient with an obscure writer precisely because it is within his power to write more clearly. But this intuition rests on a naive aesthetic, namely, that there is an ideal prose style--the one whose anatomy is dissected in writing manuals--able to accomodate any- thing worth saying and to which any right-minded author should aspire. Such a style clearly reveals the structure of the text so that the reader may easily identify its arguments in order to see how adequately they account for the phenomena in question. Writing manuals consequent- ly drive home the point that the stylistically acceptable article in philosophy differs from one in, say, history or psychology only in terms pf subject-matter and not in terms of genre. I call this aesthetic "naive" because it fails to recognize that the question of style arises not in trying to package a finished product of thought, but, rather, in actually producing the thought. Indeed, a method is nothing more than a canonical style, and a style no more than a personal method. (Needless to say, there is more similarity between schools of painting and schools of philosophy than meets the eye.) And a parallel relation can be drawn between what I shall call "legitimacy" and "authenticity". A method is "legitimate" if it accounts for its own presence; hence, the Cartesian method is legitimate insofar as part of practicing it involves showing why it is able to succeed as it does where other methods have failed. Likewise, a style is "authentic" if it reveals the presence of the author; hence, Descartes' style is authentic insofar as it offers some clues as to the uniqueness of his enterprise, or why his text should be written. (Notice that we have not taken sides on whether legitimacy or authenticity is ever fully realized.)

When a scientist senses the need to make his method legitimate (or his style authentic), he is responding to a distinctly philosophical impulse, for as a scientist his ability to reveal the structure of some well-defined set of phenomena is not problematic but expected. And he displays this competence insofar as his observations are amenable to the ideal prose style. Admittedly, the scientist may turn out to be guilty of error, but there is no a priori reason to think that he will be: The presumption of innocence is the presumption of access to reali- ty. In principle, science can reflect the structure of phenomena with- out distortion. The fact that one scientist rather than another may have the last word is irrelevant. What Wittgenstein claimed of philo- sophy can certainly be claimed of science's self-image. It leaves the world as it is. We shall explore in more detail how philosophical con- cerns for legitimacy transform this notion, as we now try to draw the ideal line between linguistics and the philosophy of language.

At first glance, the genesis of the philosophy of language at Oxford in the 1940s seems to fit Rorty's thesis that philosophy is proto- science. All of Ryle's and Austin's careful talk about "what we would

thing. Indeed, if the author took Heidegger's view of the history of philosophy seriously, then that would seem to be the only way he could legitimately write. Now the fate of my argument turns on the weight that the word "legitimately" can support. At first glance, style seems to be one of the few things that a writer has total control over, and we quickly become impatient with an obscure writer precisely because it is within his power to write more clearly. But this intuition rests on a naive aesthetic, namely, that there is an ideal prose style--the one whose anatomy is dissected in writing manuals--able to accomodate any- thing worth saying and to which any right-minded author should aspire. Such a style clearly reveals the structure of the text so that the reader may easily identify its arguments in order to see how adequately they account for the phenomena in question. Writing manuals consequent- ly drive home the point that the stylistically acceptable article in philosophy differs from one in, say, history or psychology only in terms pf subject-matter and not in terms of genre. I call this aesthetic "naive" because it fails to recognize that the question of style arises not in trying to package a finished product of thought, but, rather, in actually producing the thought. Indeed, a method is nothing more than a canonical style, and a style no more than a personal method. (Needless to say, there is more similarity between schools of painting and schools of philosophy than meets the eye.) And a parallel relation can be drawn between what I shall call "legitimacy" and "authenticity". A method is "legitimate" if it accounts for its own presence; hence, the Cartesian method is legitimate insofar as part of practicing it involves showing why it is able to succeed as it does where other methods have failed. Likewise, a style is "authentic" if it reveals the presence of the author; hence, Descartes' style is authentic insofar as it offers some clues as to the uniqueness of his enterprise, or why his text should be written. (Notice that we have not taken sides on whether legitimacy or authenticity is ever fully realized.)

When a scientist senses the need to make his method legitimate (or his style authentic), he is responding to a distinctly philosophical impulse, for as a scientist his ability to reveal the structure of some well-defined set of phenomena is not problematic but expected. And he displays this competence insofar as his observations are amenable to the ideal prose style. Admittedly, the scientist may turn out to be guilty of error, but there is no a priori reason to think that he will be: The presumption of innocence is the presumption of access to reali- ty. In principle, science can reflect the structure of phenomena with- out distortion. The fact that one scientist rather than another may have the last word is irrelevant. What Wittgenstein claimed of philo- sophy can certainly be claimed of science's self-image. It leaves the world as it is. We shall explore in more detail how philosophical con- cerns for legitimacy transform this notion, as we now try to draw the ideal line between linguistics and the philosophy of language.

At first glance, the genesis of the philosophy of language at Oxford in the 1940s seems to fit Rorty's thesis that philosophy is proto- science. All of Ryle's and Austin's careful talk about "what we would

thing. Indeed, if the author took Heidegger's view of the history of philosophy seriously, then that would seem to be the only way he could legitimately write. Now the fate of my argument turns on the weight that the word "legitimately" can support. At first glance, style seems to be one of the few things that a writer has total control over, and we quickly become impatient with an obscure writer precisely because it is within his power to write more clearly. But this intuition rests on a naive aesthetic, namely, that there is an ideal prose style--the one whose anatomy is dissected in writing manuals--able to accomodate any- thing worth saying and to which any right-minded author should aspire. Such a style clearly reveals the structure of the text so that the reader may easily identify its arguments in order to see how adequately they account for the phenomena in question. Writing manuals consequent- ly drive home the point that the stylistically acceptable article in philosophy differs from one in, say, history or psychology only in terms pf subject-matter and not in terms of genre. I call this aesthetic "naive" because it fails to recognize that the question of style arises not in trying to package a finished product of thought, but, rather, in actually producing the thought. Indeed, a method is nothing more than a canonical style, and a style no more than a personal method. (Needless to say, there is more similarity between schools of painting and schools of philosophy than meets the eye.) And a parallel relation can be drawn between what I shall call "legitimacy" and "authenticity". A method is "legitimate" if it accounts for its own presence; hence, the Cartesian method is legitimate insofar as part of practicing it involves showing why it is able to succeed as it does where other methods have failed. Likewise, a style is "authentic" if it reveals the presence of the author; hence, Descartes' style is authentic insofar as it offers some clues as to the uniqueness of his enterprise, or why his text should be written. (Notice that we have not taken sides on whether legitimacy or authenticity is ever fully realized.)

When a scientist senses the need to make his method legitimate (or his style authentic), he is responding to a distinctly philosophical impulse, for as a scientist his ability to reveal the structure of some well-defined set of phenomena is not problematic but expected. And he displays this competence insofar as his observations are amenable to the ideal prose style. Admittedly, the scientist may turn out to be guilty of error, but there is no a priori reason to think that he will be: The presumption of innocence is the presumption of access to reali- ty. In principle, science can reflect the structure of phenomena with- out distortion. The fact that one scientist rather than another may have the last word is irrelevant. What Wittgenstein claimed of philo- sophy can certainly be claimed of science's self-image. It leaves the world as it is. We shall explore in more detail how philosophical con- cerns for legitimacy transform this notion, as we now try to draw the ideal line between linguistics and the philosophy of language.

At first glance, the genesis of the philosophy of language at Oxford in the 1940s seems to fit Rorty's thesis that philosophy is proto- science. All of Ryle's and Austin's careful talk about "what we would

thing. Indeed, if the author took Heidegger's view of the history of philosophy seriously, then that would seem to be the only way he could legitimately write. Now the fate of my argument turns on the weight that the word "legitimately" can support. At first glance, style seems to be one of the few things that a writer has total control over, and we quickly become impatient with an obscure writer precisely because it is within his power to write more clearly. But this intuition rests on a naive aesthetic, namely, that there is an ideal prose style--the one whose anatomy is dissected in writing manuals--able to accomodate any- thing worth saying and to which any right-minded author should aspire. Such a style clearly reveals the structure of the text so that the reader may easily identify its arguments in order to see how adequately they account for the phenomena in question. Writing manuals consequent- ly drive home the point that the stylistically acceptable article in philosophy differs from one in, say, history or psychology only in terms pf subject-matter and not in terms of genre. I call this aesthetic "naive" because it fails to recognize that the question of style arises not in trying to package a finished product of thought, but, rather, in actually producing the thought. Indeed, a method is nothing more than a canonical style, and a style no more than a personal method. (Needless to say, there is more similarity between schools of painting and schools of philosophy than meets the eye.) And a parallel relation can be drawn between what I shall call "legitimacy" and "authenticity". A method is "legitimate" if it accounts for its own presence; hence, the Cartesian method is legitimate insofar as part of practicing it involves showing why it is able to succeed as it does where other methods have failed. Likewise, a style is "authentic" if it reveals the presence of the author; hence, Descartes' style is authentic insofar as it offers some clues as to the uniqueness of his enterprise, or why his text should be written. (Notice that we have not taken sides on whether legitimacy or authenticity is ever fully realized.)

When a scientist senses the need to make his method legitimate (or his style authentic), he is responding to a distinctly philosophical impulse, for as a scientist his ability to reveal the structure of some well-defined set of phenomena is not problematic but expected. And he displays this competence insofar as his observations are amenable to the ideal prose style. Admittedly, the scientist may turn out to be guilty of error, but there is no a priori reason to think that he will be: The presumption of innocence is the presumption of access to reali- ty. In principle, science can reflect the structure of phenomena with- out distortion. The fact that one scientist rather than another may have the last word is irrelevant. What Wittgenstein claimed of philo- sophy can certainly be claimed of science's self-image. It leaves the world as it is. We shall explore in more detail how philosophical con- cerns for legitimacy transform this notion, as we now try to draw the ideal line between linguistics and the philosophy of language.

At first glance, the genesis of the philosophy of language at Oxford in the 1940s seems to fit Rorty's thesis that philosophy is proto- science. All of Ryle's and Austin's careful talk about "what we would

thing. Indeed, if the author took Heidegger's view of the history of philosophy seriously, then that would seem to be the only way he could legitimately write. Now the fate of my argument turns on the weight that the word "legitimately" can support. At first glance, style seems to be one of the few things that a writer has total control over, and we quickly become impatient with an obscure writer precisely because it is within his power to write more clearly. But this intuition rests on a naive aesthetic, namely, that there is an ideal prose style--the one whose anatomy is dissected in writing manuals--able to accomodate any- thing worth saying and to which any right-minded author should aspire. Such a style clearly reveals the structure of the text so that the reader may easily identify its arguments in order to see how adequately they account for the phenomena in question. Writing manuals consequent- ly drive home the point that the stylistically acceptable article in philosophy differs from one in, say, history or psychology only in terms pf subject-matter and not in terms of genre. I call this aesthetic "naive" because it fails to recognize that the question of style arises not in trying to package a finished product of thought, but, rather, in actually producing the thought. Indeed, a method is nothing more than a canonical style, and a style no more than a personal method. (Needless to say, there is more similarity between schools of painting and schools of philosophy than meets the eye.) And a parallel relation can be drawn between what I shall call "legitimacy" and "authenticity". A method is "legitimate" if it accounts for its own presence; hence, the Cartesian method is legitimate insofar as part of practicing it involves showing why it is able to succeed as it does where other methods have failed. Likewise, a style is "authentic" if it reveals the presence of the author; hence, Descartes' style is authentic insofar as it offers some clues as to the uniqueness of his enterprise, or why his text should be written. (Notice that we have not taken sides on whether legitimacy or authenticity is ever fully realized.)

When a scientist senses the need to make his method legitimate (or his style authentic), he is responding to a distinctly philosophical impulse, for as a scientist his ability to reveal the structure of some well-defined set of phenomena is not problematic but expected. And he displays this competence insofar as his observations are amenable to the ideal prose style. Admittedly, the scientist may turn out to be guilty of error, but there is no a priori reason to think that he will be: The presumption of innocence is the presumption of access to reali- ty. In principle, science can reflect the structure of phenomena with- out distortion. The fact that one scientist rather than another may have the last word is irrelevant. What Wittgenstein claimed of philo- sophy can certainly be claimed of science's self-image. It leaves the world as it is. We shall explore in more detail how philosophical con- cerns for legitimacy transform this notion, as we now try to draw the ideal line between linguistics and the philosophy of language.

At first glance, the genesis of the philosophy of language at Oxford in the 1940s seems to fit Rorty's thesis that philosophy is proto- science. All of Ryle's and Austin's careful talk about "what we would

thing. Indeed, if the author took Heidegger's view of the history of philosophy seriously, then that would seem to be the only way he could legitimately write. Now the fate of my argument turns on the weight that the word "legitimately" can support. At first glance, style seems to be one of the few things that a writer has total control over, and we quickly become impatient with an obscure writer precisely because it is within his power to write more clearly. But this intuition rests on a naive aesthetic, namely, that there is an ideal prose style--the one whose anatomy is dissected in writing manuals--able to accomodate any- thing worth saying and to which any right-minded author should aspire. Such a style clearly reveals the structure of the text so that the reader may easily identify its arguments in order to see how adequately they account for the phenomena in question. Writing manuals consequent- ly drive home the point that the stylistically acceptable article in philosophy differs from one in, say, history or psychology only in terms pf subject-matter and not in terms of genre. I call this aesthetic "naive" because it fails to recognize that the question of style arises not in trying to package a finished product of thought, but, rather, in actually producing the thought. Indeed, a method is nothing more than a canonical style, and a style no more than a personal method. (Needless to say, there is more similarity between schools of painting and schools of philosophy than meets the eye.) And a parallel relation can be drawn between what I shall call "legitimacy" and "authenticity". A method is "legitimate" if it accounts for its own presence; hence, the Cartesian method is legitimate insofar as part of practicing it involves showing why it is able to succeed as it does where other methods have failed. Likewise, a style is "authentic" if it reveals the presence of the author; hence, Descartes' style is authentic insofar as it offers some clues as to the uniqueness of his enterprise, or why his text should be written. (Notice that we have not taken sides on whether legitimacy or authenticity is ever fully realized.)

When a scientist senses the need to make his method legitimate (or his style authentic), he is responding to a distinctly philosophical impulse, for as a scientist his ability to reveal the structure of some well-defined set of phenomena is not problematic but expected. And he displays this competence insofar as his observations are amenable to the ideal prose style. Admittedly, the scientist may turn out to be guilty of error, but there is no a priori reason to think that he will be: The presumption of innocence is the presumption of access to reali- ty. In principle, science can reflect the structure of phenomena with- out distortion. The fact that one scientist rather than another may have the last word is irrelevant. What Wittgenstein claimed of philo- sophy can certainly be claimed of science's self-image. It leaves the world as it is. We shall explore in more detail how philosophical con- cerns for legitimacy transform this notion, as we now try to draw the ideal line between linguistics and the philosophy of language.

At first glance, the genesis of the philosophy of language at Oxford in the 1940s seems to fit Rorty's thesis that philosophy is proto- science. All of Ryle's and Austin's careful talk about "what we would

thing. Indeed, if the author took Heidegger's view of the history of philosophy seriously, then that would seem to be the only way he could legitimately write. Now the fate of my argument turns on the weight that the word "legitimately" can support. At first glance, style seems to be one of the few things that a writer has total control over, and we quickly become impatient with an obscure writer precisely because it is within his power to write more clearly. But this intuition rests on a naive aesthetic, namely, that there is an ideal prose style--the one whose anatomy is dissected in writing manuals--able to accomodate any- thing worth saying and to which any right-minded author should aspire. Such a style clearly reveals the structure of the text so that the reader may easily identify its arguments in order to see how adequately they account for the phenomena in question. Writing manuals consequent- ly drive home the point that the stylistically acceptable article in philosophy differs from one in, say, history or psychology only in terms pf subject-matter and not in terms of genre. I call this aesthetic "naive" because it fails to recognize that the question of style arises not in trying to package a finished product of thought, but, rather, in actually producing the thought. Indeed, a method is nothing more than a canonical style, and a style no more than a personal method. (Needless to say, there is more similarity between schools of painting and schools of philosophy than meets the eye.) And a parallel relation can be drawn between what I shall call "legitimacy" and "authenticity". A method is "legitimate" if it accounts for its own presence; hence, the Cartesian method is legitimate insofar as part of practicing it involves showing why it is able to succeed as it does where other methods have failed. Likewise, a style is "authentic" if it reveals the presence of the author; hence, Descartes' style is authentic insofar as it offers some clues as to the uniqueness of his enterprise, or why his text should be written. (Notice that we have not taken sides on whether legitimacy or authenticity is ever fully realized.)

When a scientist senses the need to make his method legitimate (or his style authentic), he is responding to a distinctly philosophical impulse, for as a scientist his ability to reveal the structure of some well-defined set of phenomena is not problematic but expected. And he displays this competence insofar as his observations are amenable to the ideal prose style. Admittedly, the scientist may turn out to be guilty of error, but there is no a priori reason to think that he will be: The presumption of innocence is the presumption of access to reali- ty. In principle, science can reflect the structure of phenomena with- out distortion. The fact that one scientist rather than another may have the last word is irrelevant. What Wittgenstein claimed of philo- sophy can certainly be claimed of science's self-image. It leaves the world as it is. We shall explore in more detail how philosophical con- cerns for legitimacy transform this notion, as we now try to draw the ideal line between linguistics and the philosophy of language.

At first glance, the genesis of the philosophy of language at Oxford in the 1940s seems to fit Rorty's thesis that philosophy is proto- science. All of Ryle's and Austin's careful talk about "what we would

thing. Indeed, if the author took Heidegger's view of the history of philosophy seriously, then that would seem to be the only way he could legitimately write. Now the fate of my argument turns on the weight that the word "legitimately" can support. At first glance, style seems to be one of the few things that a writer has total control over, and we quickly become impatient with an obscure writer precisely because it is within his power to write more clearly. But this intuition rests on a naive aesthetic, namely, that there is an ideal prose style--the one whose anatomy is dissected in writing manuals--able to accomodate any- thing worth saying and to which any right-minded author should aspire. Such a style clearly reveals the structure of the text so that the reader may easily identify its arguments in order to see how adequately they account for the phenomena in question. Writing manuals consequent- ly drive home the point that the stylistically acceptable article in philosophy differs from one in, say, history or psychology only in terms pf subject-matter and not in terms of genre. I call this aesthetic "naive" because it fails to recognize that the question of style arises not in trying to package a finished product of thought, but, rather, in actually producing the thought. Indeed, a method is nothing more than a canonical style, and a style no more than a personal method. (Needless to say, there is more similarity between schools of painting and schools of philosophy than meets the eye.) And a parallel relation can be drawn between what I shall call "legitimacy" and "authenticity". A method is "legitimate" if it accounts for its own presence; hence, the Cartesian method is legitimate insofar as part of practicing it involves showing why it is able to succeed as it does where other methods have failed. Likewise, a style is "authentic" if it reveals the presence of the author; hence, Descartes' style is authentic insofar as it offers some clues as to the uniqueness of his enterprise, or why his text should be written. (Notice that we have not taken sides on whether legitimacy or authenticity is ever fully realized.)

When a scientist senses the need to make his method legitimate (or his style authentic), he is responding to a distinctly philosophical impulse, for as a scientist his ability to reveal the structure of some well-defined set of phenomena is not problematic but expected. And he displays this competence insofar as his observations are amenable to the ideal prose style. Admittedly, the scientist may turn out to be guilty of error, but there is no a priori reason to think that he will be: The presumption of innocence is the presumption of access to reali- ty. In principle, science can reflect the structure of phenomena with- out distortion. The fact that one scientist rather than another may have the last word is irrelevant. What Wittgenstein claimed of philo- sophy can certainly be claimed of science's self-image. It leaves the world as it is. We shall explore in more detail how philosophical con- cerns for legitimacy transform this notion, as we now try to draw the ideal line between linguistics and the philosophy of language.

At first glance, the genesis of the philosophy of language at Oxford in the 1940s seems to fit Rorty's thesis that philosophy is proto- science. All of Ryle's and Austin's careful talk about "what we would

thing. Indeed, if the author took Heidegger's view of the history of philosophy seriously, then that would seem to be the only way he could legitimately write. Now the fate of my argument turns on the weight that the word "legitimately" can support. At first glance, style seems to be one of the few things that a writer has total control over, and we quickly become impatient with an obscure writer precisely because it is within his power to write more clearly. But this intuition rests on a naive aesthetic, namely, that there is an ideal prose style--the one whose anatomy is dissected in writing manuals--able to accomodate any- thing worth saying and to which any right-minded author should aspire. Such a style clearly reveals the structure of the text so that the reader may easily identify its arguments in order to see how adequately they account for the phenomena in question. Writing manuals consequent- ly drive home the point that the stylistically acceptable article in philosophy differs from one in, say, history or psychology only in terms pf subject-matter and not in terms of genre. I call this aesthetic "naive" because it fails to recognize that the question of style arises not in trying to package a finished product of thought, but, rather, in actually producing the thought. Indeed, a method is nothing more than a canonical style, and a style no more than a personal method. (Needless to say, there is more similarity between schools of painting and schools of philosophy than meets the eye.) And a parallel relation can be drawn between what I shall call "legitimacy" and "authenticity". A method is "legitimate" if it accounts for its own presence; hence, the Cartesian method is legitimate insofar as part of practicing it involves showing why it is able to succeed as it does where other methods have failed. Likewise, a style is "authentic" if it reveals the presence of the author; hence, Descartes' style is authentic insofar as it offers some clues as to the uniqueness of his enterprise, or why his text should be written. (Notice that we have not taken sides on whether legitimacy or authenticity is ever fully realized.)

When a scientist senses the need to make his method legitimate (or his style authentic), he is responding to a distinctly philosophical impulse, for as a scientist his ability to reveal the structure of some well-defined set of phenomena is not problematic but expected. And he displays this competence insofar as his observations are amenable to the ideal prose style. Admittedly, the scientist may turn out to be guilty of error, but there is no a priori reason to think that he will be: The presumption of innocence is the presumption of access to reali- ty. In principle, science can reflect the structure of phenomena with- out distortion. The fact that one scientist rather than another may have the last word is irrelevant. What Wittgenstein claimed of philo- sophy can certainly be claimed of science's self-image. It leaves the world as it is. We shall explore in more detail how philosophical con- cerns for legitimacy transform this notion, as we now try to draw the ideal line between linguistics and the philosophy of language.

At first glance, the genesis of the philosophy of language at Oxford in the 1940s seems to fit Rorty's thesis that philosophy is proto- science. All of Ryle's and Austin's careful talk about "what we would

thing. Indeed, if the author took Heidegger's view of the history of philosophy seriously, then that would seem to be the only way he could legitimately write. Now the fate of my argument turns on the weight that the word "legitimately" can support. At first glance, style seems to be one of the few things that a writer has total control over, and we quickly become impatient with an obscure writer precisely because it is within his power to write more clearly. But this intuition rests on a naive aesthetic, namely, that there is an ideal prose style--the one whose anatomy is dissected in writing manuals--able to accomodate any- thing worth saying and to which any right-minded author should aspire. Such a style clearly reveals the structure of the text so that the reader may easily identify its arguments in order to see how adequately they account for the phenomena in question. Writing manuals consequent- ly drive home the point that the stylistically acceptable article in philosophy differs from one in, say, history or psychology only in terms pf subject-matter and not in terms of genre. I call this aesthetic "naive" because it fails to recognize that the question of style arises not in trying to package a finished product of thought, but, rather, in actually producing the thought. Indeed, a method is nothing more than a canonical style, and a style no more than a personal method. (Needless to say, there is more similarity between schools of painting and schools of philosophy than meets the eye.) And a parallel relation can be drawn between what I shall call "legitimacy" and "authenticity". A method is "legitimate" if it accounts for its own presence; hence, the Cartesian method is legitimate insofar as part of practicing it involves showing why it is able to succeed as it does where other methods have failed. Likewise, a style is "authentic" if it reveals the presence of the author; hence, Descartes' style is authentic insofar as it offers some clues as to the uniqueness of his enterprise, or why his text should be written. (Notice that we have not taken sides on whether legitimacy or authenticity is ever fully realized.)

When a scientist senses the need to make his method legitimate (or his style authentic), he is responding to a distinctly philosophical impulse, for as a scientist his ability to reveal the structure of some well-defined set of phenomena is not problematic but expected. And he displays this competence insofar as his observations are amenable to the ideal prose style. Admittedly, the scientist may turn out to be guilty of error, but there is no a priori reason to think that he will be: The presumption of innocence is the presumption of access to reali- ty. In principle, science can reflect the structure of phenomena with- out distortion. The fact that one scientist rather than another may have the last word is irrelevant. What Wittgenstein claimed of philo- sophy can certainly be claimed of science's self-image. It leaves the world as it is. We shall explore in more detail how philosophical con- cerns for legitimacy transform this notion, as we now try to draw the ideal line between linguistics and the philosophy of language.

At first glance, the genesis of the philosophy of language at Oxford in the 1940s seems to fit Rorty's thesis that philosophy is proto- science. All of Ryle's and Austin's careful talk about "what we would

thing. Indeed, if the author took Heidegger's view of the history of philosophy seriously, then that would seem to be the only way he could legitimately write. Now the fate of my argument turns on the weight that the word "legitimately" can support. At first glance, style seems to be one of the few things that a writer has total control over, and we quickly become impatient with an obscure writer precisely because it is within his power to write more clearly. But this intuition rests on a naive aesthetic, namely, that there is an ideal prose style--the one whose anatomy is dissected in writing manuals--able to accomodate any- thing worth saying and to which any right-minded author should aspire. Such a style clearly reveals the structure of the text so that the reader may easily identify its arguments in order to see how adequately they account for the phenomena in question. Writing manuals consequent- ly drive home the point that the stylistically acceptable article in philosophy differs from one in, say, history or psychology only in terms pf subject-matter and not in terms of genre. I call this aesthetic "naive" because it fails to recognize that the question of style arises not in trying to package a finished product of thought, but, rather, in actually producing the thought. Indeed, a method is nothing more than a canonical style, and a style no more than a personal method. (Needless to say, there is more similarity between schools of painting and schools of philosophy than meets the eye.) And a parallel relation can be drawn between what I shall call "legitimacy" and "authenticity". A method is "legitimate" if it accounts for its own presence; hence, the Cartesian method is legitimate insofar as part of practicing it involves showing why it is able to succeed as it does where other methods have failed. Likewise, a style is "authentic" if it reveals the presence of the author; hence, Descartes' style is authentic insofar as it offers some clues as to the uniqueness of his enterprise, or why his text should be written. (Notice that we have not taken sides on whether legitimacy or authenticity is ever fully realized.)

When a scientist senses the need to make his method legitimate (or his style authentic), he is responding to a distinctly philosophical impulse, for as a scientist his ability to reveal the structure of some well-defined set of phenomena is not problematic but expected. And he displays this competence insofar as his observations are amenable to the ideal prose style. Admittedly, the scientist may turn out to be guilty of error, but there is no a priori reason to think that he will be: The presumption of innocence is the presumption of access to reali- ty. In principle, science can reflect the structure of phenomena with- out distortion. The fact that one scientist rather than another may have the last word is irrelevant. What Wittgenstein claimed of philo- sophy can certainly be claimed of science's self-image. It leaves the world as it is. We shall explore in more detail how philosophical con- cerns for legitimacy transform this notion, as we now try to draw the ideal line between linguistics and the philosophy of language.

At first glance, the genesis of the philosophy of language at Oxford in the 1940s seems to fit Rorty's thesis that philosophy is proto- science. All of Ryle's and Austin's careful talk about "what we would

thing. Indeed, if the author took Heidegger's view of the history of philosophy seriously, then that would seem to be the only way he could legitimately write. Now the fate of my argument turns on the weight that the word "legitimately" can support. At first glance, style seems to be one of the few things that a writer has total control over, and we quickly become impatient with an obscure writer precisely because it is within his power to write more clearly. But this intuition rests on a naive aesthetic, namely, that there is an ideal prose style--the one whose anatomy is dissected in writing manuals--able to accomodate any- thing worth saying and to which any right-minded author should aspire. Such a style clearly reveals the structure of the text so that the reader may easily identify its arguments in order to see how adequately they account for the phenomena in question. Writing manuals consequent- ly drive home the point that the stylistically acceptable article in philosophy differs from one in, say, history or psychology only in terms pf subject-matter and not in terms of genre. I call this aesthetic "naive" because it fails to recognize that the question of style arises not in trying to package a finished product of thought, but, rather, in actually producing the thought. Indeed, a method is nothing more than a canonical style, and a style no more than a personal method. (Needless to say, there is more similarity between schools of painting and schools of philosophy than meets the eye.) And a parallel relation can be drawn between what I shall call "legitimacy" and "authenticity". A method is "legitimate" if it accounts for its own presence; hence, the Cartesian method is legitimate insofar as part of practicing it involves showing why it is able to succeed as it does where other methods have failed. Likewise, a style is "authentic" if it reveals the presence of the author; hence, Descartes' style is authentic insofar as it offers some clues as to the uniqueness of his enterprise, or why his text should be written. (Notice that we have not taken sides on whether legitimacy or authenticity is ever fully realized.)

When a scientist senses the need to make his method legitimate (or his style authentic), he is responding to a distinctly philosophical impulse, for as a scientist his ability to reveal the structure of some well-defined set of phenomena is not problematic but expected. And he displays this competence insofar as his observations are amenable to the ideal prose style. Admittedly, the scientist may turn out to be guilty of error, but there is no a priori reason to think that he will be: The presumption of innocence is the presumption of access to reali- ty. In principle, science can reflect the structure of phenomena with- out distortion. The fact that one scientist rather than another may have the last word is irrelevant. What Wittgenstein claimed of philo- sophy can certainly be claimed of science's self-image. It leaves the world as it is. We shall explore in more detail how philosophical con- cerns for legitimacy transform this notion, as we now try to draw the ideal line between linguistics and the philosophy of language.

At first glance, the genesis of the philosophy of language at Oxford in the 1940s seems to fit Rorty's thesis that philosophy is proto- science. All of Ryle's and Austin's careful talk about "what we would

thing. Indeed, if the author took Heidegger's view of the history of philosophy seriously, then that would seem to be the only way he could legitimately write. Now the fate of my argument turns on the weight that the word "legitimately" can support. At first glance, style seems to be one of the few things that a writer has total control over, and we quickly become impatient with an obscure writer precisely because it is within his power to write more clearly. But this intuition rests on a naive aesthetic, namely, that there is an ideal prose style--the one whose anatomy is dissected in writing manuals--able to accomodate any- thing worth saying and to which any right-minded author should aspire. Such a style clearly reveals the structure of the text so that the reader may easily identify its arguments in order to see how adequately they account for the phenomena in question. Writing manuals consequent- ly drive home the point that the stylistically acceptable article in philosophy differs from one in, say, history or psychology only in terms pf subject-matter and not in terms of genre. I call this aesthetic "naive" because it fails to recognize that the question of style arises not in trying to package a finished product of thought, but, rather, in actually producing the thought. Indeed, a method is nothing more than a canonical style, and a style no more than a personal method. (Needless to say, there is more similarity between schools of painting and schools of philosophy than meets the eye.) And a parallel relation can be drawn between what I shall call "legitimacy" and "authenticity". A method is "legitimate" if it accounts for its own presence; hence, the Cartesian method is legitimate insofar as part of practicing it involves showing why it is able to succeed as it does where other methods have failed. Likewise, a style is "authentic" if it reveals the presence of the author; hence, Descartes' style is authentic insofar as it offers some clues as to the uniqueness of his enterprise, or why his text should be written. (Notice that we have not taken sides on whether legitimacy or authenticity is ever fully realized.)

When a scientist senses the need to make his method legitimate (or his style authentic), he is responding to a distinctly philosophical impulse, for as a scientist his ability to reveal the structure of some well-defined set of phenomena is not problematic but expected. And he displays this competence insofar as his observations are amenable to the ideal prose style. Admittedly, the scientist may turn out to be guilty of error, but there is no a priori reason to think that he will be: The presumption of innocence is the presumption of access to reali- ty. In principle, science can reflect the structure of phenomena with- out distortion. The fact that one scientist rather than another may have the last word is irrelevant. What Wittgenstein claimed of philo- sophy can certainly be claimed of science's self-image. It leaves the world as it is. We shall explore in more detail how philosophical con- cerns for legitimacy transform this notion, as we now try to draw the ideal line between linguistics and the philosophy of language.

At first glance, the genesis of the philosophy of language at Oxford in the 1940s seems to fit Rorty's thesis that philosophy is proto- science. All of Ryle's and Austin's careful talk about "what we would

thing. Indeed, if the author took Heidegger's view of the history of philosophy seriously, then that would seem to be the only way he could legitimately write. Now the fate of my argument turns on the weight that the word "legitimately" can support. At first glance, style seems to be one of the few things that a writer has total control over, and we quickly become impatient with an obscure writer precisely because it is within his power to write more clearly. But this intuition rests on a naive aesthetic, namely, that there is an ideal prose style--the one whose anatomy is dissected in writing manuals--able to accomodate any- thing worth saying and to which any right-minded author should aspire. Such a style clearly reveals the structure of the text so that the reader may easily identify its arguments in order to see how adequately they account for the phenomena in question. Writing manuals consequent- ly drive home the point that the stylistically acceptable article in philosophy differs from one in, say, history or psychology only in terms pf subject-matter and not in terms of genre. I call this aesthetic "naive" because it fails to recognize that the question of style arises not in trying to package a finished product of thought, but, rather, in actually producing the thought. Indeed, a method is nothing more than a canonical style, and a style no more than a personal method. (Needless to say, there is more similarity between schools of painting and schools of philosophy than meets the eye.) And a parallel relation can be drawn between what I shall call "legitimacy" and "authenticity". A method is "legitimate" if it accounts for its own presence; hence, the Cartesian method is legitimate insofar as part of practicing it involves showing why it is able to succeed as it does where other methods have failed. Likewise, a style is "authentic" if it reveals the presence of the author; hence, Descartes' style is authentic insofar as it offers some clues as to the uniqueness of his enterprise, or why his text should be written. (Notice that we have not taken sides on whether legitimacy or authenticity is ever fully realized.)

When a scientist senses the need to make his method legitimate (or his style authentic), he is responding to a distinctly philosophical impulse, for as a scientist his ability to reveal the structure of some well-defined set of phenomena is not problematic but expected. And he displays this competence insofar as his observations are amenable to the ideal prose style. Admittedly, the scientist may turn out to be guilty of error, but there is no a priori reason to think that he will be: The presumption of innocence is the presumption of access to reali- ty. In principle, science can reflect the structure of phenomena with- out distortion. The fact that one scientist rather than another may have the last word is irrelevant. What Wittgenstein claimed of philo- sophy can certainly be claimed of science's self-image. It leaves the world as it is. We shall explore in more detail how philosophical con- cerns for legitimacy transform this notion, as we now try to draw the ideal line between linguistics and the philosophy of language.

At first glance, the genesis of the philosophy of language at Oxford in the 1940s seems to fit Rorty's thesis that philosophy is proto- science. All of Ryle's and Austin's careful talk about "what we would

thing. Indeed, if the author took Heidegger's view of the history of philosophy seriously, then that would seem to be the only way he could legitimately write. Now the fate of my argument turns on the weight that the word "legitimately" can support. At first glance, style seems to be one of the few things that a writer has total control over, and we quickly become impatient with an obscure writer precisely because it is within his power to write more clearly. But this intuition rests on a naive aesthetic, namely, that there is an ideal prose style--the one whose anatomy is dissected in writing manuals--able to accomodate any- thing worth saying and to which any right-minded author should aspire. Such a style clearly reveals the structure of the text so that the reader may easily identify its arguments in order to see how adequately they account for the phenomena in question. Writing manuals consequent- ly drive home the point that the stylistically acceptable article in philosophy differs from one in, say, history or psychology only in terms pf subject-matter and not in terms of genre. I call this aesthetic "naive" because it fails to recognize that the question of style arises not in trying to package a finished product of thought, but, rather, in actually producing the thought. Indeed, a method is nothing more than a canonical style, and a style no more than a personal method. (Needless to say, there is more similarity between schools of painting and schools of philosophy than meets the eye.) And a parallel relation can be drawn between what I shall call "legitimacy" and "authenticity". A method is "legitimate" if it accounts for its own presence; hence, the Cartesian method is legitimate insofar as part of practicing it involves showing why it is able to succeed as it does where other methods have failed. Likewise, a style is "authentic" if it reveals the presence of the author; hence, Descartes' style is authentic insofar as it offers some clues as to the uniqueness of his enterprise, or why his text should be written. (Notice that we have not taken sides on whether legitimacy or authenticity is ever fully realized.)

When a scientist senses the need to make his method legitimate (or his style authentic), he is responding to a distinctly philosophical impulse, for as a scientist his ability to reveal the structure of some well-defined set of phenomena is not problematic but expected. And he displays this competence insofar as his observations are amenable to the ideal prose style. Admittedly, the scientist may turn out to be guilty of error, but there is no a priori reason to think that he will be: The presumption of innocence is the presumption of access to reali- ty. In principle, science can reflect the structure of phenomena with- out distortion. The fact that one scientist rather than another may have the last word is irrelevant. What Wittgenstein claimed of philo- sophy can certainly be claimed of science's self-image. It leaves the world as it is. We shall explore in more detail how philosophical con- cerns for legitimacy transform this notion, as we now try to draw the ideal line between linguistics and the philosophy of language.

At first glance, the genesis of the philosophy of language at Oxford in the 1940s seems to fit Rorty's thesis that philosophy is proto- science. All of Ryle's and Austin's careful talk about "what we would

thing. Indeed, if the author took Heidegger's view of the history of philosophy seriously, then that would seem to be the only way he could legitimately write. Now the fate of my argument turns on the weight that the word "legitimately" can support. At first glance, style seems to be one of the few things that a writer has total control over, and we quickly become impatient with an obscure writer precisely because it is within his power to write more clearly. But this intuition rests on a naive aesthetic, namely, that there is an ideal prose style--the one whose anatomy is dissected in writing manuals--able to accomodate any- thing worth saying and to which any right-minded author should aspire. Such a style clearly reveals the structure of the text so that the reader may easily identify its arguments in order to see how adequately they account for the phenomena in question. Writing manuals consequent- ly drive home the point that the stylistically acceptable article in philosophy differs from one in, say, history or psychology only in terms pf subject-matter and not in terms of genre. I call this aesthetic "naive" because it fails to recognize that the question of style arises not in trying to package a finished product of thought, but, rather, in actually producing the thought. Indeed, a method is nothing more than a canonical style, and a style no more than a personal method. (Needless to say, there is more similarity between schools of painting and schools of philosophy than meets the eye.) And a parallel relation can be drawn between what I shall call "legitimacy" and "authenticity". A method is "legitimate" if it accounts for its own presence; hence, the Cartesian method is legitimate insofar as part of practicing it involves showing why it is able to succeed as it does where other methods have failed. Likewise, a style is "authentic" if it reveals the presence of the author; hence, Descartes' style is authentic insofar as it offers some clues as to the uniqueness of his enterprise, or why his text should be written. (Notice that we have not taken sides on whether legitimacy or authenticity is ever fully realized.)

When a scientist senses the need to make his method legitimate (or his style authentic), he is responding to a distinctly philosophical impulse, for as a scientist his ability to reveal the structure of some well-defined set of phenomena is not problematic but expected. And he displays this competence insofar as his observations are amenable to the ideal prose style. Admittedly, the scientist may turn out to be guilty of error, but there is no a priori reason to think that he will be: The presumption of innocence is the presumption of access to reali- ty. In principle, science can reflect the structure of phenomena with- out distortion. The fact that one scientist rather than another may have the last word is irrelevant. What Wittgenstein claimed of philo- sophy can certainly be claimed of science's self-image. It leaves the world as it is. We shall explore in more detail how philosophical con- cerns for legitimacy transform this notion, as we now try to draw the ideal line between linguistics and the philosophy of language.

At first glance, the genesis of the philosophy of language at Oxford in the 1940s seems to fit Rorty's thesis that philosophy is proto- science. All of Ryle's and Austin's careful talk about "what we would

thing. Indeed, if the author took Heidegger's view of the history of philosophy seriously, then that would seem to be the only way he could legitimately write. Now the fate of my argument turns on the weight that the word "legitimately" can support. At first glance, style seems to be one of the few things that a writer has total control over, and we quickly become impatient with an obscure writer precisely because it is within his power to write more clearly. But this intuition rests on a naive aesthetic, namely, that there is an ideal prose style--the one whose anatomy is dissected in writing manuals--able to accomodate any- thing worth saying and to which any right-minded author should aspire. Such a style clearly reveals the structure of the text so that the reader may easily identify its arguments in order to see how adequately they account for the phenomena in question. Writing manuals consequent- ly drive home the point that the stylistically acceptable article in philosophy differs from one in, say, history or psychology only in terms pf subject-matter and not in terms of genre. I call this aesthetic "naive" because it fails to recognize that the question of style arises not in trying to package a finished product of thought, but, rather, in actually producing the thought. Indeed, a method is nothing more than a canonical style, and a style no more than a personal method. (Needless to say, there is more similarity between schools of painting and schools of philosophy than meets the eye.) And a parallel relation can be drawn between what I shall call "legitimacy" and "authenticity". A method is "legitimate" if it accounts for its own presence; hence, the Cartesian method is legitimate insofar as part of practicing it involves showing why it is able to succeed as it does where other methods have failed. Likewise, a style is "authentic" if it reveals the presence of the author; hence, Descartes' style is authentic insofar as it offers some clues as to the uniqueness of his enterprise, or why his text should be written. (Notice that we have not taken sides on whether legitimacy or authenticity is ever fully realized.)

When a scientist senses the need to make his method legitimate (or his style authentic), he is responding to a distinctly philosophical impulse, for as a scientist his ability to reveal the structure of some well-defined set of phenomena is not problematic but expected. And he displays this competence insofar as his observations are amenable to the ideal prose style. Admittedly, the scientist may turn out to be guilty of error, but there is no a priori reason to think that he will be: The presumption of innocence is the presumption of access to reali- ty. In principle, science can reflect the structure of phenomena with- out distortion. The fact that one scientist rather than another may have the last word is irrelevant. What Wittgenstein claimed of philo- sophy can certainly be claimed of science's self-image. It leaves the world as it is. We shall explore in more detail how philosophical con- cerns for legitimacy transform this notion, as we now try to draw the ideal line between linguistics and the philosophy of language.

At first glance, the genesis of the philosophy of language at Oxford in the 1940s seems to fit Rorty's thesis that philosophy is proto- science. All of Ryle's and Austin's careful talk about "what we would

thing. Indeed, if the author took Heidegger's view of the history of philosophy seriously, then that would seem to be the only way he could legitimately write. Now the fate of my argument turns on the weight that the word "legitimately" can support. At first glance, style seems to be one of the few things that a writer has total control over, and we quickly become impatient with an obscure writer precisely because it is within his power to write more clearly. But this intuition rests on a naive aesthetic, namely, that there is an ideal prose style--the one whose anatomy is dissected in writing manuals--able to accomodate any- thing worth saying and to which any right-minded author should aspire. Such a style clearly reveals the structure of the text so that the reader may easily identify its arguments in order to see how adequately they account for the phenomena in question. Writing manuals consequent- ly drive home the point that the stylistically acceptable article in philosophy differs from one in, say, history or psychology only in terms pf subject-matter and not in terms of genre. I call this aesthetic "naive" because it fails to recognize that the question of style arises not in trying to package a finished product of thought, but, rather, in actually producing the thought. Indeed, a method is nothing more than a canonical style, and a style no more than a personal method. (Needless to say, there is more similarity between schools of painting and schools of philosophy than meets the eye.) And a parallel relation can be drawn between what I shall call "legitimacy" and "authenticity". A method is "legitimate" if it accounts for its own presence; hence, the Cartesian method is legitimate insofar as part of practicing it involves showing why it is able to succeed as it does where other methods have failed. Likewise, a style is "authentic" if it reveals the presence of the author; hence, Descartes' style is authentic insofar as it offers some clues as to the uniqueness of his enterprise, or why his text should be written. (Notice that we have not taken sides on whether legitimacy or authenticity is ever fully realized.)

When a scientist senses the need to make his method legitimate (or his style authentic), he is responding to a distinctly philosophical impulse, for as a scientist his ability to reveal the structure of some well-defined set of phenomena is not problematic but expected. And he displays this competence insofar as his observations are amenable to the ideal prose style. Admittedly, the scientist may turn out to be guilty of error, but there is no a priori reason to think that he will be: The presumption of innocence is the presumption of access to reali- ty. In principle, science can reflect the structure of phenomena with- out distortion. The fact that one scientist rather than another may have the last word is irrelevant. What Wittgenstein claimed of philo- sophy can certainly be claimed of science's self-image. It leaves the world as it is. We shall explore in more detail how philosophical con- cerns for legitimacy transform this notion, as we now try to draw the ideal line between linguistics and the philosophy of language.

At first glance, the genesis of the philosophy of language at Oxford in the 1940s seems to fit Rorty's thesis that philosophy is proto- science. All of Ryle's and Austin's careful talk about "what we would

thing. Indeed, if the author took Heidegger's view of the history of philosophy seriously, then that would seem to be the only way he could legitimately write. Now the fate of my argument turns on the weight that the word "legitimately" can support. At first glance, style seems to be one of the few things that a writer has total control over, and we quickly become impatient with an obscure writer precisely because it is within his power to write more clearly. But this intuition rests on a naive aesthetic, namely, that there is an ideal prose style--the one whose anatomy is dissected in writing manuals--able to accomodate any- thing worth saying and to which any right-minded author should aspire. Such a style clearly reveals the structure of the text so that the reader may easily identify its arguments in order to see how adequately they account for the phenomena in question. Writing manuals consequent- ly drive home the point that the stylistically acceptable article in philosophy differs from one in, say, history or psychology only in terms pf subject-matter and not in terms of genre. I call this aesthetic "naive" because it fails to recognize that the question of style arises not in trying to package a finished product of thought, but, rather, in actually producing the thought. Indeed, a method is nothing more than a canonical style, and a style no more than a personal method. (Needless to say, there is more similarity between schools of painting and schools of philosophy than meets the eye.) And a parallel relation can be drawn between what I shall call "legitimacy" and "authenticity". A method is "legitimate" if it accounts for its own presence; hence, the Cartesian method is legitimate insofar as part of practicing it involves showing why it is able to succeed as it does where other methods have failed. Likewise, a style is "authentic" if it reveals the presence of the author; hence, Descartes' style is authentic insofar as it offers some clues as to the uniqueness of his enterprise, or why his text should be written. (Notice that we have not taken sides on whether legitimacy or authenticity is ever fully realized.)

When a scientist senses the need to make his method legitimate (or his style authentic), he is responding to a distinctly philosophical impulse, for as a scientist his ability to reveal the structure of some well-defined set of phenomena is not problematic but expected. And he displays this competence insofar as his observations are amenable to the ideal prose style. Admittedly, the scientist may turn out to be guilty of error, but there is no a priori reason to think that he will be: The presumption of innocence is the presumption of access to reali- ty. In principle, science can reflect the structure of phenomena with- out distortion. The fact that one scientist rather than another may have the last word is irrelevant. What Wittgenstein claimed of philo- sophy can certainly be claimed of science's self-image. It leaves the world as it is. We shall explore in more detail how philosophical con- cerns for legitimacy transform this notion, as we now try to draw the ideal line between linguistics and the philosophy of language.

At first glance, the genesis of the philosophy of language at Oxford in the 1940s seems to fit Rorty's thesis that philosophy is proto- science. All of Ryle's and Austin's careful talk about "what we would

thing. Indeed, if the author took Heidegger's view of the history of philosophy seriously, then that would seem to be the only way he could legitimately write. Now the fate of my argument turns on the weight that the word "legitimately" can support. At first glance, style seems to be one of the few things that a writer has total control over, and we quickly become impatient with an obscure writer precisely because it is within his power to write more clearly. But this intuition rests on a naive aesthetic, namely, that there is an ideal prose style--the one whose anatomy is dissected in writing manuals--able to accomodate any- thing worth saying and to which any right-minded author should aspire. Such a style clearly reveals the structure of the text so that the reader may easily identify its arguments in order to see how adequately they account for the phenomena in question. Writing manuals consequent- ly drive home the point that the stylistically acceptable article in philosophy differs from one in, say, history or psychology only in terms pf subject-matter and not in terms of genre. I call this aesthetic "naive" because it fails to recognize that the question of style arises not in trying to package a finished product of thought, but, rather, in actually producing the thought. Indeed, a method is nothing more than a canonical style, and a style no more than a personal method. (Needless to say, there is more similarity between schools of painting and schools of philosophy than meets the eye.) And a parallel relation can be drawn between what I shall call "legitimacy" and "authenticity". A method is "legitimate" if it accounts for its own presence; hence, the Cartesian method is legitimate insofar as part of practicing it involves showing why it is able to succeed as it does where other methods have failed. Likewise, a style is "authentic" if it reveals the presence of the author; hence, Descartes' style is authentic insofar as it offers some clues as to the uniqueness of his enterprise, or why his text should be written. (Notice that we have not taken sides on whether legitimacy or authenticity is ever fully realized.)

When a scientist senses the need to make his method legitimate (or his style authentic), he is responding to a distinctly philosophical impulse, for as a scientist his ability to reveal the structure of some well-defined set of phenomena is not problematic but expected. And he displays this competence insofar as his observations are amenable to the ideal prose style. Admittedly, the scientist may turn out to be guilty of error, but there is no a priori reason to think that he will be: The presumption of innocence is the presumption of access to reali- ty. In principle, science can reflect the structure of phenomena with- out distortion. The fact that one scientist rather than another may have the last word is irrelevant. What Wittgenstein claimed of philo- sophy can certainly be claimed of science's self-image. It leaves the world as it is. We shall explore in more detail how philosophical con- cerns for legitimacy transform this notion, as we now try to draw the ideal line between linguistics and the philosophy of language.

At first glance, the genesis of the philosophy of language at Oxford in the 1940s seems to fit Rorty's thesis that philosophy is proto- science. All of Ryle's and Austin's careful talk about "what we would

thing. Indeed, if the author took Heidegger's view of the history of philosophy seriously, then that would seem to be the only way he could legitimately write. Now the fate of my argument turns on the weight that the word "legitimately" can support. At first glance, style seems to be one of the few things that a writer has total control over, and we quickly become impatient with an obscure writer precisely because it is within his power to write more clearly. But this intuition rests on a naive aesthetic, namely, that there is an ideal prose style--the one whose anatomy is dissected in writing manuals--able to accomodate any- thing worth saying and to which any right-minded author should aspire. Such a style clearly reveals the structure of the text so that the reader may easily identify its arguments in order to see how adequately they account for the phenomena in question. Writing manuals consequent- ly drive home the point that the stylistically acceptable article in philosophy differs from one in, say, history or psychology only in terms pf subject-matter and not in terms of genre. I call this aesthetic "naive" because it fails to recognize that the question of style arises not in trying to package a finished product of thought, but, rather, in actually producing the thought. Indeed, a method is nothing more than a canonical style, and a style no more than a personal method. (Needless to say, there is more similarity between schools of painting and schools of philosophy than meets the eye.) And a parallel relation can be drawn between what I shall call "legitimacy" and "authenticity". A method is "legitimate" if it accounts for its own presence; hence, the Cartesian method is legitimate insofar as part of practicing it involves showing why it is able to succeed as it does where other methods have failed. Likewise, a style is "authentic" if it reveals the presence of the author; hence, Descartes' style is authentic insofar as it offers some clues as to the uniqueness of his enterprise, or why his text should be written. (Notice that we have not taken sides on whether legitimacy or authenticity is ever fully realized.)

When a scientist senses the need to make his method legitimate (or his style authentic), he is responding to a distinctly philosophical impulse, for as a scientist his ability to reveal the structure of some well-defined set of phenomena is not problematic but expected. And he displays this competence insofar as his observations are amenable to the ideal prose style. Admittedly, the scientist may turn out to be guilty of error, but there is no a priori reason to think that he will be: The presumption of innocence is the presumption of access to reali- ty. In principle, science can reflect the structure of phenomena with- out distortion. The fact that one scientist rather than another may have the last word is irrelevant. What Wittgenstein claimed of philo- sophy can certainly be claimed of science's self-image. It leaves the world as it is. We shall explore in more detail how philosophical con- cerns for legitimacy transform this notion, as we now try to draw the ideal line between linguistics and the philosophy of language.

At first glance, the genesis of the philosophy of language at Oxford in the 1940s seems to fit Rorty's thesis that philosophy is proto- science. All of Ryle's and Austin's careful talk about "what we would

thing. Indeed, if the author took Heidegger's view of the history of philosophy seriously, then that would seem to be the only way he could legitimately write. Now the fate of my argument turns on the weight that the word "legitimately" can support. At first glance, style seems to be one of the few things that a writer has total control over, and we quickly become impatient with an obscure writer precisely because it is within his power to write more clearly. But this intuition rests on a naive aesthetic, namely, that there is an ideal prose style--the one whose anatomy is dissected in writing manuals--able to accomodate any- thing worth saying and to which any right-minded author should aspire. Such a style clearly reveals the structure of the text so that the reader may easily identify its arguments in order to see how adequately they account for the phenomena in question. Writing manuals consequent- ly drive home the point that the stylistically acceptable article in philosophy differs from one in, say, history or psychology only in terms pf subject-matter and not in terms of genre. I call this aesthetic "naive" because it fails to recognize that the question of style arises not in trying to package a finished product of thought, but, rather, in actually producing the thought. Indeed, a method is nothing more than a canonical style, and a style no more than a personal method. (Needless to say, there is more similarity between schools of painting and schools of philosophy than meets the eye.) And a parallel relation can be drawn between what I shall call "legitimacy" and "authenticity". A method is "legitimate" if it accounts for its own presence; hence, the Cartesian method is legitimate insofar as part of practicing it involves showing why it is able to succeed as it does where other methods have failed. Likewise, a style is "authentic" if it reveals the presence of the author; hence, Descartes' style is authentic insofar as it offers some clues as to the uniqueness of his enterprise, or why his text should be written. (Notice that we have not taken sides on whether legitimacy or authenticity is ever fully realized.)

When a scientist senses the need to make his method legitimate (or his style authentic), he is responding to a distinctly philosophical impulse, for as a scientist his ability to reveal the structure of some well-defined set of phenomena is not problematic but expected. And he displays this competence insofar as his observations are amenable to the ideal prose style. Admittedly, the scientist may turn out to be guilty of error, but there is no a priori reason to think that he will be: The presumption of innocence is the presumption of access to reali- ty. In principle, science can reflect the structure of phenomena with- out distortion. The fact that one scientist rather than another may have the last word is irrelevant. What Wittgenstein claimed of philo- sophy can certainly be claimed of science's self-image. It leaves the world as it is. We shall explore in more detail how philosophical con- cerns for legitimacy transform this notion, as we now try to draw the ideal line between linguistics and the philosophy of language.

At first glance, the genesis of the philosophy of language at Oxford in the 1940s seems to fit Rorty's thesis that philosophy is proto- science. All of Ryle's and Austin's careful talk about "what we would

thing. Indeed, if the author took Heidegger's view of the history of philosophy seriously, then that would seem to be the only way he could legitimately write. Now the fate of my argument turns on the weight that the word "legitimately" can support. At first glance, style seems to be one of the few things that a writer has total control over, and we quickly become impatient with an obscure writer precisely because it is within his power to write more clearly. But this intuition rests on a naive aesthetic, namely, that there is an ideal prose style--the one whose anatomy is dissected in writing manuals--able to accomodate any- thing worth saying and to which any right-minded author should aspire. Such a style clearly reveals the structure of the text so that the reader may easily identify its arguments in order to see how adequately they account for the phenomena in question. Writing manuals consequent- ly drive home the point that the stylistically acceptable article in philosophy differs from one in, say, history or psychology only in terms pf subject-matter and not in terms of genre. I call this aesthetic "naive" because it fails to recognize that the question of style arises not in trying to package a finished product of thought, but, rather, in actually producing the thought. Indeed, a method is nothing more than a canonical style, and a style no more than a personal method. (Needless to say, there is more similarity between schools of painting and schools of philosophy than meets the eye.) And a parallel relation can be drawn between what I shall call "legitimacy" and "authenticity". A method is "legitimate" if it accounts for its own presence; hence, the Cartesian method is legitimate insofar as part of practicing it involves showing why it is able to succeed as it does where other methods have failed. Likewise, a style is "authentic" if it reveals the presence of the author; hence, Descartes' style is authentic insofar as it offers some clues as to the uniqueness of his enterprise, or why his text should be written. (Notice that we have not taken sides on whether legitimacy or authenticity is ever fully realized.)

When a scientist senses the need to make his method legitimate (or his style authentic), he is responding to a distinctly philosophical impulse, for as a scientist his ability to reveal the structure of some well-defined set of phenomena is not problematic but expected. And he displays this competence insofar as his observations are amenable to the ideal prose style. Admittedly, the scientist may turn out to be guilty of error, but there is no a priori reason to think that he will be: The presumption of innocence is the presumption of access to reali- ty. In principle, science can reflect the structure of phenomena with- out distortion. The fact that one scientist rather than another may have the last word is irrelevant. What Wittgenstein claimed of philo- sophy can certainly be claimed of science's self-image. It leaves the world as it is. We shall explore in more detail how philosophical con- cerns for legitimacy transform this notion, as we now try to draw the ideal line between linguistics and the philosophy of language.

At first glance, the genesis of the philosophy of language at Oxford in the 1940s seems to fit Rorty's thesis that philosophy is proto- science. All of Ryle's and Austin's careful talk about "what we would

thing. Indeed, if the author took Heidegger's view of the history of philosophy seriously, then that would seem to be the only way he could legitimately write. Now the fate of my argument turns on the weight that the word "legitimately" can support. At first glance, style seems to be one of the few things that a writer has total control over, and we quickly become impatient with an obscure writer precisely because it is within his power to write more clearly. But this intuition rests on a naive aesthetic, namely, that there is an ideal prose style--the one whose anatomy is dissected in writing manuals--able to accomodate any- thing worth saying and to which any right-minded author should aspire. Such a style clearly reveals the structure of the text so that the reader may easily identify its arguments in order to see how adequately they account for the phenomena in question. Writing manuals consequent- ly drive home the point that the stylistically acceptable article in philosophy differs from one in, say, history or psychology only in terms pf subject-matter and not in terms of genre. I call this aesthetic "naive" because it fails to recognize that the question of style arises not in trying to package a finished product of thought, but, rather, in actually producing the thought. Indeed, a method is nothing more than a canonical style, and a style no more than a personal method. (Needless to say, there is more similarity between schools of painting and schools of philosophy than meets the eye.) And a parallel relation can be drawn between what I shall call "legitimacy" and "authenticity". A method is "legitimate" if it accounts for its own presence; hence, the Cartesian method is legitimate insofar as part of practicing it involves showing why it is able to succeed as it does where other methods have failed. Likewise, a style is "authentic" if it reveals the presence of the author; hence, Descartes' style is authentic insofar as it offers some clues as to the uniqueness of his enterprise, or why his text should be written. (Notice that we have not taken sides on whether legitimacy or authenticity is ever fully realized.)

When a scientist senses the need to make his method legitimate (or his style authentic), he is responding to a distinctly philosophical impulse, for as a scientist his ability to reveal the structure of some well-defined set of phenomena is not problematic but expected. And he displays this competence insofar as his observations are amenable to the ideal prose style. Admittedly, the scientist may turn out to be guilty of error, but there is no a priori reason to think that he will be: The presumption of innocence is the presumption of access to reali- ty. In principle, science can reflect the structure of phenomena with- out distortion. The fact that one scientist rather than another may have the last word is irrelevant. What Wittgenstein claimed of philo- sophy can certainly be claimed of science's self-image. It leaves the world as it is. We shall explore in more detail how philosophical con- cerns for legitimacy transform this notion, as we now try to draw the ideal line between linguistics and the philosophy of language.

At first glance, the genesis of the philosophy of language at Oxford in the 1940s seems to fit Rorty's thesis that philosophy is proto- science. All of Ryle's and Austin's careful talk about "what we would

thing. Indeed, if the author took Heidegger's view of the history of philosophy seriously, then that would seem to be the only way he could legitimately write. Now the fate of my argument turns on the weight that the word "legitimately" can support. At first glance, style seems to be one of the few things that a writer has total control over, and we quickly become impatient with an obscure writer precisely because it is within his power to write more clearly. But this intuition rests on a naive aesthetic, namely, that there is an ideal prose style--the one whose anatomy is dissected in writing manuals--able to accomodate any- thing worth saying and to which any right-minded author should aspire. Such a style clearly reveals the structure of the text so that the reader may easily identify its arguments in order to see how adequately they account for the phenomena in question. Writing manuals consequent- ly drive home the point that the stylistically acceptable article in philosophy differs from one in, say, history or psychology only in terms pf subject-matter and not in terms of genre. I call this aesthetic "naive" because it fails to recognize that the question of style arises not in trying to package a finished product of thought, but, rather, in actually producing the thought. Indeed, a method is nothing more than a canonical style, and a style no more than a personal method. (Needless to say, there is more similarity between schools of painting and schools of philosophy than meets the eye.) And a parallel relation can be drawn between what I shall call "legitimacy" and "authenticity". A method is "legitimate" if it accounts for its own presence; hence, the Cartesian method is legitimate insofar as part of practicing it involves showing why it is able to succeed as it does where other methods have failed. Likewise, a style is "authentic" if it reveals the presence of the author; hence, Descartes' style is authentic insofar as it offers some clues as to the uniqueness of his enterprise, or why his text should be written. (Notice that we have not taken sides on whether legitimacy or authenticity is ever fully realized.)

When a scientist senses the need to make his method legitimate (or his style authentic), he is responding to a distinctly philosophical impulse, for as a scientist his ability to reveal the structure of some well-defined set of phenomena is not problematic but expected. And he displays this competence insofar as his observations are amenable to the ideal prose style. Admittedly, the scientist may turn out to be guilty of error, but there is no a priori reason to think that he will be: The presumption of innocence is the presumption of access to reali- ty. In principle, science can reflect the structure of phenomena with- out distortion. The fact that one scientist rather than another may have the last word is irrelevant. What Wittgenstein claimed of philo- sophy can certainly be claimed of science's self-image. It leaves the world as it is. We shall explore in more detail how philosophical con- cerns for legitimacy transform this notion, as we now try to draw the ideal line between linguistics and the philosophy of language.

At first glance, the genesis of the philosophy of language at Oxford in the 1940s seems to fit Rorty's thesis that philosophy is proto- science. All of Ryle's and Austin's careful talk about "what we would

thing. Indeed, if the author took Heidegger's view of the history of philosophy seriously, then that would seem to be the only way he could legitimately write. Now the fate of my argument turns on the weight that the word "legitimately" can support. At first glance, style seems to be one of the few things that a writer has total control over, and we quickly become impatient with an obscure writer precisely because it is within his power to write more clearly. But this intuition rests on a naive aesthetic, namely, that there is an ideal prose style--the one whose anatomy is dissected in writing manuals--able to accomodate any- thing worth saying and to which any right-minded author should aspire. Such a style clearly reveals the structure of the text so that the reader may easily identify its arguments in order to see how adequately they account for the phenomena in question. Writing manuals consequent- ly drive home the point that the stylistically acceptable article in philosophy differs from one in, say, history or psychology only in terms pf subject-matter and not in terms of genre. I call this aesthetic "naive" because it fails to recognize that the question of style arises not in trying to package a finished product of thought, but, rather, in actually producing the thought. Indeed, a method is nothing more than a canonical style, and a style no more than a personal method. (Needless to say, there is more similarity between schools of painting and schools of philosophy than meets the eye.) And a parallel relation can be drawn between what I shall call "legitimacy" and "authenticity". A method is "legitimate" if it accounts for its own presence; hence, the Cartesian method is legitimate insofar as part of practicing it involves showing why it is able to succeed as it does where other methods have failed. Likewise, a style is "authentic" if it reveals the presence of the author; hence, Descartes' style is authentic insofar as it offers some clues as to the uniqueness of his enterprise, or why his text should be written. (Notice that we have not taken sides on whether legitimacy or authenticity is ever fully realized.)

When a scientist senses the need to make his method legitimate (or his style authentic), he is responding to a distinctly philosophical impulse, for as a scientist his ability to reveal the structure of some well-defined set of phenomena is not problematic but expected. And he displays this competence insofar as his observations are amenable to the ideal prose style. Admittedly, the scientist may turn out to be guilty of error, but there is no a priori reason to think that he will be: The presumption of innocence is the presumption of access to reali- ty. In principle, science can reflect the structure of phenomena with- out distortion. The fact that one scientist rather than another may have the last word is irrelevant. What Wittgenstein claimed of philo- sophy can certainly be claimed of science's self-image. It leaves the world as it is. We shall explore in more detail how philosophical con- cerns for legitimacy transform this notion, as we now try to draw the ideal line between linguistics and the philosophy of language.

At first glance, the genesis of the philosophy of language at Oxford in the 1940s seems to fit Rorty's thesis that philosophy is proto- science. All of Ryle's and Austin's careful talk about "what we would

thing. Indeed, if the author took Heidegger's view of the history of philosophy seriously, then that would seem to be the only way he could legitimately write. Now the fate of my argument turns on the weight that the word "legitimately" can support. At first glance, style seems to be one of the few things that a writer has total control over, and we quickly become impatient with an obscure writer precisely because it is within his power to write more clearly. But this intuition rests on a naive aesthetic, namely, that there is an ideal prose style--the one whose anatomy is dissected in writing manuals--able to accomodate any- thing worth saying and to which any right-minded author should aspire. Such a style clearly reveals the structure of the text so that the reader may easily identify its arguments in order to see how adequately they account for the phenomena in question. Writing manuals consequent- ly drive home the point that the stylistically acceptable article in philosophy differs from one in, say, history or psychology only in terms pf subject-matter and not in terms of genre. I call this aesthetic "naive" because it fails to recognize that the question of style arises not in trying to package a finished product of thought, but, rather, in actually producing the thought. Indeed, a method is nothing more than a canonical style, and a style no more than a personal method. (Needless to say, there is more similarity between schools of painting and schools of philosophy than meets the eye.) And a parallel relation can be drawn between what I shall call "legitimacy" and "authenticity". A method is "legitimate" if it accounts for its own presence; hence, the Cartesian method is legitimate insofar as part of practicing it involves showing why it is able to succeed as it does where other methods have failed. Likewise, a style is "authentic" if it reveals the presence of the author; hence, Descartes' style is authentic insofar as it offers some clues as to the uniqueness of his enterprise, or why his text should be written. (Notice that we have not taken sides on whether legitimacy or authenticity is ever fully realized.)

When a scientist senses the need to make his method legitimate (or his style authentic), he is responding to a distinctly philosophical impulse, for as a scientist his ability to reveal the structure of some well-defined set of phenomena is not problematic but expected. And he displays this competence insofar as his observations are amenable to the ideal prose style. Admittedly, the scientist may turn out to be guilty of error, but there is no a priori reason to think that he will be: The presumption of innocence is the presumption of access to reali- ty. In principle, science can reflect the structure of phenomena with- out distortion. The fact that one scientist rather than another may have the last word is irrelevant. What Wittgenstein claimed of philo- sophy can certainly be claimed of science's self-image. It leaves the world as it is. We shall explore in more detail how philosophical con- cerns for legitimacy transform this notion, as we now try to draw the ideal line between linguistics and the philosophy of language.

At first glance, the genesis of the philosophy of language at Oxford in the 1940s seems to fit Rorty's thesis that philosophy is proto- science. All of Ryle's and Austin's careful talk about "what we would

thing. Indeed, if the author took Heidegger's view of the history of philosophy seriously, then that would seem to be the only way he could legitimately write. Now the fate of my argument turns on the weight that the word "legitimately" can support. At first glance, style seems to be one of the few things that a writer has total control over, and we quickly become impatient with an obscure writer precisely because it is within his power to write more clearly. But this intuition rests on a naive aesthetic, namely, that there is an ideal prose style--the one whose anatomy is dissected in writing manuals--able to accomodate any- thing worth saying and to which any right-minded author should aspire. Such a style clearly reveals the structure of the text so that the reader may easily identify its arguments in order to see how adequately they account for the phenomena in question. Writing manuals consequent- ly drive home the point that the stylistically acceptable article in philosophy differs from one in, say, history or psychology only in terms pf subject-matter and not in terms of genre. I call this aesthetic "naive" because it fails to recognize that the question of style arises not in trying to package a finished product of thought, but, rather, in actually producing the thought. Indeed, a method is nothing more than a canonical style, and a style no more than a personal method. (Needless to say, there is more similarity between schools of painting and schools of philosophy than meets the eye.) And a parallel relation can be drawn between what I shall call "legitimacy" and "authenticity". A method is "legitimate" if it accounts for its own presence; hence, the Cartesian method is legitimate insofar as part of practicing it involves showing why it is able to succeed as it does where other methods have failed. Likewise, a style is "authentic" if it reveals the presence of the author; hence, Descartes' style is authentic insofar as it offers some clues as to the uniqueness of his enterprise, or why his text should be written. (Notice that we have not taken sides on whether legitimacy or authenticity is ever fully realized.)

When a scientist senses the need to make his method legitimate (or his style authentic), he is responding to a distinctly philosophical impulse, for as a scientist his ability to reveal the structure of some well-defined set of phenomena is not problematic but expected. And he displays this competence insofar as his observations are amenable to the ideal prose style. Admittedly, the scientist may turn out to be guilty of error, but there is no a priori reason to think that he will be: The presumption of innocence is the presumption of access to reali- ty. In principle, science can reflect the structure of phenomena with- out distortion. The fact that one scientist rather than another may have the last word is irrelevant. What Wittgenstein claimed of philo- sophy can certainly be claimed of science's self-image. It leaves the world as it is. We shall explore in more detail how philosophical con- cerns for legitimacy transform this notion, as we now try to draw the ideal line between linguistics and the philosophy of language.

At first glance, the genesis of the philosophy of language at Oxford in the 1940s seems to fit Rorty's thesis that philosophy is proto- science. All of Ryle's and Austin's careful talk about "what we would

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say" in certain discursive contexts mirrors the structure of our actual linguistic practices. And indeed, the analytical clarity with which they pursued their studies makes them exemplars for the writing manu- als. Why then shouldn't we just regard these Oxonian efforts as exer- cises in amateur linguistics? In fact, John Searle's subsequent re- formulation of ordinary language philosophy as "speech-act theory" is often considered a branch of linguistics. However, I think we can begin to understand why the philosophy of language should be kept dis- tinct by reflecting on a defense Ryle and Austin often invoked on be- half of their meticulous analyses. Contrary to what even the speakers themselves may think, the distinctions made in ordinary language are far subtler than those drawn by metaphysicians. The irony here is significant. If we assume that a science deals with a specified range of phenomena, while philosophy--if it does anything at all--deals with reality in general, then as a linguist I want to catalogue utterances, perhaps with the goal of constructing a grammar. In other words, I want to save the linguistic phenomena. But as a philosopher I want to save all the phenomena, and so when I turn to language, not only do I see the manifold structure of utterances, but I also see that the ut- terers themselves do not realize the complex nature of that structure. Thus, I need to account for the difference between the utterer's arti- culated and tacit knowledge of his language, and why I am able to arti- culate what is only tacit for him. Furthermore, I need to consider whether making the tacit articulate changes the nature of what is known. This is the question of whether analysis really leaves the world as it is. Only philosophically minded linguists--often those of a Marxist persuasion--have in fact taken up these issues. They require reflection on what it means to know something "adverbially", as Ryle would put it: to know detachedly, to know involvedly, as well as to know tacitly and to know articulately.

The fact that Marxist linguists have taken on these traditionally philosophical concerns as their own is itself interesting. I believe this has happened because such problems more easily permit the Marxist to vent his practical commitment, which is not to leave the world as it is, but to change it. Consider what distinguishes Austin's articu- lated knowledge of ordinary language from the ordinary man's tacit knowledge of it. The difference is that Austin is able to define the limits of correct linguistic practice, while the ordinary man is only able to speak correctly; the former can mention what the latter can only use. Whenever Austin intuits this difference, he passes from linguistics to the philosophy of language. The philosopher recognizes that the scientist has reduced something actual--a world whose limits are not known because one is immersed in it--to something possible-- a world whose limits are known because one, in some sense, has stepped outside it. The obvious advantage of knowing something as a possibil- ity is that it can be considered in relation to other possibilities. Once we know the rules of a language-game,we know what needs to be

changed (the rules) in order to play another game. In fact, I would

go so far as to assert that if there is a strategy unique to philoso- phy, it is just this reduction of the actual to the possible. Another

say" in certain discursive contexts mirrors the structure of our actual linguistic practices. And indeed, the analytical clarity with which they pursued their studies makes them exemplars for the writing manu- als. Why then shouldn't we just regard these Oxonian efforts as exer- cises in amateur linguistics? In fact, John Searle's subsequent re- formulation of ordinary language philosophy as "speech-act theory" is often considered a branch of linguistics. However, I think we can begin to understand why the philosophy of language should be kept dis- tinct by reflecting on a defense Ryle and Austin often invoked on be- half of their meticulous analyses. Contrary to what even the speakers themselves may think, the distinctions made in ordinary language are far subtler than those drawn by metaphysicians. The irony here is significant. If we assume that a science deals with a specified range of phenomena, while philosophy--if it does anything at all--deals with reality in general, then as a linguist I want to catalogue utterances, perhaps with the goal of constructing a grammar. In other words, I want to save the linguistic phenomena. But as a philosopher I want to save all the phenomena, and so when I turn to language, not only do I see the manifold structure of utterances, but I also see that the ut- terers themselves do not realize the complex nature of that structure. Thus, I need to account for the difference between the utterer's arti- culated and tacit knowledge of his language, and why I am able to arti- culate what is only tacit for him. Furthermore, I need to consider whether making the tacit articulate changes the nature of what is known. This is the question of whether analysis really leaves the world as it is. Only philosophically minded linguists--often those of a Marxist persuasion--have in fact taken up these issues. They require reflection on what it means to know something "adverbially", as Ryle would put it: to know detachedly, to know involvedly, as well as to know tacitly and to know articulately.

The fact that Marxist linguists have taken on these traditionally philosophical concerns as their own is itself interesting. I believe this has happened because such problems more easily permit the Marxist to vent his practical commitment, which is not to leave the world as it is, but to change it. Consider what distinguishes Austin's articu- lated knowledge of ordinary language from the ordinary man's tacit knowledge of it. The difference is that Austin is able to define the limits of correct linguistic practice, while the ordinary man is only able to speak correctly; the former can mention what the latter can only use. Whenever Austin intuits this difference, he passes from linguistics to the philosophy of language. The philosopher recognizes that the scientist has reduced something actual--a world whose limits are not known because one is immersed in it--to something possible-- a world whose limits are known because one, in some sense, has stepped outside it. The obvious advantage of knowing something as a possibil- ity is that it can be considered in relation to other possibilities. Once we know the rules of a language-game,we know what needs to be

changed (the rules) in order to play another game. In fact, I would

go so far as to assert that if there is a strategy unique to philoso- phy, it is just this reduction of the actual to the possible. Another

say" in certain discursive contexts mirrors the structure of our actual linguistic practices. And indeed, the analytical clarity with which they pursued their studies makes them exemplars for the writing manu- als. Why then shouldn't we just regard these Oxonian efforts as exer- cises in amateur linguistics? In fact, John Searle's subsequent re- formulation of ordinary language philosophy as "speech-act theory" is often considered a branch of linguistics. However, I think we can begin to understand why the philosophy of language should be kept dis- tinct by reflecting on a defense Ryle and Austin often invoked on be- half of their meticulous analyses. Contrary to what even the speakers themselves may think, the distinctions made in ordinary language are far subtler than those drawn by metaphysicians. The irony here is significant. If we assume that a science deals with a specified range of phenomena, while philosophy--if it does anything at all--deals with reality in general, then as a linguist I want to catalogue utterances, perhaps with the goal of constructing a grammar. In other words, I want to save the linguistic phenomena. But as a philosopher I want to save all the phenomena, and so when I turn to language, not only do I see the manifold structure of utterances, but I also see that the ut- terers themselves do not realize the complex nature of that structure. Thus, I need to account for the difference between the utterer's arti- culated and tacit knowledge of his language, and why I am able to arti- culate what is only tacit for him. Furthermore, I need to consider whether making the tacit articulate changes the nature of what is known. This is the question of whether analysis really leaves the world as it is. Only philosophically minded linguists--often those of a Marxist persuasion--have in fact taken up these issues. They require reflection on what it means to know something "adverbially", as Ryle would put it: to know detachedly, to know involvedly, as well as to know tacitly and to know articulately.

The fact that Marxist linguists have taken on these traditionally philosophical concerns as their own is itself interesting. I believe this has happened because such problems more easily permit the Marxist to vent his practical commitment, which is not to leave the world as it is, but to change it. Consider what distinguishes Austin's articu- lated knowledge of ordinary language from the ordinary man's tacit knowledge of it. The difference is that Austin is able to define the limits of correct linguistic practice, while the ordinary man is only able to speak correctly; the former can mention what the latter can only use. Whenever Austin intuits this difference, he passes from linguistics to the philosophy of language. The philosopher recognizes that the scientist has reduced something actual--a world whose limits are not known because one is immersed in it--to something possible-- a world whose limits are known because one, in some sense, has stepped outside it. The obvious advantage of knowing something as a possibil- ity is that it can be considered in relation to other possibilities. Once we know the rules of a language-game,we know what needs to be

changed (the rules) in order to play another game. In fact, I would

go so far as to assert that if there is a strategy unique to philoso- phy, it is just this reduction of the actual to the possible. Another

say" in certain discursive contexts mirrors the structure of our actual linguistic practices. And indeed, the analytical clarity with which they pursued their studies makes them exemplars for the writing manu- als. Why then shouldn't we just regard these Oxonian efforts as exer- cises in amateur linguistics? In fact, John Searle's subsequent re- formulation of ordinary language philosophy as "speech-act theory" is often considered a branch of linguistics. However, I think we can begin to understand why the philosophy of language should be kept dis- tinct by reflecting on a defense Ryle and Austin often invoked on be- half of their meticulous analyses. Contrary to what even the speakers themselves may think, the distinctions made in ordinary language are far subtler than those drawn by metaphysicians. The irony here is significant. If we assume that a science deals with a specified range of phenomena, while philosophy--if it does anything at all--deals with reality in general, then as a linguist I want to catalogue utterances, perhaps with the goal of constructing a grammar. In other words, I want to save the linguistic phenomena. But as a philosopher I want to save all the phenomena, and so when I turn to language, not only do I see the manifold structure of utterances, but I also see that the ut- terers themselves do not realize the complex nature of that structure. Thus, I need to account for the difference between the utterer's arti- culated and tacit knowledge of his language, and why I am able to arti- culate what is only tacit for him. Furthermore, I need to consider whether making the tacit articulate changes the nature of what is known. This is the question of whether analysis really leaves the world as it is. Only philosophically minded linguists--often those of a Marxist persuasion--have in fact taken up these issues. They require reflection on what it means to know something "adverbially", as Ryle would put it: to know detachedly, to know involvedly, as well as to know tacitly and to know articulately.

The fact that Marxist linguists have taken on these traditionally philosophical concerns as their own is itself interesting. I believe this has happened because such problems more easily permit the Marxist to vent his practical commitment, which is not to leave the world as it is, but to change it. Consider what distinguishes Austin's articu- lated knowledge of ordinary language from the ordinary man's tacit knowledge of it. The difference is that Austin is able to define the limits of correct linguistic practice, while the ordinary man is only able to speak correctly; the former can mention what the latter can only use. Whenever Austin intuits this difference, he passes from linguistics to the philosophy of language. The philosopher recognizes that the scientist has reduced something actual--a world whose limits are not known because one is immersed in it--to something possible-- a world whose limits are known because one, in some sense, has stepped outside it. The obvious advantage of knowing something as a possibil- ity is that it can be considered in relation to other possibilities. Once we know the rules of a language-game,we know what needs to be

changed (the rules) in order to play another game. In fact, I would

go so far as to assert that if there is a strategy unique to philoso- phy, it is just this reduction of the actual to the possible. Another

say" in certain discursive contexts mirrors the structure of our actual linguistic practices. And indeed, the analytical clarity with which they pursued their studies makes them exemplars for the writing manu- als. Why then shouldn't we just regard these Oxonian efforts as exer- cises in amateur linguistics? In fact, John Searle's subsequent re- formulation of ordinary language philosophy as "speech-act theory" is often considered a branch of linguistics. However, I think we can begin to understand why the philosophy of language should be kept dis- tinct by reflecting on a defense Ryle and Austin often invoked on be- half of their meticulous analyses. Contrary to what even the speakers themselves may think, the distinctions made in ordinary language are far subtler than those drawn by metaphysicians. The irony here is significant. If we assume that a science deals with a specified range of phenomena, while philosophy--if it does anything at all--deals with reality in general, then as a linguist I want to catalogue utterances, perhaps with the goal of constructing a grammar. In other words, I want to save the linguistic phenomena. But as a philosopher I want to save all the phenomena, and so when I turn to language, not only do I see the manifold structure of utterances, but I also see that the ut- terers themselves do not realize the complex nature of that structure. Thus, I need to account for the difference between the utterer's arti- culated and tacit knowledge of his language, and why I am able to arti- culate what is only tacit for him. Furthermore, I need to consider whether making the tacit articulate changes the nature of what is known. This is the question of whether analysis really leaves the world as it is. Only philosophically minded linguists--often those of a Marxist persuasion--have in fact taken up these issues. They require reflection on what it means to know something "adverbially", as Ryle would put it: to know detachedly, to know involvedly, as well as to know tacitly and to know articulately.

The fact that Marxist linguists have taken on these traditionally philosophical concerns as their own is itself interesting. I believe this has happened because such problems more easily permit the Marxist to vent his practical commitment, which is not to leave the world as it is, but to change it. Consider what distinguishes Austin's articu- lated knowledge of ordinary language from the ordinary man's tacit knowledge of it. The difference is that Austin is able to define the limits of correct linguistic practice, while the ordinary man is only able to speak correctly; the former can mention what the latter can only use. Whenever Austin intuits this difference, he passes from linguistics to the philosophy of language. The philosopher recognizes that the scientist has reduced something actual--a world whose limits are not known because one is immersed in it--to something possible-- a world whose limits are known because one, in some sense, has stepped outside it. The obvious advantage of knowing something as a possibil- ity is that it can be considered in relation to other possibilities. Once we know the rules of a language-game,we know what needs to be

changed (the rules) in order to play another game. In fact, I would

go so far as to assert that if there is a strategy unique to philoso- phy, it is just this reduction of the actual to the possible. Another

say" in certain discursive contexts mirrors the structure of our actual linguistic practices. And indeed, the analytical clarity with which they pursued their studies makes them exemplars for the writing manu- als. Why then shouldn't we just regard these Oxonian efforts as exer- cises in amateur linguistics? In fact, John Searle's subsequent re- formulation of ordinary language philosophy as "speech-act theory" is often considered a branch of linguistics. However, I think we can begin to understand why the philosophy of language should be kept dis- tinct by reflecting on a defense Ryle and Austin often invoked on be- half of their meticulous analyses. Contrary to what even the speakers themselves may think, the distinctions made in ordinary language are far subtler than those drawn by metaphysicians. The irony here is significant. If we assume that a science deals with a specified range of phenomena, while philosophy--if it does anything at all--deals with reality in general, then as a linguist I want to catalogue utterances, perhaps with the goal of constructing a grammar. In other words, I want to save the linguistic phenomena. But as a philosopher I want to save all the phenomena, and so when I turn to language, not only do I see the manifold structure of utterances, but I also see that the ut- terers themselves do not realize the complex nature of that structure. Thus, I need to account for the difference between the utterer's arti- culated and tacit knowledge of his language, and why I am able to arti- culate what is only tacit for him. Furthermore, I need to consider whether making the tacit articulate changes the nature of what is known. This is the question of whether analysis really leaves the world as it is. Only philosophically minded linguists--often those of a Marxist persuasion--have in fact taken up these issues. They require reflection on what it means to know something "adverbially", as Ryle would put it: to know detachedly, to know involvedly, as well as to know tacitly and to know articulately.

The fact that Marxist linguists have taken on these traditionally philosophical concerns as their own is itself interesting. I believe this has happened because such problems more easily permit the Marxist to vent his practical commitment, which is not to leave the world as it is, but to change it. Consider what distinguishes Austin's articu- lated knowledge of ordinary language from the ordinary man's tacit knowledge of it. The difference is that Austin is able to define the limits of correct linguistic practice, while the ordinary man is only able to speak correctly; the former can mention what the latter can only use. Whenever Austin intuits this difference, he passes from linguistics to the philosophy of language. The philosopher recognizes that the scientist has reduced something actual--a world whose limits are not known because one is immersed in it--to something possible-- a world whose limits are known because one, in some sense, has stepped outside it. The obvious advantage of knowing something as a possibil- ity is that it can be considered in relation to other possibilities. Once we know the rules of a language-game,we know what needs to be

changed (the rules) in order to play another game. In fact, I would

go so far as to assert that if there is a strategy unique to philoso- phy, it is just this reduction of the actual to the possible. Another

say" in certain discursive contexts mirrors the structure of our actual linguistic practices. And indeed, the analytical clarity with which they pursued their studies makes them exemplars for the writing manu- als. Why then shouldn't we just regard these Oxonian efforts as exer- cises in amateur linguistics? In fact, John Searle's subsequent re- formulation of ordinary language philosophy as "speech-act theory" is often considered a branch of linguistics. However, I think we can begin to understand why the philosophy of language should be kept dis- tinct by reflecting on a defense Ryle and Austin often invoked on be- half of their meticulous analyses. Contrary to what even the speakers themselves may think, the distinctions made in ordinary language are far subtler than those drawn by metaphysicians. The irony here is significant. If we assume that a science deals with a specified range of phenomena, while philosophy--if it does anything at all--deals with reality in general, then as a linguist I want to catalogue utterances, perhaps with the goal of constructing a grammar. In other words, I want to save the linguistic phenomena. But as a philosopher I want to save all the phenomena, and so when I turn to language, not only do I see the manifold structure of utterances, but I also see that the ut- terers themselves do not realize the complex nature of that structure. Thus, I need to account for the difference between the utterer's arti- culated and tacit knowledge of his language, and why I am able to arti- culate what is only tacit for him. Furthermore, I need to consider whether making the tacit articulate changes the nature of what is known. This is the question of whether analysis really leaves the world as it is. Only philosophically minded linguists--often those of a Marxist persuasion--have in fact taken up these issues. They require reflection on what it means to know something "adverbially", as Ryle would put it: to know detachedly, to know involvedly, as well as to know tacitly and to know articulately.

The fact that Marxist linguists have taken on these traditionally philosophical concerns as their own is itself interesting. I believe this has happened because such problems more easily permit the Marxist to vent his practical commitment, which is not to leave the world as it is, but to change it. Consider what distinguishes Austin's articu- lated knowledge of ordinary language from the ordinary man's tacit knowledge of it. The difference is that Austin is able to define the limits of correct linguistic practice, while the ordinary man is only able to speak correctly; the former can mention what the latter can only use. Whenever Austin intuits this difference, he passes from linguistics to the philosophy of language. The philosopher recognizes that the scientist has reduced something actual--a world whose limits are not known because one is immersed in it--to something possible-- a world whose limits are known because one, in some sense, has stepped outside it. The obvious advantage of knowing something as a possibil- ity is that it can be considered in relation to other possibilities. Once we know the rules of a language-game,we know what needs to be

changed (the rules) in order to play another game. In fact, I would

go so far as to assert that if there is a strategy unique to philoso- phy, it is just this reduction of the actual to the possible. Another

say" in certain discursive contexts mirrors the structure of our actual linguistic practices. And indeed, the analytical clarity with which they pursued their studies makes them exemplars for the writing manu- als. Why then shouldn't we just regard these Oxonian efforts as exer- cises in amateur linguistics? In fact, John Searle's subsequent re- formulation of ordinary language philosophy as "speech-act theory" is often considered a branch of linguistics. However, I think we can begin to understand why the philosophy of language should be kept dis- tinct by reflecting on a defense Ryle and Austin often invoked on be- half of their meticulous analyses. Contrary to what even the speakers themselves may think, the distinctions made in ordinary language are far subtler than those drawn by metaphysicians. The irony here is significant. If we assume that a science deals with a specified range of phenomena, while philosophy--if it does anything at all--deals with reality in general, then as a linguist I want to catalogue utterances, perhaps with the goal of constructing a grammar. In other words, I want to save the linguistic phenomena. But as a philosopher I want to save all the phenomena, and so when I turn to language, not only do I see the manifold structure of utterances, but I also see that the ut- terers themselves do not realize the complex nature of that structure. Thus, I need to account for the difference between the utterer's arti- culated and tacit knowledge of his language, and why I am able to arti- culate what is only tacit for him. Furthermore, I need to consider whether making the tacit articulate changes the nature of what is known. This is the question of whether analysis really leaves the world as it is. Only philosophically minded linguists--often those of a Marxist persuasion--have in fact taken up these issues. They require reflection on what it means to know something "adverbially", as Ryle would put it: to know detachedly, to know involvedly, as well as to know tacitly and to know articulately.

The fact that Marxist linguists have taken on these traditionally philosophical concerns as their own is itself interesting. I believe this has happened because such problems more easily permit the Marxist to vent his practical commitment, which is not to leave the world as it is, but to change it. Consider what distinguishes Austin's articu- lated knowledge of ordinary language from the ordinary man's tacit knowledge of it. The difference is that Austin is able to define the limits of correct linguistic practice, while the ordinary man is only able to speak correctly; the former can mention what the latter can only use. Whenever Austin intuits this difference, he passes from linguistics to the philosophy of language. The philosopher recognizes that the scientist has reduced something actual--a world whose limits are not known because one is immersed in it--to something possible-- a world whose limits are known because one, in some sense, has stepped outside it. The obvious advantage of knowing something as a possibil- ity is that it can be considered in relation to other possibilities. Once we know the rules of a language-game,we know what needs to be

changed (the rules) in order to play another game. In fact, I would

go so far as to assert that if there is a strategy unique to philoso- phy, it is just this reduction of the actual to the possible. Another

say" in certain discursive contexts mirrors the structure of our actual linguistic practices. And indeed, the analytical clarity with which they pursued their studies makes them exemplars for the writing manu- als. Why then shouldn't we just regard these Oxonian efforts as exer- cises in amateur linguistics? In fact, John Searle's subsequent re- formulation of ordinary language philosophy as "speech-act theory" is often considered a branch of linguistics. However, I think we can begin to understand why the philosophy of language should be kept dis- tinct by reflecting on a defense Ryle and Austin often invoked on be- half of their meticulous analyses. Contrary to what even the speakers themselves may think, the distinctions made in ordinary language are far subtler than those drawn by metaphysicians. The irony here is significant. If we assume that a science deals with a specified range of phenomena, while philosophy--if it does anything at all--deals with reality in general, then as a linguist I want to catalogue utterances, perhaps with the goal of constructing a grammar. In other words, I want to save the linguistic phenomena. But as a philosopher I want to save all the phenomena, and so when I turn to language, not only do I see the manifold structure of utterances, but I also see that the ut- terers themselves do not realize the complex nature of that structure. Thus, I need to account for the difference between the utterer's arti- culated and tacit knowledge of his language, and why I am able to arti- culate what is only tacit for him. Furthermore, I need to consider whether making the tacit articulate changes the nature of what is known. This is the question of whether analysis really leaves the world as it is. Only philosophically minded linguists--often those of a Marxist persuasion--have in fact taken up these issues. They require reflection on what it means to know something "adverbially", as Ryle would put it: to know detachedly, to know involvedly, as well as to know tacitly and to know articulately.

The fact that Marxist linguists have taken on these traditionally philosophical concerns as their own is itself interesting. I believe this has happened because such problems more easily permit the Marxist to vent his practical commitment, which is not to leave the world as it is, but to change it. Consider what distinguishes Austin's articu- lated knowledge of ordinary language from the ordinary man's tacit knowledge of it. The difference is that Austin is able to define the limits of correct linguistic practice, while the ordinary man is only able to speak correctly; the former can mention what the latter can only use. Whenever Austin intuits this difference, he passes from linguistics to the philosophy of language. The philosopher recognizes that the scientist has reduced something actual--a world whose limits are not known because one is immersed in it--to something possible-- a world whose limits are known because one, in some sense, has stepped outside it. The obvious advantage of knowing something as a possibil- ity is that it can be considered in relation to other possibilities. Once we know the rules of a language-game,we know what needs to be

changed (the rules) in order to play another game. In fact, I would

go so far as to assert that if there is a strategy unique to philoso- phy, it is just this reduction of the actual to the possible. Another

say" in certain discursive contexts mirrors the structure of our actual linguistic practices. And indeed, the analytical clarity with which they pursued their studies makes them exemplars for the writing manu- als. Why then shouldn't we just regard these Oxonian efforts as exer- cises in amateur linguistics? In fact, John Searle's subsequent re- formulation of ordinary language philosophy as "speech-act theory" is often considered a branch of linguistics. However, I think we can begin to understand why the philosophy of language should be kept dis- tinct by reflecting on a defense Ryle and Austin often invoked on be- half of their meticulous analyses. Contrary to what even the speakers themselves may think, the distinctions made in ordinary language are far subtler than those drawn by metaphysicians. The irony here is significant. If we assume that a science deals with a specified range of phenomena, while philosophy--if it does anything at all--deals with reality in general, then as a linguist I want to catalogue utterances, perhaps with the goal of constructing a grammar. In other words, I want to save the linguistic phenomena. But as a philosopher I want to save all the phenomena, and so when I turn to language, not only do I see the manifold structure of utterances, but I also see that the ut- terers themselves do not realize the complex nature of that structure. Thus, I need to account for the difference between the utterer's arti- culated and tacit knowledge of his language, and why I am able to arti- culate what is only tacit for him. Furthermore, I need to consider whether making the tacit articulate changes the nature of what is known. This is the question of whether analysis really leaves the world as it is. Only philosophically minded linguists--often those of a Marxist persuasion--have in fact taken up these issues. They require reflection on what it means to know something "adverbially", as Ryle would put it: to know detachedly, to know involvedly, as well as to know tacitly and to know articulately.

The fact that Marxist linguists have taken on these traditionally philosophical concerns as their own is itself interesting. I believe this has happened because such problems more easily permit the Marxist to vent his practical commitment, which is not to leave the world as it is, but to change it. Consider what distinguishes Austin's articu- lated knowledge of ordinary language from the ordinary man's tacit knowledge of it. The difference is that Austin is able to define the limits of correct linguistic practice, while the ordinary man is only able to speak correctly; the former can mention what the latter can only use. Whenever Austin intuits this difference, he passes from linguistics to the philosophy of language. The philosopher recognizes that the scientist has reduced something actual--a world whose limits are not known because one is immersed in it--to something possible-- a world whose limits are known because one, in some sense, has stepped outside it. The obvious advantage of knowing something as a possibil- ity is that it can be considered in relation to other possibilities. Once we know the rules of a language-game,we know what needs to be

changed (the rules) in order to play another game. In fact, I would

go so far as to assert that if there is a strategy unique to philoso- phy, it is just this reduction of the actual to the possible. Another

say" in certain discursive contexts mirrors the structure of our actual linguistic practices. And indeed, the analytical clarity with which they pursued their studies makes them exemplars for the writing manu- als. Why then shouldn't we just regard these Oxonian efforts as exer- cises in amateur linguistics? In fact, John Searle's subsequent re- formulation of ordinary language philosophy as "speech-act theory" is often considered a branch of linguistics. However, I think we can begin to understand why the philosophy of language should be kept dis- tinct by reflecting on a defense Ryle and Austin often invoked on be- half of their meticulous analyses. Contrary to what even the speakers themselves may think, the distinctions made in ordinary language are far subtler than those drawn by metaphysicians. The irony here is significant. If we assume that a science deals with a specified range of phenomena, while philosophy--if it does anything at all--deals with reality in general, then as a linguist I want to catalogue utterances, perhaps with the goal of constructing a grammar. In other words, I want to save the linguistic phenomena. But as a philosopher I want to save all the phenomena, and so when I turn to language, not only do I see the manifold structure of utterances, but I also see that the ut- terers themselves do not realize the complex nature of that structure. Thus, I need to account for the difference between the utterer's arti- culated and tacit knowledge of his language, and why I am able to arti- culate what is only tacit for him. Furthermore, I need to consider whether making the tacit articulate changes the nature of what is known. This is the question of whether analysis really leaves the world as it is. Only philosophically minded linguists--often those of a Marxist persuasion--have in fact taken up these issues. They require reflection on what it means to know something "adverbially", as Ryle would put it: to know detachedly, to know involvedly, as well as to know tacitly and to know articulately.

The fact that Marxist linguists have taken on these traditionally philosophical concerns as their own is itself interesting. I believe this has happened because such problems more easily permit the Marxist to vent his practical commitment, which is not to leave the world as it is, but to change it. Consider what distinguishes Austin's articu- lated knowledge of ordinary language from the ordinary man's tacit knowledge of it. The difference is that Austin is able to define the limits of correct linguistic practice, while the ordinary man is only able to speak correctly; the former can mention what the latter can only use. Whenever Austin intuits this difference, he passes from linguistics to the philosophy of language. The philosopher recognizes that the scientist has reduced something actual--a world whose limits are not known because one is immersed in it--to something possible-- a world whose limits are known because one, in some sense, has stepped outside it. The obvious advantage of knowing something as a possibil- ity is that it can be considered in relation to other possibilities. Once we know the rules of a language-game,we know what needs to be

changed (the rules) in order to play another game. In fact, I would

go so far as to assert that if there is a strategy unique to philoso- phy, it is just this reduction of the actual to the possible. Another

say" in certain discursive contexts mirrors the structure of our actual linguistic practices. And indeed, the analytical clarity with which they pursued their studies makes them exemplars for the writing manu- als. Why then shouldn't we just regard these Oxonian efforts as exer- cises in amateur linguistics? In fact, John Searle's subsequent re- formulation of ordinary language philosophy as "speech-act theory" is often considered a branch of linguistics. However, I think we can begin to understand why the philosophy of language should be kept dis- tinct by reflecting on a defense Ryle and Austin often invoked on be- half of their meticulous analyses. Contrary to what even the speakers themselves may think, the distinctions made in ordinary language are far subtler than those drawn by metaphysicians. The irony here is significant. If we assume that a science deals with a specified range of phenomena, while philosophy--if it does anything at all--deals with reality in general, then as a linguist I want to catalogue utterances, perhaps with the goal of constructing a grammar. In other words, I want to save the linguistic phenomena. But as a philosopher I want to save all the phenomena, and so when I turn to language, not only do I see the manifold structure of utterances, but I also see that the ut- terers themselves do not realize the complex nature of that structure. Thus, I need to account for the difference between the utterer's arti- culated and tacit knowledge of his language, and why I am able to arti- culate what is only tacit for him. Furthermore, I need to consider whether making the tacit articulate changes the nature of what is known. This is the question of whether analysis really leaves the world as it is. Only philosophically minded linguists--often those of a Marxist persuasion--have in fact taken up these issues. They require reflection on what it means to know something "adverbially", as Ryle would put it: to know detachedly, to know involvedly, as well as to know tacitly and to know articulately.

The fact that Marxist linguists have taken on these traditionally philosophical concerns as their own is itself interesting. I believe this has happened because such problems more easily permit the Marxist to vent his practical commitment, which is not to leave the world as it is, but to change it. Consider what distinguishes Austin's articu- lated knowledge of ordinary language from the ordinary man's tacit knowledge of it. The difference is that Austin is able to define the limits of correct linguistic practice, while the ordinary man is only able to speak correctly; the former can mention what the latter can only use. Whenever Austin intuits this difference, he passes from linguistics to the philosophy of language. The philosopher recognizes that the scientist has reduced something actual--a world whose limits are not known because one is immersed in it--to something possible-- a world whose limits are known because one, in some sense, has stepped outside it. The obvious advantage of knowing something as a possibil- ity is that it can be considered in relation to other possibilities. Once we know the rules of a language-game,we know what needs to be

changed (the rules) in order to play another game. In fact, I would

go so far as to assert that if there is a strategy unique to philoso- phy, it is just this reduction of the actual to the possible. Another

say" in certain discursive contexts mirrors the structure of our actual linguistic practices. And indeed, the analytical clarity with which they pursued their studies makes them exemplars for the writing manu- als. Why then shouldn't we just regard these Oxonian efforts as exer- cises in amateur linguistics? In fact, John Searle's subsequent re- formulation of ordinary language philosophy as "speech-act theory" is often considered a branch of linguistics. However, I think we can begin to understand why the philosophy of language should be kept dis- tinct by reflecting on a defense Ryle and Austin often invoked on be- half of their meticulous analyses. Contrary to what even the speakers themselves may think, the distinctions made in ordinary language are far subtler than those drawn by metaphysicians. The irony here is significant. If we assume that a science deals with a specified range of phenomena, while philosophy--if it does anything at all--deals with reality in general, then as a linguist I want to catalogue utterances, perhaps with the goal of constructing a grammar. In other words, I want to save the linguistic phenomena. But as a philosopher I want to save all the phenomena, and so when I turn to language, not only do I see the manifold structure of utterances, but I also see that the ut- terers themselves do not realize the complex nature of that structure. Thus, I need to account for the difference between the utterer's arti- culated and tacit knowledge of his language, and why I am able to arti- culate what is only tacit for him. Furthermore, I need to consider whether making the tacit articulate changes the nature of what is known. This is the question of whether analysis really leaves the world as it is. Only philosophically minded linguists--often those of a Marxist persuasion--have in fact taken up these issues. They require reflection on what it means to know something "adverbially", as Ryle would put it: to know detachedly, to know involvedly, as well as to know tacitly and to know articulately.

The fact that Marxist linguists have taken on these traditionally philosophical concerns as their own is itself interesting. I believe this has happened because such problems more easily permit the Marxist to vent his practical commitment, which is not to leave the world as it is, but to change it. Consider what distinguishes Austin's articu- lated knowledge of ordinary language from the ordinary man's tacit knowledge of it. The difference is that Austin is able to define the limits of correct linguistic practice, while the ordinary man is only able to speak correctly; the former can mention what the latter can only use. Whenever Austin intuits this difference, he passes from linguistics to the philosophy of language. The philosopher recognizes that the scientist has reduced something actual--a world whose limits are not known because one is immersed in it--to something possible-- a world whose limits are known because one, in some sense, has stepped outside it. The obvious advantage of knowing something as a possibil- ity is that it can be considered in relation to other possibilities. Once we know the rules of a language-game,we know what needs to be

changed (the rules) in order to play another game. In fact, I would

go so far as to assert that if there is a strategy unique to philoso- phy, it is just this reduction of the actual to the possible. Another

say" in certain discursive contexts mirrors the structure of our actual linguistic practices. And indeed, the analytical clarity with which they pursued their studies makes them exemplars for the writing manu- als. Why then shouldn't we just regard these Oxonian efforts as exer- cises in amateur linguistics? In fact, John Searle's subsequent re- formulation of ordinary language philosophy as "speech-act theory" is often considered a branch of linguistics. However, I think we can begin to understand why the philosophy of language should be kept dis- tinct by reflecting on a defense Ryle and Austin often invoked on be- half of their meticulous analyses. Contrary to what even the speakers themselves may think, the distinctions made in ordinary language are far subtler than those drawn by metaphysicians. The irony here is significant. If we assume that a science deals with a specified range of phenomena, while philosophy--if it does anything at all--deals with reality in general, then as a linguist I want to catalogue utterances, perhaps with the goal of constructing a grammar. In other words, I want to save the linguistic phenomena. But as a philosopher I want to save all the phenomena, and so when I turn to language, not only do I see the manifold structure of utterances, but I also see that the ut- terers themselves do not realize the complex nature of that structure. Thus, I need to account for the difference between the utterer's arti- culated and tacit knowledge of his language, and why I am able to arti- culate what is only tacit for him. Furthermore, I need to consider whether making the tacit articulate changes the nature of what is known. This is the question of whether analysis really leaves the world as it is. Only philosophically minded linguists--often those of a Marxist persuasion--have in fact taken up these issues. They require reflection on what it means to know something "adverbially", as Ryle would put it: to know detachedly, to know involvedly, as well as to know tacitly and to know articulately.

The fact that Marxist linguists have taken on these traditionally philosophical concerns as their own is itself interesting. I believe this has happened because such problems more easily permit the Marxist to vent his practical commitment, which is not to leave the world as it is, but to change it. Consider what distinguishes Austin's articu- lated knowledge of ordinary language from the ordinary man's tacit knowledge of it. The difference is that Austin is able to define the limits of correct linguistic practice, while the ordinary man is only able to speak correctly; the former can mention what the latter can only use. Whenever Austin intuits this difference, he passes from linguistics to the philosophy of language. The philosopher recognizes that the scientist has reduced something actual--a world whose limits are not known because one is immersed in it--to something possible-- a world whose limits are known because one, in some sense, has stepped outside it. The obvious advantage of knowing something as a possibil- ity is that it can be considered in relation to other possibilities. Once we know the rules of a language-game,we know what needs to be

changed (the rules) in order to play another game. In fact, I would

go so far as to assert that if there is a strategy unique to philoso- phy, it is just this reduction of the actual to the possible. Another

say" in certain discursive contexts mirrors the structure of our actual linguistic practices. And indeed, the analytical clarity with which they pursued their studies makes them exemplars for the writing manu- als. Why then shouldn't we just regard these Oxonian efforts as exer- cises in amateur linguistics? In fact, John Searle's subsequent re- formulation of ordinary language philosophy as "speech-act theory" is often considered a branch of linguistics. However, I think we can begin to understand why the philosophy of language should be kept dis- tinct by reflecting on a defense Ryle and Austin often invoked on be- half of their meticulous analyses. Contrary to what even the speakers themselves may think, the distinctions made in ordinary language are far subtler than those drawn by metaphysicians. The irony here is significant. If we assume that a science deals with a specified range of phenomena, while philosophy--if it does anything at all--deals with reality in general, then as a linguist I want to catalogue utterances, perhaps with the goal of constructing a grammar. In other words, I want to save the linguistic phenomena. But as a philosopher I want to save all the phenomena, and so when I turn to language, not only do I see the manifold structure of utterances, but I also see that the ut- terers themselves do not realize the complex nature of that structure. Thus, I need to account for the difference between the utterer's arti- culated and tacit knowledge of his language, and why I am able to arti- culate what is only tacit for him. Furthermore, I need to consider whether making the tacit articulate changes the nature of what is known. This is the question of whether analysis really leaves the world as it is. Only philosophically minded linguists--often those of a Marxist persuasion--have in fact taken up these issues. They require reflection on what it means to know something "adverbially", as Ryle would put it: to know detachedly, to know involvedly, as well as to know tacitly and to know articulately.

The fact that Marxist linguists have taken on these traditionally philosophical concerns as their own is itself interesting. I believe this has happened because such problems more easily permit the Marxist to vent his practical commitment, which is not to leave the world as it is, but to change it. Consider what distinguishes Austin's articu- lated knowledge of ordinary language from the ordinary man's tacit knowledge of it. The difference is that Austin is able to define the limits of correct linguistic practice, while the ordinary man is only able to speak correctly; the former can mention what the latter can only use. Whenever Austin intuits this difference, he passes from linguistics to the philosophy of language. The philosopher recognizes that the scientist has reduced something actual--a world whose limits are not known because one is immersed in it--to something possible-- a world whose limits are known because one, in some sense, has stepped outside it. The obvious advantage of knowing something as a possibil- ity is that it can be considered in relation to other possibilities. Once we know the rules of a language-game,we know what needs to be

changed (the rules) in order to play another game. In fact, I would

go so far as to assert that if there is a strategy unique to philoso- phy, it is just this reduction of the actual to the possible. Another

say" in certain discursive contexts mirrors the structure of our actual linguistic practices. And indeed, the analytical clarity with which they pursued their studies makes them exemplars for the writing manu- als. Why then shouldn't we just regard these Oxonian efforts as exer- cises in amateur linguistics? In fact, John Searle's subsequent re- formulation of ordinary language philosophy as "speech-act theory" is often considered a branch of linguistics. However, I think we can begin to understand why the philosophy of language should be kept dis- tinct by reflecting on a defense Ryle and Austin often invoked on be- half of their meticulous analyses. Contrary to what even the speakers themselves may think, the distinctions made in ordinary language are far subtler than those drawn by metaphysicians. The irony here is significant. If we assume that a science deals with a specified range of phenomena, while philosophy--if it does anything at all--deals with reality in general, then as a linguist I want to catalogue utterances, perhaps with the goal of constructing a grammar. In other words, I want to save the linguistic phenomena. But as a philosopher I want to save all the phenomena, and so when I turn to language, not only do I see the manifold structure of utterances, but I also see that the ut- terers themselves do not realize the complex nature of that structure. Thus, I need to account for the difference between the utterer's arti- culated and tacit knowledge of his language, and why I am able to arti- culate what is only tacit for him. Furthermore, I need to consider whether making the tacit articulate changes the nature of what is known. This is the question of whether analysis really leaves the world as it is. Only philosophically minded linguists--often those of a Marxist persuasion--have in fact taken up these issues. They require reflection on what it means to know something "adverbially", as Ryle would put it: to know detachedly, to know involvedly, as well as to know tacitly and to know articulately.

The fact that Marxist linguists have taken on these traditionally philosophical concerns as their own is itself interesting. I believe this has happened because such problems more easily permit the Marxist to vent his practical commitment, which is not to leave the world as it is, but to change it. Consider what distinguishes Austin's articu- lated knowledge of ordinary language from the ordinary man's tacit knowledge of it. The difference is that Austin is able to define the limits of correct linguistic practice, while the ordinary man is only able to speak correctly; the former can mention what the latter can only use. Whenever Austin intuits this difference, he passes from linguistics to the philosophy of language. The philosopher recognizes that the scientist has reduced something actual--a world whose limits are not known because one is immersed in it--to something possible-- a world whose limits are known because one, in some sense, has stepped outside it. The obvious advantage of knowing something as a possibil- ity is that it can be considered in relation to other possibilities. Once we know the rules of a language-game,we know what needs to be

changed (the rules) in order to play another game. In fact, I would

go so far as to assert that if there is a strategy unique to philoso- phy, it is just this reduction of the actual to the possible. Another

say" in certain discursive contexts mirrors the structure of our actual linguistic practices. And indeed, the analytical clarity with which they pursued their studies makes them exemplars for the writing manu- als. Why then shouldn't we just regard these Oxonian efforts as exer- cises in amateur linguistics? In fact, John Searle's subsequent re- formulation of ordinary language philosophy as "speech-act theory" is often considered a branch of linguistics. However, I think we can begin to understand why the philosophy of language should be kept dis- tinct by reflecting on a defense Ryle and Austin often invoked on be- half of their meticulous analyses. Contrary to what even the speakers themselves may think, the distinctions made in ordinary language are far subtler than those drawn by metaphysicians. The irony here is significant. If we assume that a science deals with a specified range of phenomena, while philosophy--if it does anything at all--deals with reality in general, then as a linguist I want to catalogue utterances, perhaps with the goal of constructing a grammar. In other words, I want to save the linguistic phenomena. But as a philosopher I want to save all the phenomena, and so when I turn to language, not only do I see the manifold structure of utterances, but I also see that the ut- terers themselves do not realize the complex nature of that structure. Thus, I need to account for the difference between the utterer's arti- culated and tacit knowledge of his language, and why I am able to arti- culate what is only tacit for him. Furthermore, I need to consider whether making the tacit articulate changes the nature of what is known. This is the question of whether analysis really leaves the world as it is. Only philosophically minded linguists--often those of a Marxist persuasion--have in fact taken up these issues. They require reflection on what it means to know something "adverbially", as Ryle would put it: to know detachedly, to know involvedly, as well as to know tacitly and to know articulately.

The fact that Marxist linguists have taken on these traditionally philosophical concerns as their own is itself interesting. I believe this has happened because such problems more easily permit the Marxist to vent his practical commitment, which is not to leave the world as it is, but to change it. Consider what distinguishes Austin's articu- lated knowledge of ordinary language from the ordinary man's tacit knowledge of it. The difference is that Austin is able to define the limits of correct linguistic practice, while the ordinary man is only able to speak correctly; the former can mention what the latter can only use. Whenever Austin intuits this difference, he passes from linguistics to the philosophy of language. The philosopher recognizes that the scientist has reduced something actual--a world whose limits are not known because one is immersed in it--to something possible-- a world whose limits are known because one, in some sense, has stepped outside it. The obvious advantage of knowing something as a possibil- ity is that it can be considered in relation to other possibilities. Once we know the rules of a language-game,we know what needs to be

changed (the rules) in order to play another game. In fact, I would

go so far as to assert that if there is a strategy unique to philoso- phy, it is just this reduction of the actual to the possible. Another

say" in certain discursive contexts mirrors the structure of our actual linguistic practices. And indeed, the analytical clarity with which they pursued their studies makes them exemplars for the writing manu- als. Why then shouldn't we just regard these Oxonian efforts as exer- cises in amateur linguistics? In fact, John Searle's subsequent re- formulation of ordinary language philosophy as "speech-act theory" is often considered a branch of linguistics. However, I think we can begin to understand why the philosophy of language should be kept dis- tinct by reflecting on a defense Ryle and Austin often invoked on be- half of their meticulous analyses. Contrary to what even the speakers themselves may think, the distinctions made in ordinary language are far subtler than those drawn by metaphysicians. The irony here is significant. If we assume that a science deals with a specified range of phenomena, while philosophy--if it does anything at all--deals with reality in general, then as a linguist I want to catalogue utterances, perhaps with the goal of constructing a grammar. In other words, I want to save the linguistic phenomena. But as a philosopher I want to save all the phenomena, and so when I turn to language, not only do I see the manifold structure of utterances, but I also see that the ut- terers themselves do not realize the complex nature of that structure. Thus, I need to account for the difference between the utterer's arti- culated and tacit knowledge of his language, and why I am able to arti- culate what is only tacit for him. Furthermore, I need to consider whether making the tacit articulate changes the nature of what is known. This is the question of whether analysis really leaves the world as it is. Only philosophically minded linguists--often those of a Marxist persuasion--have in fact taken up these issues. They require reflection on what it means to know something "adverbially", as Ryle would put it: to know detachedly, to know involvedly, as well as to know tacitly and to know articulately.

The fact that Marxist linguists have taken on these traditionally philosophical concerns as their own is itself interesting. I believe this has happened because such problems more easily permit the Marxist to vent his practical commitment, which is not to leave the world as it is, but to change it. Consider what distinguishes Austin's articu- lated knowledge of ordinary language from the ordinary man's tacit knowledge of it. The difference is that Austin is able to define the limits of correct linguistic practice, while the ordinary man is only able to speak correctly; the former can mention what the latter can only use. Whenever Austin intuits this difference, he passes from linguistics to the philosophy of language. The philosopher recognizes that the scientist has reduced something actual--a world whose limits are not known because one is immersed in it--to something possible-- a world whose limits are known because one, in some sense, has stepped outside it. The obvious advantage of knowing something as a possibil- ity is that it can be considered in relation to other possibilities. Once we know the rules of a language-game,we know what needs to be

changed (the rules) in order to play another game. In fact, I would

go so far as to assert that if there is a strategy unique to philoso- phy, it is just this reduction of the actual to the possible. Another

say" in certain discursive contexts mirrors the structure of our actual linguistic practices. And indeed, the analytical clarity with which they pursued their studies makes them exemplars for the writing manu- als. Why then shouldn't we just regard these Oxonian efforts as exer- cises in amateur linguistics? In fact, John Searle's subsequent re- formulation of ordinary language philosophy as "speech-act theory" is often considered a branch of linguistics. However, I think we can begin to understand why the philosophy of language should be kept dis- tinct by reflecting on a defense Ryle and Austin often invoked on be- half of their meticulous analyses. Contrary to what even the speakers themselves may think, the distinctions made in ordinary language are far subtler than those drawn by metaphysicians. The irony here is significant. If we assume that a science deals with a specified range of phenomena, while philosophy--if it does anything at all--deals with reality in general, then as a linguist I want to catalogue utterances, perhaps with the goal of constructing a grammar. In other words, I want to save the linguistic phenomena. But as a philosopher I want to save all the phenomena, and so when I turn to language, not only do I see the manifold structure of utterances, but I also see that the ut- terers themselves do not realize the complex nature of that structure. Thus, I need to account for the difference between the utterer's arti- culated and tacit knowledge of his language, and why I am able to arti- culate what is only tacit for him. Furthermore, I need to consider whether making the tacit articulate changes the nature of what is known. This is the question of whether analysis really leaves the world as it is. Only philosophically minded linguists--often those of a Marxist persuasion--have in fact taken up these issues. They require reflection on what it means to know something "adverbially", as Ryle would put it: to know detachedly, to know involvedly, as well as to know tacitly and to know articulately.

The fact that Marxist linguists have taken on these traditionally philosophical concerns as their own is itself interesting. I believe this has happened because such problems more easily permit the Marxist to vent his practical commitment, which is not to leave the world as it is, but to change it. Consider what distinguishes Austin's articu- lated knowledge of ordinary language from the ordinary man's tacit knowledge of it. The difference is that Austin is able to define the limits of correct linguistic practice, while the ordinary man is only able to speak correctly; the former can mention what the latter can only use. Whenever Austin intuits this difference, he passes from linguistics to the philosophy of language. The philosopher recognizes that the scientist has reduced something actual--a world whose limits are not known because one is immersed in it--to something possible-- a world whose limits are known because one, in some sense, has stepped outside it. The obvious advantage of knowing something as a possibil- ity is that it can be considered in relation to other possibilities. Once we know the rules of a language-game,we know what needs to be

changed (the rules) in order to play another game. In fact, I would

go so far as to assert that if there is a strategy unique to philoso- phy, it is just this reduction of the actual to the possible. Another

say" in certain discursive contexts mirrors the structure of our actual linguistic practices. And indeed, the analytical clarity with which they pursued their studies makes them exemplars for the writing manu- als. Why then shouldn't we just regard these Oxonian efforts as exer- cises in amateur linguistics? In fact, John Searle's subsequent re- formulation of ordinary language philosophy as "speech-act theory" is often considered a branch of linguistics. However, I think we can begin to understand why the philosophy of language should be kept dis- tinct by reflecting on a defense Ryle and Austin often invoked on be- half of their meticulous analyses. Contrary to what even the speakers themselves may think, the distinctions made in ordinary language are far subtler than those drawn by metaphysicians. The irony here is significant. If we assume that a science deals with a specified range of phenomena, while philosophy--if it does anything at all--deals with reality in general, then as a linguist I want to catalogue utterances, perhaps with the goal of constructing a grammar. In other words, I want to save the linguistic phenomena. But as a philosopher I want to save all the phenomena, and so when I turn to language, not only do I see the manifold structure of utterances, but I also see that the ut- terers themselves do not realize the complex nature of that structure. Thus, I need to account for the difference between the utterer's arti- culated and tacit knowledge of his language, and why I am able to arti- culate what is only tacit for him. Furthermore, I need to consider whether making the tacit articulate changes the nature of what is known. This is the question of whether analysis really leaves the world as it is. Only philosophically minded linguists--often those of a Marxist persuasion--have in fact taken up these issues. They require reflection on what it means to know something "adverbially", as Ryle would put it: to know detachedly, to know involvedly, as well as to know tacitly and to know articulately.

The fact that Marxist linguists have taken on these traditionally philosophical concerns as their own is itself interesting. I believe this has happened because such problems more easily permit the Marxist to vent his practical commitment, which is not to leave the world as it is, but to change it. Consider what distinguishes Austin's articu- lated knowledge of ordinary language from the ordinary man's tacit knowledge of it. The difference is that Austin is able to define the limits of correct linguistic practice, while the ordinary man is only able to speak correctly; the former can mention what the latter can only use. Whenever Austin intuits this difference, he passes from linguistics to the philosophy of language. The philosopher recognizes that the scientist has reduced something actual--a world whose limits are not known because one is immersed in it--to something possible-- a world whose limits are known because one, in some sense, has stepped outside it. The obvious advantage of knowing something as a possibil- ity is that it can be considered in relation to other possibilities. Once we know the rules of a language-game,we know what needs to be

changed (the rules) in order to play another game. In fact, I would

go so far as to assert that if there is a strategy unique to philoso- phy, it is just this reduction of the actual to the possible. Another

say" in certain discursive contexts mirrors the structure of our actual linguistic practices. And indeed, the analytical clarity with which they pursued their studies makes them exemplars for the writing manu- als. Why then shouldn't we just regard these Oxonian efforts as exer- cises in amateur linguistics? In fact, John Searle's subsequent re- formulation of ordinary language philosophy as "speech-act theory" is often considered a branch of linguistics. However, I think we can begin to understand why the philosophy of language should be kept dis- tinct by reflecting on a defense Ryle and Austin often invoked on be- half of their meticulous analyses. Contrary to what even the speakers themselves may think, the distinctions made in ordinary language are far subtler than those drawn by metaphysicians. The irony here is significant. If we assume that a science deals with a specified range of phenomena, while philosophy--if it does anything at all--deals with reality in general, then as a linguist I want to catalogue utterances, perhaps with the goal of constructing a grammar. In other words, I want to save the linguistic phenomena. But as a philosopher I want to save all the phenomena, and so when I turn to language, not only do I see the manifold structure of utterances, but I also see that the ut- terers themselves do not realize the complex nature of that structure. Thus, I need to account for the difference between the utterer's arti- culated and tacit knowledge of his language, and why I am able to arti- culate what is only tacit for him. Furthermore, I need to consider whether making the tacit articulate changes the nature of what is known. This is the question of whether analysis really leaves the world as it is. Only philosophically minded linguists--often those of a Marxist persuasion--have in fact taken up these issues. They require reflection on what it means to know something "adverbially", as Ryle would put it: to know detachedly, to know involvedly, as well as to know tacitly and to know articulately.

The fact that Marxist linguists have taken on these traditionally philosophical concerns as their own is itself interesting. I believe this has happened because such problems more easily permit the Marxist to vent his practical commitment, which is not to leave the world as it is, but to change it. Consider what distinguishes Austin's articu- lated knowledge of ordinary language from the ordinary man's tacit knowledge of it. The difference is that Austin is able to define the limits of correct linguistic practice, while the ordinary man is only able to speak correctly; the former can mention what the latter can only use. Whenever Austin intuits this difference, he passes from linguistics to the philosophy of language. The philosopher recognizes that the scientist has reduced something actual--a world whose limits are not known because one is immersed in it--to something possible-- a world whose limits are known because one, in some sense, has stepped outside it. The obvious advantage of knowing something as a possibil- ity is that it can be considered in relation to other possibilities. Once we know the rules of a language-game,we know what needs to be

changed (the rules) in order to play another game. In fact, I would

go so far as to assert that if there is a strategy unique to philoso- phy, it is just this reduction of the actual to the possible. Another

say" in certain discursive contexts mirrors the structure of our actual linguistic practices. And indeed, the analytical clarity with which they pursued their studies makes them exemplars for the writing manu- als. Why then shouldn't we just regard these Oxonian efforts as exer- cises in amateur linguistics? In fact, John Searle's subsequent re- formulation of ordinary language philosophy as "speech-act theory" is often considered a branch of linguistics. However, I think we can begin to understand why the philosophy of language should be kept dis- tinct by reflecting on a defense Ryle and Austin often invoked on be- half of their meticulous analyses. Contrary to what even the speakers themselves may think, the distinctions made in ordinary language are far subtler than those drawn by metaphysicians. The irony here is significant. If we assume that a science deals with a specified range of phenomena, while philosophy--if it does anything at all--deals with reality in general, then as a linguist I want to catalogue utterances, perhaps with the goal of constructing a grammar. In other words, I want to save the linguistic phenomena. But as a philosopher I want to save all the phenomena, and so when I turn to language, not only do I see the manifold structure of utterances, but I also see that the ut- terers themselves do not realize the complex nature of that structure. Thus, I need to account for the difference between the utterer's arti- culated and tacit knowledge of his language, and why I am able to arti- culate what is only tacit for him. Furthermore, I need to consider whether making the tacit articulate changes the nature of what is known. This is the question of whether analysis really leaves the world as it is. Only philosophically minded linguists--often those of a Marxist persuasion--have in fact taken up these issues. They require reflection on what it means to know something "adverbially", as Ryle would put it: to know detachedly, to know involvedly, as well as to know tacitly and to know articulately.

The fact that Marxist linguists have taken on these traditionally philosophical concerns as their own is itself interesting. I believe this has happened because such problems more easily permit the Marxist to vent his practical commitment, which is not to leave the world as it is, but to change it. Consider what distinguishes Austin's articu- lated knowledge of ordinary language from the ordinary man's tacit knowledge of it. The difference is that Austin is able to define the limits of correct linguistic practice, while the ordinary man is only able to speak correctly; the former can mention what the latter can only use. Whenever Austin intuits this difference, he passes from linguistics to the philosophy of language. The philosopher recognizes that the scientist has reduced something actual--a world whose limits are not known because one is immersed in it--to something possible-- a world whose limits are known because one, in some sense, has stepped outside it. The obvious advantage of knowing something as a possibil- ity is that it can be considered in relation to other possibilities. Once we know the rules of a language-game,we know what needs to be

changed (the rules) in order to play another game. In fact, I would

go so far as to assert that if there is a strategy unique to philoso- phy, it is just this reduction of the actual to the possible. Another

say" in certain discursive contexts mirrors the structure of our actual linguistic practices. And indeed, the analytical clarity with which they pursued their studies makes them exemplars for the writing manu- als. Why then shouldn't we just regard these Oxonian efforts as exer- cises in amateur linguistics? In fact, John Searle's subsequent re- formulation of ordinary language philosophy as "speech-act theory" is often considered a branch of linguistics. However, I think we can begin to understand why the philosophy of language should be kept dis- tinct by reflecting on a defense Ryle and Austin often invoked on be- half of their meticulous analyses. Contrary to what even the speakers themselves may think, the distinctions made in ordinary language are far subtler than those drawn by metaphysicians. The irony here is significant. If we assume that a science deals with a specified range of phenomena, while philosophy--if it does anything at all--deals with reality in general, then as a linguist I want to catalogue utterances, perhaps with the goal of constructing a grammar. In other words, I want to save the linguistic phenomena. But as a philosopher I want to save all the phenomena, and so when I turn to language, not only do I see the manifold structure of utterances, but I also see that the ut- terers themselves do not realize the complex nature of that structure. Thus, I need to account for the difference between the utterer's arti- culated and tacit knowledge of his language, and why I am able to arti- culate what is only tacit for him. Furthermore, I need to consider whether making the tacit articulate changes the nature of what is known. This is the question of whether analysis really leaves the world as it is. Only philosophically minded linguists--often those of a Marxist persuasion--have in fact taken up these issues. They require reflection on what it means to know something "adverbially", as Ryle would put it: to know detachedly, to know involvedly, as well as to know tacitly and to know articulately.

The fact that Marxist linguists have taken on these traditionally philosophical concerns as their own is itself interesting. I believe this has happened because such problems more easily permit the Marxist to vent his practical commitment, which is not to leave the world as it is, but to change it. Consider what distinguishes Austin's articu- lated knowledge of ordinary language from the ordinary man's tacit knowledge of it. The difference is that Austin is able to define the limits of correct linguistic practice, while the ordinary man is only able to speak correctly; the former can mention what the latter can only use. Whenever Austin intuits this difference, he passes from linguistics to the philosophy of language. The philosopher recognizes that the scientist has reduced something actual--a world whose limits are not known because one is immersed in it--to something possible-- a world whose limits are known because one, in some sense, has stepped outside it. The obvious advantage of knowing something as a possibil- ity is that it can be considered in relation to other possibilities. Once we know the rules of a language-game,we know what needs to be

changed (the rules) in order to play another game. In fact, I would

go so far as to assert that if there is a strategy unique to philoso- phy, it is just this reduction of the actual to the possible. Another

say" in certain discursive contexts mirrors the structure of our actual linguistic practices. And indeed, the analytical clarity with which they pursued their studies makes them exemplars for the writing manu- als. Why then shouldn't we just regard these Oxonian efforts as exer- cises in amateur linguistics? In fact, John Searle's subsequent re- formulation of ordinary language philosophy as "speech-act theory" is often considered a branch of linguistics. However, I think we can begin to understand why the philosophy of language should be kept dis- tinct by reflecting on a defense Ryle and Austin often invoked on be- half of their meticulous analyses. Contrary to what even the speakers themselves may think, the distinctions made in ordinary language are far subtler than those drawn by metaphysicians. The irony here is significant. If we assume that a science deals with a specified range of phenomena, while philosophy--if it does anything at all--deals with reality in general, then as a linguist I want to catalogue utterances, perhaps with the goal of constructing a grammar. In other words, I want to save the linguistic phenomena. But as a philosopher I want to save all the phenomena, and so when I turn to language, not only do I see the manifold structure of utterances, but I also see that the ut- terers themselves do not realize the complex nature of that structure. Thus, I need to account for the difference between the utterer's arti- culated and tacit knowledge of his language, and why I am able to arti- culate what is only tacit for him. Furthermore, I need to consider whether making the tacit articulate changes the nature of what is known. This is the question of whether analysis really leaves the world as it is. Only philosophically minded linguists--often those of a Marxist persuasion--have in fact taken up these issues. They require reflection on what it means to know something "adverbially", as Ryle would put it: to know detachedly, to know involvedly, as well as to know tacitly and to know articulately.

The fact that Marxist linguists have taken on these traditionally philosophical concerns as their own is itself interesting. I believe this has happened because such problems more easily permit the Marxist to vent his practical commitment, which is not to leave the world as it is, but to change it. Consider what distinguishes Austin's articu- lated knowledge of ordinary language from the ordinary man's tacit knowledge of it. The difference is that Austin is able to define the limits of correct linguistic practice, while the ordinary man is only able to speak correctly; the former can mention what the latter can only use. Whenever Austin intuits this difference, he passes from linguistics to the philosophy of language. The philosopher recognizes that the scientist has reduced something actual--a world whose limits are not known because one is immersed in it--to something possible-- a world whose limits are known because one, in some sense, has stepped outside it. The obvious advantage of knowing something as a possibil- ity is that it can be considered in relation to other possibilities. Once we know the rules of a language-game,we know what needs to be

changed (the rules) in order to play another game. In fact, I would

go so far as to assert that if there is a strategy unique to philoso- phy, it is just this reduction of the actual to the possible. Another

say" in certain discursive contexts mirrors the structure of our actual linguistic practices. And indeed, the analytical clarity with which they pursued their studies makes them exemplars for the writing manu- als. Why then shouldn't we just regard these Oxonian efforts as exer- cises in amateur linguistics? In fact, John Searle's subsequent re- formulation of ordinary language philosophy as "speech-act theory" is often considered a branch of linguistics. However, I think we can begin to understand why the philosophy of language should be kept dis- tinct by reflecting on a defense Ryle and Austin often invoked on be- half of their meticulous analyses. Contrary to what even the speakers themselves may think, the distinctions made in ordinary language are far subtler than those drawn by metaphysicians. The irony here is significant. If we assume that a science deals with a specified range of phenomena, while philosophy--if it does anything at all--deals with reality in general, then as a linguist I want to catalogue utterances, perhaps with the goal of constructing a grammar. In other words, I want to save the linguistic phenomena. But as a philosopher I want to save all the phenomena, and so when I turn to language, not only do I see the manifold structure of utterances, but I also see that the ut- terers themselves do not realize the complex nature of that structure. Thus, I need to account for the difference between the utterer's arti- culated and tacit knowledge of his language, and why I am able to arti- culate what is only tacit for him. Furthermore, I need to consider whether making the tacit articulate changes the nature of what is known. This is the question of whether analysis really leaves the world as it is. Only philosophically minded linguists--often those of a Marxist persuasion--have in fact taken up these issues. They require reflection on what it means to know something "adverbially", as Ryle would put it: to know detachedly, to know involvedly, as well as to know tacitly and to know articulately.

The fact that Marxist linguists have taken on these traditionally philosophical concerns as their own is itself interesting. I believe this has happened because such problems more easily permit the Marxist to vent his practical commitment, which is not to leave the world as it is, but to change it. Consider what distinguishes Austin's articu- lated knowledge of ordinary language from the ordinary man's tacit knowledge of it. The difference is that Austin is able to define the limits of correct linguistic practice, while the ordinary man is only able to speak correctly; the former can mention what the latter can only use. Whenever Austin intuits this difference, he passes from linguistics to the philosophy of language. The philosopher recognizes that the scientist has reduced something actual--a world whose limits are not known because one is immersed in it--to something possible-- a world whose limits are known because one, in some sense, has stepped outside it. The obvious advantage of knowing something as a possibil- ity is that it can be considered in relation to other possibilities. Once we know the rules of a language-game,we know what needs to be

changed (the rules) in order to play another game. In fact, I would

go so far as to assert that if there is a strategy unique to philoso- phy, it is just this reduction of the actual to the possible. Another

say" in certain discursive contexts mirrors the structure of our actual linguistic practices. And indeed, the analytical clarity with which they pursued their studies makes them exemplars for the writing manu- als. Why then shouldn't we just regard these Oxonian efforts as exer- cises in amateur linguistics? In fact, John Searle's subsequent re- formulation of ordinary language philosophy as "speech-act theory" is often considered a branch of linguistics. However, I think we can begin to understand why the philosophy of language should be kept dis- tinct by reflecting on a defense Ryle and Austin often invoked on be- half of their meticulous analyses. Contrary to what even the speakers themselves may think, the distinctions made in ordinary language are far subtler than those drawn by metaphysicians. The irony here is significant. If we assume that a science deals with a specified range of phenomena, while philosophy--if it does anything at all--deals with reality in general, then as a linguist I want to catalogue utterances, perhaps with the goal of constructing a grammar. In other words, I want to save the linguistic phenomena. But as a philosopher I want to save all the phenomena, and so when I turn to language, not only do I see the manifold structure of utterances, but I also see that the ut- terers themselves do not realize the complex nature of that structure. Thus, I need to account for the difference between the utterer's arti- culated and tacit knowledge of his language, and why I am able to arti- culate what is only tacit for him. Furthermore, I need to consider whether making the tacit articulate changes the nature of what is known. This is the question of whether analysis really leaves the world as it is. Only philosophically minded linguists--often those of a Marxist persuasion--have in fact taken up these issues. They require reflection on what it means to know something "adverbially", as Ryle would put it: to know detachedly, to know involvedly, as well as to know tacitly and to know articulately.

The fact that Marxist linguists have taken on these traditionally philosophical concerns as their own is itself interesting. I believe this has happened because such problems more easily permit the Marxist to vent his practical commitment, which is not to leave the world as it is, but to change it. Consider what distinguishes Austin's articu- lated knowledge of ordinary language from the ordinary man's tacit knowledge of it. The difference is that Austin is able to define the limits of correct linguistic practice, while the ordinary man is only able to speak correctly; the former can mention what the latter can only use. Whenever Austin intuits this difference, he passes from linguistics to the philosophy of language. The philosopher recognizes that the scientist has reduced something actual--a world whose limits are not known because one is immersed in it--to something possible-- a world whose limits are known because one, in some sense, has stepped outside it. The obvious advantage of knowing something as a possibil- ity is that it can be considered in relation to other possibilities. Once we know the rules of a language-game,we know what needs to be

changed (the rules) in order to play another game. In fact, I would

go so far as to assert that if there is a strategy unique to philoso- phy, it is just this reduction of the actual to the possible. Another

say" in certain discursive contexts mirrors the structure of our actual linguistic practices. And indeed, the analytical clarity with which they pursued their studies makes them exemplars for the writing manu- als. Why then shouldn't we just regard these Oxonian efforts as exer- cises in amateur linguistics? In fact, John Searle's subsequent re- formulation of ordinary language philosophy as "speech-act theory" is often considered a branch of linguistics. However, I think we can begin to understand why the philosophy of language should be kept dis- tinct by reflecting on a defense Ryle and Austin often invoked on be- half of their meticulous analyses. Contrary to what even the speakers themselves may think, the distinctions made in ordinary language are far subtler than those drawn by metaphysicians. The irony here is significant. If we assume that a science deals with a specified range of phenomena, while philosophy--if it does anything at all--deals with reality in general, then as a linguist I want to catalogue utterances, perhaps with the goal of constructing a grammar. In other words, I want to save the linguistic phenomena. But as a philosopher I want to save all the phenomena, and so when I turn to language, not only do I see the manifold structure of utterances, but I also see that the ut- terers themselves do not realize the complex nature of that structure. Thus, I need to account for the difference between the utterer's arti- culated and tacit knowledge of his language, and why I am able to arti- culate what is only tacit for him. Furthermore, I need to consider whether making the tacit articulate changes the nature of what is known. This is the question of whether analysis really leaves the world as it is. Only philosophically minded linguists--often those of a Marxist persuasion--have in fact taken up these issues. They require reflection on what it means to know something "adverbially", as Ryle would put it: to know detachedly, to know involvedly, as well as to know tacitly and to know articulately.

The fact that Marxist linguists have taken on these traditionally philosophical concerns as their own is itself interesting. I believe this has happened because such problems more easily permit the Marxist to vent his practical commitment, which is not to leave the world as it is, but to change it. Consider what distinguishes Austin's articu- lated knowledge of ordinary language from the ordinary man's tacit knowledge of it. The difference is that Austin is able to define the limits of correct linguistic practice, while the ordinary man is only able to speak correctly; the former can mention what the latter can only use. Whenever Austin intuits this difference, he passes from linguistics to the philosophy of language. The philosopher recognizes that the scientist has reduced something actual--a world whose limits are not known because one is immersed in it--to something possible-- a world whose limits are known because one, in some sense, has stepped outside it. The obvious advantage of knowing something as a possibil- ity is that it can be considered in relation to other possibilities. Once we know the rules of a language-game,we know what needs to be

changed (the rules) in order to play another game. In fact, I would

go so far as to assert that if there is a strategy unique to philoso- phy, it is just this reduction of the actual to the possible. Another

say" in certain discursive contexts mirrors the structure of our actual linguistic practices. And indeed, the analytical clarity with which they pursued their studies makes them exemplars for the writing manu- als. Why then shouldn't we just regard these Oxonian efforts as exer- cises in amateur linguistics? In fact, John Searle's subsequent re- formulation of ordinary language philosophy as "speech-act theory" is often considered a branch of linguistics. However, I think we can begin to understand why the philosophy of language should be kept dis- tinct by reflecting on a defense Ryle and Austin often invoked on be- half of their meticulous analyses. Contrary to what even the speakers themselves may think, the distinctions made in ordinary language are far subtler than those drawn by metaphysicians. The irony here is significant. If we assume that a science deals with a specified range of phenomena, while philosophy--if it does anything at all--deals with reality in general, then as a linguist I want to catalogue utterances, perhaps with the goal of constructing a grammar. In other words, I want to save the linguistic phenomena. But as a philosopher I want to save all the phenomena, and so when I turn to language, not only do I see the manifold structure of utterances, but I also see that the ut- terers themselves do not realize the complex nature of that structure. Thus, I need to account for the difference between the utterer's arti- culated and tacit knowledge of his language, and why I am able to arti- culate what is only tacit for him. Furthermore, I need to consider whether making the tacit articulate changes the nature of what is known. This is the question of whether analysis really leaves the world as it is. Only philosophically minded linguists--often those of a Marxist persuasion--have in fact taken up these issues. They require reflection on what it means to know something "adverbially", as Ryle would put it: to know detachedly, to know involvedly, as well as to know tacitly and to know articulately.

The fact that Marxist linguists have taken on these traditionally philosophical concerns as their own is itself interesting. I believe this has happened because such problems more easily permit the Marxist to vent his practical commitment, which is not to leave the world as it is, but to change it. Consider what distinguishes Austin's articu- lated knowledge of ordinary language from the ordinary man's tacit knowledge of it. The difference is that Austin is able to define the limits of correct linguistic practice, while the ordinary man is only able to speak correctly; the former can mention what the latter can only use. Whenever Austin intuits this difference, he passes from linguistics to the philosophy of language. The philosopher recognizes that the scientist has reduced something actual--a world whose limits are not known because one is immersed in it--to something possible-- a world whose limits are known because one, in some sense, has stepped outside it. The obvious advantage of knowing something as a possibil- ity is that it can be considered in relation to other possibilities. Once we know the rules of a language-game,we know what needs to be

changed (the rules) in order to play another game. In fact, I would

go so far as to assert that if there is a strategy unique to philoso- phy, it is just this reduction of the actual to the possible. Another

say" in certain discursive contexts mirrors the structure of our actual linguistic practices. And indeed, the analytical clarity with which they pursued their studies makes them exemplars for the writing manu- als. Why then shouldn't we just regard these Oxonian efforts as exer- cises in amateur linguistics? In fact, John Searle's subsequent re- formulation of ordinary language philosophy as "speech-act theory" is often considered a branch of linguistics. However, I think we can begin to understand why the philosophy of language should be kept dis- tinct by reflecting on a defense Ryle and Austin often invoked on be- half of their meticulous analyses. Contrary to what even the speakers themselves may think, the distinctions made in ordinary language are far subtler than those drawn by metaphysicians. The irony here is significant. If we assume that a science deals with a specified range of phenomena, while philosophy--if it does anything at all--deals with reality in general, then as a linguist I want to catalogue utterances, perhaps with the goal of constructing a grammar. In other words, I want to save the linguistic phenomena. But as a philosopher I want to save all the phenomena, and so when I turn to language, not only do I see the manifold structure of utterances, but I also see that the ut- terers themselves do not realize the complex nature of that structure. Thus, I need to account for the difference between the utterer's arti- culated and tacit knowledge of his language, and why I am able to arti- culate what is only tacit for him. Furthermore, I need to consider whether making the tacit articulate changes the nature of what is known. This is the question of whether analysis really leaves the world as it is. Only philosophically minded linguists--often those of a Marxist persuasion--have in fact taken up these issues. They require reflection on what it means to know something "adverbially", as Ryle would put it: to know detachedly, to know involvedly, as well as to know tacitly and to know articulately.

The fact that Marxist linguists have taken on these traditionally philosophical concerns as their own is itself interesting. I believe this has happened because such problems more easily permit the Marxist to vent his practical commitment, which is not to leave the world as it is, but to change it. Consider what distinguishes Austin's articu- lated knowledge of ordinary language from the ordinary man's tacit knowledge of it. The difference is that Austin is able to define the limits of correct linguistic practice, while the ordinary man is only able to speak correctly; the former can mention what the latter can only use. Whenever Austin intuits this difference, he passes from linguistics to the philosophy of language. The philosopher recognizes that the scientist has reduced something actual--a world whose limits are not known because one is immersed in it--to something possible-- a world whose limits are known because one, in some sense, has stepped outside it. The obvious advantage of knowing something as a possibil- ity is that it can be considered in relation to other possibilities. Once we know the rules of a language-game,we know what needs to be

changed (the rules) in order to play another game. In fact, I would

go so far as to assert that if there is a strategy unique to philoso- phy, it is just this reduction of the actual to the possible. Another

say" in certain discursive contexts mirrors the structure of our actual linguistic practices. And indeed, the analytical clarity with which they pursued their studies makes them exemplars for the writing manu- als. Why then shouldn't we just regard these Oxonian efforts as exer- cises in amateur linguistics? In fact, John Searle's subsequent re- formulation of ordinary language philosophy as "speech-act theory" is often considered a branch of linguistics. However, I think we can begin to understand why the philosophy of language should be kept dis- tinct by reflecting on a defense Ryle and Austin often invoked on be- half of their meticulous analyses. Contrary to what even the speakers themselves may think, the distinctions made in ordinary language are far subtler than those drawn by metaphysicians. The irony here is significant. If we assume that a science deals with a specified range of phenomena, while philosophy--if it does anything at all--deals with reality in general, then as a linguist I want to catalogue utterances, perhaps with the goal of constructing a grammar. In other words, I want to save the linguistic phenomena. But as a philosopher I want to save all the phenomena, and so when I turn to language, not only do I see the manifold structure of utterances, but I also see that the ut- terers themselves do not realize the complex nature of that structure. Thus, I need to account for the difference between the utterer's arti- culated and tacit knowledge of his language, and why I am able to arti- culate what is only tacit for him. Furthermore, I need to consider whether making the tacit articulate changes the nature of what is known. This is the question of whether analysis really leaves the world as it is. Only philosophically minded linguists--often those of a Marxist persuasion--have in fact taken up these issues. They require reflection on what it means to know something "adverbially", as Ryle would put it: to know detachedly, to know involvedly, as well as to know tacitly and to know articulately.

The fact that Marxist linguists have taken on these traditionally philosophical concerns as their own is itself interesting. I believe this has happened because such problems more easily permit the Marxist to vent his practical commitment, which is not to leave the world as it is, but to change it. Consider what distinguishes Austin's articu- lated knowledge of ordinary language from the ordinary man's tacit knowledge of it. The difference is that Austin is able to define the limits of correct linguistic practice, while the ordinary man is only able to speak correctly; the former can mention what the latter can only use. Whenever Austin intuits this difference, he passes from linguistics to the philosophy of language. The philosopher recognizes that the scientist has reduced something actual--a world whose limits are not known because one is immersed in it--to something possible-- a world whose limits are known because one, in some sense, has stepped outside it. The obvious advantage of knowing something as a possibil- ity is that it can be considered in relation to other possibilities. Once we know the rules of a language-game,we know what needs to be

changed (the rules) in order to play another game. In fact, I would

go so far as to assert that if there is a strategy unique to philoso- phy, it is just this reduction of the actual to the possible. Another

say" in certain discursive contexts mirrors the structure of our actual linguistic practices. And indeed, the analytical clarity with which they pursued their studies makes them exemplars for the writing manu- als. Why then shouldn't we just regard these Oxonian efforts as exer- cises in amateur linguistics? In fact, John Searle's subsequent re- formulation of ordinary language philosophy as "speech-act theory" is often considered a branch of linguistics. However, I think we can begin to understand why the philosophy of language should be kept dis- tinct by reflecting on a defense Ryle and Austin often invoked on be- half of their meticulous analyses. Contrary to what even the speakers themselves may think, the distinctions made in ordinary language are far subtler than those drawn by metaphysicians. The irony here is significant. If we assume that a science deals with a specified range of phenomena, while philosophy--if it does anything at all--deals with reality in general, then as a linguist I want to catalogue utterances, perhaps with the goal of constructing a grammar. In other words, I want to save the linguistic phenomena. But as a philosopher I want to save all the phenomena, and so when I turn to language, not only do I see the manifold structure of utterances, but I also see that the ut- terers themselves do not realize the complex nature of that structure. Thus, I need to account for the difference between the utterer's arti- culated and tacit knowledge of his language, and why I am able to arti- culate what is only tacit for him. Furthermore, I need to consider whether making the tacit articulate changes the nature of what is known. This is the question of whether analysis really leaves the world as it is. Only philosophically minded linguists--often those of a Marxist persuasion--have in fact taken up these issues. They require reflection on what it means to know something "adverbially", as Ryle would put it: to know detachedly, to know involvedly, as well as to know tacitly and to know articulately.

The fact that Marxist linguists have taken on these traditionally philosophical concerns as their own is itself interesting. I believe this has happened because such problems more easily permit the Marxist to vent his practical commitment, which is not to leave the world as it is, but to change it. Consider what distinguishes Austin's articu- lated knowledge of ordinary language from the ordinary man's tacit knowledge of it. The difference is that Austin is able to define the limits of correct linguistic practice, while the ordinary man is only able to speak correctly; the former can mention what the latter can only use. Whenever Austin intuits this difference, he passes from linguistics to the philosophy of language. The philosopher recognizes that the scientist has reduced something actual--a world whose limits are not known because one is immersed in it--to something possible-- a world whose limits are known because one, in some sense, has stepped outside it. The obvious advantage of knowing something as a possibil- ity is that it can be considered in relation to other possibilities. Once we know the rules of a language-game,we know what needs to be

changed (the rules) in order to play another game. In fact, I would

go so far as to assert that if there is a strategy unique to philoso- phy, it is just this reduction of the actual to the possible. Another

say" in certain discursive contexts mirrors the structure of our actual linguistic practices. And indeed, the analytical clarity with which they pursued their studies makes them exemplars for the writing manu- als. Why then shouldn't we just regard these Oxonian efforts as exer- cises in amateur linguistics? In fact, John Searle's subsequent re- formulation of ordinary language philosophy as "speech-act theory" is often considered a branch of linguistics. However, I think we can begin to understand why the philosophy of language should be kept dis- tinct by reflecting on a defense Ryle and Austin often invoked on be- half of their meticulous analyses. Contrary to what even the speakers themselves may think, the distinctions made in ordinary language are far subtler than those drawn by metaphysicians. The irony here is significant. If we assume that a science deals with a specified range of phenomena, while philosophy--if it does anything at all--deals with reality in general, then as a linguist I want to catalogue utterances, perhaps with the goal of constructing a grammar. In other words, I want to save the linguistic phenomena. But as a philosopher I want to save all the phenomena, and so when I turn to language, not only do I see the manifold structure of utterances, but I also see that the ut- terers themselves do not realize the complex nature of that structure. Thus, I need to account for the difference between the utterer's arti- culated and tacit knowledge of his language, and why I am able to arti- culate what is only tacit for him. Furthermore, I need to consider whether making the tacit articulate changes the nature of what is known. This is the question of whether analysis really leaves the world as it is. Only philosophically minded linguists--often those of a Marxist persuasion--have in fact taken up these issues. They require reflection on what it means to know something "adverbially", as Ryle would put it: to know detachedly, to know involvedly, as well as to know tacitly and to know articulately.

The fact that Marxist linguists have taken on these traditionally philosophical concerns as their own is itself interesting. I believe this has happened because such problems more easily permit the Marxist to vent his practical commitment, which is not to leave the world as it is, but to change it. Consider what distinguishes Austin's articu- lated knowledge of ordinary language from the ordinary man's tacit knowledge of it. The difference is that Austin is able to define the limits of correct linguistic practice, while the ordinary man is only able to speak correctly; the former can mention what the latter can only use. Whenever Austin intuits this difference, he passes from linguistics to the philosophy of language. The philosopher recognizes that the scientist has reduced something actual--a world whose limits are not known because one is immersed in it--to something possible-- a world whose limits are known because one, in some sense, has stepped outside it. The obvious advantage of knowing something as a possibil- ity is that it can be considered in relation to other possibilities. Once we know the rules of a language-game,we know what needs to be

changed (the rules) in order to play another game. In fact, I would

go so far as to assert that if there is a strategy unique to philoso- phy, it is just this reduction of the actual to the possible. Another

say" in certain discursive contexts mirrors the structure of our actual linguistic practices. And indeed, the analytical clarity with which they pursued their studies makes them exemplars for the writing manu- als. Why then shouldn't we just regard these Oxonian efforts as exer- cises in amateur linguistics? In fact, John Searle's subsequent re- formulation of ordinary language philosophy as "speech-act theory" is often considered a branch of linguistics. However, I think we can begin to understand why the philosophy of language should be kept dis- tinct by reflecting on a defense Ryle and Austin often invoked on be- half of their meticulous analyses. Contrary to what even the speakers themselves may think, the distinctions made in ordinary language are far subtler than those drawn by metaphysicians. The irony here is significant. If we assume that a science deals with a specified range of phenomena, while philosophy--if it does anything at all--deals with reality in general, then as a linguist I want to catalogue utterances, perhaps with the goal of constructing a grammar. In other words, I want to save the linguistic phenomena. But as a philosopher I want to save all the phenomena, and so when I turn to language, not only do I see the manifold structure of utterances, but I also see that the ut- terers themselves do not realize the complex nature of that structure. Thus, I need to account for the difference between the utterer's arti- culated and tacit knowledge of his language, and why I am able to arti- culate what is only tacit for him. Furthermore, I need to consider whether making the tacit articulate changes the nature of what is known. This is the question of whether analysis really leaves the world as it is. Only philosophically minded linguists--often those of a Marxist persuasion--have in fact taken up these issues. They require reflection on what it means to know something "adverbially", as Ryle would put it: to know detachedly, to know involvedly, as well as to know tacitly and to know articulately.

The fact that Marxist linguists have taken on these traditionally philosophical concerns as their own is itself interesting. I believe this has happened because such problems more easily permit the Marxist to vent his practical commitment, which is not to leave the world as it is, but to change it. Consider what distinguishes Austin's articu- lated knowledge of ordinary language from the ordinary man's tacit knowledge of it. The difference is that Austin is able to define the limits of correct linguistic practice, while the ordinary man is only able to speak correctly; the former can mention what the latter can only use. Whenever Austin intuits this difference, he passes from linguistics to the philosophy of language. The philosopher recognizes that the scientist has reduced something actual--a world whose limits are not known because one is immersed in it--to something possible-- a world whose limits are known because one, in some sense, has stepped outside it. The obvious advantage of knowing something as a possibil- ity is that it can be considered in relation to other possibilities. Once we know the rules of a language-game,we know what needs to be

changed (the rules) in order to play another game. In fact, I would

go so far as to assert that if there is a strategy unique to philoso- phy, it is just this reduction of the actual to the possible. Another

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way of putting it is to say that philosophy--rather than making room for faith, as Kant thought--makes room for doubt. It treats as merely one among many alternatives something that would otherwise be treated as having no alternatives whatsoever.

But while it is clear that Marxists would find such a strategy at- tractive, it is not clear that it requires a distinctly "philosophical turn" (pace Rorty). It could be argued that placing a system of lin- guistic practices against the background of socio-economic conditions suffices to show the ideological limitations of those practices without making any of the modal moves described above. In effect then, the linguist would simply be integrating phenomena from his science with those of other social sciences. And indeed, if the Marxist--or any scientist for that matter--were solely interested in providing a des- cription of the society (as many anthropology monographs in fact seem to be), no philosophical turn would then be made. However, gaining a more comprehensive picture of a society does not ipso facto imply re- vealing the limits of, or constraints on, that picture. As a scientist I can systematically describe the pursuit of profit in a capitalist society without mentioning another activity that is prohibited in virtue of such a pursuit. But of course, such mentionings form the basis of the ideological critique so characteristic of Marxist methods. More- over, such mentionings arise in science whenever explanations are re- quested for the phenomena being described. In other words, the move from description to explanation occurs when the scientist stops talking about just "x" and starts talking about "x and not y". Thus, "explain- ing 'x"' involves showing why "y" did not happen, which requires that the actual "x" and the non-actual "y" somehow be made comparable. In scientific practice, this comparability is accomplished through thought- experiments and counterfactual reasoning, which presuppose that the "actual x" can be reduced to a "possibly not x". Then, the scientist is in a position to consider why "x" and "y" are not possible together. Methodologically, we could say, after Husserl, that "x" has now been "bracketed"; stylistically, we could just as well say that "x" has been "put in scare quotes". This account accords with the view that expla- nations are needed whenever some phenomenon is said to be "necessary", which is to say, exist in virtue of excluding all other relevant possi- bilities. In short, Rorty is stood on his head. The desire for expla- nation expresses science's latent philosophical aspiration. Further- more, in the course of satisfying this desire, the scientist is in a position to think through the ramifications of there being an alterna- tive state-of-affairs, thereby making room for the Marxist, whose expla- nation of "x" may involve an implicit endorsement of "y".

Given these considerations, let us now gradually return to our ear- lier claim concerning the legitimacy of Derrida's and Cavell's obscure styles. First, it is easy to see why explaining a phenomenon involves questions of legitimacy, while describing it does not. Simply put, an implicit reference to the author is made during an explanation, insofar as he supplies the alternative states-of-affairs in virtue of whose pro- hibition the actual state-of-affairs obtains. Thus, in reading the ex- planation, we learn about the explainer as well as about the explained

way of putting it is to say that philosophy--rather than making room for faith, as Kant thought--makes room for doubt. It treats as merely one among many alternatives something that would otherwise be treated as having no alternatives whatsoever.

But while it is clear that Marxists would find such a strategy at- tractive, it is not clear that it requires a distinctly "philosophical turn" (pace Rorty). It could be argued that placing a system of lin- guistic practices against the background of socio-economic conditions suffices to show the ideological limitations of those practices without making any of the modal moves described above. In effect then, the linguist would simply be integrating phenomena from his science with those of other social sciences. And indeed, if the Marxist--or any scientist for that matter--were solely interested in providing a des- cription of the society (as many anthropology monographs in fact seem to be), no philosophical turn would then be made. However, gaining a more comprehensive picture of a society does not ipso facto imply re- vealing the limits of, or constraints on, that picture. As a scientist I can systematically describe the pursuit of profit in a capitalist society without mentioning another activity that is prohibited in virtue of such a pursuit. But of course, such mentionings form the basis of the ideological critique so characteristic of Marxist methods. More- over, such mentionings arise in science whenever explanations are re- quested for the phenomena being described. In other words, the move from description to explanation occurs when the scientist stops talking about just "x" and starts talking about "x and not y". Thus, "explain- ing 'x"' involves showing why "y" did not happen, which requires that the actual "x" and the non-actual "y" somehow be made comparable. In scientific practice, this comparability is accomplished through thought- experiments and counterfactual reasoning, which presuppose that the "actual x" can be reduced to a "possibly not x". Then, the scientist is in a position to consider why "x" and "y" are not possible together. Methodologically, we could say, after Husserl, that "x" has now been "bracketed"; stylistically, we could just as well say that "x" has been "put in scare quotes". This account accords with the view that expla- nations are needed whenever some phenomenon is said to be "necessary", which is to say, exist in virtue of excluding all other relevant possi- bilities. In short, Rorty is stood on his head. The desire for expla- nation expresses science's latent philosophical aspiration. Further- more, in the course of satisfying this desire, the scientist is in a position to think through the ramifications of there being an alterna- tive state-of-affairs, thereby making room for the Marxist, whose expla- nation of "x" may involve an implicit endorsement of "y".

Given these considerations, let us now gradually return to our ear- lier claim concerning the legitimacy of Derrida's and Cavell's obscure styles. First, it is easy to see why explaining a phenomenon involves questions of legitimacy, while describing it does not. Simply put, an implicit reference to the author is made during an explanation, insofar as he supplies the alternative states-of-affairs in virtue of whose pro- hibition the actual state-of-affairs obtains. Thus, in reading the ex- planation, we learn about the explainer as well as about the explained

way of putting it is to say that philosophy--rather than making room for faith, as Kant thought--makes room for doubt. It treats as merely one among many alternatives something that would otherwise be treated as having no alternatives whatsoever.

But while it is clear that Marxists would find such a strategy at- tractive, it is not clear that it requires a distinctly "philosophical turn" (pace Rorty). It could be argued that placing a system of lin- guistic practices against the background of socio-economic conditions suffices to show the ideological limitations of those practices without making any of the modal moves described above. In effect then, the linguist would simply be integrating phenomena from his science with those of other social sciences. And indeed, if the Marxist--or any scientist for that matter--were solely interested in providing a des- cription of the society (as many anthropology monographs in fact seem to be), no philosophical turn would then be made. However, gaining a more comprehensive picture of a society does not ipso facto imply re- vealing the limits of, or constraints on, that picture. As a scientist I can systematically describe the pursuit of profit in a capitalist society without mentioning another activity that is prohibited in virtue of such a pursuit. But of course, such mentionings form the basis of the ideological critique so characteristic of Marxist methods. More- over, such mentionings arise in science whenever explanations are re- quested for the phenomena being described. In other words, the move from description to explanation occurs when the scientist stops talking about just "x" and starts talking about "x and not y". Thus, "explain- ing 'x"' involves showing why "y" did not happen, which requires that the actual "x" and the non-actual "y" somehow be made comparable. In scientific practice, this comparability is accomplished through thought- experiments and counterfactual reasoning, which presuppose that the "actual x" can be reduced to a "possibly not x". Then, the scientist is in a position to consider why "x" and "y" are not possible together. Methodologically, we could say, after Husserl, that "x" has now been "bracketed"; stylistically, we could just as well say that "x" has been "put in scare quotes". This account accords with the view that expla- nations are needed whenever some phenomenon is said to be "necessary", which is to say, exist in virtue of excluding all other relevant possi- bilities. In short, Rorty is stood on his head. The desire for expla- nation expresses science's latent philosophical aspiration. Further- more, in the course of satisfying this desire, the scientist is in a position to think through the ramifications of there being an alterna- tive state-of-affairs, thereby making room for the Marxist, whose expla- nation of "x" may involve an implicit endorsement of "y".

Given these considerations, let us now gradually return to our ear- lier claim concerning the legitimacy of Derrida's and Cavell's obscure styles. First, it is easy to see why explaining a phenomenon involves questions of legitimacy, while describing it does not. Simply put, an implicit reference to the author is made during an explanation, insofar as he supplies the alternative states-of-affairs in virtue of whose pro- hibition the actual state-of-affairs obtains. Thus, in reading the ex- planation, we learn about the explainer as well as about the explained

way of putting it is to say that philosophy--rather than making room for faith, as Kant thought--makes room for doubt. It treats as merely one among many alternatives something that would otherwise be treated as having no alternatives whatsoever.

But while it is clear that Marxists would find such a strategy at- tractive, it is not clear that it requires a distinctly "philosophical turn" (pace Rorty). It could be argued that placing a system of lin- guistic practices against the background of socio-economic conditions suffices to show the ideological limitations of those practices without making any of the modal moves described above. In effect then, the linguist would simply be integrating phenomena from his science with those of other social sciences. And indeed, if the Marxist--or any scientist for that matter--were solely interested in providing a des- cription of the society (as many anthropology monographs in fact seem to be), no philosophical turn would then be made. However, gaining a more comprehensive picture of a society does not ipso facto imply re- vealing the limits of, or constraints on, that picture. As a scientist I can systematically describe the pursuit of profit in a capitalist society without mentioning another activity that is prohibited in virtue of such a pursuit. But of course, such mentionings form the basis of the ideological critique so characteristic of Marxist methods. More- over, such mentionings arise in science whenever explanations are re- quested for the phenomena being described. In other words, the move from description to explanation occurs when the scientist stops talking about just "x" and starts talking about "x and not y". Thus, "explain- ing 'x"' involves showing why "y" did not happen, which requires that the actual "x" and the non-actual "y" somehow be made comparable. In scientific practice, this comparability is accomplished through thought- experiments and counterfactual reasoning, which presuppose that the "actual x" can be reduced to a "possibly not x". Then, the scientist is in a position to consider why "x" and "y" are not possible together. Methodologically, we could say, after Husserl, that "x" has now been "bracketed"; stylistically, we could just as well say that "x" has been "put in scare quotes". This account accords with the view that expla- nations are needed whenever some phenomenon is said to be "necessary", which is to say, exist in virtue of excluding all other relevant possi- bilities. In short, Rorty is stood on his head. The desire for expla- nation expresses science's latent philosophical aspiration. Further- more, in the course of satisfying this desire, the scientist is in a position to think through the ramifications of there being an alterna- tive state-of-affairs, thereby making room for the Marxist, whose expla- nation of "x" may involve an implicit endorsement of "y".

Given these considerations, let us now gradually return to our ear- lier claim concerning the legitimacy of Derrida's and Cavell's obscure styles. First, it is easy to see why explaining a phenomenon involves questions of legitimacy, while describing it does not. Simply put, an implicit reference to the author is made during an explanation, insofar as he supplies the alternative states-of-affairs in virtue of whose pro- hibition the actual state-of-affairs obtains. Thus, in reading the ex- planation, we learn about the explainer as well as about the explained

way of putting it is to say that philosophy--rather than making room for faith, as Kant thought--makes room for doubt. It treats as merely one among many alternatives something that would otherwise be treated as having no alternatives whatsoever.

But while it is clear that Marxists would find such a strategy at- tractive, it is not clear that it requires a distinctly "philosophical turn" (pace Rorty). It could be argued that placing a system of lin- guistic practices against the background of socio-economic conditions suffices to show the ideological limitations of those practices without making any of the modal moves described above. In effect then, the linguist would simply be integrating phenomena from his science with those of other social sciences. And indeed, if the Marxist--or any scientist for that matter--were solely interested in providing a des- cription of the society (as many anthropology monographs in fact seem to be), no philosophical turn would then be made. However, gaining a more comprehensive picture of a society does not ipso facto imply re- vealing the limits of, or constraints on, that picture. As a scientist I can systematically describe the pursuit of profit in a capitalist society without mentioning another activity that is prohibited in virtue of such a pursuit. But of course, such mentionings form the basis of the ideological critique so characteristic of Marxist methods. More- over, such mentionings arise in science whenever explanations are re- quested for the phenomena being described. In other words, the move from description to explanation occurs when the scientist stops talking about just "x" and starts talking about "x and not y". Thus, "explain- ing 'x"' involves showing why "y" did not happen, which requires that the actual "x" and the non-actual "y" somehow be made comparable. In scientific practice, this comparability is accomplished through thought- experiments and counterfactual reasoning, which presuppose that the "actual x" can be reduced to a "possibly not x". Then, the scientist is in a position to consider why "x" and "y" are not possible together. Methodologically, we could say, after Husserl, that "x" has now been "bracketed"; stylistically, we could just as well say that "x" has been "put in scare quotes". This account accords with the view that expla- nations are needed whenever some phenomenon is said to be "necessary", which is to say, exist in virtue of excluding all other relevant possi- bilities. In short, Rorty is stood on his head. The desire for expla- nation expresses science's latent philosophical aspiration. Further- more, in the course of satisfying this desire, the scientist is in a position to think through the ramifications of there being an alterna- tive state-of-affairs, thereby making room for the Marxist, whose expla- nation of "x" may involve an implicit endorsement of "y".

Given these considerations, let us now gradually return to our ear- lier claim concerning the legitimacy of Derrida's and Cavell's obscure styles. First, it is easy to see why explaining a phenomenon involves questions of legitimacy, while describing it does not. Simply put, an implicit reference to the author is made during an explanation, insofar as he supplies the alternative states-of-affairs in virtue of whose pro- hibition the actual state-of-affairs obtains. Thus, in reading the ex- planation, we learn about the explainer as well as about the explained

way of putting it is to say that philosophy--rather than making room for faith, as Kant thought--makes room for doubt. It treats as merely one among many alternatives something that would otherwise be treated as having no alternatives whatsoever.

But while it is clear that Marxists would find such a strategy at- tractive, it is not clear that it requires a distinctly "philosophical turn" (pace Rorty). It could be argued that placing a system of lin- guistic practices against the background of socio-economic conditions suffices to show the ideological limitations of those practices without making any of the modal moves described above. In effect then, the linguist would simply be integrating phenomena from his science with those of other social sciences. And indeed, if the Marxist--or any scientist for that matter--were solely interested in providing a des- cription of the society (as many anthropology monographs in fact seem to be), no philosophical turn would then be made. However, gaining a more comprehensive picture of a society does not ipso facto imply re- vealing the limits of, or constraints on, that picture. As a scientist I can systematically describe the pursuit of profit in a capitalist society without mentioning another activity that is prohibited in virtue of such a pursuit. But of course, such mentionings form the basis of the ideological critique so characteristic of Marxist methods. More- over, such mentionings arise in science whenever explanations are re- quested for the phenomena being described. In other words, the move from description to explanation occurs when the scientist stops talking about just "x" and starts talking about "x and not y". Thus, "explain- ing 'x"' involves showing why "y" did not happen, which requires that the actual "x" and the non-actual "y" somehow be made comparable. In scientific practice, this comparability is accomplished through thought- experiments and counterfactual reasoning, which presuppose that the "actual x" can be reduced to a "possibly not x". Then, the scientist is in a position to consider why "x" and "y" are not possible together. Methodologically, we could say, after Husserl, that "x" has now been "bracketed"; stylistically, we could just as well say that "x" has been "put in scare quotes". This account accords with the view that expla- nations are needed whenever some phenomenon is said to be "necessary", which is to say, exist in virtue of excluding all other relevant possi- bilities. In short, Rorty is stood on his head. The desire for expla- nation expresses science's latent philosophical aspiration. Further- more, in the course of satisfying this desire, the scientist is in a position to think through the ramifications of there being an alterna- tive state-of-affairs, thereby making room for the Marxist, whose expla- nation of "x" may involve an implicit endorsement of "y".

Given these considerations, let us now gradually return to our ear- lier claim concerning the legitimacy of Derrida's and Cavell's obscure styles. First, it is easy to see why explaining a phenomenon involves questions of legitimacy, while describing it does not. Simply put, an implicit reference to the author is made during an explanation, insofar as he supplies the alternative states-of-affairs in virtue of whose pro- hibition the actual state-of-affairs obtains. Thus, in reading the ex- planation, we learn about the explainer as well as about the explained

way of putting it is to say that philosophy--rather than making room for faith, as Kant thought--makes room for doubt. It treats as merely one among many alternatives something that would otherwise be treated as having no alternatives whatsoever.

But while it is clear that Marxists would find such a strategy at- tractive, it is not clear that it requires a distinctly "philosophical turn" (pace Rorty). It could be argued that placing a system of lin- guistic practices against the background of socio-economic conditions suffices to show the ideological limitations of those practices without making any of the modal moves described above. In effect then, the linguist would simply be integrating phenomena from his science with those of other social sciences. And indeed, if the Marxist--or any scientist for that matter--were solely interested in providing a des- cription of the society (as many anthropology monographs in fact seem to be), no philosophical turn would then be made. However, gaining a more comprehensive picture of a society does not ipso facto imply re- vealing the limits of, or constraints on, that picture. As a scientist I can systematically describe the pursuit of profit in a capitalist society without mentioning another activity that is prohibited in virtue of such a pursuit. But of course, such mentionings form the basis of the ideological critique so characteristic of Marxist methods. More- over, such mentionings arise in science whenever explanations are re- quested for the phenomena being described. In other words, the move from description to explanation occurs when the scientist stops talking about just "x" and starts talking about "x and not y". Thus, "explain- ing 'x"' involves showing why "y" did not happen, which requires that the actual "x" and the non-actual "y" somehow be made comparable. In scientific practice, this comparability is accomplished through thought- experiments and counterfactual reasoning, which presuppose that the "actual x" can be reduced to a "possibly not x". Then, the scientist is in a position to consider why "x" and "y" are not possible together. Methodologically, we could say, after Husserl, that "x" has now been "bracketed"; stylistically, we could just as well say that "x" has been "put in scare quotes". This account accords with the view that expla- nations are needed whenever some phenomenon is said to be "necessary", which is to say, exist in virtue of excluding all other relevant possi- bilities. In short, Rorty is stood on his head. The desire for expla- nation expresses science's latent philosophical aspiration. Further- more, in the course of satisfying this desire, the scientist is in a position to think through the ramifications of there being an alterna- tive state-of-affairs, thereby making room for the Marxist, whose expla- nation of "x" may involve an implicit endorsement of "y".

Given these considerations, let us now gradually return to our ear- lier claim concerning the legitimacy of Derrida's and Cavell's obscure styles. First, it is easy to see why explaining a phenomenon involves questions of legitimacy, while describing it does not. Simply put, an implicit reference to the author is made during an explanation, insofar as he supplies the alternative states-of-affairs in virtue of whose pro- hibition the actual state-of-affairs obtains. Thus, in reading the ex- planation, we learn about the explainer as well as about the explained

way of putting it is to say that philosophy--rather than making room for faith, as Kant thought--makes room for doubt. It treats as merely one among many alternatives something that would otherwise be treated as having no alternatives whatsoever.

But while it is clear that Marxists would find such a strategy at- tractive, it is not clear that it requires a distinctly "philosophical turn" (pace Rorty). It could be argued that placing a system of lin- guistic practices against the background of socio-economic conditions suffices to show the ideological limitations of those practices without making any of the modal moves described above. In effect then, the linguist would simply be integrating phenomena from his science with those of other social sciences. And indeed, if the Marxist--or any scientist for that matter--were solely interested in providing a des- cription of the society (as many anthropology monographs in fact seem to be), no philosophical turn would then be made. However, gaining a more comprehensive picture of a society does not ipso facto imply re- vealing the limits of, or constraints on, that picture. As a scientist I can systematically describe the pursuit of profit in a capitalist society without mentioning another activity that is prohibited in virtue of such a pursuit. But of course, such mentionings form the basis of the ideological critique so characteristic of Marxist methods. More- over, such mentionings arise in science whenever explanations are re- quested for the phenomena being described. In other words, the move from description to explanation occurs when the scientist stops talking about just "x" and starts talking about "x and not y". Thus, "explain- ing 'x"' involves showing why "y" did not happen, which requires that the actual "x" and the non-actual "y" somehow be made comparable. In scientific practice, this comparability is accomplished through thought- experiments and counterfactual reasoning, which presuppose that the "actual x" can be reduced to a "possibly not x". Then, the scientist is in a position to consider why "x" and "y" are not possible together. Methodologically, we could say, after Husserl, that "x" has now been "bracketed"; stylistically, we could just as well say that "x" has been "put in scare quotes". This account accords with the view that expla- nations are needed whenever some phenomenon is said to be "necessary", which is to say, exist in virtue of excluding all other relevant possi- bilities. In short, Rorty is stood on his head. The desire for expla- nation expresses science's latent philosophical aspiration. Further- more, in the course of satisfying this desire, the scientist is in a position to think through the ramifications of there being an alterna- tive state-of-affairs, thereby making room for the Marxist, whose expla- nation of "x" may involve an implicit endorsement of "y".

Given these considerations, let us now gradually return to our ear- lier claim concerning the legitimacy of Derrida's and Cavell's obscure styles. First, it is easy to see why explaining a phenomenon involves questions of legitimacy, while describing it does not. Simply put, an implicit reference to the author is made during an explanation, insofar as he supplies the alternative states-of-affairs in virtue of whose pro- hibition the actual state-of-affairs obtains. Thus, in reading the ex- planation, we learn about the explainer as well as about the explained

way of putting it is to say that philosophy--rather than making room for faith, as Kant thought--makes room for doubt. It treats as merely one among many alternatives something that would otherwise be treated as having no alternatives whatsoever.

But while it is clear that Marxists would find such a strategy at- tractive, it is not clear that it requires a distinctly "philosophical turn" (pace Rorty). It could be argued that placing a system of lin- guistic practices against the background of socio-economic conditions suffices to show the ideological limitations of those practices without making any of the modal moves described above. In effect then, the linguist would simply be integrating phenomena from his science with those of other social sciences. And indeed, if the Marxist--or any scientist for that matter--were solely interested in providing a des- cription of the society (as many anthropology monographs in fact seem to be), no philosophical turn would then be made. However, gaining a more comprehensive picture of a society does not ipso facto imply re- vealing the limits of, or constraints on, that picture. As a scientist I can systematically describe the pursuit of profit in a capitalist society without mentioning another activity that is prohibited in virtue of such a pursuit. But of course, such mentionings form the basis of the ideological critique so characteristic of Marxist methods. More- over, such mentionings arise in science whenever explanations are re- quested for the phenomena being described. In other words, the move from description to explanation occurs when the scientist stops talking about just "x" and starts talking about "x and not y". Thus, "explain- ing 'x"' involves showing why "y" did not happen, which requires that the actual "x" and the non-actual "y" somehow be made comparable. In scientific practice, this comparability is accomplished through thought- experiments and counterfactual reasoning, which presuppose that the "actual x" can be reduced to a "possibly not x". Then, the scientist is in a position to consider why "x" and "y" are not possible together. Methodologically, we could say, after Husserl, that "x" has now been "bracketed"; stylistically, we could just as well say that "x" has been "put in scare quotes". This account accords with the view that expla- nations are needed whenever some phenomenon is said to be "necessary", which is to say, exist in virtue of excluding all other relevant possi- bilities. In short, Rorty is stood on his head. The desire for expla- nation expresses science's latent philosophical aspiration. Further- more, in the course of satisfying this desire, the scientist is in a position to think through the ramifications of there being an alterna- tive state-of-affairs, thereby making room for the Marxist, whose expla- nation of "x" may involve an implicit endorsement of "y".

Given these considerations, let us now gradually return to our ear- lier claim concerning the legitimacy of Derrida's and Cavell's obscure styles. First, it is easy to see why explaining a phenomenon involves questions of legitimacy, while describing it does not. Simply put, an implicit reference to the author is made during an explanation, insofar as he supplies the alternative states-of-affairs in virtue of whose pro- hibition the actual state-of-affairs obtains. Thus, in reading the ex- planation, we learn about the explainer as well as about the explained

way of putting it is to say that philosophy--rather than making room for faith, as Kant thought--makes room for doubt. It treats as merely one among many alternatives something that would otherwise be treated as having no alternatives whatsoever.

But while it is clear that Marxists would find such a strategy at- tractive, it is not clear that it requires a distinctly "philosophical turn" (pace Rorty). It could be argued that placing a system of lin- guistic practices against the background of socio-economic conditions suffices to show the ideological limitations of those practices without making any of the modal moves described above. In effect then, the linguist would simply be integrating phenomena from his science with those of other social sciences. And indeed, if the Marxist--or any scientist for that matter--were solely interested in providing a des- cription of the society (as many anthropology monographs in fact seem to be), no philosophical turn would then be made. However, gaining a more comprehensive picture of a society does not ipso facto imply re- vealing the limits of, or constraints on, that picture. As a scientist I can systematically describe the pursuit of profit in a capitalist society without mentioning another activity that is prohibited in virtue of such a pursuit. But of course, such mentionings form the basis of the ideological critique so characteristic of Marxist methods. More- over, such mentionings arise in science whenever explanations are re- quested for the phenomena being described. In other words, the move from description to explanation occurs when the scientist stops talking about just "x" and starts talking about "x and not y". Thus, "explain- ing 'x"' involves showing why "y" did not happen, which requires that the actual "x" and the non-actual "y" somehow be made comparable. In scientific practice, this comparability is accomplished through thought- experiments and counterfactual reasoning, which presuppose that the "actual x" can be reduced to a "possibly not x". Then, the scientist is in a position to consider why "x" and "y" are not possible together. Methodologically, we could say, after Husserl, that "x" has now been "bracketed"; stylistically, we could just as well say that "x" has been "put in scare quotes". This account accords with the view that expla- nations are needed whenever some phenomenon is said to be "necessary", which is to say, exist in virtue of excluding all other relevant possi- bilities. In short, Rorty is stood on his head. The desire for expla- nation expresses science's latent philosophical aspiration. Further- more, in the course of satisfying this desire, the scientist is in a position to think through the ramifications of there being an alterna- tive state-of-affairs, thereby making room for the Marxist, whose expla- nation of "x" may involve an implicit endorsement of "y".

Given these considerations, let us now gradually return to our ear- lier claim concerning the legitimacy of Derrida's and Cavell's obscure styles. First, it is easy to see why explaining a phenomenon involves questions of legitimacy, while describing it does not. Simply put, an implicit reference to the author is made during an explanation, insofar as he supplies the alternative states-of-affairs in virtue of whose pro- hibition the actual state-of-affairs obtains. Thus, in reading the ex- planation, we learn about the explainer as well as about the explained

way of putting it is to say that philosophy--rather than making room for faith, as Kant thought--makes room for doubt. It treats as merely one among many alternatives something that would otherwise be treated as having no alternatives whatsoever.

But while it is clear that Marxists would find such a strategy at- tractive, it is not clear that it requires a distinctly "philosophical turn" (pace Rorty). It could be argued that placing a system of lin- guistic practices against the background of socio-economic conditions suffices to show the ideological limitations of those practices without making any of the modal moves described above. In effect then, the linguist would simply be integrating phenomena from his science with those of other social sciences. And indeed, if the Marxist--or any scientist for that matter--were solely interested in providing a des- cription of the society (as many anthropology monographs in fact seem to be), no philosophical turn would then be made. However, gaining a more comprehensive picture of a society does not ipso facto imply re- vealing the limits of, or constraints on, that picture. As a scientist I can systematically describe the pursuit of profit in a capitalist society without mentioning another activity that is prohibited in virtue of such a pursuit. But of course, such mentionings form the basis of the ideological critique so characteristic of Marxist methods. More- over, such mentionings arise in science whenever explanations are re- quested for the phenomena being described. In other words, the move from description to explanation occurs when the scientist stops talking about just "x" and starts talking about "x and not y". Thus, "explain- ing 'x"' involves showing why "y" did not happen, which requires that the actual "x" and the non-actual "y" somehow be made comparable. In scientific practice, this comparability is accomplished through thought- experiments and counterfactual reasoning, which presuppose that the "actual x" can be reduced to a "possibly not x". Then, the scientist is in a position to consider why "x" and "y" are not possible together. Methodologically, we could say, after Husserl, that "x" has now been "bracketed"; stylistically, we could just as well say that "x" has been "put in scare quotes". This account accords with the view that expla- nations are needed whenever some phenomenon is said to be "necessary", which is to say, exist in virtue of excluding all other relevant possi- bilities. In short, Rorty is stood on his head. The desire for expla- nation expresses science's latent philosophical aspiration. Further- more, in the course of satisfying this desire, the scientist is in a position to think through the ramifications of there being an alterna- tive state-of-affairs, thereby making room for the Marxist, whose expla- nation of "x" may involve an implicit endorsement of "y".

Given these considerations, let us now gradually return to our ear- lier claim concerning the legitimacy of Derrida's and Cavell's obscure styles. First, it is easy to see why explaining a phenomenon involves questions of legitimacy, while describing it does not. Simply put, an implicit reference to the author is made during an explanation, insofar as he supplies the alternative states-of-affairs in virtue of whose pro- hibition the actual state-of-affairs obtains. Thus, in reading the ex- planation, we learn about the explainer as well as about the explained

way of putting it is to say that philosophy--rather than making room for faith, as Kant thought--makes room for doubt. It treats as merely one among many alternatives something that would otherwise be treated as having no alternatives whatsoever.

But while it is clear that Marxists would find such a strategy at- tractive, it is not clear that it requires a distinctly "philosophical turn" (pace Rorty). It could be argued that placing a system of lin- guistic practices against the background of socio-economic conditions suffices to show the ideological limitations of those practices without making any of the modal moves described above. In effect then, the linguist would simply be integrating phenomena from his science with those of other social sciences. And indeed, if the Marxist--or any scientist for that matter--were solely interested in providing a des- cription of the society (as many anthropology monographs in fact seem to be), no philosophical turn would then be made. However, gaining a more comprehensive picture of a society does not ipso facto imply re- vealing the limits of, or constraints on, that picture. As a scientist I can systematically describe the pursuit of profit in a capitalist society without mentioning another activity that is prohibited in virtue of such a pursuit. But of course, such mentionings form the basis of the ideological critique so characteristic of Marxist methods. More- over, such mentionings arise in science whenever explanations are re- quested for the phenomena being described. In other words, the move from description to explanation occurs when the scientist stops talking about just "x" and starts talking about "x and not y". Thus, "explain- ing 'x"' involves showing why "y" did not happen, which requires that the actual "x" and the non-actual "y" somehow be made comparable. In scientific practice, this comparability is accomplished through thought- experiments and counterfactual reasoning, which presuppose that the "actual x" can be reduced to a "possibly not x". Then, the scientist is in a position to consider why "x" and "y" are not possible together. Methodologically, we could say, after Husserl, that "x" has now been "bracketed"; stylistically, we could just as well say that "x" has been "put in scare quotes". This account accords with the view that expla- nations are needed whenever some phenomenon is said to be "necessary", which is to say, exist in virtue of excluding all other relevant possi- bilities. In short, Rorty is stood on his head. The desire for expla- nation expresses science's latent philosophical aspiration. Further- more, in the course of satisfying this desire, the scientist is in a position to think through the ramifications of there being an alterna- tive state-of-affairs, thereby making room for the Marxist, whose expla- nation of "x" may involve an implicit endorsement of "y".

Given these considerations, let us now gradually return to our ear- lier claim concerning the legitimacy of Derrida's and Cavell's obscure styles. First, it is easy to see why explaining a phenomenon involves questions of legitimacy, while describing it does not. Simply put, an implicit reference to the author is made during an explanation, insofar as he supplies the alternative states-of-affairs in virtue of whose pro- hibition the actual state-of-affairs obtains. Thus, in reading the ex- planation, we learn about the explainer as well as about the explained

way of putting it is to say that philosophy--rather than making room for faith, as Kant thought--makes room for doubt. It treats as merely one among many alternatives something that would otherwise be treated as having no alternatives whatsoever.

But while it is clear that Marxists would find such a strategy at- tractive, it is not clear that it requires a distinctly "philosophical turn" (pace Rorty). It could be argued that placing a system of lin- guistic practices against the background of socio-economic conditions suffices to show the ideological limitations of those practices without making any of the modal moves described above. In effect then, the linguist would simply be integrating phenomena from his science with those of other social sciences. And indeed, if the Marxist--or any scientist for that matter--were solely interested in providing a des- cription of the society (as many anthropology monographs in fact seem to be), no philosophical turn would then be made. However, gaining a more comprehensive picture of a society does not ipso facto imply re- vealing the limits of, or constraints on, that picture. As a scientist I can systematically describe the pursuit of profit in a capitalist society without mentioning another activity that is prohibited in virtue of such a pursuit. But of course, such mentionings form the basis of the ideological critique so characteristic of Marxist methods. More- over, such mentionings arise in science whenever explanations are re- quested for the phenomena being described. In other words, the move from description to explanation occurs when the scientist stops talking about just "x" and starts talking about "x and not y". Thus, "explain- ing 'x"' involves showing why "y" did not happen, which requires that the actual "x" and the non-actual "y" somehow be made comparable. In scientific practice, this comparability is accomplished through thought- experiments and counterfactual reasoning, which presuppose that the "actual x" can be reduced to a "possibly not x". Then, the scientist is in a position to consider why "x" and "y" are not possible together. Methodologically, we could say, after Husserl, that "x" has now been "bracketed"; stylistically, we could just as well say that "x" has been "put in scare quotes". This account accords with the view that expla- nations are needed whenever some phenomenon is said to be "necessary", which is to say, exist in virtue of excluding all other relevant possi- bilities. In short, Rorty is stood on his head. The desire for expla- nation expresses science's latent philosophical aspiration. Further- more, in the course of satisfying this desire, the scientist is in a position to think through the ramifications of there being an alterna- tive state-of-affairs, thereby making room for the Marxist, whose expla- nation of "x" may involve an implicit endorsement of "y".

Given these considerations, let us now gradually return to our ear- lier claim concerning the legitimacy of Derrida's and Cavell's obscure styles. First, it is easy to see why explaining a phenomenon involves questions of legitimacy, while describing it does not. Simply put, an implicit reference to the author is made during an explanation, insofar as he supplies the alternative states-of-affairs in virtue of whose pro- hibition the actual state-of-affairs obtains. Thus, in reading the ex- planation, we learn about the explainer as well as about the explained

way of putting it is to say that philosophy--rather than making room for faith, as Kant thought--makes room for doubt. It treats as merely one among many alternatives something that would otherwise be treated as having no alternatives whatsoever.

But while it is clear that Marxists would find such a strategy at- tractive, it is not clear that it requires a distinctly "philosophical turn" (pace Rorty). It could be argued that placing a system of lin- guistic practices against the background of socio-economic conditions suffices to show the ideological limitations of those practices without making any of the modal moves described above. In effect then, the linguist would simply be integrating phenomena from his science with those of other social sciences. And indeed, if the Marxist--or any scientist for that matter--were solely interested in providing a des- cription of the society (as many anthropology monographs in fact seem to be), no philosophical turn would then be made. However, gaining a more comprehensive picture of a society does not ipso facto imply re- vealing the limits of, or constraints on, that picture. As a scientist I can systematically describe the pursuit of profit in a capitalist society without mentioning another activity that is prohibited in virtue of such a pursuit. But of course, such mentionings form the basis of the ideological critique so characteristic of Marxist methods. More- over, such mentionings arise in science whenever explanations are re- quested for the phenomena being described. In other words, the move from description to explanation occurs when the scientist stops talking about just "x" and starts talking about "x and not y". Thus, "explain- ing 'x"' involves showing why "y" did not happen, which requires that the actual "x" and the non-actual "y" somehow be made comparable. In scientific practice, this comparability is accomplished through thought- experiments and counterfactual reasoning, which presuppose that the "actual x" can be reduced to a "possibly not x". Then, the scientist is in a position to consider why "x" and "y" are not possible together. Methodologically, we could say, after Husserl, that "x" has now been "bracketed"; stylistically, we could just as well say that "x" has been "put in scare quotes". This account accords with the view that expla- nations are needed whenever some phenomenon is said to be "necessary", which is to say, exist in virtue of excluding all other relevant possi- bilities. In short, Rorty is stood on his head. The desire for expla- nation expresses science's latent philosophical aspiration. Further- more, in the course of satisfying this desire, the scientist is in a position to think through the ramifications of there being an alterna- tive state-of-affairs, thereby making room for the Marxist, whose expla- nation of "x" may involve an implicit endorsement of "y".

Given these considerations, let us now gradually return to our ear- lier claim concerning the legitimacy of Derrida's and Cavell's obscure styles. First, it is easy to see why explaining a phenomenon involves questions of legitimacy, while describing it does not. Simply put, an implicit reference to the author is made during an explanation, insofar as he supplies the alternative states-of-affairs in virtue of whose pro- hibition the actual state-of-affairs obtains. Thus, in reading the ex- planation, we learn about the explainer as well as about the explained

way of putting it is to say that philosophy--rather than making room for faith, as Kant thought--makes room for doubt. It treats as merely one among many alternatives something that would otherwise be treated as having no alternatives whatsoever.

But while it is clear that Marxists would find such a strategy at- tractive, it is not clear that it requires a distinctly "philosophical turn" (pace Rorty). It could be argued that placing a system of lin- guistic practices against the background of socio-economic conditions suffices to show the ideological limitations of those practices without making any of the modal moves described above. In effect then, the linguist would simply be integrating phenomena from his science with those of other social sciences. And indeed, if the Marxist--or any scientist for that matter--were solely interested in providing a des- cription of the society (as many anthropology monographs in fact seem to be), no philosophical turn would then be made. However, gaining a more comprehensive picture of a society does not ipso facto imply re- vealing the limits of, or constraints on, that picture. As a scientist I can systematically describe the pursuit of profit in a capitalist society without mentioning another activity that is prohibited in virtue of such a pursuit. But of course, such mentionings form the basis of the ideological critique so characteristic of Marxist methods. More- over, such mentionings arise in science whenever explanations are re- quested for the phenomena being described. In other words, the move from description to explanation occurs when the scientist stops talking about just "x" and starts talking about "x and not y". Thus, "explain- ing 'x"' involves showing why "y" did not happen, which requires that the actual "x" and the non-actual "y" somehow be made comparable. In scientific practice, this comparability is accomplished through thought- experiments and counterfactual reasoning, which presuppose that the "actual x" can be reduced to a "possibly not x". Then, the scientist is in a position to consider why "x" and "y" are not possible together. Methodologically, we could say, after Husserl, that "x" has now been "bracketed"; stylistically, we could just as well say that "x" has been "put in scare quotes". This account accords with the view that expla- nations are needed whenever some phenomenon is said to be "necessary", which is to say, exist in virtue of excluding all other relevant possi- bilities. In short, Rorty is stood on his head. The desire for expla- nation expresses science's latent philosophical aspiration. Further- more, in the course of satisfying this desire, the scientist is in a position to think through the ramifications of there being an alterna- tive state-of-affairs, thereby making room for the Marxist, whose expla- nation of "x" may involve an implicit endorsement of "y".

Given these considerations, let us now gradually return to our ear- lier claim concerning the legitimacy of Derrida's and Cavell's obscure styles. First, it is easy to see why explaining a phenomenon involves questions of legitimacy, while describing it does not. Simply put, an implicit reference to the author is made during an explanation, insofar as he supplies the alternative states-of-affairs in virtue of whose pro- hibition the actual state-of-affairs obtains. Thus, in reading the ex- planation, we learn about the explainer as well as about the explained

way of putting it is to say that philosophy--rather than making room for faith, as Kant thought--makes room for doubt. It treats as merely one among many alternatives something that would otherwise be treated as having no alternatives whatsoever.

But while it is clear that Marxists would find such a strategy at- tractive, it is not clear that it requires a distinctly "philosophical turn" (pace Rorty). It could be argued that placing a system of lin- guistic practices against the background of socio-economic conditions suffices to show the ideological limitations of those practices without making any of the modal moves described above. In effect then, the linguist would simply be integrating phenomena from his science with those of other social sciences. And indeed, if the Marxist--or any scientist for that matter--were solely interested in providing a des- cription of the society (as many anthropology monographs in fact seem to be), no philosophical turn would then be made. However, gaining a more comprehensive picture of a society does not ipso facto imply re- vealing the limits of, or constraints on, that picture. As a scientist I can systematically describe the pursuit of profit in a capitalist society without mentioning another activity that is prohibited in virtue of such a pursuit. But of course, such mentionings form the basis of the ideological critique so characteristic of Marxist methods. More- over, such mentionings arise in science whenever explanations are re- quested for the phenomena being described. In other words, the move from description to explanation occurs when the scientist stops talking about just "x" and starts talking about "x and not y". Thus, "explain- ing 'x"' involves showing why "y" did not happen, which requires that the actual "x" and the non-actual "y" somehow be made comparable. In scientific practice, this comparability is accomplished through thought- experiments and counterfactual reasoning, which presuppose that the "actual x" can be reduced to a "possibly not x". Then, the scientist is in a position to consider why "x" and "y" are not possible together. Methodologically, we could say, after Husserl, that "x" has now been "bracketed"; stylistically, we could just as well say that "x" has been "put in scare quotes". This account accords with the view that expla- nations are needed whenever some phenomenon is said to be "necessary", which is to say, exist in virtue of excluding all other relevant possi- bilities. In short, Rorty is stood on his head. The desire for expla- nation expresses science's latent philosophical aspiration. Further- more, in the course of satisfying this desire, the scientist is in a position to think through the ramifications of there being an alterna- tive state-of-affairs, thereby making room for the Marxist, whose expla- nation of "x" may involve an implicit endorsement of "y".

Given these considerations, let us now gradually return to our ear- lier claim concerning the legitimacy of Derrida's and Cavell's obscure styles. First, it is easy to see why explaining a phenomenon involves questions of legitimacy, while describing it does not. Simply put, an implicit reference to the author is made during an explanation, insofar as he supplies the alternative states-of-affairs in virtue of whose pro- hibition the actual state-of-affairs obtains. Thus, in reading the ex- planation, we learn about the explainer as well as about the explained

way of putting it is to say that philosophy--rather than making room for faith, as Kant thought--makes room for doubt. It treats as merely one among many alternatives something that would otherwise be treated as having no alternatives whatsoever.

But while it is clear that Marxists would find such a strategy at- tractive, it is not clear that it requires a distinctly "philosophical turn" (pace Rorty). It could be argued that placing a system of lin- guistic practices against the background of socio-economic conditions suffices to show the ideological limitations of those practices without making any of the modal moves described above. In effect then, the linguist would simply be integrating phenomena from his science with those of other social sciences. And indeed, if the Marxist--or any scientist for that matter--were solely interested in providing a des- cription of the society (as many anthropology monographs in fact seem to be), no philosophical turn would then be made. However, gaining a more comprehensive picture of a society does not ipso facto imply re- vealing the limits of, or constraints on, that picture. As a scientist I can systematically describe the pursuit of profit in a capitalist society without mentioning another activity that is prohibited in virtue of such a pursuit. But of course, such mentionings form the basis of the ideological critique so characteristic of Marxist methods. More- over, such mentionings arise in science whenever explanations are re- quested for the phenomena being described. In other words, the move from description to explanation occurs when the scientist stops talking about just "x" and starts talking about "x and not y". Thus, "explain- ing 'x"' involves showing why "y" did not happen, which requires that the actual "x" and the non-actual "y" somehow be made comparable. In scientific practice, this comparability is accomplished through thought- experiments and counterfactual reasoning, which presuppose that the "actual x" can be reduced to a "possibly not x". Then, the scientist is in a position to consider why "x" and "y" are not possible together. Methodologically, we could say, after Husserl, that "x" has now been "bracketed"; stylistically, we could just as well say that "x" has been "put in scare quotes". This account accords with the view that expla- nations are needed whenever some phenomenon is said to be "necessary", which is to say, exist in virtue of excluding all other relevant possi- bilities. In short, Rorty is stood on his head. The desire for expla- nation expresses science's latent philosophical aspiration. Further- more, in the course of satisfying this desire, the scientist is in a position to think through the ramifications of there being an alterna- tive state-of-affairs, thereby making room for the Marxist, whose expla- nation of "x" may involve an implicit endorsement of "y".

Given these considerations, let us now gradually return to our ear- lier claim concerning the legitimacy of Derrida's and Cavell's obscure styles. First, it is easy to see why explaining a phenomenon involves questions of legitimacy, while describing it does not. Simply put, an implicit reference to the author is made during an explanation, insofar as he supplies the alternative states-of-affairs in virtue of whose pro- hibition the actual state-of-affairs obtains. Thus, in reading the ex- planation, we learn about the explainer as well as about the explained

way of putting it is to say that philosophy--rather than making room for faith, as Kant thought--makes room for doubt. It treats as merely one among many alternatives something that would otherwise be treated as having no alternatives whatsoever.

But while it is clear that Marxists would find such a strategy at- tractive, it is not clear that it requires a distinctly "philosophical turn" (pace Rorty). It could be argued that placing a system of lin- guistic practices against the background of socio-economic conditions suffices to show the ideological limitations of those practices without making any of the modal moves described above. In effect then, the linguist would simply be integrating phenomena from his science with those of other social sciences. And indeed, if the Marxist--or any scientist for that matter--were solely interested in providing a des- cription of the society (as many anthropology monographs in fact seem to be), no philosophical turn would then be made. However, gaining a more comprehensive picture of a society does not ipso facto imply re- vealing the limits of, or constraints on, that picture. As a scientist I can systematically describe the pursuit of profit in a capitalist society without mentioning another activity that is prohibited in virtue of such a pursuit. But of course, such mentionings form the basis of the ideological critique so characteristic of Marxist methods. More- over, such mentionings arise in science whenever explanations are re- quested for the phenomena being described. In other words, the move from description to explanation occurs when the scientist stops talking about just "x" and starts talking about "x and not y". Thus, "explain- ing 'x"' involves showing why "y" did not happen, which requires that the actual "x" and the non-actual "y" somehow be made comparable. In scientific practice, this comparability is accomplished through thought- experiments and counterfactual reasoning, which presuppose that the "actual x" can be reduced to a "possibly not x". Then, the scientist is in a position to consider why "x" and "y" are not possible together. Methodologically, we could say, after Husserl, that "x" has now been "bracketed"; stylistically, we could just as well say that "x" has been "put in scare quotes". This account accords with the view that expla- nations are needed whenever some phenomenon is said to be "necessary", which is to say, exist in virtue of excluding all other relevant possi- bilities. In short, Rorty is stood on his head. The desire for expla- nation expresses science's latent philosophical aspiration. Further- more, in the course of satisfying this desire, the scientist is in a position to think through the ramifications of there being an alterna- tive state-of-affairs, thereby making room for the Marxist, whose expla- nation of "x" may involve an implicit endorsement of "y".

Given these considerations, let us now gradually return to our ear- lier claim concerning the legitimacy of Derrida's and Cavell's obscure styles. First, it is easy to see why explaining a phenomenon involves questions of legitimacy, while describing it does not. Simply put, an implicit reference to the author is made during an explanation, insofar as he supplies the alternative states-of-affairs in virtue of whose pro- hibition the actual state-of-affairs obtains. Thus, in reading the ex- planation, we learn about the explainer as well as about the explained

way of putting it is to say that philosophy--rather than making room for faith, as Kant thought--makes room for doubt. It treats as merely one among many alternatives something that would otherwise be treated as having no alternatives whatsoever.

But while it is clear that Marxists would find such a strategy at- tractive, it is not clear that it requires a distinctly "philosophical turn" (pace Rorty). It could be argued that placing a system of lin- guistic practices against the background of socio-economic conditions suffices to show the ideological limitations of those practices without making any of the modal moves described above. In effect then, the linguist would simply be integrating phenomena from his science with those of other social sciences. And indeed, if the Marxist--or any scientist for that matter--were solely interested in providing a des- cription of the society (as many anthropology monographs in fact seem to be), no philosophical turn would then be made. However, gaining a more comprehensive picture of a society does not ipso facto imply re- vealing the limits of, or constraints on, that picture. As a scientist I can systematically describe the pursuit of profit in a capitalist society without mentioning another activity that is prohibited in virtue of such a pursuit. But of course, such mentionings form the basis of the ideological critique so characteristic of Marxist methods. More- over, such mentionings arise in science whenever explanations are re- quested for the phenomena being described. In other words, the move from description to explanation occurs when the scientist stops talking about just "x" and starts talking about "x and not y". Thus, "explain- ing 'x"' involves showing why "y" did not happen, which requires that the actual "x" and the non-actual "y" somehow be made comparable. In scientific practice, this comparability is accomplished through thought- experiments and counterfactual reasoning, which presuppose that the "actual x" can be reduced to a "possibly not x". Then, the scientist is in a position to consider why "x" and "y" are not possible together. Methodologically, we could say, after Husserl, that "x" has now been "bracketed"; stylistically, we could just as well say that "x" has been "put in scare quotes". This account accords with the view that expla- nations are needed whenever some phenomenon is said to be "necessary", which is to say, exist in virtue of excluding all other relevant possi- bilities. In short, Rorty is stood on his head. The desire for expla- nation expresses science's latent philosophical aspiration. Further- more, in the course of satisfying this desire, the scientist is in a position to think through the ramifications of there being an alterna- tive state-of-affairs, thereby making room for the Marxist, whose expla- nation of "x" may involve an implicit endorsement of "y".

Given these considerations, let us now gradually return to our ear- lier claim concerning the legitimacy of Derrida's and Cavell's obscure styles. First, it is easy to see why explaining a phenomenon involves questions of legitimacy, while describing it does not. Simply put, an implicit reference to the author is made during an explanation, insofar as he supplies the alternative states-of-affairs in virtue of whose pro- hibition the actual state-of-affairs obtains. Thus, in reading the ex- planation, we learn about the explainer as well as about the explained

way of putting it is to say that philosophy--rather than making room for faith, as Kant thought--makes room for doubt. It treats as merely one among many alternatives something that would otherwise be treated as having no alternatives whatsoever.

But while it is clear that Marxists would find such a strategy at- tractive, it is not clear that it requires a distinctly "philosophical turn" (pace Rorty). It could be argued that placing a system of lin- guistic practices against the background of socio-economic conditions suffices to show the ideological limitations of those practices without making any of the modal moves described above. In effect then, the linguist would simply be integrating phenomena from his science with those of other social sciences. And indeed, if the Marxist--or any scientist for that matter--were solely interested in providing a des- cription of the society (as many anthropology monographs in fact seem to be), no philosophical turn would then be made. However, gaining a more comprehensive picture of a society does not ipso facto imply re- vealing the limits of, or constraints on, that picture. As a scientist I can systematically describe the pursuit of profit in a capitalist society without mentioning another activity that is prohibited in virtue of such a pursuit. But of course, such mentionings form the basis of the ideological critique so characteristic of Marxist methods. More- over, such mentionings arise in science whenever explanations are re- quested for the phenomena being described. In other words, the move from description to explanation occurs when the scientist stops talking about just "x" and starts talking about "x and not y". Thus, "explain- ing 'x"' involves showing why "y" did not happen, which requires that the actual "x" and the non-actual "y" somehow be made comparable. In scientific practice, this comparability is accomplished through thought- experiments and counterfactual reasoning, which presuppose that the "actual x" can be reduced to a "possibly not x". Then, the scientist is in a position to consider why "x" and "y" are not possible together. Methodologically, we could say, after Husserl, that "x" has now been "bracketed"; stylistically, we could just as well say that "x" has been "put in scare quotes". This account accords with the view that expla- nations are needed whenever some phenomenon is said to be "necessary", which is to say, exist in virtue of excluding all other relevant possi- bilities. In short, Rorty is stood on his head. The desire for expla- nation expresses science's latent philosophical aspiration. Further- more, in the course of satisfying this desire, the scientist is in a position to think through the ramifications of there being an alterna- tive state-of-affairs, thereby making room for the Marxist, whose expla- nation of "x" may involve an implicit endorsement of "y".

Given these considerations, let us now gradually return to our ear- lier claim concerning the legitimacy of Derrida's and Cavell's obscure styles. First, it is easy to see why explaining a phenomenon involves questions of legitimacy, while describing it does not. Simply put, an implicit reference to the author is made during an explanation, insofar as he supplies the alternative states-of-affairs in virtue of whose pro- hibition the actual state-of-affairs obtains. Thus, in reading the ex- planation, we learn about the explainer as well as about the explained

way of putting it is to say that philosophy--rather than making room for faith, as Kant thought--makes room for doubt. It treats as merely one among many alternatives something that would otherwise be treated as having no alternatives whatsoever.

But while it is clear that Marxists would find such a strategy at- tractive, it is not clear that it requires a distinctly "philosophical turn" (pace Rorty). It could be argued that placing a system of lin- guistic practices against the background of socio-economic conditions suffices to show the ideological limitations of those practices without making any of the modal moves described above. In effect then, the linguist would simply be integrating phenomena from his science with those of other social sciences. And indeed, if the Marxist--or any scientist for that matter--were solely interested in providing a des- cription of the society (as many anthropology monographs in fact seem to be), no philosophical turn would then be made. However, gaining a more comprehensive picture of a society does not ipso facto imply re- vealing the limits of, or constraints on, that picture. As a scientist I can systematically describe the pursuit of profit in a capitalist society without mentioning another activity that is prohibited in virtue of such a pursuit. But of course, such mentionings form the basis of the ideological critique so characteristic of Marxist methods. More- over, such mentionings arise in science whenever explanations are re- quested for the phenomena being described. In other words, the move from description to explanation occurs when the scientist stops talking about just "x" and starts talking about "x and not y". Thus, "explain- ing 'x"' involves showing why "y" did not happen, which requires that the actual "x" and the non-actual "y" somehow be made comparable. In scientific practice, this comparability is accomplished through thought- experiments and counterfactual reasoning, which presuppose that the "actual x" can be reduced to a "possibly not x". Then, the scientist is in a position to consider why "x" and "y" are not possible together. Methodologically, we could say, after Husserl, that "x" has now been "bracketed"; stylistically, we could just as well say that "x" has been "put in scare quotes". This account accords with the view that expla- nations are needed whenever some phenomenon is said to be "necessary", which is to say, exist in virtue of excluding all other relevant possi- bilities. In short, Rorty is stood on his head. The desire for expla- nation expresses science's latent philosophical aspiration. Further- more, in the course of satisfying this desire, the scientist is in a position to think through the ramifications of there being an alterna- tive state-of-affairs, thereby making room for the Marxist, whose expla- nation of "x" may involve an implicit endorsement of "y".

Given these considerations, let us now gradually return to our ear- lier claim concerning the legitimacy of Derrida's and Cavell's obscure styles. First, it is easy to see why explaining a phenomenon involves questions of legitimacy, while describing it does not. Simply put, an implicit reference to the author is made during an explanation, insofar as he supplies the alternative states-of-affairs in virtue of whose pro- hibition the actual state-of-affairs obtains. Thus, in reading the ex- planation, we learn about the explainer as well as about the explained

way of putting it is to say that philosophy--rather than making room for faith, as Kant thought--makes room for doubt. It treats as merely one among many alternatives something that would otherwise be treated as having no alternatives whatsoever.

But while it is clear that Marxists would find such a strategy at- tractive, it is not clear that it requires a distinctly "philosophical turn" (pace Rorty). It could be argued that placing a system of lin- guistic practices against the background of socio-economic conditions suffices to show the ideological limitations of those practices without making any of the modal moves described above. In effect then, the linguist would simply be integrating phenomena from his science with those of other social sciences. And indeed, if the Marxist--or any scientist for that matter--were solely interested in providing a des- cription of the society (as many anthropology monographs in fact seem to be), no philosophical turn would then be made. However, gaining a more comprehensive picture of a society does not ipso facto imply re- vealing the limits of, or constraints on, that picture. As a scientist I can systematically describe the pursuit of profit in a capitalist society without mentioning another activity that is prohibited in virtue of such a pursuit. But of course, such mentionings form the basis of the ideological critique so characteristic of Marxist methods. More- over, such mentionings arise in science whenever explanations are re- quested for the phenomena being described. In other words, the move from description to explanation occurs when the scientist stops talking about just "x" and starts talking about "x and not y". Thus, "explain- ing 'x"' involves showing why "y" did not happen, which requires that the actual "x" and the non-actual "y" somehow be made comparable. In scientific practice, this comparability is accomplished through thought- experiments and counterfactual reasoning, which presuppose that the "actual x" can be reduced to a "possibly not x". Then, the scientist is in a position to consider why "x" and "y" are not possible together. Methodologically, we could say, after Husserl, that "x" has now been "bracketed"; stylistically, we could just as well say that "x" has been "put in scare quotes". This account accords with the view that expla- nations are needed whenever some phenomenon is said to be "necessary", which is to say, exist in virtue of excluding all other relevant possi- bilities. In short, Rorty is stood on his head. The desire for expla- nation expresses science's latent philosophical aspiration. Further- more, in the course of satisfying this desire, the scientist is in a position to think through the ramifications of there being an alterna- tive state-of-affairs, thereby making room for the Marxist, whose expla- nation of "x" may involve an implicit endorsement of "y".

Given these considerations, let us now gradually return to our ear- lier claim concerning the legitimacy of Derrida's and Cavell's obscure styles. First, it is easy to see why explaining a phenomenon involves questions of legitimacy, while describing it does not. Simply put, an implicit reference to the author is made during an explanation, insofar as he supplies the alternative states-of-affairs in virtue of whose pro- hibition the actual state-of-affairs obtains. Thus, in reading the ex- planation, we learn about the explainer as well as about the explained

way of putting it is to say that philosophy--rather than making room for faith, as Kant thought--makes room for doubt. It treats as merely one among many alternatives something that would otherwise be treated as having no alternatives whatsoever.

But while it is clear that Marxists would find such a strategy at- tractive, it is not clear that it requires a distinctly "philosophical turn" (pace Rorty). It could be argued that placing a system of lin- guistic practices against the background of socio-economic conditions suffices to show the ideological limitations of those practices without making any of the modal moves described above. In effect then, the linguist would simply be integrating phenomena from his science with those of other social sciences. And indeed, if the Marxist--or any scientist for that matter--were solely interested in providing a des- cription of the society (as many anthropology monographs in fact seem to be), no philosophical turn would then be made. However, gaining a more comprehensive picture of a society does not ipso facto imply re- vealing the limits of, or constraints on, that picture. As a scientist I can systematically describe the pursuit of profit in a capitalist society without mentioning another activity that is prohibited in virtue of such a pursuit. But of course, such mentionings form the basis of the ideological critique so characteristic of Marxist methods. More- over, such mentionings arise in science whenever explanations are re- quested for the phenomena being described. In other words, the move from description to explanation occurs when the scientist stops talking about just "x" and starts talking about "x and not y". Thus, "explain- ing 'x"' involves showing why "y" did not happen, which requires that the actual "x" and the non-actual "y" somehow be made comparable. In scientific practice, this comparability is accomplished through thought- experiments and counterfactual reasoning, which presuppose that the "actual x" can be reduced to a "possibly not x". Then, the scientist is in a position to consider why "x" and "y" are not possible together. Methodologically, we could say, after Husserl, that "x" has now been "bracketed"; stylistically, we could just as well say that "x" has been "put in scare quotes". This account accords with the view that expla- nations are needed whenever some phenomenon is said to be "necessary", which is to say, exist in virtue of excluding all other relevant possi- bilities. In short, Rorty is stood on his head. The desire for expla- nation expresses science's latent philosophical aspiration. Further- more, in the course of satisfying this desire, the scientist is in a position to think through the ramifications of there being an alterna- tive state-of-affairs, thereby making room for the Marxist, whose expla- nation of "x" may involve an implicit endorsement of "y".

Given these considerations, let us now gradually return to our ear- lier claim concerning the legitimacy of Derrida's and Cavell's obscure styles. First, it is easy to see why explaining a phenomenon involves questions of legitimacy, while describing it does not. Simply put, an implicit reference to the author is made during an explanation, insofar as he supplies the alternative states-of-affairs in virtue of whose pro- hibition the actual state-of-affairs obtains. Thus, in reading the ex- planation, we learn about the explainer as well as about the explained

way of putting it is to say that philosophy--rather than making room for faith, as Kant thought--makes room for doubt. It treats as merely one among many alternatives something that would otherwise be treated as having no alternatives whatsoever.

But while it is clear that Marxists would find such a strategy at- tractive, it is not clear that it requires a distinctly "philosophical turn" (pace Rorty). It could be argued that placing a system of lin- guistic practices against the background of socio-economic conditions suffices to show the ideological limitations of those practices without making any of the modal moves described above. In effect then, the linguist would simply be integrating phenomena from his science with those of other social sciences. And indeed, if the Marxist--or any scientist for that matter--were solely interested in providing a des- cription of the society (as many anthropology monographs in fact seem to be), no philosophical turn would then be made. However, gaining a more comprehensive picture of a society does not ipso facto imply re- vealing the limits of, or constraints on, that picture. As a scientist I can systematically describe the pursuit of profit in a capitalist society without mentioning another activity that is prohibited in virtue of such a pursuit. But of course, such mentionings form the basis of the ideological critique so characteristic of Marxist methods. More- over, such mentionings arise in science whenever explanations are re- quested for the phenomena being described. In other words, the move from description to explanation occurs when the scientist stops talking about just "x" and starts talking about "x and not y". Thus, "explain- ing 'x"' involves showing why "y" did not happen, which requires that the actual "x" and the non-actual "y" somehow be made comparable. In scientific practice, this comparability is accomplished through thought- experiments and counterfactual reasoning, which presuppose that the "actual x" can be reduced to a "possibly not x". Then, the scientist is in a position to consider why "x" and "y" are not possible together. Methodologically, we could say, after Husserl, that "x" has now been "bracketed"; stylistically, we could just as well say that "x" has been "put in scare quotes". This account accords with the view that expla- nations are needed whenever some phenomenon is said to be "necessary", which is to say, exist in virtue of excluding all other relevant possi- bilities. In short, Rorty is stood on his head. The desire for expla- nation expresses science's latent philosophical aspiration. Further- more, in the course of satisfying this desire, the scientist is in a position to think through the ramifications of there being an alterna- tive state-of-affairs, thereby making room for the Marxist, whose expla- nation of "x" may involve an implicit endorsement of "y".

Given these considerations, let us now gradually return to our ear- lier claim concerning the legitimacy of Derrida's and Cavell's obscure styles. First, it is easy to see why explaining a phenomenon involves questions of legitimacy, while describing it does not. Simply put, an implicit reference to the author is made during an explanation, insofar as he supplies the alternative states-of-affairs in virtue of whose pro- hibition the actual state-of-affairs obtains. Thus, in reading the ex- planation, we learn about the explainer as well as about the explained

way of putting it is to say that philosophy--rather than making room for faith, as Kant thought--makes room for doubt. It treats as merely one among many alternatives something that would otherwise be treated as having no alternatives whatsoever.

But while it is clear that Marxists would find such a strategy at- tractive, it is not clear that it requires a distinctly "philosophical turn" (pace Rorty). It could be argued that placing a system of lin- guistic practices against the background of socio-economic conditions suffices to show the ideological limitations of those practices without making any of the modal moves described above. In effect then, the linguist would simply be integrating phenomena from his science with those of other social sciences. And indeed, if the Marxist--or any scientist for that matter--were solely interested in providing a des- cription of the society (as many anthropology monographs in fact seem to be), no philosophical turn would then be made. However, gaining a more comprehensive picture of a society does not ipso facto imply re- vealing the limits of, or constraints on, that picture. As a scientist I can systematically describe the pursuit of profit in a capitalist society without mentioning another activity that is prohibited in virtue of such a pursuit. But of course, such mentionings form the basis of the ideological critique so characteristic of Marxist methods. More- over, such mentionings arise in science whenever explanations are re- quested for the phenomena being described. In other words, the move from description to explanation occurs when the scientist stops talking about just "x" and starts talking about "x and not y". Thus, "explain- ing 'x"' involves showing why "y" did not happen, which requires that the actual "x" and the non-actual "y" somehow be made comparable. In scientific practice, this comparability is accomplished through thought- experiments and counterfactual reasoning, which presuppose that the "actual x" can be reduced to a "possibly not x". Then, the scientist is in a position to consider why "x" and "y" are not possible together. Methodologically, we could say, after Husserl, that "x" has now been "bracketed"; stylistically, we could just as well say that "x" has been "put in scare quotes". This account accords with the view that expla- nations are needed whenever some phenomenon is said to be "necessary", which is to say, exist in virtue of excluding all other relevant possi- bilities. In short, Rorty is stood on his head. The desire for expla- nation expresses science's latent philosophical aspiration. Further- more, in the course of satisfying this desire, the scientist is in a position to think through the ramifications of there being an alterna- tive state-of-affairs, thereby making room for the Marxist, whose expla- nation of "x" may involve an implicit endorsement of "y".

Given these considerations, let us now gradually return to our ear- lier claim concerning the legitimacy of Derrida's and Cavell's obscure styles. First, it is easy to see why explaining a phenomenon involves questions of legitimacy, while describing it does not. Simply put, an implicit reference to the author is made during an explanation, insofar as he supplies the alternative states-of-affairs in virtue of whose pro- hibition the actual state-of-affairs obtains. Thus, in reading the ex- planation, we learn about the explainer as well as about the explained

way of putting it is to say that philosophy--rather than making room for faith, as Kant thought--makes room for doubt. It treats as merely one among many alternatives something that would otherwise be treated as having no alternatives whatsoever.

But while it is clear that Marxists would find such a strategy at- tractive, it is not clear that it requires a distinctly "philosophical turn" (pace Rorty). It could be argued that placing a system of lin- guistic practices against the background of socio-economic conditions suffices to show the ideological limitations of those practices without making any of the modal moves described above. In effect then, the linguist would simply be integrating phenomena from his science with those of other social sciences. And indeed, if the Marxist--or any scientist for that matter--were solely interested in providing a des- cription of the society (as many anthropology monographs in fact seem to be), no philosophical turn would then be made. However, gaining a more comprehensive picture of a society does not ipso facto imply re- vealing the limits of, or constraints on, that picture. As a scientist I can systematically describe the pursuit of profit in a capitalist society without mentioning another activity that is prohibited in virtue of such a pursuit. But of course, such mentionings form the basis of the ideological critique so characteristic of Marxist methods. More- over, such mentionings arise in science whenever explanations are re- quested for the phenomena being described. In other words, the move from description to explanation occurs when the scientist stops talking about just "x" and starts talking about "x and not y". Thus, "explain- ing 'x"' involves showing why "y" did not happen, which requires that the actual "x" and the non-actual "y" somehow be made comparable. In scientific practice, this comparability is accomplished through thought- experiments and counterfactual reasoning, which presuppose that the "actual x" can be reduced to a "possibly not x". Then, the scientist is in a position to consider why "x" and "y" are not possible together. Methodologically, we could say, after Husserl, that "x" has now been "bracketed"; stylistically, we could just as well say that "x" has been "put in scare quotes". This account accords with the view that expla- nations are needed whenever some phenomenon is said to be "necessary", which is to say, exist in virtue of excluding all other relevant possi- bilities. In short, Rorty is stood on his head. The desire for expla- nation expresses science's latent philosophical aspiration. Further- more, in the course of satisfying this desire, the scientist is in a position to think through the ramifications of there being an alterna- tive state-of-affairs, thereby making room for the Marxist, whose expla- nation of "x" may involve an implicit endorsement of "y".

Given these considerations, let us now gradually return to our ear- lier claim concerning the legitimacy of Derrida's and Cavell's obscure styles. First, it is easy to see why explaining a phenomenon involves questions of legitimacy, while describing it does not. Simply put, an implicit reference to the author is made during an explanation, insofar as he supplies the alternative states-of-affairs in virtue of whose pro- hibition the actual state-of-affairs obtains. Thus, in reading the ex- planation, we learn about the explainer as well as about the explained

way of putting it is to say that philosophy--rather than making room for faith, as Kant thought--makes room for doubt. It treats as merely one among many alternatives something that would otherwise be treated as having no alternatives whatsoever.

But while it is clear that Marxists would find such a strategy at- tractive, it is not clear that it requires a distinctly "philosophical turn" (pace Rorty). It could be argued that placing a system of lin- guistic practices against the background of socio-economic conditions suffices to show the ideological limitations of those practices without making any of the modal moves described above. In effect then, the linguist would simply be integrating phenomena from his science with those of other social sciences. And indeed, if the Marxist--or any scientist for that matter--were solely interested in providing a des- cription of the society (as many anthropology monographs in fact seem to be), no philosophical turn would then be made. However, gaining a more comprehensive picture of a society does not ipso facto imply re- vealing the limits of, or constraints on, that picture. As a scientist I can systematically describe the pursuit of profit in a capitalist society without mentioning another activity that is prohibited in virtue of such a pursuit. But of course, such mentionings form the basis of the ideological critique so characteristic of Marxist methods. More- over, such mentionings arise in science whenever explanations are re- quested for the phenomena being described. In other words, the move from description to explanation occurs when the scientist stops talking about just "x" and starts talking about "x and not y". Thus, "explain- ing 'x"' involves showing why "y" did not happen, which requires that the actual "x" and the non-actual "y" somehow be made comparable. In scientific practice, this comparability is accomplished through thought- experiments and counterfactual reasoning, which presuppose that the "actual x" can be reduced to a "possibly not x". Then, the scientist is in a position to consider why "x" and "y" are not possible together. Methodologically, we could say, after Husserl, that "x" has now been "bracketed"; stylistically, we could just as well say that "x" has been "put in scare quotes". This account accords with the view that expla- nations are needed whenever some phenomenon is said to be "necessary", which is to say, exist in virtue of excluding all other relevant possi- bilities. In short, Rorty is stood on his head. The desire for expla- nation expresses science's latent philosophical aspiration. Further- more, in the course of satisfying this desire, the scientist is in a position to think through the ramifications of there being an alterna- tive state-of-affairs, thereby making room for the Marxist, whose expla- nation of "x" may involve an implicit endorsement of "y".

Given these considerations, let us now gradually return to our ear- lier claim concerning the legitimacy of Derrida's and Cavell's obscure styles. First, it is easy to see why explaining a phenomenon involves questions of legitimacy, while describing it does not. Simply put, an implicit reference to the author is made during an explanation, insofar as he supplies the alternative states-of-affairs in virtue of whose pro- hibition the actual state-of-affairs obtains. Thus, in reading the ex- planation, we learn about the explainer as well as about the explained

way of putting it is to say that philosophy--rather than making room for faith, as Kant thought--makes room for doubt. It treats as merely one among many alternatives something that would otherwise be treated as having no alternatives whatsoever.

But while it is clear that Marxists would find such a strategy at- tractive, it is not clear that it requires a distinctly "philosophical turn" (pace Rorty). It could be argued that placing a system of lin- guistic practices against the background of socio-economic conditions suffices to show the ideological limitations of those practices without making any of the modal moves described above. In effect then, the linguist would simply be integrating phenomena from his science with those of other social sciences. And indeed, if the Marxist--or any scientist for that matter--were solely interested in providing a des- cription of the society (as many anthropology monographs in fact seem to be), no philosophical turn would then be made. However, gaining a more comprehensive picture of a society does not ipso facto imply re- vealing the limits of, or constraints on, that picture. As a scientist I can systematically describe the pursuit of profit in a capitalist society without mentioning another activity that is prohibited in virtue of such a pursuit. But of course, such mentionings form the basis of the ideological critique so characteristic of Marxist methods. More- over, such mentionings arise in science whenever explanations are re- quested for the phenomena being described. In other words, the move from description to explanation occurs when the scientist stops talking about just "x" and starts talking about "x and not y". Thus, "explain- ing 'x"' involves showing why "y" did not happen, which requires that the actual "x" and the non-actual "y" somehow be made comparable. In scientific practice, this comparability is accomplished through thought- experiments and counterfactual reasoning, which presuppose that the "actual x" can be reduced to a "possibly not x". Then, the scientist is in a position to consider why "x" and "y" are not possible together. Methodologically, we could say, after Husserl, that "x" has now been "bracketed"; stylistically, we could just as well say that "x" has been "put in scare quotes". This account accords with the view that expla- nations are needed whenever some phenomenon is said to be "necessary", which is to say, exist in virtue of excluding all other relevant possi- bilities. In short, Rorty is stood on his head. The desire for expla- nation expresses science's latent philosophical aspiration. Further- more, in the course of satisfying this desire, the scientist is in a position to think through the ramifications of there being an alterna- tive state-of-affairs, thereby making room for the Marxist, whose expla- nation of "x" may involve an implicit endorsement of "y".

Given these considerations, let us now gradually return to our ear- lier claim concerning the legitimacy of Derrida's and Cavell's obscure styles. First, it is easy to see why explaining a phenomenon involves questions of legitimacy, while describing it does not. Simply put, an implicit reference to the author is made during an explanation, insofar as he supplies the alternative states-of-affairs in virtue of whose pro- hibition the actual state-of-affairs obtains. Thus, in reading the ex- planation, we learn about the explainer as well as about the explained

way of putting it is to say that philosophy--rather than making room for faith, as Kant thought--makes room for doubt. It treats as merely one among many alternatives something that would otherwise be treated as having no alternatives whatsoever.

But while it is clear that Marxists would find such a strategy at- tractive, it is not clear that it requires a distinctly "philosophical turn" (pace Rorty). It could be argued that placing a system of lin- guistic practices against the background of socio-economic conditions suffices to show the ideological limitations of those practices without making any of the modal moves described above. In effect then, the linguist would simply be integrating phenomena from his science with those of other social sciences. And indeed, if the Marxist--or any scientist for that matter--were solely interested in providing a des- cription of the society (as many anthropology monographs in fact seem to be), no philosophical turn would then be made. However, gaining a more comprehensive picture of a society does not ipso facto imply re- vealing the limits of, or constraints on, that picture. As a scientist I can systematically describe the pursuit of profit in a capitalist society without mentioning another activity that is prohibited in virtue of such a pursuit. But of course, such mentionings form the basis of the ideological critique so characteristic of Marxist methods. More- over, such mentionings arise in science whenever explanations are re- quested for the phenomena being described. In other words, the move from description to explanation occurs when the scientist stops talking about just "x" and starts talking about "x and not y". Thus, "explain- ing 'x"' involves showing why "y" did not happen, which requires that the actual "x" and the non-actual "y" somehow be made comparable. In scientific practice, this comparability is accomplished through thought- experiments and counterfactual reasoning, which presuppose that the "actual x" can be reduced to a "possibly not x". Then, the scientist is in a position to consider why "x" and "y" are not possible together. Methodologically, we could say, after Husserl, that "x" has now been "bracketed"; stylistically, we could just as well say that "x" has been "put in scare quotes". This account accords with the view that expla- nations are needed whenever some phenomenon is said to be "necessary", which is to say, exist in virtue of excluding all other relevant possi- bilities. In short, Rorty is stood on his head. The desire for expla- nation expresses science's latent philosophical aspiration. Further- more, in the course of satisfying this desire, the scientist is in a position to think through the ramifications of there being an alterna- tive state-of-affairs, thereby making room for the Marxist, whose expla- nation of "x" may involve an implicit endorsement of "y".

Given these considerations, let us now gradually return to our ear- lier claim concerning the legitimacy of Derrida's and Cavell's obscure styles. First, it is easy to see why explaining a phenomenon involves questions of legitimacy, while describing it does not. Simply put, an implicit reference to the author is made during an explanation, insofar as he supplies the alternative states-of-affairs in virtue of whose pro- hibition the actual state-of-affairs obtains. Thus, in reading the ex- planation, we learn about the explainer as well as about the explained

way of putting it is to say that philosophy--rather than making room for faith, as Kant thought--makes room for doubt. It treats as merely one among many alternatives something that would otherwise be treated as having no alternatives whatsoever.

But while it is clear that Marxists would find such a strategy at- tractive, it is not clear that it requires a distinctly "philosophical turn" (pace Rorty). It could be argued that placing a system of lin- guistic practices against the background of socio-economic conditions suffices to show the ideological limitations of those practices without making any of the modal moves described above. In effect then, the linguist would simply be integrating phenomena from his science with those of other social sciences. And indeed, if the Marxist--or any scientist for that matter--were solely interested in providing a des- cription of the society (as many anthropology monographs in fact seem to be), no philosophical turn would then be made. However, gaining a more comprehensive picture of a society does not ipso facto imply re- vealing the limits of, or constraints on, that picture. As a scientist I can systematically describe the pursuit of profit in a capitalist society without mentioning another activity that is prohibited in virtue of such a pursuit. But of course, such mentionings form the basis of the ideological critique so characteristic of Marxist methods. More- over, such mentionings arise in science whenever explanations are re- quested for the phenomena being described. In other words, the move from description to explanation occurs when the scientist stops talking about just "x" and starts talking about "x and not y". Thus, "explain- ing 'x"' involves showing why "y" did not happen, which requires that the actual "x" and the non-actual "y" somehow be made comparable. In scientific practice, this comparability is accomplished through thought- experiments and counterfactual reasoning, which presuppose that the "actual x" can be reduced to a "possibly not x". Then, the scientist is in a position to consider why "x" and "y" are not possible together. Methodologically, we could say, after Husserl, that "x" has now been "bracketed"; stylistically, we could just as well say that "x" has been "put in scare quotes". This account accords with the view that expla- nations are needed whenever some phenomenon is said to be "necessary", which is to say, exist in virtue of excluding all other relevant possi- bilities. In short, Rorty is stood on his head. The desire for expla- nation expresses science's latent philosophical aspiration. Further- more, in the course of satisfying this desire, the scientist is in a position to think through the ramifications of there being an alterna- tive state-of-affairs, thereby making room for the Marxist, whose expla- nation of "x" may involve an implicit endorsement of "y".

Given these considerations, let us now gradually return to our ear- lier claim concerning the legitimacy of Derrida's and Cavell's obscure styles. First, it is easy to see why explaining a phenomenon involves questions of legitimacy, while describing it does not. Simply put, an implicit reference to the author is made during an explanation, insofar as he supplies the alternative states-of-affairs in virtue of whose pro- hibition the actual state-of-affairs obtains. Thus, in reading the ex- planation, we learn about the explainer as well as about the explained

way of putting it is to say that philosophy--rather than making room for faith, as Kant thought--makes room for doubt. It treats as merely one among many alternatives something that would otherwise be treated as having no alternatives whatsoever.

But while it is clear that Marxists would find such a strategy at- tractive, it is not clear that it requires a distinctly "philosophical turn" (pace Rorty). It could be argued that placing a system of lin- guistic practices against the background of socio-economic conditions suffices to show the ideological limitations of those practices without making any of the modal moves described above. In effect then, the linguist would simply be integrating phenomena from his science with those of other social sciences. And indeed, if the Marxist--or any scientist for that matter--were solely interested in providing a des- cription of the society (as many anthropology monographs in fact seem to be), no philosophical turn would then be made. However, gaining a more comprehensive picture of a society does not ipso facto imply re- vealing the limits of, or constraints on, that picture. As a scientist I can systematically describe the pursuit of profit in a capitalist society without mentioning another activity that is prohibited in virtue of such a pursuit. But of course, such mentionings form the basis of the ideological critique so characteristic of Marxist methods. More- over, such mentionings arise in science whenever explanations are re- quested for the phenomena being described. In other words, the move from description to explanation occurs when the scientist stops talking about just "x" and starts talking about "x and not y". Thus, "explain- ing 'x"' involves showing why "y" did not happen, which requires that the actual "x" and the non-actual "y" somehow be made comparable. In scientific practice, this comparability is accomplished through thought- experiments and counterfactual reasoning, which presuppose that the "actual x" can be reduced to a "possibly not x". Then, the scientist is in a position to consider why "x" and "y" are not possible together. Methodologically, we could say, after Husserl, that "x" has now been "bracketed"; stylistically, we could just as well say that "x" has been "put in scare quotes". This account accords with the view that expla- nations are needed whenever some phenomenon is said to be "necessary", which is to say, exist in virtue of excluding all other relevant possi- bilities. In short, Rorty is stood on his head. The desire for expla- nation expresses science's latent philosophical aspiration. Further- more, in the course of satisfying this desire, the scientist is in a position to think through the ramifications of there being an alterna- tive state-of-affairs, thereby making room for the Marxist, whose expla- nation of "x" may involve an implicit endorsement of "y".

Given these considerations, let us now gradually return to our ear- lier claim concerning the legitimacy of Derrida's and Cavell's obscure styles. First, it is easy to see why explaining a phenomenon involves questions of legitimacy, while describing it does not. Simply put, an implicit reference to the author is made during an explanation, insofar as he supplies the alternative states-of-affairs in virtue of whose pro- hibition the actual state-of-affairs obtains. Thus, in reading the ex- planation, we learn about the explainer as well as about the explained

way of putting it is to say that philosophy--rather than making room for faith, as Kant thought--makes room for doubt. It treats as merely one among many alternatives something that would otherwise be treated as having no alternatives whatsoever.

But while it is clear that Marxists would find such a strategy at- tractive, it is not clear that it requires a distinctly "philosophical turn" (pace Rorty). It could be argued that placing a system of lin- guistic practices against the background of socio-economic conditions suffices to show the ideological limitations of those practices without making any of the modal moves described above. In effect then, the linguist would simply be integrating phenomena from his science with those of other social sciences. And indeed, if the Marxist--or any scientist for that matter--were solely interested in providing a des- cription of the society (as many anthropology monographs in fact seem to be), no philosophical turn would then be made. However, gaining a more comprehensive picture of a society does not ipso facto imply re- vealing the limits of, or constraints on, that picture. As a scientist I can systematically describe the pursuit of profit in a capitalist society without mentioning another activity that is prohibited in virtue of such a pursuit. But of course, such mentionings form the basis of the ideological critique so characteristic of Marxist methods. More- over, such mentionings arise in science whenever explanations are re- quested for the phenomena being described. In other words, the move from description to explanation occurs when the scientist stops talking about just "x" and starts talking about "x and not y". Thus, "explain- ing 'x"' involves showing why "y" did not happen, which requires that the actual "x" and the non-actual "y" somehow be made comparable. In scientific practice, this comparability is accomplished through thought- experiments and counterfactual reasoning, which presuppose that the "actual x" can be reduced to a "possibly not x". Then, the scientist is in a position to consider why "x" and "y" are not possible together. Methodologically, we could say, after Husserl, that "x" has now been "bracketed"; stylistically, we could just as well say that "x" has been "put in scare quotes". This account accords with the view that expla- nations are needed whenever some phenomenon is said to be "necessary", which is to say, exist in virtue of excluding all other relevant possi- bilities. In short, Rorty is stood on his head. The desire for expla- nation expresses science's latent philosophical aspiration. Further- more, in the course of satisfying this desire, the scientist is in a position to think through the ramifications of there being an alterna- tive state-of-affairs, thereby making room for the Marxist, whose expla- nation of "x" may involve an implicit endorsement of "y".

Given these considerations, let us now gradually return to our ear- lier claim concerning the legitimacy of Derrida's and Cavell's obscure styles. First, it is easy to see why explaining a phenomenon involves questions of legitimacy, while describing it does not. Simply put, an implicit reference to the author is made during an explanation, insofar as he supplies the alternative states-of-affairs in virtue of whose pro- hibition the actual state-of-affairs obtains. Thus, in reading the ex- planation, we learn about the explainer as well as about the explained

way of putting it is to say that philosophy--rather than making room for faith, as Kant thought--makes room for doubt. It treats as merely one among many alternatives something that would otherwise be treated as having no alternatives whatsoever.

But while it is clear that Marxists would find such a strategy at- tractive, it is not clear that it requires a distinctly "philosophical turn" (pace Rorty). It could be argued that placing a system of lin- guistic practices against the background of socio-economic conditions suffices to show the ideological limitations of those practices without making any of the modal moves described above. In effect then, the linguist would simply be integrating phenomena from his science with those of other social sciences. And indeed, if the Marxist--or any scientist for that matter--were solely interested in providing a des- cription of the society (as many anthropology monographs in fact seem to be), no philosophical turn would then be made. However, gaining a more comprehensive picture of a society does not ipso facto imply re- vealing the limits of, or constraints on, that picture. As a scientist I can systematically describe the pursuit of profit in a capitalist society without mentioning another activity that is prohibited in virtue of such a pursuit. But of course, such mentionings form the basis of the ideological critique so characteristic of Marxist methods. More- over, such mentionings arise in science whenever explanations are re- quested for the phenomena being described. In other words, the move from description to explanation occurs when the scientist stops talking about just "x" and starts talking about "x and not y". Thus, "explain- ing 'x"' involves showing why "y" did not happen, which requires that the actual "x" and the non-actual "y" somehow be made comparable. In scientific practice, this comparability is accomplished through thought- experiments and counterfactual reasoning, which presuppose that the "actual x" can be reduced to a "possibly not x". Then, the scientist is in a position to consider why "x" and "y" are not possible together. Methodologically, we could say, after Husserl, that "x" has now been "bracketed"; stylistically, we could just as well say that "x" has been "put in scare quotes". This account accords with the view that expla- nations are needed whenever some phenomenon is said to be "necessary", which is to say, exist in virtue of excluding all other relevant possi- bilities. In short, Rorty is stood on his head. The desire for expla- nation expresses science's latent philosophical aspiration. Further- more, in the course of satisfying this desire, the scientist is in a position to think through the ramifications of there being an alterna- tive state-of-affairs, thereby making room for the Marxist, whose expla- nation of "x" may involve an implicit endorsement of "y".

Given these considerations, let us now gradually return to our ear- lier claim concerning the legitimacy of Derrida's and Cavell's obscure styles. First, it is easy to see why explaining a phenomenon involves questions of legitimacy, while describing it does not. Simply put, an implicit reference to the author is made during an explanation, insofar as he supplies the alternative states-of-affairs in virtue of whose pro- hibition the actual state-of-affairs obtains. Thus, in reading the ex- planation, we learn about the explainer as well as about the explained

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by seeing what he takes to be significant exclusions. And competing explanations may be evaluated on the basis of the relative signifi- cance of the states-of-affairs they make impossible. And although it remains to be shown how a science orders the "relative significance" of what are really nonevents, I would offer the following as a clue in that direction. Explaining why Caesar crossed the Rubicon and did not instead cross a nearby river is, ceteris paribus, better than explain- ing why Caesar crossed the Rubicon and did not instead cross the Eu- phrates. Given our knowledge of the circumstances surrounding Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon (including the minimum amount of time it could have taken him to travel from Western Europe to the Near East), the former nonevent was a much more viable possibility than the latter. The guiding intuition here is that to explain an event is to show how, if some highly probable nonevent occurred instead, other known events would probably not have occurred. We become better explainers as our explanations raise the probabilities of both the nonevent that could have happened and the noneventuality of known events that would have followed. Thus, to wax Peircean, explanations ultimately aim at show- ing how the slightest shift in the actual world would have universal (though not necessarily major) consequences. I suspect that this view appears deterministic only because explanations are usually of past events, which, given a realist view of time, could not (now) have been otherwise. But my tenseless formulation offers the possibility that small changes (in the future) could make big differences--so there is still hope for the Marxist.

These points go some way toward explicating what it means for two radically divergent paradigms to be within one science. For example, the grammar of economics is uniform enough so that it would be mislead- ing to say that Marxists and Neoclassicists describe economic phenomena radically differently. Indeed, recalling the ideal prose style of the writing manuals, insofar as the two schools mirror the structure of the phenomena in largely the same way, they are practicing a common science. And in virtue of that fact they need only identify their explanations as "economic" ones, rather than, say, "Marxo-economic" ones--as if the prefix indicated that the economic phenomena in question were discerni- ble to only Marxist eyes. However, even in the most mainstream profes- sional journal, where party-line rhetoric is kept to a minimum, the astute reader will nevertheless be able to sort out the schools to which the authors belong simply by noticing what nonevents form the background of their texts' explanatory strategies. Evaluating the explanations in this case is more difficult than weighing the counterfactuals to Caesar crossing the Rubicon "only" because these nonevents are signs of radi- cally divergent paradigms, and so not easily ordered according to their relative significance. But the guiding intuition as to what counts as a better explanation still applies.

As we have just seen, the first step in what may be called a "herme- neutics of legitimacy" involves establishing the narrative perspective, or "voice", of the explainer in a text by determining the things that didn't happen which are of interest to him--either because they were expected or desired. But as all literary critics know, the text may

by seeing what he takes to be significant exclusions. And competing explanations may be evaluated on the basis of the relative signifi- cance of the states-of-affairs they make impossible. And although it remains to be shown how a science orders the "relative significance" of what are really nonevents, I would offer the following as a clue in that direction. Explaining why Caesar crossed the Rubicon and did not instead cross a nearby river is, ceteris paribus, better than explain- ing why Caesar crossed the Rubicon and did not instead cross the Eu- phrates. Given our knowledge of the circumstances surrounding Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon (including the minimum amount of time it could have taken him to travel from Western Europe to the Near East), the former nonevent was a much more viable possibility than the latter. The guiding intuition here is that to explain an event is to show how, if some highly probable nonevent occurred instead, other known events would probably not have occurred. We become better explainers as our explanations raise the probabilities of both the nonevent that could have happened and the noneventuality of known events that would have followed. Thus, to wax Peircean, explanations ultimately aim at show- ing how the slightest shift in the actual world would have universal (though not necessarily major) consequences. I suspect that this view appears deterministic only because explanations are usually of past events, which, given a realist view of time, could not (now) have been otherwise. But my tenseless formulation offers the possibility that small changes (in the future) could make big differences--so there is still hope for the Marxist.

These points go some way toward explicating what it means for two radically divergent paradigms to be within one science. For example, the grammar of economics is uniform enough so that it would be mislead- ing to say that Marxists and Neoclassicists describe economic phenomena radically differently. Indeed, recalling the ideal prose style of the writing manuals, insofar as the two schools mirror the structure of the phenomena in largely the same way, they are practicing a common science. And in virtue of that fact they need only identify their explanations as "economic" ones, rather than, say, "Marxo-economic" ones--as if the prefix indicated that the economic phenomena in question were discerni- ble to only Marxist eyes. However, even in the most mainstream profes- sional journal, where party-line rhetoric is kept to a minimum, the astute reader will nevertheless be able to sort out the schools to which the authors belong simply by noticing what nonevents form the background of their texts' explanatory strategies. Evaluating the explanations in this case is more difficult than weighing the counterfactuals to Caesar crossing the Rubicon "only" because these nonevents are signs of radi- cally divergent paradigms, and so not easily ordered according to their relative significance. But the guiding intuition as to what counts as a better explanation still applies.

As we have just seen, the first step in what may be called a "herme- neutics of legitimacy" involves establishing the narrative perspective, or "voice", of the explainer in a text by determining the things that didn't happen which are of interest to him--either because they were expected or desired. But as all literary critics know, the text may

by seeing what he takes to be significant exclusions. And competing explanations may be evaluated on the basis of the relative signifi- cance of the states-of-affairs they make impossible. And although it remains to be shown how a science orders the "relative significance" of what are really nonevents, I would offer the following as a clue in that direction. Explaining why Caesar crossed the Rubicon and did not instead cross a nearby river is, ceteris paribus, better than explain- ing why Caesar crossed the Rubicon and did not instead cross the Eu- phrates. Given our knowledge of the circumstances surrounding Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon (including the minimum amount of time it could have taken him to travel from Western Europe to the Near East), the former nonevent was a much more viable possibility than the latter. The guiding intuition here is that to explain an event is to show how, if some highly probable nonevent occurred instead, other known events would probably not have occurred. We become better explainers as our explanations raise the probabilities of both the nonevent that could have happened and the noneventuality of known events that would have followed. Thus, to wax Peircean, explanations ultimately aim at show- ing how the slightest shift in the actual world would have universal (though not necessarily major) consequences. I suspect that this view appears deterministic only because explanations are usually of past events, which, given a realist view of time, could not (now) have been otherwise. But my tenseless formulation offers the possibility that small changes (in the future) could make big differences--so there is still hope for the Marxist.

These points go some way toward explicating what it means for two radically divergent paradigms to be within one science. For example, the grammar of economics is uniform enough so that it would be mislead- ing to say that Marxists and Neoclassicists describe economic phenomena radically differently. Indeed, recalling the ideal prose style of the writing manuals, insofar as the two schools mirror the structure of the phenomena in largely the same way, they are practicing a common science. And in virtue of that fact they need only identify their explanations as "economic" ones, rather than, say, "Marxo-economic" ones--as if the prefix indicated that the economic phenomena in question were discerni- ble to only Marxist eyes. However, even in the most mainstream profes- sional journal, where party-line rhetoric is kept to a minimum, the astute reader will nevertheless be able to sort out the schools to which the authors belong simply by noticing what nonevents form the background of their texts' explanatory strategies. Evaluating the explanations in this case is more difficult than weighing the counterfactuals to Caesar crossing the Rubicon "only" because these nonevents are signs of radi- cally divergent paradigms, and so not easily ordered according to their relative significance. But the guiding intuition as to what counts as a better explanation still applies.

As we have just seen, the first step in what may be called a "herme- neutics of legitimacy" involves establishing the narrative perspective, or "voice", of the explainer in a text by determining the things that didn't happen which are of interest to him--either because they were expected or desired. But as all literary critics know, the text may

by seeing what he takes to be significant exclusions. And competing explanations may be evaluated on the basis of the relative signifi- cance of the states-of-affairs they make impossible. And although it remains to be shown how a science orders the "relative significance" of what are really nonevents, I would offer the following as a clue in that direction. Explaining why Caesar crossed the Rubicon and did not instead cross a nearby river is, ceteris paribus, better than explain- ing why Caesar crossed the Rubicon and did not instead cross the Eu- phrates. Given our knowledge of the circumstances surrounding Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon (including the minimum amount of time it could have taken him to travel from Western Europe to the Near East), the former nonevent was a much more viable possibility than the latter. The guiding intuition here is that to explain an event is to show how, if some highly probable nonevent occurred instead, other known events would probably not have occurred. We become better explainers as our explanations raise the probabilities of both the nonevent that could have happened and the noneventuality of known events that would have followed. Thus, to wax Peircean, explanations ultimately aim at show- ing how the slightest shift in the actual world would have universal (though not necessarily major) consequences. I suspect that this view appears deterministic only because explanations are usually of past events, which, given a realist view of time, could not (now) have been otherwise. But my tenseless formulation offers the possibility that small changes (in the future) could make big differences--so there is still hope for the Marxist.

These points go some way toward explicating what it means for two radically divergent paradigms to be within one science. For example, the grammar of economics is uniform enough so that it would be mislead- ing to say that Marxists and Neoclassicists describe economic phenomena radically differently. Indeed, recalling the ideal prose style of the writing manuals, insofar as the two schools mirror the structure of the phenomena in largely the same way, they are practicing a common science. And in virtue of that fact they need only identify their explanations as "economic" ones, rather than, say, "Marxo-economic" ones--as if the prefix indicated that the economic phenomena in question were discerni- ble to only Marxist eyes. However, even in the most mainstream profes- sional journal, where party-line rhetoric is kept to a minimum, the astute reader will nevertheless be able to sort out the schools to which the authors belong simply by noticing what nonevents form the background of their texts' explanatory strategies. Evaluating the explanations in this case is more difficult than weighing the counterfactuals to Caesar crossing the Rubicon "only" because these nonevents are signs of radi- cally divergent paradigms, and so not easily ordered according to their relative significance. But the guiding intuition as to what counts as a better explanation still applies.

As we have just seen, the first step in what may be called a "herme- neutics of legitimacy" involves establishing the narrative perspective, or "voice", of the explainer in a text by determining the things that didn't happen which are of interest to him--either because they were expected or desired. But as all literary critics know, the text may

by seeing what he takes to be significant exclusions. And competing explanations may be evaluated on the basis of the relative signifi- cance of the states-of-affairs they make impossible. And although it remains to be shown how a science orders the "relative significance" of what are really nonevents, I would offer the following as a clue in that direction. Explaining why Caesar crossed the Rubicon and did not instead cross a nearby river is, ceteris paribus, better than explain- ing why Caesar crossed the Rubicon and did not instead cross the Eu- phrates. Given our knowledge of the circumstances surrounding Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon (including the minimum amount of time it could have taken him to travel from Western Europe to the Near East), the former nonevent was a much more viable possibility than the latter. The guiding intuition here is that to explain an event is to show how, if some highly probable nonevent occurred instead, other known events would probably not have occurred. We become better explainers as our explanations raise the probabilities of both the nonevent that could have happened and the noneventuality of known events that would have followed. Thus, to wax Peircean, explanations ultimately aim at show- ing how the slightest shift in the actual world would have universal (though not necessarily major) consequences. I suspect that this view appears deterministic only because explanations are usually of past events, which, given a realist view of time, could not (now) have been otherwise. But my tenseless formulation offers the possibility that small changes (in the future) could make big differences--so there is still hope for the Marxist.

These points go some way toward explicating what it means for two radically divergent paradigms to be within one science. For example, the grammar of economics is uniform enough so that it would be mislead- ing to say that Marxists and Neoclassicists describe economic phenomena radically differently. Indeed, recalling the ideal prose style of the writing manuals, insofar as the two schools mirror the structure of the phenomena in largely the same way, they are practicing a common science. And in virtue of that fact they need only identify their explanations as "economic" ones, rather than, say, "Marxo-economic" ones--as if the prefix indicated that the economic phenomena in question were discerni- ble to only Marxist eyes. However, even in the most mainstream profes- sional journal, where party-line rhetoric is kept to a minimum, the astute reader will nevertheless be able to sort out the schools to which the authors belong simply by noticing what nonevents form the background of their texts' explanatory strategies. Evaluating the explanations in this case is more difficult than weighing the counterfactuals to Caesar crossing the Rubicon "only" because these nonevents are signs of radi- cally divergent paradigms, and so not easily ordered according to their relative significance. But the guiding intuition as to what counts as a better explanation still applies.

As we have just seen, the first step in what may be called a "herme- neutics of legitimacy" involves establishing the narrative perspective, or "voice", of the explainer in a text by determining the things that didn't happen which are of interest to him--either because they were expected or desired. But as all literary critics know, the text may

by seeing what he takes to be significant exclusions. And competing explanations may be evaluated on the basis of the relative signifi- cance of the states-of-affairs they make impossible. And although it remains to be shown how a science orders the "relative significance" of what are really nonevents, I would offer the following as a clue in that direction. Explaining why Caesar crossed the Rubicon and did not instead cross a nearby river is, ceteris paribus, better than explain- ing why Caesar crossed the Rubicon and did not instead cross the Eu- phrates. Given our knowledge of the circumstances surrounding Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon (including the minimum amount of time it could have taken him to travel from Western Europe to the Near East), the former nonevent was a much more viable possibility than the latter. The guiding intuition here is that to explain an event is to show how, if some highly probable nonevent occurred instead, other known events would probably not have occurred. We become better explainers as our explanations raise the probabilities of both the nonevent that could have happened and the noneventuality of known events that would have followed. Thus, to wax Peircean, explanations ultimately aim at show- ing how the slightest shift in the actual world would have universal (though not necessarily major) consequences. I suspect that this view appears deterministic only because explanations are usually of past events, which, given a realist view of time, could not (now) have been otherwise. But my tenseless formulation offers the possibility that small changes (in the future) could make big differences--so there is still hope for the Marxist.

These points go some way toward explicating what it means for two radically divergent paradigms to be within one science. For example, the grammar of economics is uniform enough so that it would be mislead- ing to say that Marxists and Neoclassicists describe economic phenomena radically differently. Indeed, recalling the ideal prose style of the writing manuals, insofar as the two schools mirror the structure of the phenomena in largely the same way, they are practicing a common science. And in virtue of that fact they need only identify their explanations as "economic" ones, rather than, say, "Marxo-economic" ones--as if the prefix indicated that the economic phenomena in question were discerni- ble to only Marxist eyes. However, even in the most mainstream profes- sional journal, where party-line rhetoric is kept to a minimum, the astute reader will nevertheless be able to sort out the schools to which the authors belong simply by noticing what nonevents form the background of their texts' explanatory strategies. Evaluating the explanations in this case is more difficult than weighing the counterfactuals to Caesar crossing the Rubicon "only" because these nonevents are signs of radi- cally divergent paradigms, and so not easily ordered according to their relative significance. But the guiding intuition as to what counts as a better explanation still applies.

As we have just seen, the first step in what may be called a "herme- neutics of legitimacy" involves establishing the narrative perspective, or "voice", of the explainer in a text by determining the things that didn't happen which are of interest to him--either because they were expected or desired. But as all literary critics know, the text may

by seeing what he takes to be significant exclusions. And competing explanations may be evaluated on the basis of the relative signifi- cance of the states-of-affairs they make impossible. And although it remains to be shown how a science orders the "relative significance" of what are really nonevents, I would offer the following as a clue in that direction. Explaining why Caesar crossed the Rubicon and did not instead cross a nearby river is, ceteris paribus, better than explain- ing why Caesar crossed the Rubicon and did not instead cross the Eu- phrates. Given our knowledge of the circumstances surrounding Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon (including the minimum amount of time it could have taken him to travel from Western Europe to the Near East), the former nonevent was a much more viable possibility than the latter. The guiding intuition here is that to explain an event is to show how, if some highly probable nonevent occurred instead, other known events would probably not have occurred. We become better explainers as our explanations raise the probabilities of both the nonevent that could have happened and the noneventuality of known events that would have followed. Thus, to wax Peircean, explanations ultimately aim at show- ing how the slightest shift in the actual world would have universal (though not necessarily major) consequences. I suspect that this view appears deterministic only because explanations are usually of past events, which, given a realist view of time, could not (now) have been otherwise. But my tenseless formulation offers the possibility that small changes (in the future) could make big differences--so there is still hope for the Marxist.

These points go some way toward explicating what it means for two radically divergent paradigms to be within one science. For example, the grammar of economics is uniform enough so that it would be mislead- ing to say that Marxists and Neoclassicists describe economic phenomena radically differently. Indeed, recalling the ideal prose style of the writing manuals, insofar as the two schools mirror the structure of the phenomena in largely the same way, they are practicing a common science. And in virtue of that fact they need only identify their explanations as "economic" ones, rather than, say, "Marxo-economic" ones--as if the prefix indicated that the economic phenomena in question were discerni- ble to only Marxist eyes. However, even in the most mainstream profes- sional journal, where party-line rhetoric is kept to a minimum, the astute reader will nevertheless be able to sort out the schools to which the authors belong simply by noticing what nonevents form the background of their texts' explanatory strategies. Evaluating the explanations in this case is more difficult than weighing the counterfactuals to Caesar crossing the Rubicon "only" because these nonevents are signs of radi- cally divergent paradigms, and so not easily ordered according to their relative significance. But the guiding intuition as to what counts as a better explanation still applies.

As we have just seen, the first step in what may be called a "herme- neutics of legitimacy" involves establishing the narrative perspective, or "voice", of the explainer in a text by determining the things that didn't happen which are of interest to him--either because they were expected or desired. But as all literary critics know, the text may

by seeing what he takes to be significant exclusions. And competing explanations may be evaluated on the basis of the relative signifi- cance of the states-of-affairs they make impossible. And although it remains to be shown how a science orders the "relative significance" of what are really nonevents, I would offer the following as a clue in that direction. Explaining why Caesar crossed the Rubicon and did not instead cross a nearby river is, ceteris paribus, better than explain- ing why Caesar crossed the Rubicon and did not instead cross the Eu- phrates. Given our knowledge of the circumstances surrounding Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon (including the minimum amount of time it could have taken him to travel from Western Europe to the Near East), the former nonevent was a much more viable possibility than the latter. The guiding intuition here is that to explain an event is to show how, if some highly probable nonevent occurred instead, other known events would probably not have occurred. We become better explainers as our explanations raise the probabilities of both the nonevent that could have happened and the noneventuality of known events that would have followed. Thus, to wax Peircean, explanations ultimately aim at show- ing how the slightest shift in the actual world would have universal (though not necessarily major) consequences. I suspect that this view appears deterministic only because explanations are usually of past events, which, given a realist view of time, could not (now) have been otherwise. But my tenseless formulation offers the possibility that small changes (in the future) could make big differences--so there is still hope for the Marxist.

These points go some way toward explicating what it means for two radically divergent paradigms to be within one science. For example, the grammar of economics is uniform enough so that it would be mislead- ing to say that Marxists and Neoclassicists describe economic phenomena radically differently. Indeed, recalling the ideal prose style of the writing manuals, insofar as the two schools mirror the structure of the phenomena in largely the same way, they are practicing a common science. And in virtue of that fact they need only identify their explanations as "economic" ones, rather than, say, "Marxo-economic" ones--as if the prefix indicated that the economic phenomena in question were discerni- ble to only Marxist eyes. However, even in the most mainstream profes- sional journal, where party-line rhetoric is kept to a minimum, the astute reader will nevertheless be able to sort out the schools to which the authors belong simply by noticing what nonevents form the background of their texts' explanatory strategies. Evaluating the explanations in this case is more difficult than weighing the counterfactuals to Caesar crossing the Rubicon "only" because these nonevents are signs of radi- cally divergent paradigms, and so not easily ordered according to their relative significance. But the guiding intuition as to what counts as a better explanation still applies.

As we have just seen, the first step in what may be called a "herme- neutics of legitimacy" involves establishing the narrative perspective, or "voice", of the explainer in a text by determining the things that didn't happen which are of interest to him--either because they were expected or desired. But as all literary critics know, the text may

by seeing what he takes to be significant exclusions. And competing explanations may be evaluated on the basis of the relative signifi- cance of the states-of-affairs they make impossible. And although it remains to be shown how a science orders the "relative significance" of what are really nonevents, I would offer the following as a clue in that direction. Explaining why Caesar crossed the Rubicon and did not instead cross a nearby river is, ceteris paribus, better than explain- ing why Caesar crossed the Rubicon and did not instead cross the Eu- phrates. Given our knowledge of the circumstances surrounding Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon (including the minimum amount of time it could have taken him to travel from Western Europe to the Near East), the former nonevent was a much more viable possibility than the latter. The guiding intuition here is that to explain an event is to show how, if some highly probable nonevent occurred instead, other known events would probably not have occurred. We become better explainers as our explanations raise the probabilities of both the nonevent that could have happened and the noneventuality of known events that would have followed. Thus, to wax Peircean, explanations ultimately aim at show- ing how the slightest shift in the actual world would have universal (though not necessarily major) consequences. I suspect that this view appears deterministic only because explanations are usually of past events, which, given a realist view of time, could not (now) have been otherwise. But my tenseless formulation offers the possibility that small changes (in the future) could make big differences--so there is still hope for the Marxist.

These points go some way toward explicating what it means for two radically divergent paradigms to be within one science. For example, the grammar of economics is uniform enough so that it would be mislead- ing to say that Marxists and Neoclassicists describe economic phenomena radically differently. Indeed, recalling the ideal prose style of the writing manuals, insofar as the two schools mirror the structure of the phenomena in largely the same way, they are practicing a common science. And in virtue of that fact they need only identify their explanations as "economic" ones, rather than, say, "Marxo-economic" ones--as if the prefix indicated that the economic phenomena in question were discerni- ble to only Marxist eyes. However, even in the most mainstream profes- sional journal, where party-line rhetoric is kept to a minimum, the astute reader will nevertheless be able to sort out the schools to which the authors belong simply by noticing what nonevents form the background of their texts' explanatory strategies. Evaluating the explanations in this case is more difficult than weighing the counterfactuals to Caesar crossing the Rubicon "only" because these nonevents are signs of radi- cally divergent paradigms, and so not easily ordered according to their relative significance. But the guiding intuition as to what counts as a better explanation still applies.

As we have just seen, the first step in what may be called a "herme- neutics of legitimacy" involves establishing the narrative perspective, or "voice", of the explainer in a text by determining the things that didn't happen which are of interest to him--either because they were expected or desired. But as all literary critics know, the text may

by seeing what he takes to be significant exclusions. And competing explanations may be evaluated on the basis of the relative signifi- cance of the states-of-affairs they make impossible. And although it remains to be shown how a science orders the "relative significance" of what are really nonevents, I would offer the following as a clue in that direction. Explaining why Caesar crossed the Rubicon and did not instead cross a nearby river is, ceteris paribus, better than explain- ing why Caesar crossed the Rubicon and did not instead cross the Eu- phrates. Given our knowledge of the circumstances surrounding Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon (including the minimum amount of time it could have taken him to travel from Western Europe to the Near East), the former nonevent was a much more viable possibility than the latter. The guiding intuition here is that to explain an event is to show how, if some highly probable nonevent occurred instead, other known events would probably not have occurred. We become better explainers as our explanations raise the probabilities of both the nonevent that could have happened and the noneventuality of known events that would have followed. Thus, to wax Peircean, explanations ultimately aim at show- ing how the slightest shift in the actual world would have universal (though not necessarily major) consequences. I suspect that this view appears deterministic only because explanations are usually of past events, which, given a realist view of time, could not (now) have been otherwise. But my tenseless formulation offers the possibility that small changes (in the future) could make big differences--so there is still hope for the Marxist.

These points go some way toward explicating what it means for two radically divergent paradigms to be within one science. For example, the grammar of economics is uniform enough so that it would be mislead- ing to say that Marxists and Neoclassicists describe economic phenomena radically differently. Indeed, recalling the ideal prose style of the writing manuals, insofar as the two schools mirror the structure of the phenomena in largely the same way, they are practicing a common science. And in virtue of that fact they need only identify their explanations as "economic" ones, rather than, say, "Marxo-economic" ones--as if the prefix indicated that the economic phenomena in question were discerni- ble to only Marxist eyes. However, even in the most mainstream profes- sional journal, where party-line rhetoric is kept to a minimum, the astute reader will nevertheless be able to sort out the schools to which the authors belong simply by noticing what nonevents form the background of their texts' explanatory strategies. Evaluating the explanations in this case is more difficult than weighing the counterfactuals to Caesar crossing the Rubicon "only" because these nonevents are signs of radi- cally divergent paradigms, and so not easily ordered according to their relative significance. But the guiding intuition as to what counts as a better explanation still applies.

As we have just seen, the first step in what may be called a "herme- neutics of legitimacy" involves establishing the narrative perspective, or "voice", of the explainer in a text by determining the things that didn't happen which are of interest to him--either because they were expected or desired. But as all literary critics know, the text may

by seeing what he takes to be significant exclusions. And competing explanations may be evaluated on the basis of the relative signifi- cance of the states-of-affairs they make impossible. And although it remains to be shown how a science orders the "relative significance" of what are really nonevents, I would offer the following as a clue in that direction. Explaining why Caesar crossed the Rubicon and did not instead cross a nearby river is, ceteris paribus, better than explain- ing why Caesar crossed the Rubicon and did not instead cross the Eu- phrates. Given our knowledge of the circumstances surrounding Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon (including the minimum amount of time it could have taken him to travel from Western Europe to the Near East), the former nonevent was a much more viable possibility than the latter. The guiding intuition here is that to explain an event is to show how, if some highly probable nonevent occurred instead, other known events would probably not have occurred. We become better explainers as our explanations raise the probabilities of both the nonevent that could have happened and the noneventuality of known events that would have followed. Thus, to wax Peircean, explanations ultimately aim at show- ing how the slightest shift in the actual world would have universal (though not necessarily major) consequences. I suspect that this view appears deterministic only because explanations are usually of past events, which, given a realist view of time, could not (now) have been otherwise. But my tenseless formulation offers the possibility that small changes (in the future) could make big differences--so there is still hope for the Marxist.

These points go some way toward explicating what it means for two radically divergent paradigms to be within one science. For example, the grammar of economics is uniform enough so that it would be mislead- ing to say that Marxists and Neoclassicists describe economic phenomena radically differently. Indeed, recalling the ideal prose style of the writing manuals, insofar as the two schools mirror the structure of the phenomena in largely the same way, they are practicing a common science. And in virtue of that fact they need only identify their explanations as "economic" ones, rather than, say, "Marxo-economic" ones--as if the prefix indicated that the economic phenomena in question were discerni- ble to only Marxist eyes. However, even in the most mainstream profes- sional journal, where party-line rhetoric is kept to a minimum, the astute reader will nevertheless be able to sort out the schools to which the authors belong simply by noticing what nonevents form the background of their texts' explanatory strategies. Evaluating the explanations in this case is more difficult than weighing the counterfactuals to Caesar crossing the Rubicon "only" because these nonevents are signs of radi- cally divergent paradigms, and so not easily ordered according to their relative significance. But the guiding intuition as to what counts as a better explanation still applies.

As we have just seen, the first step in what may be called a "herme- neutics of legitimacy" involves establishing the narrative perspective, or "voice", of the explainer in a text by determining the things that didn't happen which are of interest to him--either because they were expected or desired. But as all literary critics know, the text may

by seeing what he takes to be significant exclusions. And competing explanations may be evaluated on the basis of the relative signifi- cance of the states-of-affairs they make impossible. And although it remains to be shown how a science orders the "relative significance" of what are really nonevents, I would offer the following as a clue in that direction. Explaining why Caesar crossed the Rubicon and did not instead cross a nearby river is, ceteris paribus, better than explain- ing why Caesar crossed the Rubicon and did not instead cross the Eu- phrates. Given our knowledge of the circumstances surrounding Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon (including the minimum amount of time it could have taken him to travel from Western Europe to the Near East), the former nonevent was a much more viable possibility than the latter. The guiding intuition here is that to explain an event is to show how, if some highly probable nonevent occurred instead, other known events would probably not have occurred. We become better explainers as our explanations raise the probabilities of both the nonevent that could have happened and the noneventuality of known events that would have followed. Thus, to wax Peircean, explanations ultimately aim at show- ing how the slightest shift in the actual world would have universal (though not necessarily major) consequences. I suspect that this view appears deterministic only because explanations are usually of past events, which, given a realist view of time, could not (now) have been otherwise. But my tenseless formulation offers the possibility that small changes (in the future) could make big differences--so there is still hope for the Marxist.

These points go some way toward explicating what it means for two radically divergent paradigms to be within one science. For example, the grammar of economics is uniform enough so that it would be mislead- ing to say that Marxists and Neoclassicists describe economic phenomena radically differently. Indeed, recalling the ideal prose style of the writing manuals, insofar as the two schools mirror the structure of the phenomena in largely the same way, they are practicing a common science. And in virtue of that fact they need only identify their explanations as "economic" ones, rather than, say, "Marxo-economic" ones--as if the prefix indicated that the economic phenomena in question were discerni- ble to only Marxist eyes. However, even in the most mainstream profes- sional journal, where party-line rhetoric is kept to a minimum, the astute reader will nevertheless be able to sort out the schools to which the authors belong simply by noticing what nonevents form the background of their texts' explanatory strategies. Evaluating the explanations in this case is more difficult than weighing the counterfactuals to Caesar crossing the Rubicon "only" because these nonevents are signs of radi- cally divergent paradigms, and so not easily ordered according to their relative significance. But the guiding intuition as to what counts as a better explanation still applies.

As we have just seen, the first step in what may be called a "herme- neutics of legitimacy" involves establishing the narrative perspective, or "voice", of the explainer in a text by determining the things that didn't happen which are of interest to him--either because they were expected or desired. But as all literary critics know, the text may

by seeing what he takes to be significant exclusions. And competing explanations may be evaluated on the basis of the relative signifi- cance of the states-of-affairs they make impossible. And although it remains to be shown how a science orders the "relative significance" of what are really nonevents, I would offer the following as a clue in that direction. Explaining why Caesar crossed the Rubicon and did not instead cross a nearby river is, ceteris paribus, better than explain- ing why Caesar crossed the Rubicon and did not instead cross the Eu- phrates. Given our knowledge of the circumstances surrounding Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon (including the minimum amount of time it could have taken him to travel from Western Europe to the Near East), the former nonevent was a much more viable possibility than the latter. The guiding intuition here is that to explain an event is to show how, if some highly probable nonevent occurred instead, other known events would probably not have occurred. We become better explainers as our explanations raise the probabilities of both the nonevent that could have happened and the noneventuality of known events that would have followed. Thus, to wax Peircean, explanations ultimately aim at show- ing how the slightest shift in the actual world would have universal (though not necessarily major) consequences. I suspect that this view appears deterministic only because explanations are usually of past events, which, given a realist view of time, could not (now) have been otherwise. But my tenseless formulation offers the possibility that small changes (in the future) could make big differences--so there is still hope for the Marxist.

These points go some way toward explicating what it means for two radically divergent paradigms to be within one science. For example, the grammar of economics is uniform enough so that it would be mislead- ing to say that Marxists and Neoclassicists describe economic phenomena radically differently. Indeed, recalling the ideal prose style of the writing manuals, insofar as the two schools mirror the structure of the phenomena in largely the same way, they are practicing a common science. And in virtue of that fact they need only identify their explanations as "economic" ones, rather than, say, "Marxo-economic" ones--as if the prefix indicated that the economic phenomena in question were discerni- ble to only Marxist eyes. However, even in the most mainstream profes- sional journal, where party-line rhetoric is kept to a minimum, the astute reader will nevertheless be able to sort out the schools to which the authors belong simply by noticing what nonevents form the background of their texts' explanatory strategies. Evaluating the explanations in this case is more difficult than weighing the counterfactuals to Caesar crossing the Rubicon "only" because these nonevents are signs of radi- cally divergent paradigms, and so not easily ordered according to their relative significance. But the guiding intuition as to what counts as a better explanation still applies.

As we have just seen, the first step in what may be called a "herme- neutics of legitimacy" involves establishing the narrative perspective, or "voice", of the explainer in a text by determining the things that didn't happen which are of interest to him--either because they were expected or desired. But as all literary critics know, the text may

by seeing what he takes to be significant exclusions. And competing explanations may be evaluated on the basis of the relative signifi- cance of the states-of-affairs they make impossible. And although it remains to be shown how a science orders the "relative significance" of what are really nonevents, I would offer the following as a clue in that direction. Explaining why Caesar crossed the Rubicon and did not instead cross a nearby river is, ceteris paribus, better than explain- ing why Caesar crossed the Rubicon and did not instead cross the Eu- phrates. Given our knowledge of the circumstances surrounding Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon (including the minimum amount of time it could have taken him to travel from Western Europe to the Near East), the former nonevent was a much more viable possibility than the latter. The guiding intuition here is that to explain an event is to show how, if some highly probable nonevent occurred instead, other known events would probably not have occurred. We become better explainers as our explanations raise the probabilities of both the nonevent that could have happened and the noneventuality of known events that would have followed. Thus, to wax Peircean, explanations ultimately aim at show- ing how the slightest shift in the actual world would have universal (though not necessarily major) consequences. I suspect that this view appears deterministic only because explanations are usually of past events, which, given a realist view of time, could not (now) have been otherwise. But my tenseless formulation offers the possibility that small changes (in the future) could make big differences--so there is still hope for the Marxist.

These points go some way toward explicating what it means for two radically divergent paradigms to be within one science. For example, the grammar of economics is uniform enough so that it would be mislead- ing to say that Marxists and Neoclassicists describe economic phenomena radically differently. Indeed, recalling the ideal prose style of the writing manuals, insofar as the two schools mirror the structure of the phenomena in largely the same way, they are practicing a common science. And in virtue of that fact they need only identify their explanations as "economic" ones, rather than, say, "Marxo-economic" ones--as if the prefix indicated that the economic phenomena in question were discerni- ble to only Marxist eyes. However, even in the most mainstream profes- sional journal, where party-line rhetoric is kept to a minimum, the astute reader will nevertheless be able to sort out the schools to which the authors belong simply by noticing what nonevents form the background of their texts' explanatory strategies. Evaluating the explanations in this case is more difficult than weighing the counterfactuals to Caesar crossing the Rubicon "only" because these nonevents are signs of radi- cally divergent paradigms, and so not easily ordered according to their relative significance. But the guiding intuition as to what counts as a better explanation still applies.

As we have just seen, the first step in what may be called a "herme- neutics of legitimacy" involves establishing the narrative perspective, or "voice", of the explainer in a text by determining the things that didn't happen which are of interest to him--either because they were expected or desired. But as all literary critics know, the text may

by seeing what he takes to be significant exclusions. And competing explanations may be evaluated on the basis of the relative signifi- cance of the states-of-affairs they make impossible. And although it remains to be shown how a science orders the "relative significance" of what are really nonevents, I would offer the following as a clue in that direction. Explaining why Caesar crossed the Rubicon and did not instead cross a nearby river is, ceteris paribus, better than explain- ing why Caesar crossed the Rubicon and did not instead cross the Eu- phrates. Given our knowledge of the circumstances surrounding Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon (including the minimum amount of time it could have taken him to travel from Western Europe to the Near East), the former nonevent was a much more viable possibility than the latter. The guiding intuition here is that to explain an event is to show how, if some highly probable nonevent occurred instead, other known events would probably not have occurred. We become better explainers as our explanations raise the probabilities of both the nonevent that could have happened and the noneventuality of known events that would have followed. Thus, to wax Peircean, explanations ultimately aim at show- ing how the slightest shift in the actual world would have universal (though not necessarily major) consequences. I suspect that this view appears deterministic only because explanations are usually of past events, which, given a realist view of time, could not (now) have been otherwise. But my tenseless formulation offers the possibility that small changes (in the future) could make big differences--so there is still hope for the Marxist.

These points go some way toward explicating what it means for two radically divergent paradigms to be within one science. For example, the grammar of economics is uniform enough so that it would be mislead- ing to say that Marxists and Neoclassicists describe economic phenomena radically differently. Indeed, recalling the ideal prose style of the writing manuals, insofar as the two schools mirror the structure of the phenomena in largely the same way, they are practicing a common science. And in virtue of that fact they need only identify their explanations as "economic" ones, rather than, say, "Marxo-economic" ones--as if the prefix indicated that the economic phenomena in question were discerni- ble to only Marxist eyes. However, even in the most mainstream profes- sional journal, where party-line rhetoric is kept to a minimum, the astute reader will nevertheless be able to sort out the schools to which the authors belong simply by noticing what nonevents form the background of their texts' explanatory strategies. Evaluating the explanations in this case is more difficult than weighing the counterfactuals to Caesar crossing the Rubicon "only" because these nonevents are signs of radi- cally divergent paradigms, and so not easily ordered according to their relative significance. But the guiding intuition as to what counts as a better explanation still applies.

As we have just seen, the first step in what may be called a "herme- neutics of legitimacy" involves establishing the narrative perspective, or "voice", of the explainer in a text by determining the things that didn't happen which are of interest to him--either because they were expected or desired. But as all literary critics know, the text may

by seeing what he takes to be significant exclusions. And competing explanations may be evaluated on the basis of the relative signifi- cance of the states-of-affairs they make impossible. And although it remains to be shown how a science orders the "relative significance" of what are really nonevents, I would offer the following as a clue in that direction. Explaining why Caesar crossed the Rubicon and did not instead cross a nearby river is, ceteris paribus, better than explain- ing why Caesar crossed the Rubicon and did not instead cross the Eu- phrates. Given our knowledge of the circumstances surrounding Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon (including the minimum amount of time it could have taken him to travel from Western Europe to the Near East), the former nonevent was a much more viable possibility than the latter. The guiding intuition here is that to explain an event is to show how, if some highly probable nonevent occurred instead, other known events would probably not have occurred. We become better explainers as our explanations raise the probabilities of both the nonevent that could have happened and the noneventuality of known events that would have followed. Thus, to wax Peircean, explanations ultimately aim at show- ing how the slightest shift in the actual world would have universal (though not necessarily major) consequences. I suspect that this view appears deterministic only because explanations are usually of past events, which, given a realist view of time, could not (now) have been otherwise. But my tenseless formulation offers the possibility that small changes (in the future) could make big differences--so there is still hope for the Marxist.

These points go some way toward explicating what it means for two radically divergent paradigms to be within one science. For example, the grammar of economics is uniform enough so that it would be mislead- ing to say that Marxists and Neoclassicists describe economic phenomena radically differently. Indeed, recalling the ideal prose style of the writing manuals, insofar as the two schools mirror the structure of the phenomena in largely the same way, they are practicing a common science. And in virtue of that fact they need only identify their explanations as "economic" ones, rather than, say, "Marxo-economic" ones--as if the prefix indicated that the economic phenomena in question were discerni- ble to only Marxist eyes. However, even in the most mainstream profes- sional journal, where party-line rhetoric is kept to a minimum, the astute reader will nevertheless be able to sort out the schools to which the authors belong simply by noticing what nonevents form the background of their texts' explanatory strategies. Evaluating the explanations in this case is more difficult than weighing the counterfactuals to Caesar crossing the Rubicon "only" because these nonevents are signs of radi- cally divergent paradigms, and so not easily ordered according to their relative significance. But the guiding intuition as to what counts as a better explanation still applies.

As we have just seen, the first step in what may be called a "herme- neutics of legitimacy" involves establishing the narrative perspective, or "voice", of the explainer in a text by determining the things that didn't happen which are of interest to him--either because they were expected or desired. But as all literary critics know, the text may

by seeing what he takes to be significant exclusions. And competing explanations may be evaluated on the basis of the relative signifi- cance of the states-of-affairs they make impossible. And although it remains to be shown how a science orders the "relative significance" of what are really nonevents, I would offer the following as a clue in that direction. Explaining why Caesar crossed the Rubicon and did not instead cross a nearby river is, ceteris paribus, better than explain- ing why Caesar crossed the Rubicon and did not instead cross the Eu- phrates. Given our knowledge of the circumstances surrounding Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon (including the minimum amount of time it could have taken him to travel from Western Europe to the Near East), the former nonevent was a much more viable possibility than the latter. The guiding intuition here is that to explain an event is to show how, if some highly probable nonevent occurred instead, other known events would probably not have occurred. We become better explainers as our explanations raise the probabilities of both the nonevent that could have happened and the noneventuality of known events that would have followed. Thus, to wax Peircean, explanations ultimately aim at show- ing how the slightest shift in the actual world would have universal (though not necessarily major) consequences. I suspect that this view appears deterministic only because explanations are usually of past events, which, given a realist view of time, could not (now) have been otherwise. But my tenseless formulation offers the possibility that small changes (in the future) could make big differences--so there is still hope for the Marxist.

These points go some way toward explicating what it means for two radically divergent paradigms to be within one science. For example, the grammar of economics is uniform enough so that it would be mislead- ing to say that Marxists and Neoclassicists describe economic phenomena radically differently. Indeed, recalling the ideal prose style of the writing manuals, insofar as the two schools mirror the structure of the phenomena in largely the same way, they are practicing a common science. And in virtue of that fact they need only identify their explanations as "economic" ones, rather than, say, "Marxo-economic" ones--as if the prefix indicated that the economic phenomena in question were discerni- ble to only Marxist eyes. However, even in the most mainstream profes- sional journal, where party-line rhetoric is kept to a minimum, the astute reader will nevertheless be able to sort out the schools to which the authors belong simply by noticing what nonevents form the background of their texts' explanatory strategies. Evaluating the explanations in this case is more difficult than weighing the counterfactuals to Caesar crossing the Rubicon "only" because these nonevents are signs of radi- cally divergent paradigms, and so not easily ordered according to their relative significance. But the guiding intuition as to what counts as a better explanation still applies.

As we have just seen, the first step in what may be called a "herme- neutics of legitimacy" involves establishing the narrative perspective, or "voice", of the explainer in a text by determining the things that didn't happen which are of interest to him--either because they were expected or desired. But as all literary critics know, the text may

by seeing what he takes to be significant exclusions. And competing explanations may be evaluated on the basis of the relative signifi- cance of the states-of-affairs they make impossible. And although it remains to be shown how a science orders the "relative significance" of what are really nonevents, I would offer the following as a clue in that direction. Explaining why Caesar crossed the Rubicon and did not instead cross a nearby river is, ceteris paribus, better than explain- ing why Caesar crossed the Rubicon and did not instead cross the Eu- phrates. Given our knowledge of the circumstances surrounding Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon (including the minimum amount of time it could have taken him to travel from Western Europe to the Near East), the former nonevent was a much more viable possibility than the latter. The guiding intuition here is that to explain an event is to show how, if some highly probable nonevent occurred instead, other known events would probably not have occurred. We become better explainers as our explanations raise the probabilities of both the nonevent that could have happened and the noneventuality of known events that would have followed. Thus, to wax Peircean, explanations ultimately aim at show- ing how the slightest shift in the actual world would have universal (though not necessarily major) consequences. I suspect that this view appears deterministic only because explanations are usually of past events, which, given a realist view of time, could not (now) have been otherwise. But my tenseless formulation offers the possibility that small changes (in the future) could make big differences--so there is still hope for the Marxist.

These points go some way toward explicating what it means for two radically divergent paradigms to be within one science. For example, the grammar of economics is uniform enough so that it would be mislead- ing to say that Marxists and Neoclassicists describe economic phenomena radically differently. Indeed, recalling the ideal prose style of the writing manuals, insofar as the two schools mirror the structure of the phenomena in largely the same way, they are practicing a common science. And in virtue of that fact they need only identify their explanations as "economic" ones, rather than, say, "Marxo-economic" ones--as if the prefix indicated that the economic phenomena in question were discerni- ble to only Marxist eyes. However, even in the most mainstream profes- sional journal, where party-line rhetoric is kept to a minimum, the astute reader will nevertheless be able to sort out the schools to which the authors belong simply by noticing what nonevents form the background of their texts' explanatory strategies. Evaluating the explanations in this case is more difficult than weighing the counterfactuals to Caesar crossing the Rubicon "only" because these nonevents are signs of radi- cally divergent paradigms, and so not easily ordered according to their relative significance. But the guiding intuition as to what counts as a better explanation still applies.

As we have just seen, the first step in what may be called a "herme- neutics of legitimacy" involves establishing the narrative perspective, or "voice", of the explainer in a text by determining the things that didn't happen which are of interest to him--either because they were expected or desired. But as all literary critics know, the text may

by seeing what he takes to be significant exclusions. And competing explanations may be evaluated on the basis of the relative signifi- cance of the states-of-affairs they make impossible. And although it remains to be shown how a science orders the "relative significance" of what are really nonevents, I would offer the following as a clue in that direction. Explaining why Caesar crossed the Rubicon and did not instead cross a nearby river is, ceteris paribus, better than explain- ing why Caesar crossed the Rubicon and did not instead cross the Eu- phrates. Given our knowledge of the circumstances surrounding Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon (including the minimum amount of time it could have taken him to travel from Western Europe to the Near East), the former nonevent was a much more viable possibility than the latter. The guiding intuition here is that to explain an event is to show how, if some highly probable nonevent occurred instead, other known events would probably not have occurred. We become better explainers as our explanations raise the probabilities of both the nonevent that could have happened and the noneventuality of known events that would have followed. Thus, to wax Peircean, explanations ultimately aim at show- ing how the slightest shift in the actual world would have universal (though not necessarily major) consequences. I suspect that this view appears deterministic only because explanations are usually of past events, which, given a realist view of time, could not (now) have been otherwise. But my tenseless formulation offers the possibility that small changes (in the future) could make big differences--so there is still hope for the Marxist.

These points go some way toward explicating what it means for two radically divergent paradigms to be within one science. For example, the grammar of economics is uniform enough so that it would be mislead- ing to say that Marxists and Neoclassicists describe economic phenomena radically differently. Indeed, recalling the ideal prose style of the writing manuals, insofar as the two schools mirror the structure of the phenomena in largely the same way, they are practicing a common science. And in virtue of that fact they need only identify their explanations as "economic" ones, rather than, say, "Marxo-economic" ones--as if the prefix indicated that the economic phenomena in question were discerni- ble to only Marxist eyes. However, even in the most mainstream profes- sional journal, where party-line rhetoric is kept to a minimum, the astute reader will nevertheless be able to sort out the schools to which the authors belong simply by noticing what nonevents form the background of their texts' explanatory strategies. Evaluating the explanations in this case is more difficult than weighing the counterfactuals to Caesar crossing the Rubicon "only" because these nonevents are signs of radi- cally divergent paradigms, and so not easily ordered according to their relative significance. But the guiding intuition as to what counts as a better explanation still applies.

As we have just seen, the first step in what may be called a "herme- neutics of legitimacy" involves establishing the narrative perspective, or "voice", of the explainer in a text by determining the things that didn't happen which are of interest to him--either because they were expected or desired. But as all literary critics know, the text may

by seeing what he takes to be significant exclusions. And competing explanations may be evaluated on the basis of the relative signifi- cance of the states-of-affairs they make impossible. And although it remains to be shown how a science orders the "relative significance" of what are really nonevents, I would offer the following as a clue in that direction. Explaining why Caesar crossed the Rubicon and did not instead cross a nearby river is, ceteris paribus, better than explain- ing why Caesar crossed the Rubicon and did not instead cross the Eu- phrates. Given our knowledge of the circumstances surrounding Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon (including the minimum amount of time it could have taken him to travel from Western Europe to the Near East), the former nonevent was a much more viable possibility than the latter. The guiding intuition here is that to explain an event is to show how, if some highly probable nonevent occurred instead, other known events would probably not have occurred. We become better explainers as our explanations raise the probabilities of both the nonevent that could have happened and the noneventuality of known events that would have followed. Thus, to wax Peircean, explanations ultimately aim at show- ing how the slightest shift in the actual world would have universal (though not necessarily major) consequences. I suspect that this view appears deterministic only because explanations are usually of past events, which, given a realist view of time, could not (now) have been otherwise. But my tenseless formulation offers the possibility that small changes (in the future) could make big differences--so there is still hope for the Marxist.

These points go some way toward explicating what it means for two radically divergent paradigms to be within one science. For example, the grammar of economics is uniform enough so that it would be mislead- ing to say that Marxists and Neoclassicists describe economic phenomena radically differently. Indeed, recalling the ideal prose style of the writing manuals, insofar as the two schools mirror the structure of the phenomena in largely the same way, they are practicing a common science. And in virtue of that fact they need only identify their explanations as "economic" ones, rather than, say, "Marxo-economic" ones--as if the prefix indicated that the economic phenomena in question were discerni- ble to only Marxist eyes. However, even in the most mainstream profes- sional journal, where party-line rhetoric is kept to a minimum, the astute reader will nevertheless be able to sort out the schools to which the authors belong simply by noticing what nonevents form the background of their texts' explanatory strategies. Evaluating the explanations in this case is more difficult than weighing the counterfactuals to Caesar crossing the Rubicon "only" because these nonevents are signs of radi- cally divergent paradigms, and so not easily ordered according to their relative significance. But the guiding intuition as to what counts as a better explanation still applies.

As we have just seen, the first step in what may be called a "herme- neutics of legitimacy" involves establishing the narrative perspective, or "voice", of the explainer in a text by determining the things that didn't happen which are of interest to him--either because they were expected or desired. But as all literary critics know, the text may

by seeing what he takes to be significant exclusions. And competing explanations may be evaluated on the basis of the relative signifi- cance of the states-of-affairs they make impossible. And although it remains to be shown how a science orders the "relative significance" of what are really nonevents, I would offer the following as a clue in that direction. Explaining why Caesar crossed the Rubicon and did not instead cross a nearby river is, ceteris paribus, better than explain- ing why Caesar crossed the Rubicon and did not instead cross the Eu- phrates. Given our knowledge of the circumstances surrounding Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon (including the minimum amount of time it could have taken him to travel from Western Europe to the Near East), the former nonevent was a much more viable possibility than the latter. The guiding intuition here is that to explain an event is to show how, if some highly probable nonevent occurred instead, other known events would probably not have occurred. We become better explainers as our explanations raise the probabilities of both the nonevent that could have happened and the noneventuality of known events that would have followed. Thus, to wax Peircean, explanations ultimately aim at show- ing how the slightest shift in the actual world would have universal (though not necessarily major) consequences. I suspect that this view appears deterministic only because explanations are usually of past events, which, given a realist view of time, could not (now) have been otherwise. But my tenseless formulation offers the possibility that small changes (in the future) could make big differences--so there is still hope for the Marxist.

These points go some way toward explicating what it means for two radically divergent paradigms to be within one science. For example, the grammar of economics is uniform enough so that it would be mislead- ing to say that Marxists and Neoclassicists describe economic phenomena radically differently. Indeed, recalling the ideal prose style of the writing manuals, insofar as the two schools mirror the structure of the phenomena in largely the same way, they are practicing a common science. And in virtue of that fact they need only identify their explanations as "economic" ones, rather than, say, "Marxo-economic" ones--as if the prefix indicated that the economic phenomena in question were discerni- ble to only Marxist eyes. However, even in the most mainstream profes- sional journal, where party-line rhetoric is kept to a minimum, the astute reader will nevertheless be able to sort out the schools to which the authors belong simply by noticing what nonevents form the background of their texts' explanatory strategies. Evaluating the explanations in this case is more difficult than weighing the counterfactuals to Caesar crossing the Rubicon "only" because these nonevents are signs of radi- cally divergent paradigms, and so not easily ordered according to their relative significance. But the guiding intuition as to what counts as a better explanation still applies.

As we have just seen, the first step in what may be called a "herme- neutics of legitimacy" involves establishing the narrative perspective, or "voice", of the explainer in a text by determining the things that didn't happen which are of interest to him--either because they were expected or desired. But as all literary critics know, the text may

by seeing what he takes to be significant exclusions. And competing explanations may be evaluated on the basis of the relative signifi- cance of the states-of-affairs they make impossible. And although it remains to be shown how a science orders the "relative significance" of what are really nonevents, I would offer the following as a clue in that direction. Explaining why Caesar crossed the Rubicon and did not instead cross a nearby river is, ceteris paribus, better than explain- ing why Caesar crossed the Rubicon and did not instead cross the Eu- phrates. Given our knowledge of the circumstances surrounding Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon (including the minimum amount of time it could have taken him to travel from Western Europe to the Near East), the former nonevent was a much more viable possibility than the latter. The guiding intuition here is that to explain an event is to show how, if some highly probable nonevent occurred instead, other known events would probably not have occurred. We become better explainers as our explanations raise the probabilities of both the nonevent that could have happened and the noneventuality of known events that would have followed. Thus, to wax Peircean, explanations ultimately aim at show- ing how the slightest shift in the actual world would have universal (though not necessarily major) consequences. I suspect that this view appears deterministic only because explanations are usually of past events, which, given a realist view of time, could not (now) have been otherwise. But my tenseless formulation offers the possibility that small changes (in the future) could make big differences--so there is still hope for the Marxist.

These points go some way toward explicating what it means for two radically divergent paradigms to be within one science. For example, the grammar of economics is uniform enough so that it would be mislead- ing to say that Marxists and Neoclassicists describe economic phenomena radically differently. Indeed, recalling the ideal prose style of the writing manuals, insofar as the two schools mirror the structure of the phenomena in largely the same way, they are practicing a common science. And in virtue of that fact they need only identify their explanations as "economic" ones, rather than, say, "Marxo-economic" ones--as if the prefix indicated that the economic phenomena in question were discerni- ble to only Marxist eyes. However, even in the most mainstream profes- sional journal, where party-line rhetoric is kept to a minimum, the astute reader will nevertheless be able to sort out the schools to which the authors belong simply by noticing what nonevents form the background of their texts' explanatory strategies. Evaluating the explanations in this case is more difficult than weighing the counterfactuals to Caesar crossing the Rubicon "only" because these nonevents are signs of radi- cally divergent paradigms, and so not easily ordered according to their relative significance. But the guiding intuition as to what counts as a better explanation still applies.

As we have just seen, the first step in what may be called a "herme- neutics of legitimacy" involves establishing the narrative perspective, or "voice", of the explainer in a text by determining the things that didn't happen which are of interest to him--either because they were expected or desired. But as all literary critics know, the text may

by seeing what he takes to be significant exclusions. And competing explanations may be evaluated on the basis of the relative signifi- cance of the states-of-affairs they make impossible. And although it remains to be shown how a science orders the "relative significance" of what are really nonevents, I would offer the following as a clue in that direction. Explaining why Caesar crossed the Rubicon and did not instead cross a nearby river is, ceteris paribus, better than explain- ing why Caesar crossed the Rubicon and did not instead cross the Eu- phrates. Given our knowledge of the circumstances surrounding Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon (including the minimum amount of time it could have taken him to travel from Western Europe to the Near East), the former nonevent was a much more viable possibility than the latter. The guiding intuition here is that to explain an event is to show how, if some highly probable nonevent occurred instead, other known events would probably not have occurred. We become better explainers as our explanations raise the probabilities of both the nonevent that could have happened and the noneventuality of known events that would have followed. Thus, to wax Peircean, explanations ultimately aim at show- ing how the slightest shift in the actual world would have universal (though not necessarily major) consequences. I suspect that this view appears deterministic only because explanations are usually of past events, which, given a realist view of time, could not (now) have been otherwise. But my tenseless formulation offers the possibility that small changes (in the future) could make big differences--so there is still hope for the Marxist.

These points go some way toward explicating what it means for two radically divergent paradigms to be within one science. For example, the grammar of economics is uniform enough so that it would be mislead- ing to say that Marxists and Neoclassicists describe economic phenomena radically differently. Indeed, recalling the ideal prose style of the writing manuals, insofar as the two schools mirror the structure of the phenomena in largely the same way, they are practicing a common science. And in virtue of that fact they need only identify their explanations as "economic" ones, rather than, say, "Marxo-economic" ones--as if the prefix indicated that the economic phenomena in question were discerni- ble to only Marxist eyes. However, even in the most mainstream profes- sional journal, where party-line rhetoric is kept to a minimum, the astute reader will nevertheless be able to sort out the schools to which the authors belong simply by noticing what nonevents form the background of their texts' explanatory strategies. Evaluating the explanations in this case is more difficult than weighing the counterfactuals to Caesar crossing the Rubicon "only" because these nonevents are signs of radi- cally divergent paradigms, and so not easily ordered according to their relative significance. But the guiding intuition as to what counts as a better explanation still applies.

As we have just seen, the first step in what may be called a "herme- neutics of legitimacy" involves establishing the narrative perspective, or "voice", of the explainer in a text by determining the things that didn't happen which are of interest to him--either because they were expected or desired. But as all literary critics know, the text may

by seeing what he takes to be significant exclusions. And competing explanations may be evaluated on the basis of the relative signifi- cance of the states-of-affairs they make impossible. And although it remains to be shown how a science orders the "relative significance" of what are really nonevents, I would offer the following as a clue in that direction. Explaining why Caesar crossed the Rubicon and did not instead cross a nearby river is, ceteris paribus, better than explain- ing why Caesar crossed the Rubicon and did not instead cross the Eu- phrates. Given our knowledge of the circumstances surrounding Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon (including the minimum amount of time it could have taken him to travel from Western Europe to the Near East), the former nonevent was a much more viable possibility than the latter. The guiding intuition here is that to explain an event is to show how, if some highly probable nonevent occurred instead, other known events would probably not have occurred. We become better explainers as our explanations raise the probabilities of both the nonevent that could have happened and the noneventuality of known events that would have followed. Thus, to wax Peircean, explanations ultimately aim at show- ing how the slightest shift in the actual world would have universal (though not necessarily major) consequences. I suspect that this view appears deterministic only because explanations are usually of past events, which, given a realist view of time, could not (now) have been otherwise. But my tenseless formulation offers the possibility that small changes (in the future) could make big differences--so there is still hope for the Marxist.

These points go some way toward explicating what it means for two radically divergent paradigms to be within one science. For example, the grammar of economics is uniform enough so that it would be mislead- ing to say that Marxists and Neoclassicists describe economic phenomena radically differently. Indeed, recalling the ideal prose style of the writing manuals, insofar as the two schools mirror the structure of the phenomena in largely the same way, they are practicing a common science. And in virtue of that fact they need only identify their explanations as "economic" ones, rather than, say, "Marxo-economic" ones--as if the prefix indicated that the economic phenomena in question were discerni- ble to only Marxist eyes. However, even in the most mainstream profes- sional journal, where party-line rhetoric is kept to a minimum, the astute reader will nevertheless be able to sort out the schools to which the authors belong simply by noticing what nonevents form the background of their texts' explanatory strategies. Evaluating the explanations in this case is more difficult than weighing the counterfactuals to Caesar crossing the Rubicon "only" because these nonevents are signs of radi- cally divergent paradigms, and so not easily ordered according to their relative significance. But the guiding intuition as to what counts as a better explanation still applies.

As we have just seen, the first step in what may be called a "herme- neutics of legitimacy" involves establishing the narrative perspective, or "voice", of the explainer in a text by determining the things that didn't happen which are of interest to him--either because they were expected or desired. But as all literary critics know, the text may

by seeing what he takes to be significant exclusions. And competing explanations may be evaluated on the basis of the relative signifi- cance of the states-of-affairs they make impossible. And although it remains to be shown how a science orders the "relative significance" of what are really nonevents, I would offer the following as a clue in that direction. Explaining why Caesar crossed the Rubicon and did not instead cross a nearby river is, ceteris paribus, better than explain- ing why Caesar crossed the Rubicon and did not instead cross the Eu- phrates. Given our knowledge of the circumstances surrounding Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon (including the minimum amount of time it could have taken him to travel from Western Europe to the Near East), the former nonevent was a much more viable possibility than the latter. The guiding intuition here is that to explain an event is to show how, if some highly probable nonevent occurred instead, other known events would probably not have occurred. We become better explainers as our explanations raise the probabilities of both the nonevent that could have happened and the noneventuality of known events that would have followed. Thus, to wax Peircean, explanations ultimately aim at show- ing how the slightest shift in the actual world would have universal (though not necessarily major) consequences. I suspect that this view appears deterministic only because explanations are usually of past events, which, given a realist view of time, could not (now) have been otherwise. But my tenseless formulation offers the possibility that small changes (in the future) could make big differences--so there is still hope for the Marxist.

These points go some way toward explicating what it means for two radically divergent paradigms to be within one science. For example, the grammar of economics is uniform enough so that it would be mislead- ing to say that Marxists and Neoclassicists describe economic phenomena radically differently. Indeed, recalling the ideal prose style of the writing manuals, insofar as the two schools mirror the structure of the phenomena in largely the same way, they are practicing a common science. And in virtue of that fact they need only identify their explanations as "economic" ones, rather than, say, "Marxo-economic" ones--as if the prefix indicated that the economic phenomena in question were discerni- ble to only Marxist eyes. However, even in the most mainstream profes- sional journal, where party-line rhetoric is kept to a minimum, the astute reader will nevertheless be able to sort out the schools to which the authors belong simply by noticing what nonevents form the background of their texts' explanatory strategies. Evaluating the explanations in this case is more difficult than weighing the counterfactuals to Caesar crossing the Rubicon "only" because these nonevents are signs of radi- cally divergent paradigms, and so not easily ordered according to their relative significance. But the guiding intuition as to what counts as a better explanation still applies.

As we have just seen, the first step in what may be called a "herme- neutics of legitimacy" involves establishing the narrative perspective, or "voice", of the explainer in a text by determining the things that didn't happen which are of interest to him--either because they were expected or desired. But as all literary critics know, the text may

by seeing what he takes to be significant exclusions. And competing explanations may be evaluated on the basis of the relative signifi- cance of the states-of-affairs they make impossible. And although it remains to be shown how a science orders the "relative significance" of what are really nonevents, I would offer the following as a clue in that direction. Explaining why Caesar crossed the Rubicon and did not instead cross a nearby river is, ceteris paribus, better than explain- ing why Caesar crossed the Rubicon and did not instead cross the Eu- phrates. Given our knowledge of the circumstances surrounding Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon (including the minimum amount of time it could have taken him to travel from Western Europe to the Near East), the former nonevent was a much more viable possibility than the latter. The guiding intuition here is that to explain an event is to show how, if some highly probable nonevent occurred instead, other known events would probably not have occurred. We become better explainers as our explanations raise the probabilities of both the nonevent that could have happened and the noneventuality of known events that would have followed. Thus, to wax Peircean, explanations ultimately aim at show- ing how the slightest shift in the actual world would have universal (though not necessarily major) consequences. I suspect that this view appears deterministic only because explanations are usually of past events, which, given a realist view of time, could not (now) have been otherwise. But my tenseless formulation offers the possibility that small changes (in the future) could make big differences--so there is still hope for the Marxist.

These points go some way toward explicating what it means for two radically divergent paradigms to be within one science. For example, the grammar of economics is uniform enough so that it would be mislead- ing to say that Marxists and Neoclassicists describe economic phenomena radically differently. Indeed, recalling the ideal prose style of the writing manuals, insofar as the two schools mirror the structure of the phenomena in largely the same way, they are practicing a common science. And in virtue of that fact they need only identify their explanations as "economic" ones, rather than, say, "Marxo-economic" ones--as if the prefix indicated that the economic phenomena in question were discerni- ble to only Marxist eyes. However, even in the most mainstream profes- sional journal, where party-line rhetoric is kept to a minimum, the astute reader will nevertheless be able to sort out the schools to which the authors belong simply by noticing what nonevents form the background of their texts' explanatory strategies. Evaluating the explanations in this case is more difficult than weighing the counterfactuals to Caesar crossing the Rubicon "only" because these nonevents are signs of radi- cally divergent paradigms, and so not easily ordered according to their relative significance. But the guiding intuition as to what counts as a better explanation still applies.

As we have just seen, the first step in what may be called a "herme- neutics of legitimacy" involves establishing the narrative perspective, or "voice", of the explainer in a text by determining the things that didn't happen which are of interest to him--either because they were expected or desired. But as all literary critics know, the text may

by seeing what he takes to be significant exclusions. And competing explanations may be evaluated on the basis of the relative signifi- cance of the states-of-affairs they make impossible. And although it remains to be shown how a science orders the "relative significance" of what are really nonevents, I would offer the following as a clue in that direction. Explaining why Caesar crossed the Rubicon and did not instead cross a nearby river is, ceteris paribus, better than explain- ing why Caesar crossed the Rubicon and did not instead cross the Eu- phrates. Given our knowledge of the circumstances surrounding Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon (including the minimum amount of time it could have taken him to travel from Western Europe to the Near East), the former nonevent was a much more viable possibility than the latter. The guiding intuition here is that to explain an event is to show how, if some highly probable nonevent occurred instead, other known events would probably not have occurred. We become better explainers as our explanations raise the probabilities of both the nonevent that could have happened and the noneventuality of known events that would have followed. Thus, to wax Peircean, explanations ultimately aim at show- ing how the slightest shift in the actual world would have universal (though not necessarily major) consequences. I suspect that this view appears deterministic only because explanations are usually of past events, which, given a realist view of time, could not (now) have been otherwise. But my tenseless formulation offers the possibility that small changes (in the future) could make big differences--so there is still hope for the Marxist.

These points go some way toward explicating what it means for two radically divergent paradigms to be within one science. For example, the grammar of economics is uniform enough so that it would be mislead- ing to say that Marxists and Neoclassicists describe economic phenomena radically differently. Indeed, recalling the ideal prose style of the writing manuals, insofar as the two schools mirror the structure of the phenomena in largely the same way, they are practicing a common science. And in virtue of that fact they need only identify their explanations as "economic" ones, rather than, say, "Marxo-economic" ones--as if the prefix indicated that the economic phenomena in question were discerni- ble to only Marxist eyes. However, even in the most mainstream profes- sional journal, where party-line rhetoric is kept to a minimum, the astute reader will nevertheless be able to sort out the schools to which the authors belong simply by noticing what nonevents form the background of their texts' explanatory strategies. Evaluating the explanations in this case is more difficult than weighing the counterfactuals to Caesar crossing the Rubicon "only" because these nonevents are signs of radi- cally divergent paradigms, and so not easily ordered according to their relative significance. But the guiding intuition as to what counts as a better explanation still applies.

As we have just seen, the first step in what may be called a "herme- neutics of legitimacy" involves establishing the narrative perspective, or "voice", of the explainer in a text by determining the things that didn't happen which are of interest to him--either because they were expected or desired. But as all literary critics know, the text may

by seeing what he takes to be significant exclusions. And competing explanations may be evaluated on the basis of the relative signifi- cance of the states-of-affairs they make impossible. And although it remains to be shown how a science orders the "relative significance" of what are really nonevents, I would offer the following as a clue in that direction. Explaining why Caesar crossed the Rubicon and did not instead cross a nearby river is, ceteris paribus, better than explain- ing why Caesar crossed the Rubicon and did not instead cross the Eu- phrates. Given our knowledge of the circumstances surrounding Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon (including the minimum amount of time it could have taken him to travel from Western Europe to the Near East), the former nonevent was a much more viable possibility than the latter. The guiding intuition here is that to explain an event is to show how, if some highly probable nonevent occurred instead, other known events would probably not have occurred. We become better explainers as our explanations raise the probabilities of both the nonevent that could have happened and the noneventuality of known events that would have followed. Thus, to wax Peircean, explanations ultimately aim at show- ing how the slightest shift in the actual world would have universal (though not necessarily major) consequences. I suspect that this view appears deterministic only because explanations are usually of past events, which, given a realist view of time, could not (now) have been otherwise. But my tenseless formulation offers the possibility that small changes (in the future) could make big differences--so there is still hope for the Marxist.

These points go some way toward explicating what it means for two radically divergent paradigms to be within one science. For example, the grammar of economics is uniform enough so that it would be mislead- ing to say that Marxists and Neoclassicists describe economic phenomena radically differently. Indeed, recalling the ideal prose style of the writing manuals, insofar as the two schools mirror the structure of the phenomena in largely the same way, they are practicing a common science. And in virtue of that fact they need only identify their explanations as "economic" ones, rather than, say, "Marxo-economic" ones--as if the prefix indicated that the economic phenomena in question were discerni- ble to only Marxist eyes. However, even in the most mainstream profes- sional journal, where party-line rhetoric is kept to a minimum, the astute reader will nevertheless be able to sort out the schools to which the authors belong simply by noticing what nonevents form the background of their texts' explanatory strategies. Evaluating the explanations in this case is more difficult than weighing the counterfactuals to Caesar crossing the Rubicon "only" because these nonevents are signs of radi- cally divergent paradigms, and so not easily ordered according to their relative significance. But the guiding intuition as to what counts as a better explanation still applies.

As we have just seen, the first step in what may be called a "herme- neutics of legitimacy" involves establishing the narrative perspective, or "voice", of the explainer in a text by determining the things that didn't happen which are of interest to him--either because they were expected or desired. But as all literary critics know, the text may

by seeing what he takes to be significant exclusions. And competing explanations may be evaluated on the basis of the relative signifi- cance of the states-of-affairs they make impossible. And although it remains to be shown how a science orders the "relative significance" of what are really nonevents, I would offer the following as a clue in that direction. Explaining why Caesar crossed the Rubicon and did not instead cross a nearby river is, ceteris paribus, better than explain- ing why Caesar crossed the Rubicon and did not instead cross the Eu- phrates. Given our knowledge of the circumstances surrounding Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon (including the minimum amount of time it could have taken him to travel from Western Europe to the Near East), the former nonevent was a much more viable possibility than the latter. The guiding intuition here is that to explain an event is to show how, if some highly probable nonevent occurred instead, other known events would probably not have occurred. We become better explainers as our explanations raise the probabilities of both the nonevent that could have happened and the noneventuality of known events that would have followed. Thus, to wax Peircean, explanations ultimately aim at show- ing how the slightest shift in the actual world would have universal (though not necessarily major) consequences. I suspect that this view appears deterministic only because explanations are usually of past events, which, given a realist view of time, could not (now) have been otherwise. But my tenseless formulation offers the possibility that small changes (in the future) could make big differences--so there is still hope for the Marxist.

These points go some way toward explicating what it means for two radically divergent paradigms to be within one science. For example, the grammar of economics is uniform enough so that it would be mislead- ing to say that Marxists and Neoclassicists describe economic phenomena radically differently. Indeed, recalling the ideal prose style of the writing manuals, insofar as the two schools mirror the structure of the phenomena in largely the same way, they are practicing a common science. And in virtue of that fact they need only identify their explanations as "economic" ones, rather than, say, "Marxo-economic" ones--as if the prefix indicated that the economic phenomena in question were discerni- ble to only Marxist eyes. However, even in the most mainstream profes- sional journal, where party-line rhetoric is kept to a minimum, the astute reader will nevertheless be able to sort out the schools to which the authors belong simply by noticing what nonevents form the background of their texts' explanatory strategies. Evaluating the explanations in this case is more difficult than weighing the counterfactuals to Caesar crossing the Rubicon "only" because these nonevents are signs of radi- cally divergent paradigms, and so not easily ordered according to their relative significance. But the guiding intuition as to what counts as a better explanation still applies.

As we have just seen, the first step in what may be called a "herme- neutics of legitimacy" involves establishing the narrative perspective, or "voice", of the explainer in a text by determining the things that didn't happen which are of interest to him--either because they were expected or desired. But as all literary critics know, the text may

by seeing what he takes to be significant exclusions. And competing explanations may be evaluated on the basis of the relative signifi- cance of the states-of-affairs they make impossible. And although it remains to be shown how a science orders the "relative significance" of what are really nonevents, I would offer the following as a clue in that direction. Explaining why Caesar crossed the Rubicon and did not instead cross a nearby river is, ceteris paribus, better than explain- ing why Caesar crossed the Rubicon and did not instead cross the Eu- phrates. Given our knowledge of the circumstances surrounding Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon (including the minimum amount of time it could have taken him to travel from Western Europe to the Near East), the former nonevent was a much more viable possibility than the latter. The guiding intuition here is that to explain an event is to show how, if some highly probable nonevent occurred instead, other known events would probably not have occurred. We become better explainers as our explanations raise the probabilities of both the nonevent that could have happened and the noneventuality of known events that would have followed. Thus, to wax Peircean, explanations ultimately aim at show- ing how the slightest shift in the actual world would have universal (though not necessarily major) consequences. I suspect that this view appears deterministic only because explanations are usually of past events, which, given a realist view of time, could not (now) have been otherwise. But my tenseless formulation offers the possibility that small changes (in the future) could make big differences--so there is still hope for the Marxist.

These points go some way toward explicating what it means for two radically divergent paradigms to be within one science. For example, the grammar of economics is uniform enough so that it would be mislead- ing to say that Marxists and Neoclassicists describe economic phenomena radically differently. Indeed, recalling the ideal prose style of the writing manuals, insofar as the two schools mirror the structure of the phenomena in largely the same way, they are practicing a common science. And in virtue of that fact they need only identify their explanations as "economic" ones, rather than, say, "Marxo-economic" ones--as if the prefix indicated that the economic phenomena in question were discerni- ble to only Marxist eyes. However, even in the most mainstream profes- sional journal, where party-line rhetoric is kept to a minimum, the astute reader will nevertheless be able to sort out the schools to which the authors belong simply by noticing what nonevents form the background of their texts' explanatory strategies. Evaluating the explanations in this case is more difficult than weighing the counterfactuals to Caesar crossing the Rubicon "only" because these nonevents are signs of radi- cally divergent paradigms, and so not easily ordered according to their relative significance. But the guiding intuition as to what counts as a better explanation still applies.

As we have just seen, the first step in what may be called a "herme- neutics of legitimacy" involves establishing the narrative perspective, or "voice", of the explainer in a text by determining the things that didn't happen which are of interest to him--either because they were expected or desired. But as all literary critics know, the text may

by seeing what he takes to be significant exclusions. And competing explanations may be evaluated on the basis of the relative signifi- cance of the states-of-affairs they make impossible. And although it remains to be shown how a science orders the "relative significance" of what are really nonevents, I would offer the following as a clue in that direction. Explaining why Caesar crossed the Rubicon and did not instead cross a nearby river is, ceteris paribus, better than explain- ing why Caesar crossed the Rubicon and did not instead cross the Eu- phrates. Given our knowledge of the circumstances surrounding Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon (including the minimum amount of time it could have taken him to travel from Western Europe to the Near East), the former nonevent was a much more viable possibility than the latter. The guiding intuition here is that to explain an event is to show how, if some highly probable nonevent occurred instead, other known events would probably not have occurred. We become better explainers as our explanations raise the probabilities of both the nonevent that could have happened and the noneventuality of known events that would have followed. Thus, to wax Peircean, explanations ultimately aim at show- ing how the slightest shift in the actual world would have universal (though not necessarily major) consequences. I suspect that this view appears deterministic only because explanations are usually of past events, which, given a realist view of time, could not (now) have been otherwise. But my tenseless formulation offers the possibility that small changes (in the future) could make big differences--so there is still hope for the Marxist.

These points go some way toward explicating what it means for two radically divergent paradigms to be within one science. For example, the grammar of economics is uniform enough so that it would be mislead- ing to say that Marxists and Neoclassicists describe economic phenomena radically differently. Indeed, recalling the ideal prose style of the writing manuals, insofar as the two schools mirror the structure of the phenomena in largely the same way, they are practicing a common science. And in virtue of that fact they need only identify their explanations as "economic" ones, rather than, say, "Marxo-economic" ones--as if the prefix indicated that the economic phenomena in question were discerni- ble to only Marxist eyes. However, even in the most mainstream profes- sional journal, where party-line rhetoric is kept to a minimum, the astute reader will nevertheless be able to sort out the schools to which the authors belong simply by noticing what nonevents form the background of their texts' explanatory strategies. Evaluating the explanations in this case is more difficult than weighing the counterfactuals to Caesar crossing the Rubicon "only" because these nonevents are signs of radi- cally divergent paradigms, and so not easily ordered according to their relative significance. But the guiding intuition as to what counts as a better explanation still applies.

As we have just seen, the first step in what may be called a "herme- neutics of legitimacy" involves establishing the narrative perspective, or "voice", of the explainer in a text by determining the things that didn't happen which are of interest to him--either because they were expected or desired. But as all literary critics know, the text may

by seeing what he takes to be significant exclusions. And competing explanations may be evaluated on the basis of the relative signifi- cance of the states-of-affairs they make impossible. And although it remains to be shown how a science orders the "relative significance" of what are really nonevents, I would offer the following as a clue in that direction. Explaining why Caesar crossed the Rubicon and did not instead cross a nearby river is, ceteris paribus, better than explain- ing why Caesar crossed the Rubicon and did not instead cross the Eu- phrates. Given our knowledge of the circumstances surrounding Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon (including the minimum amount of time it could have taken him to travel from Western Europe to the Near East), the former nonevent was a much more viable possibility than the latter. The guiding intuition here is that to explain an event is to show how, if some highly probable nonevent occurred instead, other known events would probably not have occurred. We become better explainers as our explanations raise the probabilities of both the nonevent that could have happened and the noneventuality of known events that would have followed. Thus, to wax Peircean, explanations ultimately aim at show- ing how the slightest shift in the actual world would have universal (though not necessarily major) consequences. I suspect that this view appears deterministic only because explanations are usually of past events, which, given a realist view of time, could not (now) have been otherwise. But my tenseless formulation offers the possibility that small changes (in the future) could make big differences--so there is still hope for the Marxist.

These points go some way toward explicating what it means for two radically divergent paradigms to be within one science. For example, the grammar of economics is uniform enough so that it would be mislead- ing to say that Marxists and Neoclassicists describe economic phenomena radically differently. Indeed, recalling the ideal prose style of the writing manuals, insofar as the two schools mirror the structure of the phenomena in largely the same way, they are practicing a common science. And in virtue of that fact they need only identify their explanations as "economic" ones, rather than, say, "Marxo-economic" ones--as if the prefix indicated that the economic phenomena in question were discerni- ble to only Marxist eyes. However, even in the most mainstream profes- sional journal, where party-line rhetoric is kept to a minimum, the astute reader will nevertheless be able to sort out the schools to which the authors belong simply by noticing what nonevents form the background of their texts' explanatory strategies. Evaluating the explanations in this case is more difficult than weighing the counterfactuals to Caesar crossing the Rubicon "only" because these nonevents are signs of radi- cally divergent paradigms, and so not easily ordered according to their relative significance. But the guiding intuition as to what counts as a better explanation still applies.

As we have just seen, the first step in what may be called a "herme- neutics of legitimacy" involves establishing the narrative perspective, or "voice", of the explainer in a text by determining the things that didn't happen which are of interest to him--either because they were expected or desired. But as all literary critics know, the text may

by seeing what he takes to be significant exclusions. And competing explanations may be evaluated on the basis of the relative signifi- cance of the states-of-affairs they make impossible. And although it remains to be shown how a science orders the "relative significance" of what are really nonevents, I would offer the following as a clue in that direction. Explaining why Caesar crossed the Rubicon and did not instead cross a nearby river is, ceteris paribus, better than explain- ing why Caesar crossed the Rubicon and did not instead cross the Eu- phrates. Given our knowledge of the circumstances surrounding Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon (including the minimum amount of time it could have taken him to travel from Western Europe to the Near East), the former nonevent was a much more viable possibility than the latter. The guiding intuition here is that to explain an event is to show how, if some highly probable nonevent occurred instead, other known events would probably not have occurred. We become better explainers as our explanations raise the probabilities of both the nonevent that could have happened and the noneventuality of known events that would have followed. Thus, to wax Peircean, explanations ultimately aim at show- ing how the slightest shift in the actual world would have universal (though not necessarily major) consequences. I suspect that this view appears deterministic only because explanations are usually of past events, which, given a realist view of time, could not (now) have been otherwise. But my tenseless formulation offers the possibility that small changes (in the future) could make big differences--so there is still hope for the Marxist.

These points go some way toward explicating what it means for two radically divergent paradigms to be within one science. For example, the grammar of economics is uniform enough so that it would be mislead- ing to say that Marxists and Neoclassicists describe economic phenomena radically differently. Indeed, recalling the ideal prose style of the writing manuals, insofar as the two schools mirror the structure of the phenomena in largely the same way, they are practicing a common science. And in virtue of that fact they need only identify their explanations as "economic" ones, rather than, say, "Marxo-economic" ones--as if the prefix indicated that the economic phenomena in question were discerni- ble to only Marxist eyes. However, even in the most mainstream profes- sional journal, where party-line rhetoric is kept to a minimum, the astute reader will nevertheless be able to sort out the schools to which the authors belong simply by noticing what nonevents form the background of their texts' explanatory strategies. Evaluating the explanations in this case is more difficult than weighing the counterfactuals to Caesar crossing the Rubicon "only" because these nonevents are signs of radi- cally divergent paradigms, and so not easily ordered according to their relative significance. But the guiding intuition as to what counts as a better explanation still applies.

As we have just seen, the first step in what may be called a "herme- neutics of legitimacy" involves establishing the narrative perspective, or "voice", of the explainer in a text by determining the things that didn't happen which are of interest to him--either because they were expected or desired. But as all literary critics know, the text may

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speak with several voices at once in an effort to convey a comprehen- sive picture that incorporates not merely a description of the pheno- mena, which on our account do not speak for themselves but are instead spoken for; nor do the voices necessarily cease with that of the omni- scient narrator who, like Leibniz's God, situates things-as-they-are against the backdrop of things-as-they-could-be in order to explain the former in terms of the latter. In addition, there may be the voice who speaks from knowledge that the narrator is not actually the omni- scient supplier of possibilities who stands outside the phenomena he explains, although it is a voice he must adopt in order to continue narrating. This "metavoice," as it were, makes the explainer part of what needs to be explained because ultimately his explanation cannot be evaluated unless the reader understands the sense in which what the explainer offers as constraints on the phenomena in fact reflect con- straints on his own possibilities for explaining the phenomena.

Although the voices of a text may be analytically distinguished along the lines we have just suggested, their textual interdependency is also evident. A text with many voices will indeed be obscure if it is read as having only one voice. In that case, the one voice will be characterized as "equivocal", "paradoxical", "contradictory", and by all the other adjectives at the command of the reader to express the author's apparent duplicity. However, the reader is trading on a confu- sion that because a text is written by one author, it ought to have one voice, or at least that there ought to be one of perhaps many textual voices that clearly expresses the author's stance toward the subject- matter. Clarity would then come from the reader's ability to latch on to this one voice as it narrates and comments on the subject-matter. (I suspect that this confusion arises partly as a result of children no longer having to grapple with a difficult text like the Bible when learning how to read; but this requires another Rorty-style history that is beyond the scope of this paper.) In fact, the persuasiveness of Rorty's argument for the end of philosophy capitalizes on our normal- ly reading an explicitly nonfictional text as if it had only one voice, which is to say, our judging the text against the standards of the ideal prose style. I say this because were the reader instead to engage in the hermeneutical exercise of sorting out the voices of the text, he would be forced to take the philosophical turn, insofar as the different narrative stances express the different modalities in which the subject- matter is being regarded.

Literary critics have discerned many finer distinctions in perspec- tive, usually subsumed under the category of rhetoric known as "tropes", which could greatly enhance philosophical thinking. For example, the many shades of irony--the trope whereby something that is not x is re- garded as if it were x--may at first glance seem little more than part of the poet's bag of tricks. But consider how one traditional issue in epistemology--the significance of illusions for the possibility of veri- dical perception--can be handled much more subtlely if illusion, which satisfies the above definition of irony, is understood not as a parti- cular subject-matter (one of our "mental contents") but as a particular perspective from which anything may be regarded. In that case, we would

speak with several voices at once in an effort to convey a comprehen- sive picture that incorporates not merely a description of the pheno- mena, which on our account do not speak for themselves but are instead spoken for; nor do the voices necessarily cease with that of the omni- scient narrator who, like Leibniz's God, situates things-as-they-are against the backdrop of things-as-they-could-be in order to explain the former in terms of the latter. In addition, there may be the voice who speaks from knowledge that the narrator is not actually the omni- scient supplier of possibilities who stands outside the phenomena he explains, although it is a voice he must adopt in order to continue narrating. This "metavoice," as it were, makes the explainer part of what needs to be explained because ultimately his explanation cannot be evaluated unless the reader understands the sense in which what the explainer offers as constraints on the phenomena in fact reflect con- straints on his own possibilities for explaining the phenomena.

Although the voices of a text may be analytically distinguished along the lines we have just suggested, their textual interdependency is also evident. A text with many voices will indeed be obscure if it is read as having only one voice. In that case, the one voice will be characterized as "equivocal", "paradoxical", "contradictory", and by all the other adjectives at the command of the reader to express the author's apparent duplicity. However, the reader is trading on a confu- sion that because a text is written by one author, it ought to have one voice, or at least that there ought to be one of perhaps many textual voices that clearly expresses the author's stance toward the subject- matter. Clarity would then come from the reader's ability to latch on to this one voice as it narrates and comments on the subject-matter. (I suspect that this confusion arises partly as a result of children no longer having to grapple with a difficult text like the Bible when learning how to read; but this requires another Rorty-style history that is beyond the scope of this paper.) In fact, the persuasiveness of Rorty's argument for the end of philosophy capitalizes on our normal- ly reading an explicitly nonfictional text as if it had only one voice, which is to say, our judging the text against the standards of the ideal prose style. I say this because were the reader instead to engage in the hermeneutical exercise of sorting out the voices of the text, he would be forced to take the philosophical turn, insofar as the different narrative stances express the different modalities in which the subject- matter is being regarded.

Literary critics have discerned many finer distinctions in perspec- tive, usually subsumed under the category of rhetoric known as "tropes", which could greatly enhance philosophical thinking. For example, the many shades of irony--the trope whereby something that is not x is re- garded as if it were x--may at first glance seem little more than part of the poet's bag of tricks. But consider how one traditional issue in epistemology--the significance of illusions for the possibility of veri- dical perception--can be handled much more subtlely if illusion, which satisfies the above definition of irony, is understood not as a parti- cular subject-matter (one of our "mental contents") but as a particular perspective from which anything may be regarded. In that case, we would

speak with several voices at once in an effort to convey a comprehen- sive picture that incorporates not merely a description of the pheno- mena, which on our account do not speak for themselves but are instead spoken for; nor do the voices necessarily cease with that of the omni- scient narrator who, like Leibniz's God, situates things-as-they-are against the backdrop of things-as-they-could-be in order to explain the former in terms of the latter. In addition, there may be the voice who speaks from knowledge that the narrator is not actually the omni- scient supplier of possibilities who stands outside the phenomena he explains, although it is a voice he must adopt in order to continue narrating. This "metavoice," as it were, makes the explainer part of what needs to be explained because ultimately his explanation cannot be evaluated unless the reader understands the sense in which what the explainer offers as constraints on the phenomena in fact reflect con- straints on his own possibilities for explaining the phenomena.

Although the voices of a text may be analytically distinguished along the lines we have just suggested, their textual interdependency is also evident. A text with many voices will indeed be obscure if it is read as having only one voice. In that case, the one voice will be characterized as "equivocal", "paradoxical", "contradictory", and by all the other adjectives at the command of the reader to express the author's apparent duplicity. However, the reader is trading on a confu- sion that because a text is written by one author, it ought to have one voice, or at least that there ought to be one of perhaps many textual voices that clearly expresses the author's stance toward the subject- matter. Clarity would then come from the reader's ability to latch on to this one voice as it narrates and comments on the subject-matter. (I suspect that this confusion arises partly as a result of children no longer having to grapple with a difficult text like the Bible when learning how to read; but this requires another Rorty-style history that is beyond the scope of this paper.) In fact, the persuasiveness of Rorty's argument for the end of philosophy capitalizes on our normal- ly reading an explicitly nonfictional text as if it had only one voice, which is to say, our judging the text against the standards of the ideal prose style. I say this because were the reader instead to engage in the hermeneutical exercise of sorting out the voices of the text, he would be forced to take the philosophical turn, insofar as the different narrative stances express the different modalities in which the subject- matter is being regarded.

Literary critics have discerned many finer distinctions in perspec- tive, usually subsumed under the category of rhetoric known as "tropes", which could greatly enhance philosophical thinking. For example, the many shades of irony--the trope whereby something that is not x is re- garded as if it were x--may at first glance seem little more than part of the poet's bag of tricks. But consider how one traditional issue in epistemology--the significance of illusions for the possibility of veri- dical perception--can be handled much more subtlely if illusion, which satisfies the above definition of irony, is understood not as a parti- cular subject-matter (one of our "mental contents") but as a particular perspective from which anything may be regarded. In that case, we would

speak with several voices at once in an effort to convey a comprehen- sive picture that incorporates not merely a description of the pheno- mena, which on our account do not speak for themselves but are instead spoken for; nor do the voices necessarily cease with that of the omni- scient narrator who, like Leibniz's God, situates things-as-they-are against the backdrop of things-as-they-could-be in order to explain the former in terms of the latter. In addition, there may be the voice who speaks from knowledge that the narrator is not actually the omni- scient supplier of possibilities who stands outside the phenomena he explains, although it is a voice he must adopt in order to continue narrating. This "metavoice," as it were, makes the explainer part of what needs to be explained because ultimately his explanation cannot be evaluated unless the reader understands the sense in which what the explainer offers as constraints on the phenomena in fact reflect con- straints on his own possibilities for explaining the phenomena.

Although the voices of a text may be analytically distinguished along the lines we have just suggested, their textual interdependency is also evident. A text with many voices will indeed be obscure if it is read as having only one voice. In that case, the one voice will be characterized as "equivocal", "paradoxical", "contradictory", and by all the other adjectives at the command of the reader to express the author's apparent duplicity. However, the reader is trading on a confu- sion that because a text is written by one author, it ought to have one voice, or at least that there ought to be one of perhaps many textual voices that clearly expresses the author's stance toward the subject- matter. Clarity would then come from the reader's ability to latch on to this one voice as it narrates and comments on the subject-matter. (I suspect that this confusion arises partly as a result of children no longer having to grapple with a difficult text like the Bible when learning how to read; but this requires another Rorty-style history that is beyond the scope of this paper.) In fact, the persuasiveness of Rorty's argument for the end of philosophy capitalizes on our normal- ly reading an explicitly nonfictional text as if it had only one voice, which is to say, our judging the text against the standards of the ideal prose style. I say this because were the reader instead to engage in the hermeneutical exercise of sorting out the voices of the text, he would be forced to take the philosophical turn, insofar as the different narrative stances express the different modalities in which the subject- matter is being regarded.

Literary critics have discerned many finer distinctions in perspec- tive, usually subsumed under the category of rhetoric known as "tropes", which could greatly enhance philosophical thinking. For example, the many shades of irony--the trope whereby something that is not x is re- garded as if it were x--may at first glance seem little more than part of the poet's bag of tricks. But consider how one traditional issue in epistemology--the significance of illusions for the possibility of veri- dical perception--can be handled much more subtlely if illusion, which satisfies the above definition of irony, is understood not as a parti- cular subject-matter (one of our "mental contents") but as a particular perspective from which anything may be regarded. In that case, we would

speak with several voices at once in an effort to convey a comprehen- sive picture that incorporates not merely a description of the pheno- mena, which on our account do not speak for themselves but are instead spoken for; nor do the voices necessarily cease with that of the omni- scient narrator who, like Leibniz's God, situates things-as-they-are against the backdrop of things-as-they-could-be in order to explain the former in terms of the latter. In addition, there may be the voice who speaks from knowledge that the narrator is not actually the omni- scient supplier of possibilities who stands outside the phenomena he explains, although it is a voice he must adopt in order to continue narrating. This "metavoice," as it were, makes the explainer part of what needs to be explained because ultimately his explanation cannot be evaluated unless the reader understands the sense in which what the explainer offers as constraints on the phenomena in fact reflect con- straints on his own possibilities for explaining the phenomena.

Although the voices of a text may be analytically distinguished along the lines we have just suggested, their textual interdependency is also evident. A text with many voices will indeed be obscure if it is read as having only one voice. In that case, the one voice will be characterized as "equivocal", "paradoxical", "contradictory", and by all the other adjectives at the command of the reader to express the author's apparent duplicity. However, the reader is trading on a confu- sion that because a text is written by one author, it ought to have one voice, or at least that there ought to be one of perhaps many textual voices that clearly expresses the author's stance toward the subject- matter. Clarity would then come from the reader's ability to latch on to this one voice as it narrates and comments on the subject-matter. (I suspect that this confusion arises partly as a result of children no longer having to grapple with a difficult text like the Bible when learning how to read; but this requires another Rorty-style history that is beyond the scope of this paper.) In fact, the persuasiveness of Rorty's argument for the end of philosophy capitalizes on our normal- ly reading an explicitly nonfictional text as if it had only one voice, which is to say, our judging the text against the standards of the ideal prose style. I say this because were the reader instead to engage in the hermeneutical exercise of sorting out the voices of the text, he would be forced to take the philosophical turn, insofar as the different narrative stances express the different modalities in which the subject- matter is being regarded.

Literary critics have discerned many finer distinctions in perspec- tive, usually subsumed under the category of rhetoric known as "tropes", which could greatly enhance philosophical thinking. For example, the many shades of irony--the trope whereby something that is not x is re- garded as if it were x--may at first glance seem little more than part of the poet's bag of tricks. But consider how one traditional issue in epistemology--the significance of illusions for the possibility of veri- dical perception--can be handled much more subtlely if illusion, which satisfies the above definition of irony, is understood not as a parti- cular subject-matter (one of our "mental contents") but as a particular perspective from which anything may be regarded. In that case, we would

speak with several voices at once in an effort to convey a comprehen- sive picture that incorporates not merely a description of the pheno- mena, which on our account do not speak for themselves but are instead spoken for; nor do the voices necessarily cease with that of the omni- scient narrator who, like Leibniz's God, situates things-as-they-are against the backdrop of things-as-they-could-be in order to explain the former in terms of the latter. In addition, there may be the voice who speaks from knowledge that the narrator is not actually the omni- scient supplier of possibilities who stands outside the phenomena he explains, although it is a voice he must adopt in order to continue narrating. This "metavoice," as it were, makes the explainer part of what needs to be explained because ultimately his explanation cannot be evaluated unless the reader understands the sense in which what the explainer offers as constraints on the phenomena in fact reflect con- straints on his own possibilities for explaining the phenomena.

Although the voices of a text may be analytically distinguished along the lines we have just suggested, their textual interdependency is also evident. A text with many voices will indeed be obscure if it is read as having only one voice. In that case, the one voice will be characterized as "equivocal", "paradoxical", "contradictory", and by all the other adjectives at the command of the reader to express the author's apparent duplicity. However, the reader is trading on a confu- sion that because a text is written by one author, it ought to have one voice, or at least that there ought to be one of perhaps many textual voices that clearly expresses the author's stance toward the subject- matter. Clarity would then come from the reader's ability to latch on to this one voice as it narrates and comments on the subject-matter. (I suspect that this confusion arises partly as a result of children no longer having to grapple with a difficult text like the Bible when learning how to read; but this requires another Rorty-style history that is beyond the scope of this paper.) In fact, the persuasiveness of Rorty's argument for the end of philosophy capitalizes on our normal- ly reading an explicitly nonfictional text as if it had only one voice, which is to say, our judging the text against the standards of the ideal prose style. I say this because were the reader instead to engage in the hermeneutical exercise of sorting out the voices of the text, he would be forced to take the philosophical turn, insofar as the different narrative stances express the different modalities in which the subject- matter is being regarded.

Literary critics have discerned many finer distinctions in perspec- tive, usually subsumed under the category of rhetoric known as "tropes", which could greatly enhance philosophical thinking. For example, the many shades of irony--the trope whereby something that is not x is re- garded as if it were x--may at first glance seem little more than part of the poet's bag of tricks. But consider how one traditional issue in epistemology--the significance of illusions for the possibility of veri- dical perception--can be handled much more subtlely if illusion, which satisfies the above definition of irony, is understood not as a parti- cular subject-matter (one of our "mental contents") but as a particular perspective from which anything may be regarded. In that case, we would

speak with several voices at once in an effort to convey a comprehen- sive picture that incorporates not merely a description of the pheno- mena, which on our account do not speak for themselves but are instead spoken for; nor do the voices necessarily cease with that of the omni- scient narrator who, like Leibniz's God, situates things-as-they-are against the backdrop of things-as-they-could-be in order to explain the former in terms of the latter. In addition, there may be the voice who speaks from knowledge that the narrator is not actually the omni- scient supplier of possibilities who stands outside the phenomena he explains, although it is a voice he must adopt in order to continue narrating. This "metavoice," as it were, makes the explainer part of what needs to be explained because ultimately his explanation cannot be evaluated unless the reader understands the sense in which what the explainer offers as constraints on the phenomena in fact reflect con- straints on his own possibilities for explaining the phenomena.

Although the voices of a text may be analytically distinguished along the lines we have just suggested, their textual interdependency is also evident. A text with many voices will indeed be obscure if it is read as having only one voice. In that case, the one voice will be characterized as "equivocal", "paradoxical", "contradictory", and by all the other adjectives at the command of the reader to express the author's apparent duplicity. However, the reader is trading on a confu- sion that because a text is written by one author, it ought to have one voice, or at least that there ought to be one of perhaps many textual voices that clearly expresses the author's stance toward the subject- matter. Clarity would then come from the reader's ability to latch on to this one voice as it narrates and comments on the subject-matter. (I suspect that this confusion arises partly as a result of children no longer having to grapple with a difficult text like the Bible when learning how to read; but this requires another Rorty-style history that is beyond the scope of this paper.) In fact, the persuasiveness of Rorty's argument for the end of philosophy capitalizes on our normal- ly reading an explicitly nonfictional text as if it had only one voice, which is to say, our judging the text against the standards of the ideal prose style. I say this because were the reader instead to engage in the hermeneutical exercise of sorting out the voices of the text, he would be forced to take the philosophical turn, insofar as the different narrative stances express the different modalities in which the subject- matter is being regarded.

Literary critics have discerned many finer distinctions in perspec- tive, usually subsumed under the category of rhetoric known as "tropes", which could greatly enhance philosophical thinking. For example, the many shades of irony--the trope whereby something that is not x is re- garded as if it were x--may at first glance seem little more than part of the poet's bag of tricks. But consider how one traditional issue in epistemology--the significance of illusions for the possibility of veri- dical perception--can be handled much more subtlely if illusion, which satisfies the above definition of irony, is understood not as a parti- cular subject-matter (one of our "mental contents") but as a particular perspective from which anything may be regarded. In that case, we would

speak with several voices at once in an effort to convey a comprehen- sive picture that incorporates not merely a description of the pheno- mena, which on our account do not speak for themselves but are instead spoken for; nor do the voices necessarily cease with that of the omni- scient narrator who, like Leibniz's God, situates things-as-they-are against the backdrop of things-as-they-could-be in order to explain the former in terms of the latter. In addition, there may be the voice who speaks from knowledge that the narrator is not actually the omni- scient supplier of possibilities who stands outside the phenomena he explains, although it is a voice he must adopt in order to continue narrating. This "metavoice," as it were, makes the explainer part of what needs to be explained because ultimately his explanation cannot be evaluated unless the reader understands the sense in which what the explainer offers as constraints on the phenomena in fact reflect con- straints on his own possibilities for explaining the phenomena.

Although the voices of a text may be analytically distinguished along the lines we have just suggested, their textual interdependency is also evident. A text with many voices will indeed be obscure if it is read as having only one voice. In that case, the one voice will be characterized as "equivocal", "paradoxical", "contradictory", and by all the other adjectives at the command of the reader to express the author's apparent duplicity. However, the reader is trading on a confu- sion that because a text is written by one author, it ought to have one voice, or at least that there ought to be one of perhaps many textual voices that clearly expresses the author's stance toward the subject- matter. Clarity would then come from the reader's ability to latch on to this one voice as it narrates and comments on the subject-matter. (I suspect that this confusion arises partly as a result of children no longer having to grapple with a difficult text like the Bible when learning how to read; but this requires another Rorty-style history that is beyond the scope of this paper.) In fact, the persuasiveness of Rorty's argument for the end of philosophy capitalizes on our normal- ly reading an explicitly nonfictional text as if it had only one voice, which is to say, our judging the text against the standards of the ideal prose style. I say this because were the reader instead to engage in the hermeneutical exercise of sorting out the voices of the text, he would be forced to take the philosophical turn, insofar as the different narrative stances express the different modalities in which the subject- matter is being regarded.

Literary critics have discerned many finer distinctions in perspec- tive, usually subsumed under the category of rhetoric known as "tropes", which could greatly enhance philosophical thinking. For example, the many shades of irony--the trope whereby something that is not x is re- garded as if it were x--may at first glance seem little more than part of the poet's bag of tricks. But consider how one traditional issue in epistemology--the significance of illusions for the possibility of veri- dical perception--can be handled much more subtlely if illusion, which satisfies the above definition of irony, is understood not as a parti- cular subject-matter (one of our "mental contents") but as a particular perspective from which anything may be regarded. In that case, we would

speak with several voices at once in an effort to convey a comprehen- sive picture that incorporates not merely a description of the pheno- mena, which on our account do not speak for themselves but are instead spoken for; nor do the voices necessarily cease with that of the omni- scient narrator who, like Leibniz's God, situates things-as-they-are against the backdrop of things-as-they-could-be in order to explain the former in terms of the latter. In addition, there may be the voice who speaks from knowledge that the narrator is not actually the omni- scient supplier of possibilities who stands outside the phenomena he explains, although it is a voice he must adopt in order to continue narrating. This "metavoice," as it were, makes the explainer part of what needs to be explained because ultimately his explanation cannot be evaluated unless the reader understands the sense in which what the explainer offers as constraints on the phenomena in fact reflect con- straints on his own possibilities for explaining the phenomena.

Although the voices of a text may be analytically distinguished along the lines we have just suggested, their textual interdependency is also evident. A text with many voices will indeed be obscure if it is read as having only one voice. In that case, the one voice will be characterized as "equivocal", "paradoxical", "contradictory", and by all the other adjectives at the command of the reader to express the author's apparent duplicity. However, the reader is trading on a confu- sion that because a text is written by one author, it ought to have one voice, or at least that there ought to be one of perhaps many textual voices that clearly expresses the author's stance toward the subject- matter. Clarity would then come from the reader's ability to latch on to this one voice as it narrates and comments on the subject-matter. (I suspect that this confusion arises partly as a result of children no longer having to grapple with a difficult text like the Bible when learning how to read; but this requires another Rorty-style history that is beyond the scope of this paper.) In fact, the persuasiveness of Rorty's argument for the end of philosophy capitalizes on our normal- ly reading an explicitly nonfictional text as if it had only one voice, which is to say, our judging the text against the standards of the ideal prose style. I say this because were the reader instead to engage in the hermeneutical exercise of sorting out the voices of the text, he would be forced to take the philosophical turn, insofar as the different narrative stances express the different modalities in which the subject- matter is being regarded.

Literary critics have discerned many finer distinctions in perspec- tive, usually subsumed under the category of rhetoric known as "tropes", which could greatly enhance philosophical thinking. For example, the many shades of irony--the trope whereby something that is not x is re- garded as if it were x--may at first glance seem little more than part of the poet's bag of tricks. But consider how one traditional issue in epistemology--the significance of illusions for the possibility of veri- dical perception--can be handled much more subtlely if illusion, which satisfies the above definition of irony, is understood not as a parti- cular subject-matter (one of our "mental contents") but as a particular perspective from which anything may be regarded. In that case, we would

speak with several voices at once in an effort to convey a comprehen- sive picture that incorporates not merely a description of the pheno- mena, which on our account do not speak for themselves but are instead spoken for; nor do the voices necessarily cease with that of the omni- scient narrator who, like Leibniz's God, situates things-as-they-are against the backdrop of things-as-they-could-be in order to explain the former in terms of the latter. In addition, there may be the voice who speaks from knowledge that the narrator is not actually the omni- scient supplier of possibilities who stands outside the phenomena he explains, although it is a voice he must adopt in order to continue narrating. This "metavoice," as it were, makes the explainer part of what needs to be explained because ultimately his explanation cannot be evaluated unless the reader understands the sense in which what the explainer offers as constraints on the phenomena in fact reflect con- straints on his own possibilities for explaining the phenomena.

Although the voices of a text may be analytically distinguished along the lines we have just suggested, their textual interdependency is also evident. A text with many voices will indeed be obscure if it is read as having only one voice. In that case, the one voice will be characterized as "equivocal", "paradoxical", "contradictory", and by all the other adjectives at the command of the reader to express the author's apparent duplicity. However, the reader is trading on a confu- sion that because a text is written by one author, it ought to have one voice, or at least that there ought to be one of perhaps many textual voices that clearly expresses the author's stance toward the subject- matter. Clarity would then come from the reader's ability to latch on to this one voice as it narrates and comments on the subject-matter. (I suspect that this confusion arises partly as a result of children no longer having to grapple with a difficult text like the Bible when learning how to read; but this requires another Rorty-style history that is beyond the scope of this paper.) In fact, the persuasiveness of Rorty's argument for the end of philosophy capitalizes on our normal- ly reading an explicitly nonfictional text as if it had only one voice, which is to say, our judging the text against the standards of the ideal prose style. I say this because were the reader instead to engage in the hermeneutical exercise of sorting out the voices of the text, he would be forced to take the philosophical turn, insofar as the different narrative stances express the different modalities in which the subject- matter is being regarded.

Literary critics have discerned many finer distinctions in perspec- tive, usually subsumed under the category of rhetoric known as "tropes", which could greatly enhance philosophical thinking. For example, the many shades of irony--the trope whereby something that is not x is re- garded as if it were x--may at first glance seem little more than part of the poet's bag of tricks. But consider how one traditional issue in epistemology--the significance of illusions for the possibility of veri- dical perception--can be handled much more subtlely if illusion, which satisfies the above definition of irony, is understood not as a parti- cular subject-matter (one of our "mental contents") but as a particular perspective from which anything may be regarded. In that case, we would

speak with several voices at once in an effort to convey a comprehen- sive picture that incorporates not merely a description of the pheno- mena, which on our account do not speak for themselves but are instead spoken for; nor do the voices necessarily cease with that of the omni- scient narrator who, like Leibniz's God, situates things-as-they-are against the backdrop of things-as-they-could-be in order to explain the former in terms of the latter. In addition, there may be the voice who speaks from knowledge that the narrator is not actually the omni- scient supplier of possibilities who stands outside the phenomena he explains, although it is a voice he must adopt in order to continue narrating. This "metavoice," as it were, makes the explainer part of what needs to be explained because ultimately his explanation cannot be evaluated unless the reader understands the sense in which what the explainer offers as constraints on the phenomena in fact reflect con- straints on his own possibilities for explaining the phenomena.

Although the voices of a text may be analytically distinguished along the lines we have just suggested, their textual interdependency is also evident. A text with many voices will indeed be obscure if it is read as having only one voice. In that case, the one voice will be characterized as "equivocal", "paradoxical", "contradictory", and by all the other adjectives at the command of the reader to express the author's apparent duplicity. However, the reader is trading on a confu- sion that because a text is written by one author, it ought to have one voice, or at least that there ought to be one of perhaps many textual voices that clearly expresses the author's stance toward the subject- matter. Clarity would then come from the reader's ability to latch on to this one voice as it narrates and comments on the subject-matter. (I suspect that this confusion arises partly as a result of children no longer having to grapple with a difficult text like the Bible when learning how to read; but this requires another Rorty-style history that is beyond the scope of this paper.) In fact, the persuasiveness of Rorty's argument for the end of philosophy capitalizes on our normal- ly reading an explicitly nonfictional text as if it had only one voice, which is to say, our judging the text against the standards of the ideal prose style. I say this because were the reader instead to engage in the hermeneutical exercise of sorting out the voices of the text, he would be forced to take the philosophical turn, insofar as the different narrative stances express the different modalities in which the subject- matter is being regarded.

Literary critics have discerned many finer distinctions in perspec- tive, usually subsumed under the category of rhetoric known as "tropes", which could greatly enhance philosophical thinking. For example, the many shades of irony--the trope whereby something that is not x is re- garded as if it were x--may at first glance seem little more than part of the poet's bag of tricks. But consider how one traditional issue in epistemology--the significance of illusions for the possibility of veri- dical perception--can be handled much more subtlely if illusion, which satisfies the above definition of irony, is understood not as a parti- cular subject-matter (one of our "mental contents") but as a particular perspective from which anything may be regarded. In that case, we would

speak with several voices at once in an effort to convey a comprehen- sive picture that incorporates not merely a description of the pheno- mena, which on our account do not speak for themselves but are instead spoken for; nor do the voices necessarily cease with that of the omni- scient narrator who, like Leibniz's God, situates things-as-they-are against the backdrop of things-as-they-could-be in order to explain the former in terms of the latter. In addition, there may be the voice who speaks from knowledge that the narrator is not actually the omni- scient supplier of possibilities who stands outside the phenomena he explains, although it is a voice he must adopt in order to continue narrating. This "metavoice," as it were, makes the explainer part of what needs to be explained because ultimately his explanation cannot be evaluated unless the reader understands the sense in which what the explainer offers as constraints on the phenomena in fact reflect con- straints on his own possibilities for explaining the phenomena.

Although the voices of a text may be analytically distinguished along the lines we have just suggested, their textual interdependency is also evident. A text with many voices will indeed be obscure if it is read as having only one voice. In that case, the one voice will be characterized as "equivocal", "paradoxical", "contradictory", and by all the other adjectives at the command of the reader to express the author's apparent duplicity. However, the reader is trading on a confu- sion that because a text is written by one author, it ought to have one voice, or at least that there ought to be one of perhaps many textual voices that clearly expresses the author's stance toward the subject- matter. Clarity would then come from the reader's ability to latch on to this one voice as it narrates and comments on the subject-matter. (I suspect that this confusion arises partly as a result of children no longer having to grapple with a difficult text like the Bible when learning how to read; but this requires another Rorty-style history that is beyond the scope of this paper.) In fact, the persuasiveness of Rorty's argument for the end of philosophy capitalizes on our normal- ly reading an explicitly nonfictional text as if it had only one voice, which is to say, our judging the text against the standards of the ideal prose style. I say this because were the reader instead to engage in the hermeneutical exercise of sorting out the voices of the text, he would be forced to take the philosophical turn, insofar as the different narrative stances express the different modalities in which the subject- matter is being regarded.

Literary critics have discerned many finer distinctions in perspec- tive, usually subsumed under the category of rhetoric known as "tropes", which could greatly enhance philosophical thinking. For example, the many shades of irony--the trope whereby something that is not x is re- garded as if it were x--may at first glance seem little more than part of the poet's bag of tricks. But consider how one traditional issue in epistemology--the significance of illusions for the possibility of veri- dical perception--can be handled much more subtlely if illusion, which satisfies the above definition of irony, is understood not as a parti- cular subject-matter (one of our "mental contents") but as a particular perspective from which anything may be regarded. In that case, we would

speak with several voices at once in an effort to convey a comprehen- sive picture that incorporates not merely a description of the pheno- mena, which on our account do not speak for themselves but are instead spoken for; nor do the voices necessarily cease with that of the omni- scient narrator who, like Leibniz's God, situates things-as-they-are against the backdrop of things-as-they-could-be in order to explain the former in terms of the latter. In addition, there may be the voice who speaks from knowledge that the narrator is not actually the omni- scient supplier of possibilities who stands outside the phenomena he explains, although it is a voice he must adopt in order to continue narrating. This "metavoice," as it were, makes the explainer part of what needs to be explained because ultimately his explanation cannot be evaluated unless the reader understands the sense in which what the explainer offers as constraints on the phenomena in fact reflect con- straints on his own possibilities for explaining the phenomena.

Although the voices of a text may be analytically distinguished along the lines we have just suggested, their textual interdependency is also evident. A text with many voices will indeed be obscure if it is read as having only one voice. In that case, the one voice will be characterized as "equivocal", "paradoxical", "contradictory", and by all the other adjectives at the command of the reader to express the author's apparent duplicity. However, the reader is trading on a confu- sion that because a text is written by one author, it ought to have one voice, or at least that there ought to be one of perhaps many textual voices that clearly expresses the author's stance toward the subject- matter. Clarity would then come from the reader's ability to latch on to this one voice as it narrates and comments on the subject-matter. (I suspect that this confusion arises partly as a result of children no longer having to grapple with a difficult text like the Bible when learning how to read; but this requires another Rorty-style history that is beyond the scope of this paper.) In fact, the persuasiveness of Rorty's argument for the end of philosophy capitalizes on our normal- ly reading an explicitly nonfictional text as if it had only one voice, which is to say, our judging the text against the standards of the ideal prose style. I say this because were the reader instead to engage in the hermeneutical exercise of sorting out the voices of the text, he would be forced to take the philosophical turn, insofar as the different narrative stances express the different modalities in which the subject- matter is being regarded.

Literary critics have discerned many finer distinctions in perspec- tive, usually subsumed under the category of rhetoric known as "tropes", which could greatly enhance philosophical thinking. For example, the many shades of irony--the trope whereby something that is not x is re- garded as if it were x--may at first glance seem little more than part of the poet's bag of tricks. But consider how one traditional issue in epistemology--the significance of illusions for the possibility of veri- dical perception--can be handled much more subtlely if illusion, which satisfies the above definition of irony, is understood not as a parti- cular subject-matter (one of our "mental contents") but as a particular perspective from which anything may be regarded. In that case, we would

speak with several voices at once in an effort to convey a comprehen- sive picture that incorporates not merely a description of the pheno- mena, which on our account do not speak for themselves but are instead spoken for; nor do the voices necessarily cease with that of the omni- scient narrator who, like Leibniz's God, situates things-as-they-are against the backdrop of things-as-they-could-be in order to explain the former in terms of the latter. In addition, there may be the voice who speaks from knowledge that the narrator is not actually the omni- scient supplier of possibilities who stands outside the phenomena he explains, although it is a voice he must adopt in order to continue narrating. This "metavoice," as it were, makes the explainer part of what needs to be explained because ultimately his explanation cannot be evaluated unless the reader understands the sense in which what the explainer offers as constraints on the phenomena in fact reflect con- straints on his own possibilities for explaining the phenomena.

Although the voices of a text may be analytically distinguished along the lines we have just suggested, their textual interdependency is also evident. A text with many voices will indeed be obscure if it is read as having only one voice. In that case, the one voice will be characterized as "equivocal", "paradoxical", "contradictory", and by all the other adjectives at the command of the reader to express the author's apparent duplicity. However, the reader is trading on a confu- sion that because a text is written by one author, it ought to have one voice, or at least that there ought to be one of perhaps many textual voices that clearly expresses the author's stance toward the subject- matter. Clarity would then come from the reader's ability to latch on to this one voice as it narrates and comments on the subject-matter. (I suspect that this confusion arises partly as a result of children no longer having to grapple with a difficult text like the Bible when learning how to read; but this requires another Rorty-style history that is beyond the scope of this paper.) In fact, the persuasiveness of Rorty's argument for the end of philosophy capitalizes on our normal- ly reading an explicitly nonfictional text as if it had only one voice, which is to say, our judging the text against the standards of the ideal prose style. I say this because were the reader instead to engage in the hermeneutical exercise of sorting out the voices of the text, he would be forced to take the philosophical turn, insofar as the different narrative stances express the different modalities in which the subject- matter is being regarded.

Literary critics have discerned many finer distinctions in perspec- tive, usually subsumed under the category of rhetoric known as "tropes", which could greatly enhance philosophical thinking. For example, the many shades of irony--the trope whereby something that is not x is re- garded as if it were x--may at first glance seem little more than part of the poet's bag of tricks. But consider how one traditional issue in epistemology--the significance of illusions for the possibility of veri- dical perception--can be handled much more subtlely if illusion, which satisfies the above definition of irony, is understood not as a parti- cular subject-matter (one of our "mental contents") but as a particular perspective from which anything may be regarded. In that case, we would

speak with several voices at once in an effort to convey a comprehen- sive picture that incorporates not merely a description of the pheno- mena, which on our account do not speak for themselves but are instead spoken for; nor do the voices necessarily cease with that of the omni- scient narrator who, like Leibniz's God, situates things-as-they-are against the backdrop of things-as-they-could-be in order to explain the former in terms of the latter. In addition, there may be the voice who speaks from knowledge that the narrator is not actually the omni- scient supplier of possibilities who stands outside the phenomena he explains, although it is a voice he must adopt in order to continue narrating. This "metavoice," as it were, makes the explainer part of what needs to be explained because ultimately his explanation cannot be evaluated unless the reader understands the sense in which what the explainer offers as constraints on the phenomena in fact reflect con- straints on his own possibilities for explaining the phenomena.

Although the voices of a text may be analytically distinguished along the lines we have just suggested, their textual interdependency is also evident. A text with many voices will indeed be obscure if it is read as having only one voice. In that case, the one voice will be characterized as "equivocal", "paradoxical", "contradictory", and by all the other adjectives at the command of the reader to express the author's apparent duplicity. However, the reader is trading on a confu- sion that because a text is written by one author, it ought to have one voice, or at least that there ought to be one of perhaps many textual voices that clearly expresses the author's stance toward the subject- matter. Clarity would then come from the reader's ability to latch on to this one voice as it narrates and comments on the subject-matter. (I suspect that this confusion arises partly as a result of children no longer having to grapple with a difficult text like the Bible when learning how to read; but this requires another Rorty-style history that is beyond the scope of this paper.) In fact, the persuasiveness of Rorty's argument for the end of philosophy capitalizes on our normal- ly reading an explicitly nonfictional text as if it had only one voice, which is to say, our judging the text against the standards of the ideal prose style. I say this because were the reader instead to engage in the hermeneutical exercise of sorting out the voices of the text, he would be forced to take the philosophical turn, insofar as the different narrative stances express the different modalities in which the subject- matter is being regarded.

Literary critics have discerned many finer distinctions in perspec- tive, usually subsumed under the category of rhetoric known as "tropes", which could greatly enhance philosophical thinking. For example, the many shades of irony--the trope whereby something that is not x is re- garded as if it were x--may at first glance seem little more than part of the poet's bag of tricks. But consider how one traditional issue in epistemology--the significance of illusions for the possibility of veri- dical perception--can be handled much more subtlely if illusion, which satisfies the above definition of irony, is understood not as a parti- cular subject-matter (one of our "mental contents") but as a particular perspective from which anything may be regarded. In that case, we would

speak with several voices at once in an effort to convey a comprehen- sive picture that incorporates not merely a description of the pheno- mena, which on our account do not speak for themselves but are instead spoken for; nor do the voices necessarily cease with that of the omni- scient narrator who, like Leibniz's God, situates things-as-they-are against the backdrop of things-as-they-could-be in order to explain the former in terms of the latter. In addition, there may be the voice who speaks from knowledge that the narrator is not actually the omni- scient supplier of possibilities who stands outside the phenomena he explains, although it is a voice he must adopt in order to continue narrating. This "metavoice," as it were, makes the explainer part of what needs to be explained because ultimately his explanation cannot be evaluated unless the reader understands the sense in which what the explainer offers as constraints on the phenomena in fact reflect con- straints on his own possibilities for explaining the phenomena.

Although the voices of a text may be analytically distinguished along the lines we have just suggested, their textual interdependency is also evident. A text with many voices will indeed be obscure if it is read as having only one voice. In that case, the one voice will be characterized as "equivocal", "paradoxical", "contradictory", and by all the other adjectives at the command of the reader to express the author's apparent duplicity. However, the reader is trading on a confu- sion that because a text is written by one author, it ought to have one voice, or at least that there ought to be one of perhaps many textual voices that clearly expresses the author's stance toward the subject- matter. Clarity would then come from the reader's ability to latch on to this one voice as it narrates and comments on the subject-matter. (I suspect that this confusion arises partly as a result of children no longer having to grapple with a difficult text like the Bible when learning how to read; but this requires another Rorty-style history that is beyond the scope of this paper.) In fact, the persuasiveness of Rorty's argument for the end of philosophy capitalizes on our normal- ly reading an explicitly nonfictional text as if it had only one voice, which is to say, our judging the text against the standards of the ideal prose style. I say this because were the reader instead to engage in the hermeneutical exercise of sorting out the voices of the text, he would be forced to take the philosophical turn, insofar as the different narrative stances express the different modalities in which the subject- matter is being regarded.

Literary critics have discerned many finer distinctions in perspec- tive, usually subsumed under the category of rhetoric known as "tropes", which could greatly enhance philosophical thinking. For example, the many shades of irony--the trope whereby something that is not x is re- garded as if it were x--may at first glance seem little more than part of the poet's bag of tricks. But consider how one traditional issue in epistemology--the significance of illusions for the possibility of veri- dical perception--can be handled much more subtlely if illusion, which satisfies the above definition of irony, is understood not as a parti- cular subject-matter (one of our "mental contents") but as a particular perspective from which anything may be regarded. In that case, we would

speak with several voices at once in an effort to convey a comprehen- sive picture that incorporates not merely a description of the pheno- mena, which on our account do not speak for themselves but are instead spoken for; nor do the voices necessarily cease with that of the omni- scient narrator who, like Leibniz's God, situates things-as-they-are against the backdrop of things-as-they-could-be in order to explain the former in terms of the latter. In addition, there may be the voice who speaks from knowledge that the narrator is not actually the omni- scient supplier of possibilities who stands outside the phenomena he explains, although it is a voice he must adopt in order to continue narrating. This "metavoice," as it were, makes the explainer part of what needs to be explained because ultimately his explanation cannot be evaluated unless the reader understands the sense in which what the explainer offers as constraints on the phenomena in fact reflect con- straints on his own possibilities for explaining the phenomena.

Although the voices of a text may be analytically distinguished along the lines we have just suggested, their textual interdependency is also evident. A text with many voices will indeed be obscure if it is read as having only one voice. In that case, the one voice will be characterized as "equivocal", "paradoxical", "contradictory", and by all the other adjectives at the command of the reader to express the author's apparent duplicity. However, the reader is trading on a confu- sion that because a text is written by one author, it ought to have one voice, or at least that there ought to be one of perhaps many textual voices that clearly expresses the author's stance toward the subject- matter. Clarity would then come from the reader's ability to latch on to this one voice as it narrates and comments on the subject-matter. (I suspect that this confusion arises partly as a result of children no longer having to grapple with a difficult text like the Bible when learning how to read; but this requires another Rorty-style history that is beyond the scope of this paper.) In fact, the persuasiveness of Rorty's argument for the end of philosophy capitalizes on our normal- ly reading an explicitly nonfictional text as if it had only one voice, which is to say, our judging the text against the standards of the ideal prose style. I say this because were the reader instead to engage in the hermeneutical exercise of sorting out the voices of the text, he would be forced to take the philosophical turn, insofar as the different narrative stances express the different modalities in which the subject- matter is being regarded.

Literary critics have discerned many finer distinctions in perspec- tive, usually subsumed under the category of rhetoric known as "tropes", which could greatly enhance philosophical thinking. For example, the many shades of irony--the trope whereby something that is not x is re- garded as if it were x--may at first glance seem little more than part of the poet's bag of tricks. But consider how one traditional issue in epistemology--the significance of illusions for the possibility of veri- dical perception--can be handled much more subtlely if illusion, which satisfies the above definition of irony, is understood not as a parti- cular subject-matter (one of our "mental contents") but as a particular perspective from which anything may be regarded. In that case, we would

speak with several voices at once in an effort to convey a comprehen- sive picture that incorporates not merely a description of the pheno- mena, which on our account do not speak for themselves but are instead spoken for; nor do the voices necessarily cease with that of the omni- scient narrator who, like Leibniz's God, situates things-as-they-are against the backdrop of things-as-they-could-be in order to explain the former in terms of the latter. In addition, there may be the voice who speaks from knowledge that the narrator is not actually the omni- scient supplier of possibilities who stands outside the phenomena he explains, although it is a voice he must adopt in order to continue narrating. This "metavoice," as it were, makes the explainer part of what needs to be explained because ultimately his explanation cannot be evaluated unless the reader understands the sense in which what the explainer offers as constraints on the phenomena in fact reflect con- straints on his own possibilities for explaining the phenomena.

Although the voices of a text may be analytically distinguished along the lines we have just suggested, their textual interdependency is also evident. A text with many voices will indeed be obscure if it is read as having only one voice. In that case, the one voice will be characterized as "equivocal", "paradoxical", "contradictory", and by all the other adjectives at the command of the reader to express the author's apparent duplicity. However, the reader is trading on a confu- sion that because a text is written by one author, it ought to have one voice, or at least that there ought to be one of perhaps many textual voices that clearly expresses the author's stance toward the subject- matter. Clarity would then come from the reader's ability to latch on to this one voice as it narrates and comments on the subject-matter. (I suspect that this confusion arises partly as a result of children no longer having to grapple with a difficult text like the Bible when learning how to read; but this requires another Rorty-style history that is beyond the scope of this paper.) In fact, the persuasiveness of Rorty's argument for the end of philosophy capitalizes on our normal- ly reading an explicitly nonfictional text as if it had only one voice, which is to say, our judging the text against the standards of the ideal prose style. I say this because were the reader instead to engage in the hermeneutical exercise of sorting out the voices of the text, he would be forced to take the philosophical turn, insofar as the different narrative stances express the different modalities in which the subject- matter is being regarded.

Literary critics have discerned many finer distinctions in perspec- tive, usually subsumed under the category of rhetoric known as "tropes", which could greatly enhance philosophical thinking. For example, the many shades of irony--the trope whereby something that is not x is re- garded as if it were x--may at first glance seem little more than part of the poet's bag of tricks. But consider how one traditional issue in epistemology--the significance of illusions for the possibility of veri- dical perception--can be handled much more subtlely if illusion, which satisfies the above definition of irony, is understood not as a parti- cular subject-matter (one of our "mental contents") but as a particular perspective from which anything may be regarded. In that case, we would

speak with several voices at once in an effort to convey a comprehen- sive picture that incorporates not merely a description of the pheno- mena, which on our account do not speak for themselves but are instead spoken for; nor do the voices necessarily cease with that of the omni- scient narrator who, like Leibniz's God, situates things-as-they-are against the backdrop of things-as-they-could-be in order to explain the former in terms of the latter. In addition, there may be the voice who speaks from knowledge that the narrator is not actually the omni- scient supplier of possibilities who stands outside the phenomena he explains, although it is a voice he must adopt in order to continue narrating. This "metavoice," as it were, makes the explainer part of what needs to be explained because ultimately his explanation cannot be evaluated unless the reader understands the sense in which what the explainer offers as constraints on the phenomena in fact reflect con- straints on his own possibilities for explaining the phenomena.

Although the voices of a text may be analytically distinguished along the lines we have just suggested, their textual interdependency is also evident. A text with many voices will indeed be obscure if it is read as having only one voice. In that case, the one voice will be characterized as "equivocal", "paradoxical", "contradictory", and by all the other adjectives at the command of the reader to express the author's apparent duplicity. However, the reader is trading on a confu- sion that because a text is written by one author, it ought to have one voice, or at least that there ought to be one of perhaps many textual voices that clearly expresses the author's stance toward the subject- matter. Clarity would then come from the reader's ability to latch on to this one voice as it narrates and comments on the subject-matter. (I suspect that this confusion arises partly as a result of children no longer having to grapple with a difficult text like the Bible when learning how to read; but this requires another Rorty-style history that is beyond the scope of this paper.) In fact, the persuasiveness of Rorty's argument for the end of philosophy capitalizes on our normal- ly reading an explicitly nonfictional text as if it had only one voice, which is to say, our judging the text against the standards of the ideal prose style. I say this because were the reader instead to engage in the hermeneutical exercise of sorting out the voices of the text, he would be forced to take the philosophical turn, insofar as the different narrative stances express the different modalities in which the subject- matter is being regarded.

Literary critics have discerned many finer distinctions in perspec- tive, usually subsumed under the category of rhetoric known as "tropes", which could greatly enhance philosophical thinking. For example, the many shades of irony--the trope whereby something that is not x is re- garded as if it were x--may at first glance seem little more than part of the poet's bag of tricks. But consider how one traditional issue in epistemology--the significance of illusions for the possibility of veri- dical perception--can be handled much more subtlely if illusion, which satisfies the above definition of irony, is understood not as a parti- cular subject-matter (one of our "mental contents") but as a particular perspective from which anything may be regarded. In that case, we would

speak with several voices at once in an effort to convey a comprehen- sive picture that incorporates not merely a description of the pheno- mena, which on our account do not speak for themselves but are instead spoken for; nor do the voices necessarily cease with that of the omni- scient narrator who, like Leibniz's God, situates things-as-they-are against the backdrop of things-as-they-could-be in order to explain the former in terms of the latter. In addition, there may be the voice who speaks from knowledge that the narrator is not actually the omni- scient supplier of possibilities who stands outside the phenomena he explains, although it is a voice he must adopt in order to continue narrating. This "metavoice," as it were, makes the explainer part of what needs to be explained because ultimately his explanation cannot be evaluated unless the reader understands the sense in which what the explainer offers as constraints on the phenomena in fact reflect con- straints on his own possibilities for explaining the phenomena.

Although the voices of a text may be analytically distinguished along the lines we have just suggested, their textual interdependency is also evident. A text with many voices will indeed be obscure if it is read as having only one voice. In that case, the one voice will be characterized as "equivocal", "paradoxical", "contradictory", and by all the other adjectives at the command of the reader to express the author's apparent duplicity. However, the reader is trading on a confu- sion that because a text is written by one author, it ought to have one voice, or at least that there ought to be one of perhaps many textual voices that clearly expresses the author's stance toward the subject- matter. Clarity would then come from the reader's ability to latch on to this one voice as it narrates and comments on the subject-matter. (I suspect that this confusion arises partly as a result of children no longer having to grapple with a difficult text like the Bible when learning how to read; but this requires another Rorty-style history that is beyond the scope of this paper.) In fact, the persuasiveness of Rorty's argument for the end of philosophy capitalizes on our normal- ly reading an explicitly nonfictional text as if it had only one voice, which is to say, our judging the text against the standards of the ideal prose style. I say this because were the reader instead to engage in the hermeneutical exercise of sorting out the voices of the text, he would be forced to take the philosophical turn, insofar as the different narrative stances express the different modalities in which the subject- matter is being regarded.

Literary critics have discerned many finer distinctions in perspec- tive, usually subsumed under the category of rhetoric known as "tropes", which could greatly enhance philosophical thinking. For example, the many shades of irony--the trope whereby something that is not x is re- garded as if it were x--may at first glance seem little more than part of the poet's bag of tricks. But consider how one traditional issue in epistemology--the significance of illusions for the possibility of veri- dical perception--can be handled much more subtlely if illusion, which satisfies the above definition of irony, is understood not as a parti- cular subject-matter (one of our "mental contents") but as a particular perspective from which anything may be regarded. In that case, we would

speak with several voices at once in an effort to convey a comprehen- sive picture that incorporates not merely a description of the pheno- mena, which on our account do not speak for themselves but are instead spoken for; nor do the voices necessarily cease with that of the omni- scient narrator who, like Leibniz's God, situates things-as-they-are against the backdrop of things-as-they-could-be in order to explain the former in terms of the latter. In addition, there may be the voice who speaks from knowledge that the narrator is not actually the omni- scient supplier of possibilities who stands outside the phenomena he explains, although it is a voice he must adopt in order to continue narrating. This "metavoice," as it were, makes the explainer part of what needs to be explained because ultimately his explanation cannot be evaluated unless the reader understands the sense in which what the explainer offers as constraints on the phenomena in fact reflect con- straints on his own possibilities for explaining the phenomena.

Although the voices of a text may be analytically distinguished along the lines we have just suggested, their textual interdependency is also evident. A text with many voices will indeed be obscure if it is read as having only one voice. In that case, the one voice will be characterized as "equivocal", "paradoxical", "contradictory", and by all the other adjectives at the command of the reader to express the author's apparent duplicity. However, the reader is trading on a confu- sion that because a text is written by one author, it ought to have one voice, or at least that there ought to be one of perhaps many textual voices that clearly expresses the author's stance toward the subject- matter. Clarity would then come from the reader's ability to latch on to this one voice as it narrates and comments on the subject-matter. (I suspect that this confusion arises partly as a result of children no longer having to grapple with a difficult text like the Bible when learning how to read; but this requires another Rorty-style history that is beyond the scope of this paper.) In fact, the persuasiveness of Rorty's argument for the end of philosophy capitalizes on our normal- ly reading an explicitly nonfictional text as if it had only one voice, which is to say, our judging the text against the standards of the ideal prose style. I say this because were the reader instead to engage in the hermeneutical exercise of sorting out the voices of the text, he would be forced to take the philosophical turn, insofar as the different narrative stances express the different modalities in which the subject- matter is being regarded.

Literary critics have discerned many finer distinctions in perspec- tive, usually subsumed under the category of rhetoric known as "tropes", which could greatly enhance philosophical thinking. For example, the many shades of irony--the trope whereby something that is not x is re- garded as if it were x--may at first glance seem little more than part of the poet's bag of tricks. But consider how one traditional issue in epistemology--the significance of illusions for the possibility of veri- dical perception--can be handled much more subtlely if illusion, which satisfies the above definition of irony, is understood not as a parti- cular subject-matter (one of our "mental contents") but as a particular perspective from which anything may be regarded. In that case, we would

speak with several voices at once in an effort to convey a comprehen- sive picture that incorporates not merely a description of the pheno- mena, which on our account do not speak for themselves but are instead spoken for; nor do the voices necessarily cease with that of the omni- scient narrator who, like Leibniz's God, situates things-as-they-are against the backdrop of things-as-they-could-be in order to explain the former in terms of the latter. In addition, there may be the voice who speaks from knowledge that the narrator is not actually the omni- scient supplier of possibilities who stands outside the phenomena he explains, although it is a voice he must adopt in order to continue narrating. This "metavoice," as it were, makes the explainer part of what needs to be explained because ultimately his explanation cannot be evaluated unless the reader understands the sense in which what the explainer offers as constraints on the phenomena in fact reflect con- straints on his own possibilities for explaining the phenomena.

Although the voices of a text may be analytically distinguished along the lines we have just suggested, their textual interdependency is also evident. A text with many voices will indeed be obscure if it is read as having only one voice. In that case, the one voice will be characterized as "equivocal", "paradoxical", "contradictory", and by all the other adjectives at the command of the reader to express the author's apparent duplicity. However, the reader is trading on a confu- sion that because a text is written by one author, it ought to have one voice, or at least that there ought to be one of perhaps many textual voices that clearly expresses the author's stance toward the subject- matter. Clarity would then come from the reader's ability to latch on to this one voice as it narrates and comments on the subject-matter. (I suspect that this confusion arises partly as a result of children no longer having to grapple with a difficult text like the Bible when learning how to read; but this requires another Rorty-style history that is beyond the scope of this paper.) In fact, the persuasiveness of Rorty's argument for the end of philosophy capitalizes on our normal- ly reading an explicitly nonfictional text as if it had only one voice, which is to say, our judging the text against the standards of the ideal prose style. I say this because were the reader instead to engage in the hermeneutical exercise of sorting out the voices of the text, he would be forced to take the philosophical turn, insofar as the different narrative stances express the different modalities in which the subject- matter is being regarded.

Literary critics have discerned many finer distinctions in perspec- tive, usually subsumed under the category of rhetoric known as "tropes", which could greatly enhance philosophical thinking. For example, the many shades of irony--the trope whereby something that is not x is re- garded as if it were x--may at first glance seem little more than part of the poet's bag of tricks. But consider how one traditional issue in epistemology--the significance of illusions for the possibility of veri- dical perception--can be handled much more subtlely if illusion, which satisfies the above definition of irony, is understood not as a parti- cular subject-matter (one of our "mental contents") but as a particular perspective from which anything may be regarded. In that case, we would

speak with several voices at once in an effort to convey a comprehen- sive picture that incorporates not merely a description of the pheno- mena, which on our account do not speak for themselves but are instead spoken for; nor do the voices necessarily cease with that of the omni- scient narrator who, like Leibniz's God, situates things-as-they-are against the backdrop of things-as-they-could-be in order to explain the former in terms of the latter. In addition, there may be the voice who speaks from knowledge that the narrator is not actually the omni- scient supplier of possibilities who stands outside the phenomena he explains, although it is a voice he must adopt in order to continue narrating. This "metavoice," as it were, makes the explainer part of what needs to be explained because ultimately his explanation cannot be evaluated unless the reader understands the sense in which what the explainer offers as constraints on the phenomena in fact reflect con- straints on his own possibilities for explaining the phenomena.

Although the voices of a text may be analytically distinguished along the lines we have just suggested, their textual interdependency is also evident. A text with many voices will indeed be obscure if it is read as having only one voice. In that case, the one voice will be characterized as "equivocal", "paradoxical", "contradictory", and by all the other adjectives at the command of the reader to express the author's apparent duplicity. However, the reader is trading on a confu- sion that because a text is written by one author, it ought to have one voice, or at least that there ought to be one of perhaps many textual voices that clearly expresses the author's stance toward the subject- matter. Clarity would then come from the reader's ability to latch on to this one voice as it narrates and comments on the subject-matter. (I suspect that this confusion arises partly as a result of children no longer having to grapple with a difficult text like the Bible when learning how to read; but this requires another Rorty-style history that is beyond the scope of this paper.) In fact, the persuasiveness of Rorty's argument for the end of philosophy capitalizes on our normal- ly reading an explicitly nonfictional text as if it had only one voice, which is to say, our judging the text against the standards of the ideal prose style. I say this because were the reader instead to engage in the hermeneutical exercise of sorting out the voices of the text, he would be forced to take the philosophical turn, insofar as the different narrative stances express the different modalities in which the subject- matter is being regarded.

Literary critics have discerned many finer distinctions in perspec- tive, usually subsumed under the category of rhetoric known as "tropes", which could greatly enhance philosophical thinking. For example, the many shades of irony--the trope whereby something that is not x is re- garded as if it were x--may at first glance seem little more than part of the poet's bag of tricks. But consider how one traditional issue in epistemology--the significance of illusions for the possibility of veri- dical perception--can be handled much more subtlely if illusion, which satisfies the above definition of irony, is understood not as a parti- cular subject-matter (one of our "mental contents") but as a particular perspective from which anything may be regarded. In that case, we would

speak with several voices at once in an effort to convey a comprehen- sive picture that incorporates not merely a description of the pheno- mena, which on our account do not speak for themselves but are instead spoken for; nor do the voices necessarily cease with that of the omni- scient narrator who, like Leibniz's God, situates things-as-they-are against the backdrop of things-as-they-could-be in order to explain the former in terms of the latter. In addition, there may be the voice who speaks from knowledge that the narrator is not actually the omni- scient supplier of possibilities who stands outside the phenomena he explains, although it is a voice he must adopt in order to continue narrating. This "metavoice," as it were, makes the explainer part of what needs to be explained because ultimately his explanation cannot be evaluated unless the reader understands the sense in which what the explainer offers as constraints on the phenomena in fact reflect con- straints on his own possibilities for explaining the phenomena.

Although the voices of a text may be analytically distinguished along the lines we have just suggested, their textual interdependency is also evident. A text with many voices will indeed be obscure if it is read as having only one voice. In that case, the one voice will be characterized as "equivocal", "paradoxical", "contradictory", and by all the other adjectives at the command of the reader to express the author's apparent duplicity. However, the reader is trading on a confu- sion that because a text is written by one author, it ought to have one voice, or at least that there ought to be one of perhaps many textual voices that clearly expresses the author's stance toward the subject- matter. Clarity would then come from the reader's ability to latch on to this one voice as it narrates and comments on the subject-matter. (I suspect that this confusion arises partly as a result of children no longer having to grapple with a difficult text like the Bible when learning how to read; but this requires another Rorty-style history that is beyond the scope of this paper.) In fact, the persuasiveness of Rorty's argument for the end of philosophy capitalizes on our normal- ly reading an explicitly nonfictional text as if it had only one voice, which is to say, our judging the text against the standards of the ideal prose style. I say this because were the reader instead to engage in the hermeneutical exercise of sorting out the voices of the text, he would be forced to take the philosophical turn, insofar as the different narrative stances express the different modalities in which the subject- matter is being regarded.

Literary critics have discerned many finer distinctions in perspec- tive, usually subsumed under the category of rhetoric known as "tropes", which could greatly enhance philosophical thinking. For example, the many shades of irony--the trope whereby something that is not x is re- garded as if it were x--may at first glance seem little more than part of the poet's bag of tricks. But consider how one traditional issue in epistemology--the significance of illusions for the possibility of veri- dical perception--can be handled much more subtlely if illusion, which satisfies the above definition of irony, is understood not as a parti- cular subject-matter (one of our "mental contents") but as a particular perspective from which anything may be regarded. In that case, we would

speak with several voices at once in an effort to convey a comprehen- sive picture that incorporates not merely a description of the pheno- mena, which on our account do not speak for themselves but are instead spoken for; nor do the voices necessarily cease with that of the omni- scient narrator who, like Leibniz's God, situates things-as-they-are against the backdrop of things-as-they-could-be in order to explain the former in terms of the latter. In addition, there may be the voice who speaks from knowledge that the narrator is not actually the omni- scient supplier of possibilities who stands outside the phenomena he explains, although it is a voice he must adopt in order to continue narrating. This "metavoice," as it were, makes the explainer part of what needs to be explained because ultimately his explanation cannot be evaluated unless the reader understands the sense in which what the explainer offers as constraints on the phenomena in fact reflect con- straints on his own possibilities for explaining the phenomena.

Although the voices of a text may be analytically distinguished along the lines we have just suggested, their textual interdependency is also evident. A text with many voices will indeed be obscure if it is read as having only one voice. In that case, the one voice will be characterized as "equivocal", "paradoxical", "contradictory", and by all the other adjectives at the command of the reader to express the author's apparent duplicity. However, the reader is trading on a confu- sion that because a text is written by one author, it ought to have one voice, or at least that there ought to be one of perhaps many textual voices that clearly expresses the author's stance toward the subject- matter. Clarity would then come from the reader's ability to latch on to this one voice as it narrates and comments on the subject-matter. (I suspect that this confusion arises partly as a result of children no longer having to grapple with a difficult text like the Bible when learning how to read; but this requires another Rorty-style history that is beyond the scope of this paper.) In fact, the persuasiveness of Rorty's argument for the end of philosophy capitalizes on our normal- ly reading an explicitly nonfictional text as if it had only one voice, which is to say, our judging the text against the standards of the ideal prose style. I say this because were the reader instead to engage in the hermeneutical exercise of sorting out the voices of the text, he would be forced to take the philosophical turn, insofar as the different narrative stances express the different modalities in which the subject- matter is being regarded.

Literary critics have discerned many finer distinctions in perspec- tive, usually subsumed under the category of rhetoric known as "tropes", which could greatly enhance philosophical thinking. For example, the many shades of irony--the trope whereby something that is not x is re- garded as if it were x--may at first glance seem little more than part of the poet's bag of tricks. But consider how one traditional issue in epistemology--the significance of illusions for the possibility of veri- dical perception--can be handled much more subtlely if illusion, which satisfies the above definition of irony, is understood not as a parti- cular subject-matter (one of our "mental contents") but as a particular perspective from which anything may be regarded. In that case, we would

speak with several voices at once in an effort to convey a comprehen- sive picture that incorporates not merely a description of the pheno- mena, which on our account do not speak for themselves but are instead spoken for; nor do the voices necessarily cease with that of the omni- scient narrator who, like Leibniz's God, situates things-as-they-are against the backdrop of things-as-they-could-be in order to explain the former in terms of the latter. In addition, there may be the voice who speaks from knowledge that the narrator is not actually the omni- scient supplier of possibilities who stands outside the phenomena he explains, although it is a voice he must adopt in order to continue narrating. This "metavoice," as it were, makes the explainer part of what needs to be explained because ultimately his explanation cannot be evaluated unless the reader understands the sense in which what the explainer offers as constraints on the phenomena in fact reflect con- straints on his own possibilities for explaining the phenomena.

Although the voices of a text may be analytically distinguished along the lines we have just suggested, their textual interdependency is also evident. A text with many voices will indeed be obscure if it is read as having only one voice. In that case, the one voice will be characterized as "equivocal", "paradoxical", "contradictory", and by all the other adjectives at the command of the reader to express the author's apparent duplicity. However, the reader is trading on a confu- sion that because a text is written by one author, it ought to have one voice, or at least that there ought to be one of perhaps many textual voices that clearly expresses the author's stance toward the subject- matter. Clarity would then come from the reader's ability to latch on to this one voice as it narrates and comments on the subject-matter. (I suspect that this confusion arises partly as a result of children no longer having to grapple with a difficult text like the Bible when learning how to read; but this requires another Rorty-style history that is beyond the scope of this paper.) In fact, the persuasiveness of Rorty's argument for the end of philosophy capitalizes on our normal- ly reading an explicitly nonfictional text as if it had only one voice, which is to say, our judging the text against the standards of the ideal prose style. I say this because were the reader instead to engage in the hermeneutical exercise of sorting out the voices of the text, he would be forced to take the philosophical turn, insofar as the different narrative stances express the different modalities in which the subject- matter is being regarded.

Literary critics have discerned many finer distinctions in perspec- tive, usually subsumed under the category of rhetoric known as "tropes", which could greatly enhance philosophical thinking. For example, the many shades of irony--the trope whereby something that is not x is re- garded as if it were x--may at first glance seem little more than part of the poet's bag of tricks. But consider how one traditional issue in epistemology--the significance of illusions for the possibility of veri- dical perception--can be handled much more subtlely if illusion, which satisfies the above definition of irony, is understood not as a parti- cular subject-matter (one of our "mental contents") but as a particular perspective from which anything may be regarded. In that case, we would

speak with several voices at once in an effort to convey a comprehen- sive picture that incorporates not merely a description of the pheno- mena, which on our account do not speak for themselves but are instead spoken for; nor do the voices necessarily cease with that of the omni- scient narrator who, like Leibniz's God, situates things-as-they-are against the backdrop of things-as-they-could-be in order to explain the former in terms of the latter. In addition, there may be the voice who speaks from knowledge that the narrator is not actually the omni- scient supplier of possibilities who stands outside the phenomena he explains, although it is a voice he must adopt in order to continue narrating. This "metavoice," as it were, makes the explainer part of what needs to be explained because ultimately his explanation cannot be evaluated unless the reader understands the sense in which what the explainer offers as constraints on the phenomena in fact reflect con- straints on his own possibilities for explaining the phenomena.

Although the voices of a text may be analytically distinguished along the lines we have just suggested, their textual interdependency is also evident. A text with many voices will indeed be obscure if it is read as having only one voice. In that case, the one voice will be characterized as "equivocal", "paradoxical", "contradictory", and by all the other adjectives at the command of the reader to express the author's apparent duplicity. However, the reader is trading on a confu- sion that because a text is written by one author, it ought to have one voice, or at least that there ought to be one of perhaps many textual voices that clearly expresses the author's stance toward the subject- matter. Clarity would then come from the reader's ability to latch on to this one voice as it narrates and comments on the subject-matter. (I suspect that this confusion arises partly as a result of children no longer having to grapple with a difficult text like the Bible when learning how to read; but this requires another Rorty-style history that is beyond the scope of this paper.) In fact, the persuasiveness of Rorty's argument for the end of philosophy capitalizes on our normal- ly reading an explicitly nonfictional text as if it had only one voice, which is to say, our judging the text against the standards of the ideal prose style. I say this because were the reader instead to engage in the hermeneutical exercise of sorting out the voices of the text, he would be forced to take the philosophical turn, insofar as the different narrative stances express the different modalities in which the subject- matter is being regarded.

Literary critics have discerned many finer distinctions in perspec- tive, usually subsumed under the category of rhetoric known as "tropes", which could greatly enhance philosophical thinking. For example, the many shades of irony--the trope whereby something that is not x is re- garded as if it were x--may at first glance seem little more than part of the poet's bag of tricks. But consider how one traditional issue in epistemology--the significance of illusions for the possibility of veri- dical perception--can be handled much more subtlely if illusion, which satisfies the above definition of irony, is understood not as a parti- cular subject-matter (one of our "mental contents") but as a particular perspective from which anything may be regarded. In that case, we would

speak with several voices at once in an effort to convey a comprehen- sive picture that incorporates not merely a description of the pheno- mena, which on our account do not speak for themselves but are instead spoken for; nor do the voices necessarily cease with that of the omni- scient narrator who, like Leibniz's God, situates things-as-they-are against the backdrop of things-as-they-could-be in order to explain the former in terms of the latter. In addition, there may be the voice who speaks from knowledge that the narrator is not actually the omni- scient supplier of possibilities who stands outside the phenomena he explains, although it is a voice he must adopt in order to continue narrating. This "metavoice," as it were, makes the explainer part of what needs to be explained because ultimately his explanation cannot be evaluated unless the reader understands the sense in which what the explainer offers as constraints on the phenomena in fact reflect con- straints on his own possibilities for explaining the phenomena.

Although the voices of a text may be analytically distinguished along the lines we have just suggested, their textual interdependency is also evident. A text with many voices will indeed be obscure if it is read as having only one voice. In that case, the one voice will be characterized as "equivocal", "paradoxical", "contradictory", and by all the other adjectives at the command of the reader to express the author's apparent duplicity. However, the reader is trading on a confu- sion that because a text is written by one author, it ought to have one voice, or at least that there ought to be one of perhaps many textual voices that clearly expresses the author's stance toward the subject- matter. Clarity would then come from the reader's ability to latch on to this one voice as it narrates and comments on the subject-matter. (I suspect that this confusion arises partly as a result of children no longer having to grapple with a difficult text like the Bible when learning how to read; but this requires another Rorty-style history that is beyond the scope of this paper.) In fact, the persuasiveness of Rorty's argument for the end of philosophy capitalizes on our normal- ly reading an explicitly nonfictional text as if it had only one voice, which is to say, our judging the text against the standards of the ideal prose style. I say this because were the reader instead to engage in the hermeneutical exercise of sorting out the voices of the text, he would be forced to take the philosophical turn, insofar as the different narrative stances express the different modalities in which the subject- matter is being regarded.

Literary critics have discerned many finer distinctions in perspec- tive, usually subsumed under the category of rhetoric known as "tropes", which could greatly enhance philosophical thinking. For example, the many shades of irony--the trope whereby something that is not x is re- garded as if it were x--may at first glance seem little more than part of the poet's bag of tricks. But consider how one traditional issue in epistemology--the significance of illusions for the possibility of veri- dical perception--can be handled much more subtlely if illusion, which satisfies the above definition of irony, is understood not as a parti- cular subject-matter (one of our "mental contents") but as a particular perspective from which anything may be regarded. In that case, we would

speak with several voices at once in an effort to convey a comprehen- sive picture that incorporates not merely a description of the pheno- mena, which on our account do not speak for themselves but are instead spoken for; nor do the voices necessarily cease with that of the omni- scient narrator who, like Leibniz's God, situates things-as-they-are against the backdrop of things-as-they-could-be in order to explain the former in terms of the latter. In addition, there may be the voice who speaks from knowledge that the narrator is not actually the omni- scient supplier of possibilities who stands outside the phenomena he explains, although it is a voice he must adopt in order to continue narrating. This "metavoice," as it were, makes the explainer part of what needs to be explained because ultimately his explanation cannot be evaluated unless the reader understands the sense in which what the explainer offers as constraints on the phenomena in fact reflect con- straints on his own possibilities for explaining the phenomena.

Although the voices of a text may be analytically distinguished along the lines we have just suggested, their textual interdependency is also evident. A text with many voices will indeed be obscure if it is read as having only one voice. In that case, the one voice will be characterized as "equivocal", "paradoxical", "contradictory", and by all the other adjectives at the command of the reader to express the author's apparent duplicity. However, the reader is trading on a confu- sion that because a text is written by one author, it ought to have one voice, or at least that there ought to be one of perhaps many textual voices that clearly expresses the author's stance toward the subject- matter. Clarity would then come from the reader's ability to latch on to this one voice as it narrates and comments on the subject-matter. (I suspect that this confusion arises partly as a result of children no longer having to grapple with a difficult text like the Bible when learning how to read; but this requires another Rorty-style history that is beyond the scope of this paper.) In fact, the persuasiveness of Rorty's argument for the end of philosophy capitalizes on our normal- ly reading an explicitly nonfictional text as if it had only one voice, which is to say, our judging the text against the standards of the ideal prose style. I say this because were the reader instead to engage in the hermeneutical exercise of sorting out the voices of the text, he would be forced to take the philosophical turn, insofar as the different narrative stances express the different modalities in which the subject- matter is being regarded.

Literary critics have discerned many finer distinctions in perspec- tive, usually subsumed under the category of rhetoric known as "tropes", which could greatly enhance philosophical thinking. For example, the many shades of irony--the trope whereby something that is not x is re- garded as if it were x--may at first glance seem little more than part of the poet's bag of tricks. But consider how one traditional issue in epistemology--the significance of illusions for the possibility of veri- dical perception--can be handled much more subtlely if illusion, which satisfies the above definition of irony, is understood not as a parti- cular subject-matter (one of our "mental contents") but as a particular perspective from which anything may be regarded. In that case, we would

speak with several voices at once in an effort to convey a comprehen- sive picture that incorporates not merely a description of the pheno- mena, which on our account do not speak for themselves but are instead spoken for; nor do the voices necessarily cease with that of the omni- scient narrator who, like Leibniz's God, situates things-as-they-are against the backdrop of things-as-they-could-be in order to explain the former in terms of the latter. In addition, there may be the voice who speaks from knowledge that the narrator is not actually the omni- scient supplier of possibilities who stands outside the phenomena he explains, although it is a voice he must adopt in order to continue narrating. This "metavoice," as it were, makes the explainer part of what needs to be explained because ultimately his explanation cannot be evaluated unless the reader understands the sense in which what the explainer offers as constraints on the phenomena in fact reflect con- straints on his own possibilities for explaining the phenomena.

Although the voices of a text may be analytically distinguished along the lines we have just suggested, their textual interdependency is also evident. A text with many voices will indeed be obscure if it is read as having only one voice. In that case, the one voice will be characterized as "equivocal", "paradoxical", "contradictory", and by all the other adjectives at the command of the reader to express the author's apparent duplicity. However, the reader is trading on a confu- sion that because a text is written by one author, it ought to have one voice, or at least that there ought to be one of perhaps many textual voices that clearly expresses the author's stance toward the subject- matter. Clarity would then come from the reader's ability to latch on to this one voice as it narrates and comments on the subject-matter. (I suspect that this confusion arises partly as a result of children no longer having to grapple with a difficult text like the Bible when learning how to read; but this requires another Rorty-style history that is beyond the scope of this paper.) In fact, the persuasiveness of Rorty's argument for the end of philosophy capitalizes on our normal- ly reading an explicitly nonfictional text as if it had only one voice, which is to say, our judging the text against the standards of the ideal prose style. I say this because were the reader instead to engage in the hermeneutical exercise of sorting out the voices of the text, he would be forced to take the philosophical turn, insofar as the different narrative stances express the different modalities in which the subject- matter is being regarded.

Literary critics have discerned many finer distinctions in perspec- tive, usually subsumed under the category of rhetoric known as "tropes", which could greatly enhance philosophical thinking. For example, the many shades of irony--the trope whereby something that is not x is re- garded as if it were x--may at first glance seem little more than part of the poet's bag of tricks. But consider how one traditional issue in epistemology--the significance of illusions for the possibility of veri- dical perception--can be handled much more subtlely if illusion, which satisfies the above definition of irony, is understood not as a parti- cular subject-matter (one of our "mental contents") but as a particular perspective from which anything may be regarded. In that case, we would

speak with several voices at once in an effort to convey a comprehen- sive picture that incorporates not merely a description of the pheno- mena, which on our account do not speak for themselves but are instead spoken for; nor do the voices necessarily cease with that of the omni- scient narrator who, like Leibniz's God, situates things-as-they-are against the backdrop of things-as-they-could-be in order to explain the former in terms of the latter. In addition, there may be the voice who speaks from knowledge that the narrator is not actually the omni- scient supplier of possibilities who stands outside the phenomena he explains, although it is a voice he must adopt in order to continue narrating. This "metavoice," as it were, makes the explainer part of what needs to be explained because ultimately his explanation cannot be evaluated unless the reader understands the sense in which what the explainer offers as constraints on the phenomena in fact reflect con- straints on his own possibilities for explaining the phenomena.

Although the voices of a text may be analytically distinguished along the lines we have just suggested, their textual interdependency is also evident. A text with many voices will indeed be obscure if it is read as having only one voice. In that case, the one voice will be characterized as "equivocal", "paradoxical", "contradictory", and by all the other adjectives at the command of the reader to express the author's apparent duplicity. However, the reader is trading on a confu- sion that because a text is written by one author, it ought to have one voice, or at least that there ought to be one of perhaps many textual voices that clearly expresses the author's stance toward the subject- matter. Clarity would then come from the reader's ability to latch on to this one voice as it narrates and comments on the subject-matter. (I suspect that this confusion arises partly as a result of children no longer having to grapple with a difficult text like the Bible when learning how to read; but this requires another Rorty-style history that is beyond the scope of this paper.) In fact, the persuasiveness of Rorty's argument for the end of philosophy capitalizes on our normal- ly reading an explicitly nonfictional text as if it had only one voice, which is to say, our judging the text against the standards of the ideal prose style. I say this because were the reader instead to engage in the hermeneutical exercise of sorting out the voices of the text, he would be forced to take the philosophical turn, insofar as the different narrative stances express the different modalities in which the subject- matter is being regarded.

Literary critics have discerned many finer distinctions in perspec- tive, usually subsumed under the category of rhetoric known as "tropes", which could greatly enhance philosophical thinking. For example, the many shades of irony--the trope whereby something that is not x is re- garded as if it were x--may at first glance seem little more than part of the poet's bag of tricks. But consider how one traditional issue in epistemology--the significance of illusions for the possibility of veri- dical perception--can be handled much more subtlely if illusion, which satisfies the above definition of irony, is understood not as a parti- cular subject-matter (one of our "mental contents") but as a particular perspective from which anything may be regarded. In that case, we would

speak with several voices at once in an effort to convey a comprehen- sive picture that incorporates not merely a description of the pheno- mena, which on our account do not speak for themselves but are instead spoken for; nor do the voices necessarily cease with that of the omni- scient narrator who, like Leibniz's God, situates things-as-they-are against the backdrop of things-as-they-could-be in order to explain the former in terms of the latter. In addition, there may be the voice who speaks from knowledge that the narrator is not actually the omni- scient supplier of possibilities who stands outside the phenomena he explains, although it is a voice he must adopt in order to continue narrating. This "metavoice," as it were, makes the explainer part of what needs to be explained because ultimately his explanation cannot be evaluated unless the reader understands the sense in which what the explainer offers as constraints on the phenomena in fact reflect con- straints on his own possibilities for explaining the phenomena.

Although the voices of a text may be analytically distinguished along the lines we have just suggested, their textual interdependency is also evident. A text with many voices will indeed be obscure if it is read as having only one voice. In that case, the one voice will be characterized as "equivocal", "paradoxical", "contradictory", and by all the other adjectives at the command of the reader to express the author's apparent duplicity. However, the reader is trading on a confu- sion that because a text is written by one author, it ought to have one voice, or at least that there ought to be one of perhaps many textual voices that clearly expresses the author's stance toward the subject- matter. Clarity would then come from the reader's ability to latch on to this one voice as it narrates and comments on the subject-matter. (I suspect that this confusion arises partly as a result of children no longer having to grapple with a difficult text like the Bible when learning how to read; but this requires another Rorty-style history that is beyond the scope of this paper.) In fact, the persuasiveness of Rorty's argument for the end of philosophy capitalizes on our normal- ly reading an explicitly nonfictional text as if it had only one voice, which is to say, our judging the text against the standards of the ideal prose style. I say this because were the reader instead to engage in the hermeneutical exercise of sorting out the voices of the text, he would be forced to take the philosophical turn, insofar as the different narrative stances express the different modalities in which the subject- matter is being regarded.

Literary critics have discerned many finer distinctions in perspec- tive, usually subsumed under the category of rhetoric known as "tropes", which could greatly enhance philosophical thinking. For example, the many shades of irony--the trope whereby something that is not x is re- garded as if it were x--may at first glance seem little more than part of the poet's bag of tricks. But consider how one traditional issue in epistemology--the significance of illusions for the possibility of veri- dical perception--can be handled much more subtlely if illusion, which satisfies the above definition of irony, is understood not as a parti- cular subject-matter (one of our "mental contents") but as a particular perspective from which anything may be regarded. In that case, we would

speak with several voices at once in an effort to convey a comprehen- sive picture that incorporates not merely a description of the pheno- mena, which on our account do not speak for themselves but are instead spoken for; nor do the voices necessarily cease with that of the omni- scient narrator who, like Leibniz's God, situates things-as-they-are against the backdrop of things-as-they-could-be in order to explain the former in terms of the latter. In addition, there may be the voice who speaks from knowledge that the narrator is not actually the omni- scient supplier of possibilities who stands outside the phenomena he explains, although it is a voice he must adopt in order to continue narrating. This "metavoice," as it were, makes the explainer part of what needs to be explained because ultimately his explanation cannot be evaluated unless the reader understands the sense in which what the explainer offers as constraints on the phenomena in fact reflect con- straints on his own possibilities for explaining the phenomena.

Although the voices of a text may be analytically distinguished along the lines we have just suggested, their textual interdependency is also evident. A text with many voices will indeed be obscure if it is read as having only one voice. In that case, the one voice will be characterized as "equivocal", "paradoxical", "contradictory", and by all the other adjectives at the command of the reader to express the author's apparent duplicity. However, the reader is trading on a confu- sion that because a text is written by one author, it ought to have one voice, or at least that there ought to be one of perhaps many textual voices that clearly expresses the author's stance toward the subject- matter. Clarity would then come from the reader's ability to latch on to this one voice as it narrates and comments on the subject-matter. (I suspect that this confusion arises partly as a result of children no longer having to grapple with a difficult text like the Bible when learning how to read; but this requires another Rorty-style history that is beyond the scope of this paper.) In fact, the persuasiveness of Rorty's argument for the end of philosophy capitalizes on our normal- ly reading an explicitly nonfictional text as if it had only one voice, which is to say, our judging the text against the standards of the ideal prose style. I say this because were the reader instead to engage in the hermeneutical exercise of sorting out the voices of the text, he would be forced to take the philosophical turn, insofar as the different narrative stances express the different modalities in which the subject- matter is being regarded.

Literary critics have discerned many finer distinctions in perspec- tive, usually subsumed under the category of rhetoric known as "tropes", which could greatly enhance philosophical thinking. For example, the many shades of irony--the trope whereby something that is not x is re- garded as if it were x--may at first glance seem little more than part of the poet's bag of tricks. But consider how one traditional issue in epistemology--the significance of illusions for the possibility of veri- dical perception--can be handled much more subtlely if illusion, which satisfies the above definition of irony, is understood not as a parti- cular subject-matter (one of our "mental contents") but as a particular perspective from which anything may be regarded. In that case, we would

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no longer ask what kind of thing is an illusion, but, rather, in what kind of relation does one need to stand to something in order to say that it is an illusion. It can be easily seen that the problematics which follow from these two opening queries are radically different. But notice too that only the latter query preserves the integrity of the philosophical by acknowledging Rorty's point that philosophy has no unique subject-matter.

This observation also suggests an answer to why certain philosophical problems--especially "metaphysical" ones--are so difficult. The re- ceived view is that difficulty arises from an intractable subject- matter, one that does not readily yield to analytical methods and clear argument structures. Since metaphysical problems often seem to demand that some defining feature of reality be encompassed within a single proposition, their insolubility has usually been attributed to the impossibility of arriving at a synoptic vision through the modest methods of discursive reasoning. As a result, and as we have seen, modern intellectual history has been marked by the breakdown of reality into the more manageable pieces that are now the respective phenomena of the sciences. But while this conception of philosophical difficulty plays right into Rorty's hands, I would argue that there is good reason to suspect that it misses the mark entirely, namely, that our actual philosophical diffculties are not illuminated by regarding them as the products of an intractable subject-matter. Rorty may render philoso- phical difficulties insignificant, but he goes no way toward addressing them on their own terms. Intuitively, the symptoms of philosophical difficulty do not so much involve trying to get a sense of the vast range of phenomena under consideration as trying to find an approach that will allow the phenomena to be considered. Once again, the prob- lem is setting up the correct combination of perspectives on which a narrative structure can be built.

Consider the typically metaphysical dialectic between idealist and realist. The idealist argues that only a paradox would allow the realist's view to be tested--namely, that we would somehow "see" that the world was not dependent on our seeing it, while the realist argues that the correctness of the idealist's view implies that our common- sense understanding of the world is systematically misleading--a highly improbable hypothesis. Because of the curious way in which this dia- lectic stalemates, Kant would situate it among his "antinomies of rea- son". It will be recalled that Kant assigns to reason a non-constitu- tive role in cognition--which is to say, the difference between realism and idealism would not be manifested simply in terms of different descriptions of the world but in terms of different explanations, which, as we have seen, are distinguished by their reference to counterfactual possibilities. Is causality an intrinsically physical relation that would obtain without the presence of minds? If so, then it is to be explained by physics; if not, then by psychology. But since Kant believed that nothing determinate could be said about counterfactuals, it makes no sense to argue about the relative merits of the two posi- tions--although there may be some value in conducting empirical inquiry as if one or the other were true. Rorty shares Kant's sensibility as

no longer ask what kind of thing is an illusion, but, rather, in what kind of relation does one need to stand to something in order to say that it is an illusion. It can be easily seen that the problematics which follow from these two opening queries are radically different. But notice too that only the latter query preserves the integrity of the philosophical by acknowledging Rorty's point that philosophy has no unique subject-matter.

This observation also suggests an answer to why certain philosophical problems--especially "metaphysical" ones--are so difficult. The re- ceived view is that difficulty arises from an intractable subject- matter, one that does not readily yield to analytical methods and clear argument structures. Since metaphysical problems often seem to demand that some defining feature of reality be encompassed within a single proposition, their insolubility has usually been attributed to the impossibility of arriving at a synoptic vision through the modest methods of discursive reasoning. As a result, and as we have seen, modern intellectual history has been marked by the breakdown of reality into the more manageable pieces that are now the respective phenomena of the sciences. But while this conception of philosophical difficulty plays right into Rorty's hands, I would argue that there is good reason to suspect that it misses the mark entirely, namely, that our actual philosophical diffculties are not illuminated by regarding them as the products of an intractable subject-matter. Rorty may render philoso- phical difficulties insignificant, but he goes no way toward addressing them on their own terms. Intuitively, the symptoms of philosophical difficulty do not so much involve trying to get a sense of the vast range of phenomena under consideration as trying to find an approach that will allow the phenomena to be considered. Once again, the prob- lem is setting up the correct combination of perspectives on which a narrative structure can be built.

Consider the typically metaphysical dialectic between idealist and realist. The idealist argues that only a paradox would allow the realist's view to be tested--namely, that we would somehow "see" that the world was not dependent on our seeing it, while the realist argues that the correctness of the idealist's view implies that our common- sense understanding of the world is systematically misleading--a highly improbable hypothesis. Because of the curious way in which this dia- lectic stalemates, Kant would situate it among his "antinomies of rea- son". It will be recalled that Kant assigns to reason a non-constitu- tive role in cognition--which is to say, the difference between realism and idealism would not be manifested simply in terms of different descriptions of the world but in terms of different explanations, which, as we have seen, are distinguished by their reference to counterfactual possibilities. Is causality an intrinsically physical relation that would obtain without the presence of minds? If so, then it is to be explained by physics; if not, then by psychology. But since Kant believed that nothing determinate could be said about counterfactuals, it makes no sense to argue about the relative merits of the two posi- tions--although there may be some value in conducting empirical inquiry as if one or the other were true. Rorty shares Kant's sensibility as

no longer ask what kind of thing is an illusion, but, rather, in what kind of relation does one need to stand to something in order to say that it is an illusion. It can be easily seen that the problematics which follow from these two opening queries are radically different. But notice too that only the latter query preserves the integrity of the philosophical by acknowledging Rorty's point that philosophy has no unique subject-matter.

This observation also suggests an answer to why certain philosophical problems--especially "metaphysical" ones--are so difficult. The re- ceived view is that difficulty arises from an intractable subject- matter, one that does not readily yield to analytical methods and clear argument structures. Since metaphysical problems often seem to demand that some defining feature of reality be encompassed within a single proposition, their insolubility has usually been attributed to the impossibility of arriving at a synoptic vision through the modest methods of discursive reasoning. As a result, and as we have seen, modern intellectual history has been marked by the breakdown of reality into the more manageable pieces that are now the respective phenomena of the sciences. But while this conception of philosophical difficulty plays right into Rorty's hands, I would argue that there is good reason to suspect that it misses the mark entirely, namely, that our actual philosophical diffculties are not illuminated by regarding them as the products of an intractable subject-matter. Rorty may render philoso- phical difficulties insignificant, but he goes no way toward addressing them on their own terms. Intuitively, the symptoms of philosophical difficulty do not so much involve trying to get a sense of the vast range of phenomena under consideration as trying to find an approach that will allow the phenomena to be considered. Once again, the prob- lem is setting up the correct combination of perspectives on which a narrative structure can be built.

Consider the typically metaphysical dialectic between idealist and realist. The idealist argues that only a paradox would allow the realist's view to be tested--namely, that we would somehow "see" that the world was not dependent on our seeing it, while the realist argues that the correctness of the idealist's view implies that our common- sense understanding of the world is systematically misleading--a highly improbable hypothesis. Because of the curious way in which this dia- lectic stalemates, Kant would situate it among his "antinomies of rea- son". It will be recalled that Kant assigns to reason a non-constitu- tive role in cognition--which is to say, the difference between realism and idealism would not be manifested simply in terms of different descriptions of the world but in terms of different explanations, which, as we have seen, are distinguished by their reference to counterfactual possibilities. Is causality an intrinsically physical relation that would obtain without the presence of minds? If so, then it is to be explained by physics; if not, then by psychology. But since Kant believed that nothing determinate could be said about counterfactuals, it makes no sense to argue about the relative merits of the two posi- tions--although there may be some value in conducting empirical inquiry as if one or the other were true. Rorty shares Kant's sensibility as

no longer ask what kind of thing is an illusion, but, rather, in what kind of relation does one need to stand to something in order to say that it is an illusion. It can be easily seen that the problematics which follow from these two opening queries are radically different. But notice too that only the latter query preserves the integrity of the philosophical by acknowledging Rorty's point that philosophy has no unique subject-matter.

This observation also suggests an answer to why certain philosophical problems--especially "metaphysical" ones--are so difficult. The re- ceived view is that difficulty arises from an intractable subject- matter, one that does not readily yield to analytical methods and clear argument structures. Since metaphysical problems often seem to demand that some defining feature of reality be encompassed within a single proposition, their insolubility has usually been attributed to the impossibility of arriving at a synoptic vision through the modest methods of discursive reasoning. As a result, and as we have seen, modern intellectual history has been marked by the breakdown of reality into the more manageable pieces that are now the respective phenomena of the sciences. But while this conception of philosophical difficulty plays right into Rorty's hands, I would argue that there is good reason to suspect that it misses the mark entirely, namely, that our actual philosophical diffculties are not illuminated by regarding them as the products of an intractable subject-matter. Rorty may render philoso- phical difficulties insignificant, but he goes no way toward addressing them on their own terms. Intuitively, the symptoms of philosophical difficulty do not so much involve trying to get a sense of the vast range of phenomena under consideration as trying to find an approach that will allow the phenomena to be considered. Once again, the prob- lem is setting up the correct combination of perspectives on which a narrative structure can be built.

Consider the typically metaphysical dialectic between idealist and realist. The idealist argues that only a paradox would allow the realist's view to be tested--namely, that we would somehow "see" that the world was not dependent on our seeing it, while the realist argues that the correctness of the idealist's view implies that our common- sense understanding of the world is systematically misleading--a highly improbable hypothesis. Because of the curious way in which this dia- lectic stalemates, Kant would situate it among his "antinomies of rea- son". It will be recalled that Kant assigns to reason a non-constitu- tive role in cognition--which is to say, the difference between realism and idealism would not be manifested simply in terms of different descriptions of the world but in terms of different explanations, which, as we have seen, are distinguished by their reference to counterfactual possibilities. Is causality an intrinsically physical relation that would obtain without the presence of minds? If so, then it is to be explained by physics; if not, then by psychology. But since Kant believed that nothing determinate could be said about counterfactuals, it makes no sense to argue about the relative merits of the two posi- tions--although there may be some value in conducting empirical inquiry as if one or the other were true. Rorty shares Kant's sensibility as

no longer ask what kind of thing is an illusion, but, rather, in what kind of relation does one need to stand to something in order to say that it is an illusion. It can be easily seen that the problematics which follow from these two opening queries are radically different. But notice too that only the latter query preserves the integrity of the philosophical by acknowledging Rorty's point that philosophy has no unique subject-matter.

This observation also suggests an answer to why certain philosophical problems--especially "metaphysical" ones--are so difficult. The re- ceived view is that difficulty arises from an intractable subject- matter, one that does not readily yield to analytical methods and clear argument structures. Since metaphysical problems often seem to demand that some defining feature of reality be encompassed within a single proposition, their insolubility has usually been attributed to the impossibility of arriving at a synoptic vision through the modest methods of discursive reasoning. As a result, and as we have seen, modern intellectual history has been marked by the breakdown of reality into the more manageable pieces that are now the respective phenomena of the sciences. But while this conception of philosophical difficulty plays right into Rorty's hands, I would argue that there is good reason to suspect that it misses the mark entirely, namely, that our actual philosophical diffculties are not illuminated by regarding them as the products of an intractable subject-matter. Rorty may render philoso- phical difficulties insignificant, but he goes no way toward addressing them on their own terms. Intuitively, the symptoms of philosophical difficulty do not so much involve trying to get a sense of the vast range of phenomena under consideration as trying to find an approach that will allow the phenomena to be considered. Once again, the prob- lem is setting up the correct combination of perspectives on which a narrative structure can be built.

Consider the typically metaphysical dialectic between idealist and realist. The idealist argues that only a paradox would allow the realist's view to be tested--namely, that we would somehow "see" that the world was not dependent on our seeing it, while the realist argues that the correctness of the idealist's view implies that our common- sense understanding of the world is systematically misleading--a highly improbable hypothesis. Because of the curious way in which this dia- lectic stalemates, Kant would situate it among his "antinomies of rea- son". It will be recalled that Kant assigns to reason a non-constitu- tive role in cognition--which is to say, the difference between realism and idealism would not be manifested simply in terms of different descriptions of the world but in terms of different explanations, which, as we have seen, are distinguished by their reference to counterfactual possibilities. Is causality an intrinsically physical relation that would obtain without the presence of minds? If so, then it is to be explained by physics; if not, then by psychology. But since Kant believed that nothing determinate could be said about counterfactuals, it makes no sense to argue about the relative merits of the two posi- tions--although there may be some value in conducting empirical inquiry as if one or the other were true. Rorty shares Kant's sensibility as

no longer ask what kind of thing is an illusion, but, rather, in what kind of relation does one need to stand to something in order to say that it is an illusion. It can be easily seen that the problematics which follow from these two opening queries are radically different. But notice too that only the latter query preserves the integrity of the philosophical by acknowledging Rorty's point that philosophy has no unique subject-matter.

This observation also suggests an answer to why certain philosophical problems--especially "metaphysical" ones--are so difficult. The re- ceived view is that difficulty arises from an intractable subject- matter, one that does not readily yield to analytical methods and clear argument structures. Since metaphysical problems often seem to demand that some defining feature of reality be encompassed within a single proposition, their insolubility has usually been attributed to the impossibility of arriving at a synoptic vision through the modest methods of discursive reasoning. As a result, and as we have seen, modern intellectual history has been marked by the breakdown of reality into the more manageable pieces that are now the respective phenomena of the sciences. But while this conception of philosophical difficulty plays right into Rorty's hands, I would argue that there is good reason to suspect that it misses the mark entirely, namely, that our actual philosophical diffculties are not illuminated by regarding them as the products of an intractable subject-matter. Rorty may render philoso- phical difficulties insignificant, but he goes no way toward addressing them on their own terms. Intuitively, the symptoms of philosophical difficulty do not so much involve trying to get a sense of the vast range of phenomena under consideration as trying to find an approach that will allow the phenomena to be considered. Once again, the prob- lem is setting up the correct combination of perspectives on which a narrative structure can be built.

Consider the typically metaphysical dialectic between idealist and realist. The idealist argues that only a paradox would allow the realist's view to be tested--namely, that we would somehow "see" that the world was not dependent on our seeing it, while the realist argues that the correctness of the idealist's view implies that our common- sense understanding of the world is systematically misleading--a highly improbable hypothesis. Because of the curious way in which this dia- lectic stalemates, Kant would situate it among his "antinomies of rea- son". It will be recalled that Kant assigns to reason a non-constitu- tive role in cognition--which is to say, the difference between realism and idealism would not be manifested simply in terms of different descriptions of the world but in terms of different explanations, which, as we have seen, are distinguished by their reference to counterfactual possibilities. Is causality an intrinsically physical relation that would obtain without the presence of minds? If so, then it is to be explained by physics; if not, then by psychology. But since Kant believed that nothing determinate could be said about counterfactuals, it makes no sense to argue about the relative merits of the two posi- tions--although there may be some value in conducting empirical inquiry as if one or the other were true. Rorty shares Kant's sensibility as

no longer ask what kind of thing is an illusion, but, rather, in what kind of relation does one need to stand to something in order to say that it is an illusion. It can be easily seen that the problematics which follow from these two opening queries are radically different. But notice too that only the latter query preserves the integrity of the philosophical by acknowledging Rorty's point that philosophy has no unique subject-matter.

This observation also suggests an answer to why certain philosophical problems--especially "metaphysical" ones--are so difficult. The re- ceived view is that difficulty arises from an intractable subject- matter, one that does not readily yield to analytical methods and clear argument structures. Since metaphysical problems often seem to demand that some defining feature of reality be encompassed within a single proposition, their insolubility has usually been attributed to the impossibility of arriving at a synoptic vision through the modest methods of discursive reasoning. As a result, and as we have seen, modern intellectual history has been marked by the breakdown of reality into the more manageable pieces that are now the respective phenomena of the sciences. But while this conception of philosophical difficulty plays right into Rorty's hands, I would argue that there is good reason to suspect that it misses the mark entirely, namely, that our actual philosophical diffculties are not illuminated by regarding them as the products of an intractable subject-matter. Rorty may render philoso- phical difficulties insignificant, but he goes no way toward addressing them on their own terms. Intuitively, the symptoms of philosophical difficulty do not so much involve trying to get a sense of the vast range of phenomena under consideration as trying to find an approach that will allow the phenomena to be considered. Once again, the prob- lem is setting up the correct combination of perspectives on which a narrative structure can be built.

Consider the typically metaphysical dialectic between idealist and realist. The idealist argues that only a paradox would allow the realist's view to be tested--namely, that we would somehow "see" that the world was not dependent on our seeing it, while the realist argues that the correctness of the idealist's view implies that our common- sense understanding of the world is systematically misleading--a highly improbable hypothesis. Because of the curious way in which this dia- lectic stalemates, Kant would situate it among his "antinomies of rea- son". It will be recalled that Kant assigns to reason a non-constitu- tive role in cognition--which is to say, the difference between realism and idealism would not be manifested simply in terms of different descriptions of the world but in terms of different explanations, which, as we have seen, are distinguished by their reference to counterfactual possibilities. Is causality an intrinsically physical relation that would obtain without the presence of minds? If so, then it is to be explained by physics; if not, then by psychology. But since Kant believed that nothing determinate could be said about counterfactuals, it makes no sense to argue about the relative merits of the two posi- tions--although there may be some value in conducting empirical inquiry as if one or the other were true. Rorty shares Kant's sensibility as

no longer ask what kind of thing is an illusion, but, rather, in what kind of relation does one need to stand to something in order to say that it is an illusion. It can be easily seen that the problematics which follow from these two opening queries are radically different. But notice too that only the latter query preserves the integrity of the philosophical by acknowledging Rorty's point that philosophy has no unique subject-matter.

This observation also suggests an answer to why certain philosophical problems--especially "metaphysical" ones--are so difficult. The re- ceived view is that difficulty arises from an intractable subject- matter, one that does not readily yield to analytical methods and clear argument structures. Since metaphysical problems often seem to demand that some defining feature of reality be encompassed within a single proposition, their insolubility has usually been attributed to the impossibility of arriving at a synoptic vision through the modest methods of discursive reasoning. As a result, and as we have seen, modern intellectual history has been marked by the breakdown of reality into the more manageable pieces that are now the respective phenomena of the sciences. But while this conception of philosophical difficulty plays right into Rorty's hands, I would argue that there is good reason to suspect that it misses the mark entirely, namely, that our actual philosophical diffculties are not illuminated by regarding them as the products of an intractable subject-matter. Rorty may render philoso- phical difficulties insignificant, but he goes no way toward addressing them on their own terms. Intuitively, the symptoms of philosophical difficulty do not so much involve trying to get a sense of the vast range of phenomena under consideration as trying to find an approach that will allow the phenomena to be considered. Once again, the prob- lem is setting up the correct combination of perspectives on which a narrative structure can be built.

Consider the typically metaphysical dialectic between idealist and realist. The idealist argues that only a paradox would allow the realist's view to be tested--namely, that we would somehow "see" that the world was not dependent on our seeing it, while the realist argues that the correctness of the idealist's view implies that our common- sense understanding of the world is systematically misleading--a highly improbable hypothesis. Because of the curious way in which this dia- lectic stalemates, Kant would situate it among his "antinomies of rea- son". It will be recalled that Kant assigns to reason a non-constitu- tive role in cognition--which is to say, the difference between realism and idealism would not be manifested simply in terms of different descriptions of the world but in terms of different explanations, which, as we have seen, are distinguished by their reference to counterfactual possibilities. Is causality an intrinsically physical relation that would obtain without the presence of minds? If so, then it is to be explained by physics; if not, then by psychology. But since Kant believed that nothing determinate could be said about counterfactuals, it makes no sense to argue about the relative merits of the two posi- tions--although there may be some value in conducting empirical inquiry as if one or the other were true. Rorty shares Kant's sensibility as

no longer ask what kind of thing is an illusion, but, rather, in what kind of relation does one need to stand to something in order to say that it is an illusion. It can be easily seen that the problematics which follow from these two opening queries are radically different. But notice too that only the latter query preserves the integrity of the philosophical by acknowledging Rorty's point that philosophy has no unique subject-matter.

This observation also suggests an answer to why certain philosophical problems--especially "metaphysical" ones--are so difficult. The re- ceived view is that difficulty arises from an intractable subject- matter, one that does not readily yield to analytical methods and clear argument structures. Since metaphysical problems often seem to demand that some defining feature of reality be encompassed within a single proposition, their insolubility has usually been attributed to the impossibility of arriving at a synoptic vision through the modest methods of discursive reasoning. As a result, and as we have seen, modern intellectual history has been marked by the breakdown of reality into the more manageable pieces that are now the respective phenomena of the sciences. But while this conception of philosophical difficulty plays right into Rorty's hands, I would argue that there is good reason to suspect that it misses the mark entirely, namely, that our actual philosophical diffculties are not illuminated by regarding them as the products of an intractable subject-matter. Rorty may render philoso- phical difficulties insignificant, but he goes no way toward addressing them on their own terms. Intuitively, the symptoms of philosophical difficulty do not so much involve trying to get a sense of the vast range of phenomena under consideration as trying to find an approach that will allow the phenomena to be considered. Once again, the prob- lem is setting up the correct combination of perspectives on which a narrative structure can be built.

Consider the typically metaphysical dialectic between idealist and realist. The idealist argues that only a paradox would allow the realist's view to be tested--namely, that we would somehow "see" that the world was not dependent on our seeing it, while the realist argues that the correctness of the idealist's view implies that our common- sense understanding of the world is systematically misleading--a highly improbable hypothesis. Because of the curious way in which this dia- lectic stalemates, Kant would situate it among his "antinomies of rea- son". It will be recalled that Kant assigns to reason a non-constitu- tive role in cognition--which is to say, the difference between realism and idealism would not be manifested simply in terms of different descriptions of the world but in terms of different explanations, which, as we have seen, are distinguished by their reference to counterfactual possibilities. Is causality an intrinsically physical relation that would obtain without the presence of minds? If so, then it is to be explained by physics; if not, then by psychology. But since Kant believed that nothing determinate could be said about counterfactuals, it makes no sense to argue about the relative merits of the two posi- tions--although there may be some value in conducting empirical inquiry as if one or the other were true. Rorty shares Kant's sensibility as

no longer ask what kind of thing is an illusion, but, rather, in what kind of relation does one need to stand to something in order to say that it is an illusion. It can be easily seen that the problematics which follow from these two opening queries are radically different. But notice too that only the latter query preserves the integrity of the philosophical by acknowledging Rorty's point that philosophy has no unique subject-matter.

This observation also suggests an answer to why certain philosophical problems--especially "metaphysical" ones--are so difficult. The re- ceived view is that difficulty arises from an intractable subject- matter, one that does not readily yield to analytical methods and clear argument structures. Since metaphysical problems often seem to demand that some defining feature of reality be encompassed within a single proposition, their insolubility has usually been attributed to the impossibility of arriving at a synoptic vision through the modest methods of discursive reasoning. As a result, and as we have seen, modern intellectual history has been marked by the breakdown of reality into the more manageable pieces that are now the respective phenomena of the sciences. But while this conception of philosophical difficulty plays right into Rorty's hands, I would argue that there is good reason to suspect that it misses the mark entirely, namely, that our actual philosophical diffculties are not illuminated by regarding them as the products of an intractable subject-matter. Rorty may render philoso- phical difficulties insignificant, but he goes no way toward addressing them on their own terms. Intuitively, the symptoms of philosophical difficulty do not so much involve trying to get a sense of the vast range of phenomena under consideration as trying to find an approach that will allow the phenomena to be considered. Once again, the prob- lem is setting up the correct combination of perspectives on which a narrative structure can be built.

Consider the typically metaphysical dialectic between idealist and realist. The idealist argues that only a paradox would allow the realist's view to be tested--namely, that we would somehow "see" that the world was not dependent on our seeing it, while the realist argues that the correctness of the idealist's view implies that our common- sense understanding of the world is systematically misleading--a highly improbable hypothesis. Because of the curious way in which this dia- lectic stalemates, Kant would situate it among his "antinomies of rea- son". It will be recalled that Kant assigns to reason a non-constitu- tive role in cognition--which is to say, the difference between realism and idealism would not be manifested simply in terms of different descriptions of the world but in terms of different explanations, which, as we have seen, are distinguished by their reference to counterfactual possibilities. Is causality an intrinsically physical relation that would obtain without the presence of minds? If so, then it is to be explained by physics; if not, then by psychology. But since Kant believed that nothing determinate could be said about counterfactuals, it makes no sense to argue about the relative merits of the two posi- tions--although there may be some value in conducting empirical inquiry as if one or the other were true. Rorty shares Kant's sensibility as

no longer ask what kind of thing is an illusion, but, rather, in what kind of relation does one need to stand to something in order to say that it is an illusion. It can be easily seen that the problematics which follow from these two opening queries are radically different. But notice too that only the latter query preserves the integrity of the philosophical by acknowledging Rorty's point that philosophy has no unique subject-matter.

This observation also suggests an answer to why certain philosophical problems--especially "metaphysical" ones--are so difficult. The re- ceived view is that difficulty arises from an intractable subject- matter, one that does not readily yield to analytical methods and clear argument structures. Since metaphysical problems often seem to demand that some defining feature of reality be encompassed within a single proposition, their insolubility has usually been attributed to the impossibility of arriving at a synoptic vision through the modest methods of discursive reasoning. As a result, and as we have seen, modern intellectual history has been marked by the breakdown of reality into the more manageable pieces that are now the respective phenomena of the sciences. But while this conception of philosophical difficulty plays right into Rorty's hands, I would argue that there is good reason to suspect that it misses the mark entirely, namely, that our actual philosophical diffculties are not illuminated by regarding them as the products of an intractable subject-matter. Rorty may render philoso- phical difficulties insignificant, but he goes no way toward addressing them on their own terms. Intuitively, the symptoms of philosophical difficulty do not so much involve trying to get a sense of the vast range of phenomena under consideration as trying to find an approach that will allow the phenomena to be considered. Once again, the prob- lem is setting up the correct combination of perspectives on which a narrative structure can be built.

Consider the typically metaphysical dialectic between idealist and realist. The idealist argues that only a paradox would allow the realist's view to be tested--namely, that we would somehow "see" that the world was not dependent on our seeing it, while the realist argues that the correctness of the idealist's view implies that our common- sense understanding of the world is systematically misleading--a highly improbable hypothesis. Because of the curious way in which this dia- lectic stalemates, Kant would situate it among his "antinomies of rea- son". It will be recalled that Kant assigns to reason a non-constitu- tive role in cognition--which is to say, the difference between realism and idealism would not be manifested simply in terms of different descriptions of the world but in terms of different explanations, which, as we have seen, are distinguished by their reference to counterfactual possibilities. Is causality an intrinsically physical relation that would obtain without the presence of minds? If so, then it is to be explained by physics; if not, then by psychology. But since Kant believed that nothing determinate could be said about counterfactuals, it makes no sense to argue about the relative merits of the two posi- tions--although there may be some value in conducting empirical inquiry as if one or the other were true. Rorty shares Kant's sensibility as

no longer ask what kind of thing is an illusion, but, rather, in what kind of relation does one need to stand to something in order to say that it is an illusion. It can be easily seen that the problematics which follow from these two opening queries are radically different. But notice too that only the latter query preserves the integrity of the philosophical by acknowledging Rorty's point that philosophy has no unique subject-matter.

This observation also suggests an answer to why certain philosophical problems--especially "metaphysical" ones--are so difficult. The re- ceived view is that difficulty arises from an intractable subject- matter, one that does not readily yield to analytical methods and clear argument structures. Since metaphysical problems often seem to demand that some defining feature of reality be encompassed within a single proposition, their insolubility has usually been attributed to the impossibility of arriving at a synoptic vision through the modest methods of discursive reasoning. As a result, and as we have seen, modern intellectual history has been marked by the breakdown of reality into the more manageable pieces that are now the respective phenomena of the sciences. But while this conception of philosophical difficulty plays right into Rorty's hands, I would argue that there is good reason to suspect that it misses the mark entirely, namely, that our actual philosophical diffculties are not illuminated by regarding them as the products of an intractable subject-matter. Rorty may render philoso- phical difficulties insignificant, but he goes no way toward addressing them on their own terms. Intuitively, the symptoms of philosophical difficulty do not so much involve trying to get a sense of the vast range of phenomena under consideration as trying to find an approach that will allow the phenomena to be considered. Once again, the prob- lem is setting up the correct combination of perspectives on which a narrative structure can be built.

Consider the typically metaphysical dialectic between idealist and realist. The idealist argues that only a paradox would allow the realist's view to be tested--namely, that we would somehow "see" that the world was not dependent on our seeing it, while the realist argues that the correctness of the idealist's view implies that our common- sense understanding of the world is systematically misleading--a highly improbable hypothesis. Because of the curious way in which this dia- lectic stalemates, Kant would situate it among his "antinomies of rea- son". It will be recalled that Kant assigns to reason a non-constitu- tive role in cognition--which is to say, the difference between realism and idealism would not be manifested simply in terms of different descriptions of the world but in terms of different explanations, which, as we have seen, are distinguished by their reference to counterfactual possibilities. Is causality an intrinsically physical relation that would obtain without the presence of minds? If so, then it is to be explained by physics; if not, then by psychology. But since Kant believed that nothing determinate could be said about counterfactuals, it makes no sense to argue about the relative merits of the two posi- tions--although there may be some value in conducting empirical inquiry as if one or the other were true. Rorty shares Kant's sensibility as

no longer ask what kind of thing is an illusion, but, rather, in what kind of relation does one need to stand to something in order to say that it is an illusion. It can be easily seen that the problematics which follow from these two opening queries are radically different. But notice too that only the latter query preserves the integrity of the philosophical by acknowledging Rorty's point that philosophy has no unique subject-matter.

This observation also suggests an answer to why certain philosophical problems--especially "metaphysical" ones--are so difficult. The re- ceived view is that difficulty arises from an intractable subject- matter, one that does not readily yield to analytical methods and clear argument structures. Since metaphysical problems often seem to demand that some defining feature of reality be encompassed within a single proposition, their insolubility has usually been attributed to the impossibility of arriving at a synoptic vision through the modest methods of discursive reasoning. As a result, and as we have seen, modern intellectual history has been marked by the breakdown of reality into the more manageable pieces that are now the respective phenomena of the sciences. But while this conception of philosophical difficulty plays right into Rorty's hands, I would argue that there is good reason to suspect that it misses the mark entirely, namely, that our actual philosophical diffculties are not illuminated by regarding them as the products of an intractable subject-matter. Rorty may render philoso- phical difficulties insignificant, but he goes no way toward addressing them on their own terms. Intuitively, the symptoms of philosophical difficulty do not so much involve trying to get a sense of the vast range of phenomena under consideration as trying to find an approach that will allow the phenomena to be considered. Once again, the prob- lem is setting up the correct combination of perspectives on which a narrative structure can be built.

Consider the typically metaphysical dialectic between idealist and realist. The idealist argues that only a paradox would allow the realist's view to be tested--namely, that we would somehow "see" that the world was not dependent on our seeing it, while the realist argues that the correctness of the idealist's view implies that our common- sense understanding of the world is systematically misleading--a highly improbable hypothesis. Because of the curious way in which this dia- lectic stalemates, Kant would situate it among his "antinomies of rea- son". It will be recalled that Kant assigns to reason a non-constitu- tive role in cognition--which is to say, the difference between realism and idealism would not be manifested simply in terms of different descriptions of the world but in terms of different explanations, which, as we have seen, are distinguished by their reference to counterfactual possibilities. Is causality an intrinsically physical relation that would obtain without the presence of minds? If so, then it is to be explained by physics; if not, then by psychology. But since Kant believed that nothing determinate could be said about counterfactuals, it makes no sense to argue about the relative merits of the two posi- tions--although there may be some value in conducting empirical inquiry as if one or the other were true. Rorty shares Kant's sensibility as

no longer ask what kind of thing is an illusion, but, rather, in what kind of relation does one need to stand to something in order to say that it is an illusion. It can be easily seen that the problematics which follow from these two opening queries are radically different. But notice too that only the latter query preserves the integrity of the philosophical by acknowledging Rorty's point that philosophy has no unique subject-matter.

This observation also suggests an answer to why certain philosophical problems--especially "metaphysical" ones--are so difficult. The re- ceived view is that difficulty arises from an intractable subject- matter, one that does not readily yield to analytical methods and clear argument structures. Since metaphysical problems often seem to demand that some defining feature of reality be encompassed within a single proposition, their insolubility has usually been attributed to the impossibility of arriving at a synoptic vision through the modest methods of discursive reasoning. As a result, and as we have seen, modern intellectual history has been marked by the breakdown of reality into the more manageable pieces that are now the respective phenomena of the sciences. But while this conception of philosophical difficulty plays right into Rorty's hands, I would argue that there is good reason to suspect that it misses the mark entirely, namely, that our actual philosophical diffculties are not illuminated by regarding them as the products of an intractable subject-matter. Rorty may render philoso- phical difficulties insignificant, but he goes no way toward addressing them on their own terms. Intuitively, the symptoms of philosophical difficulty do not so much involve trying to get a sense of the vast range of phenomena under consideration as trying to find an approach that will allow the phenomena to be considered. Once again, the prob- lem is setting up the correct combination of perspectives on which a narrative structure can be built.

Consider the typically metaphysical dialectic between idealist and realist. The idealist argues that only a paradox would allow the realist's view to be tested--namely, that we would somehow "see" that the world was not dependent on our seeing it, while the realist argues that the correctness of the idealist's view implies that our common- sense understanding of the world is systematically misleading--a highly improbable hypothesis. Because of the curious way in which this dia- lectic stalemates, Kant would situate it among his "antinomies of rea- son". It will be recalled that Kant assigns to reason a non-constitu- tive role in cognition--which is to say, the difference between realism and idealism would not be manifested simply in terms of different descriptions of the world but in terms of different explanations, which, as we have seen, are distinguished by their reference to counterfactual possibilities. Is causality an intrinsically physical relation that would obtain without the presence of minds? If so, then it is to be explained by physics; if not, then by psychology. But since Kant believed that nothing determinate could be said about counterfactuals, it makes no sense to argue about the relative merits of the two posi- tions--although there may be some value in conducting empirical inquiry as if one or the other were true. Rorty shares Kant's sensibility as

no longer ask what kind of thing is an illusion, but, rather, in what kind of relation does one need to stand to something in order to say that it is an illusion. It can be easily seen that the problematics which follow from these two opening queries are radically different. But notice too that only the latter query preserves the integrity of the philosophical by acknowledging Rorty's point that philosophy has no unique subject-matter.

This observation also suggests an answer to why certain philosophical problems--especially "metaphysical" ones--are so difficult. The re- ceived view is that difficulty arises from an intractable subject- matter, one that does not readily yield to analytical methods and clear argument structures. Since metaphysical problems often seem to demand that some defining feature of reality be encompassed within a single proposition, their insolubility has usually been attributed to the impossibility of arriving at a synoptic vision through the modest methods of discursive reasoning. As a result, and as we have seen, modern intellectual history has been marked by the breakdown of reality into the more manageable pieces that are now the respective phenomena of the sciences. But while this conception of philosophical difficulty plays right into Rorty's hands, I would argue that there is good reason to suspect that it misses the mark entirely, namely, that our actual philosophical diffculties are not illuminated by regarding them as the products of an intractable subject-matter. Rorty may render philoso- phical difficulties insignificant, but he goes no way toward addressing them on their own terms. Intuitively, the symptoms of philosophical difficulty do not so much involve trying to get a sense of the vast range of phenomena under consideration as trying to find an approach that will allow the phenomena to be considered. Once again, the prob- lem is setting up the correct combination of perspectives on which a narrative structure can be built.

Consider the typically metaphysical dialectic between idealist and realist. The idealist argues that only a paradox would allow the realist's view to be tested--namely, that we would somehow "see" that the world was not dependent on our seeing it, while the realist argues that the correctness of the idealist's view implies that our common- sense understanding of the world is systematically misleading--a highly improbable hypothesis. Because of the curious way in which this dia- lectic stalemates, Kant would situate it among his "antinomies of rea- son". It will be recalled that Kant assigns to reason a non-constitu- tive role in cognition--which is to say, the difference between realism and idealism would not be manifested simply in terms of different descriptions of the world but in terms of different explanations, which, as we have seen, are distinguished by their reference to counterfactual possibilities. Is causality an intrinsically physical relation that would obtain without the presence of minds? If so, then it is to be explained by physics; if not, then by psychology. But since Kant believed that nothing determinate could be said about counterfactuals, it makes no sense to argue about the relative merits of the two posi- tions--although there may be some value in conducting empirical inquiry as if one or the other were true. Rorty shares Kant's sensibility as

no longer ask what kind of thing is an illusion, but, rather, in what kind of relation does one need to stand to something in order to say that it is an illusion. It can be easily seen that the problematics which follow from these two opening queries are radically different. But notice too that only the latter query preserves the integrity of the philosophical by acknowledging Rorty's point that philosophy has no unique subject-matter.

This observation also suggests an answer to why certain philosophical problems--especially "metaphysical" ones--are so difficult. The re- ceived view is that difficulty arises from an intractable subject- matter, one that does not readily yield to analytical methods and clear argument structures. Since metaphysical problems often seem to demand that some defining feature of reality be encompassed within a single proposition, their insolubility has usually been attributed to the impossibility of arriving at a synoptic vision through the modest methods of discursive reasoning. As a result, and as we have seen, modern intellectual history has been marked by the breakdown of reality into the more manageable pieces that are now the respective phenomena of the sciences. But while this conception of philosophical difficulty plays right into Rorty's hands, I would argue that there is good reason to suspect that it misses the mark entirely, namely, that our actual philosophical diffculties are not illuminated by regarding them as the products of an intractable subject-matter. Rorty may render philoso- phical difficulties insignificant, but he goes no way toward addressing them on their own terms. Intuitively, the symptoms of philosophical difficulty do not so much involve trying to get a sense of the vast range of phenomena under consideration as trying to find an approach that will allow the phenomena to be considered. Once again, the prob- lem is setting up the correct combination of perspectives on which a narrative structure can be built.

Consider the typically metaphysical dialectic between idealist and realist. The idealist argues that only a paradox would allow the realist's view to be tested--namely, that we would somehow "see" that the world was not dependent on our seeing it, while the realist argues that the correctness of the idealist's view implies that our common- sense understanding of the world is systematically misleading--a highly improbable hypothesis. Because of the curious way in which this dia- lectic stalemates, Kant would situate it among his "antinomies of rea- son". It will be recalled that Kant assigns to reason a non-constitu- tive role in cognition--which is to say, the difference between realism and idealism would not be manifested simply in terms of different descriptions of the world but in terms of different explanations, which, as we have seen, are distinguished by their reference to counterfactual possibilities. Is causality an intrinsically physical relation that would obtain without the presence of minds? If so, then it is to be explained by physics; if not, then by psychology. But since Kant believed that nothing determinate could be said about counterfactuals, it makes no sense to argue about the relative merits of the two posi- tions--although there may be some value in conducting empirical inquiry as if one or the other were true. Rorty shares Kant's sensibility as

no longer ask what kind of thing is an illusion, but, rather, in what kind of relation does one need to stand to something in order to say that it is an illusion. It can be easily seen that the problematics which follow from these two opening queries are radically different. But notice too that only the latter query preserves the integrity of the philosophical by acknowledging Rorty's point that philosophy has no unique subject-matter.

This observation also suggests an answer to why certain philosophical problems--especially "metaphysical" ones--are so difficult. The re- ceived view is that difficulty arises from an intractable subject- matter, one that does not readily yield to analytical methods and clear argument structures. Since metaphysical problems often seem to demand that some defining feature of reality be encompassed within a single proposition, their insolubility has usually been attributed to the impossibility of arriving at a synoptic vision through the modest methods of discursive reasoning. As a result, and as we have seen, modern intellectual history has been marked by the breakdown of reality into the more manageable pieces that are now the respective phenomena of the sciences. But while this conception of philosophical difficulty plays right into Rorty's hands, I would argue that there is good reason to suspect that it misses the mark entirely, namely, that our actual philosophical diffculties are not illuminated by regarding them as the products of an intractable subject-matter. Rorty may render philoso- phical difficulties insignificant, but he goes no way toward addressing them on their own terms. Intuitively, the symptoms of philosophical difficulty do not so much involve trying to get a sense of the vast range of phenomena under consideration as trying to find an approach that will allow the phenomena to be considered. Once again, the prob- lem is setting up the correct combination of perspectives on which a narrative structure can be built.

Consider the typically metaphysical dialectic between idealist and realist. The idealist argues that only a paradox would allow the realist's view to be tested--namely, that we would somehow "see" that the world was not dependent on our seeing it, while the realist argues that the correctness of the idealist's view implies that our common- sense understanding of the world is systematically misleading--a highly improbable hypothesis. Because of the curious way in which this dia- lectic stalemates, Kant would situate it among his "antinomies of rea- son". It will be recalled that Kant assigns to reason a non-constitu- tive role in cognition--which is to say, the difference between realism and idealism would not be manifested simply in terms of different descriptions of the world but in terms of different explanations, which, as we have seen, are distinguished by their reference to counterfactual possibilities. Is causality an intrinsically physical relation that would obtain without the presence of minds? If so, then it is to be explained by physics; if not, then by psychology. But since Kant believed that nothing determinate could be said about counterfactuals, it makes no sense to argue about the relative merits of the two posi- tions--although there may be some value in conducting empirical inquiry as if one or the other were true. Rorty shares Kant's sensibility as

no longer ask what kind of thing is an illusion, but, rather, in what kind of relation does one need to stand to something in order to say that it is an illusion. It can be easily seen that the problematics which follow from these two opening queries are radically different. But notice too that only the latter query preserves the integrity of the philosophical by acknowledging Rorty's point that philosophy has no unique subject-matter.

This observation also suggests an answer to why certain philosophical problems--especially "metaphysical" ones--are so difficult. The re- ceived view is that difficulty arises from an intractable subject- matter, one that does not readily yield to analytical methods and clear argument structures. Since metaphysical problems often seem to demand that some defining feature of reality be encompassed within a single proposition, their insolubility has usually been attributed to the impossibility of arriving at a synoptic vision through the modest methods of discursive reasoning. As a result, and as we have seen, modern intellectual history has been marked by the breakdown of reality into the more manageable pieces that are now the respective phenomena of the sciences. But while this conception of philosophical difficulty plays right into Rorty's hands, I would argue that there is good reason to suspect that it misses the mark entirely, namely, that our actual philosophical diffculties are not illuminated by regarding them as the products of an intractable subject-matter. Rorty may render philoso- phical difficulties insignificant, but he goes no way toward addressing them on their own terms. Intuitively, the symptoms of philosophical difficulty do not so much involve trying to get a sense of the vast range of phenomena under consideration as trying to find an approach that will allow the phenomena to be considered. Once again, the prob- lem is setting up the correct combination of perspectives on which a narrative structure can be built.

Consider the typically metaphysical dialectic between idealist and realist. The idealist argues that only a paradox would allow the realist's view to be tested--namely, that we would somehow "see" that the world was not dependent on our seeing it, while the realist argues that the correctness of the idealist's view implies that our common- sense understanding of the world is systematically misleading--a highly improbable hypothesis. Because of the curious way in which this dia- lectic stalemates, Kant would situate it among his "antinomies of rea- son". It will be recalled that Kant assigns to reason a non-constitu- tive role in cognition--which is to say, the difference between realism and idealism would not be manifested simply in terms of different descriptions of the world but in terms of different explanations, which, as we have seen, are distinguished by their reference to counterfactual possibilities. Is causality an intrinsically physical relation that would obtain without the presence of minds? If so, then it is to be explained by physics; if not, then by psychology. But since Kant believed that nothing determinate could be said about counterfactuals, it makes no sense to argue about the relative merits of the two posi- tions--although there may be some value in conducting empirical inquiry as if one or the other were true. Rorty shares Kant's sensibility as

no longer ask what kind of thing is an illusion, but, rather, in what kind of relation does one need to stand to something in order to say that it is an illusion. It can be easily seen that the problematics which follow from these two opening queries are radically different. But notice too that only the latter query preserves the integrity of the philosophical by acknowledging Rorty's point that philosophy has no unique subject-matter.

This observation also suggests an answer to why certain philosophical problems--especially "metaphysical" ones--are so difficult. The re- ceived view is that difficulty arises from an intractable subject- matter, one that does not readily yield to analytical methods and clear argument structures. Since metaphysical problems often seem to demand that some defining feature of reality be encompassed within a single proposition, their insolubility has usually been attributed to the impossibility of arriving at a synoptic vision through the modest methods of discursive reasoning. As a result, and as we have seen, modern intellectual history has been marked by the breakdown of reality into the more manageable pieces that are now the respective phenomena of the sciences. But while this conception of philosophical difficulty plays right into Rorty's hands, I would argue that there is good reason to suspect that it misses the mark entirely, namely, that our actual philosophical diffculties are not illuminated by regarding them as the products of an intractable subject-matter. Rorty may render philoso- phical difficulties insignificant, but he goes no way toward addressing them on their own terms. Intuitively, the symptoms of philosophical difficulty do not so much involve trying to get a sense of the vast range of phenomena under consideration as trying to find an approach that will allow the phenomena to be considered. Once again, the prob- lem is setting up the correct combination of perspectives on which a narrative structure can be built.

Consider the typically metaphysical dialectic between idealist and realist. The idealist argues that only a paradox would allow the realist's view to be tested--namely, that we would somehow "see" that the world was not dependent on our seeing it, while the realist argues that the correctness of the idealist's view implies that our common- sense understanding of the world is systematically misleading--a highly improbable hypothesis. Because of the curious way in which this dia- lectic stalemates, Kant would situate it among his "antinomies of rea- son". It will be recalled that Kant assigns to reason a non-constitu- tive role in cognition--which is to say, the difference between realism and idealism would not be manifested simply in terms of different descriptions of the world but in terms of different explanations, which, as we have seen, are distinguished by their reference to counterfactual possibilities. Is causality an intrinsically physical relation that would obtain without the presence of minds? If so, then it is to be explained by physics; if not, then by psychology. But since Kant believed that nothing determinate could be said about counterfactuals, it makes no sense to argue about the relative merits of the two posi- tions--although there may be some value in conducting empirical inquiry as if one or the other were true. Rorty shares Kant's sensibility as

no longer ask what kind of thing is an illusion, but, rather, in what kind of relation does one need to stand to something in order to say that it is an illusion. It can be easily seen that the problematics which follow from these two opening queries are radically different. But notice too that only the latter query preserves the integrity of the philosophical by acknowledging Rorty's point that philosophy has no unique subject-matter.

This observation also suggests an answer to why certain philosophical problems--especially "metaphysical" ones--are so difficult. The re- ceived view is that difficulty arises from an intractable subject- matter, one that does not readily yield to analytical methods and clear argument structures. Since metaphysical problems often seem to demand that some defining feature of reality be encompassed within a single proposition, their insolubility has usually been attributed to the impossibility of arriving at a synoptic vision through the modest methods of discursive reasoning. As a result, and as we have seen, modern intellectual history has been marked by the breakdown of reality into the more manageable pieces that are now the respective phenomena of the sciences. But while this conception of philosophical difficulty plays right into Rorty's hands, I would argue that there is good reason to suspect that it misses the mark entirely, namely, that our actual philosophical diffculties are not illuminated by regarding them as the products of an intractable subject-matter. Rorty may render philoso- phical difficulties insignificant, but he goes no way toward addressing them on their own terms. Intuitively, the symptoms of philosophical difficulty do not so much involve trying to get a sense of the vast range of phenomena under consideration as trying to find an approach that will allow the phenomena to be considered. Once again, the prob- lem is setting up the correct combination of perspectives on which a narrative structure can be built.

Consider the typically metaphysical dialectic between idealist and realist. The idealist argues that only a paradox would allow the realist's view to be tested--namely, that we would somehow "see" that the world was not dependent on our seeing it, while the realist argues that the correctness of the idealist's view implies that our common- sense understanding of the world is systematically misleading--a highly improbable hypothesis. Because of the curious way in which this dia- lectic stalemates, Kant would situate it among his "antinomies of rea- son". It will be recalled that Kant assigns to reason a non-constitu- tive role in cognition--which is to say, the difference between realism and idealism would not be manifested simply in terms of different descriptions of the world but in terms of different explanations, which, as we have seen, are distinguished by their reference to counterfactual possibilities. Is causality an intrinsically physical relation that would obtain without the presence of minds? If so, then it is to be explained by physics; if not, then by psychology. But since Kant believed that nothing determinate could be said about counterfactuals, it makes no sense to argue about the relative merits of the two posi- tions--although there may be some value in conducting empirical inquiry as if one or the other were true. Rorty shares Kant's sensibility as

no longer ask what kind of thing is an illusion, but, rather, in what kind of relation does one need to stand to something in order to say that it is an illusion. It can be easily seen that the problematics which follow from these two opening queries are radically different. But notice too that only the latter query preserves the integrity of the philosophical by acknowledging Rorty's point that philosophy has no unique subject-matter.

This observation also suggests an answer to why certain philosophical problems--especially "metaphysical" ones--are so difficult. The re- ceived view is that difficulty arises from an intractable subject- matter, one that does not readily yield to analytical methods and clear argument structures. Since metaphysical problems often seem to demand that some defining feature of reality be encompassed within a single proposition, their insolubility has usually been attributed to the impossibility of arriving at a synoptic vision through the modest methods of discursive reasoning. As a result, and as we have seen, modern intellectual history has been marked by the breakdown of reality into the more manageable pieces that are now the respective phenomena of the sciences. But while this conception of philosophical difficulty plays right into Rorty's hands, I would argue that there is good reason to suspect that it misses the mark entirely, namely, that our actual philosophical diffculties are not illuminated by regarding them as the products of an intractable subject-matter. Rorty may render philoso- phical difficulties insignificant, but he goes no way toward addressing them on their own terms. Intuitively, the symptoms of philosophical difficulty do not so much involve trying to get a sense of the vast range of phenomena under consideration as trying to find an approach that will allow the phenomena to be considered. Once again, the prob- lem is setting up the correct combination of perspectives on which a narrative structure can be built.

Consider the typically metaphysical dialectic between idealist and realist. The idealist argues that only a paradox would allow the realist's view to be tested--namely, that we would somehow "see" that the world was not dependent on our seeing it, while the realist argues that the correctness of the idealist's view implies that our common- sense understanding of the world is systematically misleading--a highly improbable hypothesis. Because of the curious way in which this dia- lectic stalemates, Kant would situate it among his "antinomies of rea- son". It will be recalled that Kant assigns to reason a non-constitu- tive role in cognition--which is to say, the difference between realism and idealism would not be manifested simply in terms of different descriptions of the world but in terms of different explanations, which, as we have seen, are distinguished by their reference to counterfactual possibilities. Is causality an intrinsically physical relation that would obtain without the presence of minds? If so, then it is to be explained by physics; if not, then by psychology. But since Kant believed that nothing determinate could be said about counterfactuals, it makes no sense to argue about the relative merits of the two posi- tions--although there may be some value in conducting empirical inquiry as if one or the other were true. Rorty shares Kant's sensibility as

no longer ask what kind of thing is an illusion, but, rather, in what kind of relation does one need to stand to something in order to say that it is an illusion. It can be easily seen that the problematics which follow from these two opening queries are radically different. But notice too that only the latter query preserves the integrity of the philosophical by acknowledging Rorty's point that philosophy has no unique subject-matter.

This observation also suggests an answer to why certain philosophical problems--especially "metaphysical" ones--are so difficult. The re- ceived view is that difficulty arises from an intractable subject- matter, one that does not readily yield to analytical methods and clear argument structures. Since metaphysical problems often seem to demand that some defining feature of reality be encompassed within a single proposition, their insolubility has usually been attributed to the impossibility of arriving at a synoptic vision through the modest methods of discursive reasoning. As a result, and as we have seen, modern intellectual history has been marked by the breakdown of reality into the more manageable pieces that are now the respective phenomena of the sciences. But while this conception of philosophical difficulty plays right into Rorty's hands, I would argue that there is good reason to suspect that it misses the mark entirely, namely, that our actual philosophical diffculties are not illuminated by regarding them as the products of an intractable subject-matter. Rorty may render philoso- phical difficulties insignificant, but he goes no way toward addressing them on their own terms. Intuitively, the symptoms of philosophical difficulty do not so much involve trying to get a sense of the vast range of phenomena under consideration as trying to find an approach that will allow the phenomena to be considered. Once again, the prob- lem is setting up the correct combination of perspectives on which a narrative structure can be built.

Consider the typically metaphysical dialectic between idealist and realist. The idealist argues that only a paradox would allow the realist's view to be tested--namely, that we would somehow "see" that the world was not dependent on our seeing it, while the realist argues that the correctness of the idealist's view implies that our common- sense understanding of the world is systematically misleading--a highly improbable hypothesis. Because of the curious way in which this dia- lectic stalemates, Kant would situate it among his "antinomies of rea- son". It will be recalled that Kant assigns to reason a non-constitu- tive role in cognition--which is to say, the difference between realism and idealism would not be manifested simply in terms of different descriptions of the world but in terms of different explanations, which, as we have seen, are distinguished by their reference to counterfactual possibilities. Is causality an intrinsically physical relation that would obtain without the presence of minds? If so, then it is to be explained by physics; if not, then by psychology. But since Kant believed that nothing determinate could be said about counterfactuals, it makes no sense to argue about the relative merits of the two posi- tions--although there may be some value in conducting empirical inquiry as if one or the other were true. Rorty shares Kant's sensibility as

no longer ask what kind of thing is an illusion, but, rather, in what kind of relation does one need to stand to something in order to say that it is an illusion. It can be easily seen that the problematics which follow from these two opening queries are radically different. But notice too that only the latter query preserves the integrity of the philosophical by acknowledging Rorty's point that philosophy has no unique subject-matter.

This observation also suggests an answer to why certain philosophical problems--especially "metaphysical" ones--are so difficult. The re- ceived view is that difficulty arises from an intractable subject- matter, one that does not readily yield to analytical methods and clear argument structures. Since metaphysical problems often seem to demand that some defining feature of reality be encompassed within a single proposition, their insolubility has usually been attributed to the impossibility of arriving at a synoptic vision through the modest methods of discursive reasoning. As a result, and as we have seen, modern intellectual history has been marked by the breakdown of reality into the more manageable pieces that are now the respective phenomena of the sciences. But while this conception of philosophical difficulty plays right into Rorty's hands, I would argue that there is good reason to suspect that it misses the mark entirely, namely, that our actual philosophical diffculties are not illuminated by regarding them as the products of an intractable subject-matter. Rorty may render philoso- phical difficulties insignificant, but he goes no way toward addressing them on their own terms. Intuitively, the symptoms of philosophical difficulty do not so much involve trying to get a sense of the vast range of phenomena under consideration as trying to find an approach that will allow the phenomena to be considered. Once again, the prob- lem is setting up the correct combination of perspectives on which a narrative structure can be built.

Consider the typically metaphysical dialectic between idealist and realist. The idealist argues that only a paradox would allow the realist's view to be tested--namely, that we would somehow "see" that the world was not dependent on our seeing it, while the realist argues that the correctness of the idealist's view implies that our common- sense understanding of the world is systematically misleading--a highly improbable hypothesis. Because of the curious way in which this dia- lectic stalemates, Kant would situate it among his "antinomies of rea- son". It will be recalled that Kant assigns to reason a non-constitu- tive role in cognition--which is to say, the difference between realism and idealism would not be manifested simply in terms of different descriptions of the world but in terms of different explanations, which, as we have seen, are distinguished by their reference to counterfactual possibilities. Is causality an intrinsically physical relation that would obtain without the presence of minds? If so, then it is to be explained by physics; if not, then by psychology. But since Kant believed that nothing determinate could be said about counterfactuals, it makes no sense to argue about the relative merits of the two posi- tions--although there may be some value in conducting empirical inquiry as if one or the other were true. Rorty shares Kant's sensibility as

no longer ask what kind of thing is an illusion, but, rather, in what kind of relation does one need to stand to something in order to say that it is an illusion. It can be easily seen that the problematics which follow from these two opening queries are radically different. But notice too that only the latter query preserves the integrity of the philosophical by acknowledging Rorty's point that philosophy has no unique subject-matter.

This observation also suggests an answer to why certain philosophical problems--especially "metaphysical" ones--are so difficult. The re- ceived view is that difficulty arises from an intractable subject- matter, one that does not readily yield to analytical methods and clear argument structures. Since metaphysical problems often seem to demand that some defining feature of reality be encompassed within a single proposition, their insolubility has usually been attributed to the impossibility of arriving at a synoptic vision through the modest methods of discursive reasoning. As a result, and as we have seen, modern intellectual history has been marked by the breakdown of reality into the more manageable pieces that are now the respective phenomena of the sciences. But while this conception of philosophical difficulty plays right into Rorty's hands, I would argue that there is good reason to suspect that it misses the mark entirely, namely, that our actual philosophical diffculties are not illuminated by regarding them as the products of an intractable subject-matter. Rorty may render philoso- phical difficulties insignificant, but he goes no way toward addressing them on their own terms. Intuitively, the symptoms of philosophical difficulty do not so much involve trying to get a sense of the vast range of phenomena under consideration as trying to find an approach that will allow the phenomena to be considered. Once again, the prob- lem is setting up the correct combination of perspectives on which a narrative structure can be built.

Consider the typically metaphysical dialectic between idealist and realist. The idealist argues that only a paradox would allow the realist's view to be tested--namely, that we would somehow "see" that the world was not dependent on our seeing it, while the realist argues that the correctness of the idealist's view implies that our common- sense understanding of the world is systematically misleading--a highly improbable hypothesis. Because of the curious way in which this dia- lectic stalemates, Kant would situate it among his "antinomies of rea- son". It will be recalled that Kant assigns to reason a non-constitu- tive role in cognition--which is to say, the difference between realism and idealism would not be manifested simply in terms of different descriptions of the world but in terms of different explanations, which, as we have seen, are distinguished by their reference to counterfactual possibilities. Is causality an intrinsically physical relation that would obtain without the presence of minds? If so, then it is to be explained by physics; if not, then by psychology. But since Kant believed that nothing determinate could be said about counterfactuals, it makes no sense to argue about the relative merits of the two posi- tions--although there may be some value in conducting empirical inquiry as if one or the other were true. Rorty shares Kant's sensibility as

no longer ask what kind of thing is an illusion, but, rather, in what kind of relation does one need to stand to something in order to say that it is an illusion. It can be easily seen that the problematics which follow from these two opening queries are radically different. But notice too that only the latter query preserves the integrity of the philosophical by acknowledging Rorty's point that philosophy has no unique subject-matter.

This observation also suggests an answer to why certain philosophical problems--especially "metaphysical" ones--are so difficult. The re- ceived view is that difficulty arises from an intractable subject- matter, one that does not readily yield to analytical methods and clear argument structures. Since metaphysical problems often seem to demand that some defining feature of reality be encompassed within a single proposition, their insolubility has usually been attributed to the impossibility of arriving at a synoptic vision through the modest methods of discursive reasoning. As a result, and as we have seen, modern intellectual history has been marked by the breakdown of reality into the more manageable pieces that are now the respective phenomena of the sciences. But while this conception of philosophical difficulty plays right into Rorty's hands, I would argue that there is good reason to suspect that it misses the mark entirely, namely, that our actual philosophical diffculties are not illuminated by regarding them as the products of an intractable subject-matter. Rorty may render philoso- phical difficulties insignificant, but he goes no way toward addressing them on their own terms. Intuitively, the symptoms of philosophical difficulty do not so much involve trying to get a sense of the vast range of phenomena under consideration as trying to find an approach that will allow the phenomena to be considered. Once again, the prob- lem is setting up the correct combination of perspectives on which a narrative structure can be built.

Consider the typically metaphysical dialectic between idealist and realist. The idealist argues that only a paradox would allow the realist's view to be tested--namely, that we would somehow "see" that the world was not dependent on our seeing it, while the realist argues that the correctness of the idealist's view implies that our common- sense understanding of the world is systematically misleading--a highly improbable hypothesis. Because of the curious way in which this dia- lectic stalemates, Kant would situate it among his "antinomies of rea- son". It will be recalled that Kant assigns to reason a non-constitu- tive role in cognition--which is to say, the difference between realism and idealism would not be manifested simply in terms of different descriptions of the world but in terms of different explanations, which, as we have seen, are distinguished by their reference to counterfactual possibilities. Is causality an intrinsically physical relation that would obtain without the presence of minds? If so, then it is to be explained by physics; if not, then by psychology. But since Kant believed that nothing determinate could be said about counterfactuals, it makes no sense to argue about the relative merits of the two posi- tions--although there may be some value in conducting empirical inquiry as if one or the other were true. Rorty shares Kant's sensibility as

no longer ask what kind of thing is an illusion, but, rather, in what kind of relation does one need to stand to something in order to say that it is an illusion. It can be easily seen that the problematics which follow from these two opening queries are radically different. But notice too that only the latter query preserves the integrity of the philosophical by acknowledging Rorty's point that philosophy has no unique subject-matter.

This observation also suggests an answer to why certain philosophical problems--especially "metaphysical" ones--are so difficult. The re- ceived view is that difficulty arises from an intractable subject- matter, one that does not readily yield to analytical methods and clear argument structures. Since metaphysical problems often seem to demand that some defining feature of reality be encompassed within a single proposition, their insolubility has usually been attributed to the impossibility of arriving at a synoptic vision through the modest methods of discursive reasoning. As a result, and as we have seen, modern intellectual history has been marked by the breakdown of reality into the more manageable pieces that are now the respective phenomena of the sciences. But while this conception of philosophical difficulty plays right into Rorty's hands, I would argue that there is good reason to suspect that it misses the mark entirely, namely, that our actual philosophical diffculties are not illuminated by regarding them as the products of an intractable subject-matter. Rorty may render philoso- phical difficulties insignificant, but he goes no way toward addressing them on their own terms. Intuitively, the symptoms of philosophical difficulty do not so much involve trying to get a sense of the vast range of phenomena under consideration as trying to find an approach that will allow the phenomena to be considered. Once again, the prob- lem is setting up the correct combination of perspectives on which a narrative structure can be built.

Consider the typically metaphysical dialectic between idealist and realist. The idealist argues that only a paradox would allow the realist's view to be tested--namely, that we would somehow "see" that the world was not dependent on our seeing it, while the realist argues that the correctness of the idealist's view implies that our common- sense understanding of the world is systematically misleading--a highly improbable hypothesis. Because of the curious way in which this dia- lectic stalemates, Kant would situate it among his "antinomies of rea- son". It will be recalled that Kant assigns to reason a non-constitu- tive role in cognition--which is to say, the difference between realism and idealism would not be manifested simply in terms of different descriptions of the world but in terms of different explanations, which, as we have seen, are distinguished by their reference to counterfactual possibilities. Is causality an intrinsically physical relation that would obtain without the presence of minds? If so, then it is to be explained by physics; if not, then by psychology. But since Kant believed that nothing determinate could be said about counterfactuals, it makes no sense to argue about the relative merits of the two posi- tions--although there may be some value in conducting empirical inquiry as if one or the other were true. Rorty shares Kant's sensibility as

no longer ask what kind of thing is an illusion, but, rather, in what kind of relation does one need to stand to something in order to say that it is an illusion. It can be easily seen that the problematics which follow from these two opening queries are radically different. But notice too that only the latter query preserves the integrity of the philosophical by acknowledging Rorty's point that philosophy has no unique subject-matter.

This observation also suggests an answer to why certain philosophical problems--especially "metaphysical" ones--are so difficult. The re- ceived view is that difficulty arises from an intractable subject- matter, one that does not readily yield to analytical methods and clear argument structures. Since metaphysical problems often seem to demand that some defining feature of reality be encompassed within a single proposition, their insolubility has usually been attributed to the impossibility of arriving at a synoptic vision through the modest methods of discursive reasoning. As a result, and as we have seen, modern intellectual history has been marked by the breakdown of reality into the more manageable pieces that are now the respective phenomena of the sciences. But while this conception of philosophical difficulty plays right into Rorty's hands, I would argue that there is good reason to suspect that it misses the mark entirely, namely, that our actual philosophical diffculties are not illuminated by regarding them as the products of an intractable subject-matter. Rorty may render philoso- phical difficulties insignificant, but he goes no way toward addressing them on their own terms. Intuitively, the symptoms of philosophical difficulty do not so much involve trying to get a sense of the vast range of phenomena under consideration as trying to find an approach that will allow the phenomena to be considered. Once again, the prob- lem is setting up the correct combination of perspectives on which a narrative structure can be built.

Consider the typically metaphysical dialectic between idealist and realist. The idealist argues that only a paradox would allow the realist's view to be tested--namely, that we would somehow "see" that the world was not dependent on our seeing it, while the realist argues that the correctness of the idealist's view implies that our common- sense understanding of the world is systematically misleading--a highly improbable hypothesis. Because of the curious way in which this dia- lectic stalemates, Kant would situate it among his "antinomies of rea- son". It will be recalled that Kant assigns to reason a non-constitu- tive role in cognition--which is to say, the difference between realism and idealism would not be manifested simply in terms of different descriptions of the world but in terms of different explanations, which, as we have seen, are distinguished by their reference to counterfactual possibilities. Is causality an intrinsically physical relation that would obtain without the presence of minds? If so, then it is to be explained by physics; if not, then by psychology. But since Kant believed that nothing determinate could be said about counterfactuals, it makes no sense to argue about the relative merits of the two posi- tions--although there may be some value in conducting empirical inquiry as if one or the other were true. Rorty shares Kant's sensibility as

no longer ask what kind of thing is an illusion, but, rather, in what kind of relation does one need to stand to something in order to say that it is an illusion. It can be easily seen that the problematics which follow from these two opening queries are radically different. But notice too that only the latter query preserves the integrity of the philosophical by acknowledging Rorty's point that philosophy has no unique subject-matter.

This observation also suggests an answer to why certain philosophical problems--especially "metaphysical" ones--are so difficult. The re- ceived view is that difficulty arises from an intractable subject- matter, one that does not readily yield to analytical methods and clear argument structures. Since metaphysical problems often seem to demand that some defining feature of reality be encompassed within a single proposition, their insolubility has usually been attributed to the impossibility of arriving at a synoptic vision through the modest methods of discursive reasoning. As a result, and as we have seen, modern intellectual history has been marked by the breakdown of reality into the more manageable pieces that are now the respective phenomena of the sciences. But while this conception of philosophical difficulty plays right into Rorty's hands, I would argue that there is good reason to suspect that it misses the mark entirely, namely, that our actual philosophical diffculties are not illuminated by regarding them as the products of an intractable subject-matter. Rorty may render philoso- phical difficulties insignificant, but he goes no way toward addressing them on their own terms. Intuitively, the symptoms of philosophical difficulty do not so much involve trying to get a sense of the vast range of phenomena under consideration as trying to find an approach that will allow the phenomena to be considered. Once again, the prob- lem is setting up the correct combination of perspectives on which a narrative structure can be built.

Consider the typically metaphysical dialectic between idealist and realist. The idealist argues that only a paradox would allow the realist's view to be tested--namely, that we would somehow "see" that the world was not dependent on our seeing it, while the realist argues that the correctness of the idealist's view implies that our common- sense understanding of the world is systematically misleading--a highly improbable hypothesis. Because of the curious way in which this dia- lectic stalemates, Kant would situate it among his "antinomies of rea- son". It will be recalled that Kant assigns to reason a non-constitu- tive role in cognition--which is to say, the difference between realism and idealism would not be manifested simply in terms of different descriptions of the world but in terms of different explanations, which, as we have seen, are distinguished by their reference to counterfactual possibilities. Is causality an intrinsically physical relation that would obtain without the presence of minds? If so, then it is to be explained by physics; if not, then by psychology. But since Kant believed that nothing determinate could be said about counterfactuals, it makes no sense to argue about the relative merits of the two posi- tions--although there may be some value in conducting empirical inquiry as if one or the other were true. Rorty shares Kant's sensibility as

no longer ask what kind of thing is an illusion, but, rather, in what kind of relation does one need to stand to something in order to say that it is an illusion. It can be easily seen that the problematics which follow from these two opening queries are radically different. But notice too that only the latter query preserves the integrity of the philosophical by acknowledging Rorty's point that philosophy has no unique subject-matter.

This observation also suggests an answer to why certain philosophical problems--especially "metaphysical" ones--are so difficult. The re- ceived view is that difficulty arises from an intractable subject- matter, one that does not readily yield to analytical methods and clear argument structures. Since metaphysical problems often seem to demand that some defining feature of reality be encompassed within a single proposition, their insolubility has usually been attributed to the impossibility of arriving at a synoptic vision through the modest methods of discursive reasoning. As a result, and as we have seen, modern intellectual history has been marked by the breakdown of reality into the more manageable pieces that are now the respective phenomena of the sciences. But while this conception of philosophical difficulty plays right into Rorty's hands, I would argue that there is good reason to suspect that it misses the mark entirely, namely, that our actual philosophical diffculties are not illuminated by regarding them as the products of an intractable subject-matter. Rorty may render philoso- phical difficulties insignificant, but he goes no way toward addressing them on their own terms. Intuitively, the symptoms of philosophical difficulty do not so much involve trying to get a sense of the vast range of phenomena under consideration as trying to find an approach that will allow the phenomena to be considered. Once again, the prob- lem is setting up the correct combination of perspectives on which a narrative structure can be built.

Consider the typically metaphysical dialectic between idealist and realist. The idealist argues that only a paradox would allow the realist's view to be tested--namely, that we would somehow "see" that the world was not dependent on our seeing it, while the realist argues that the correctness of the idealist's view implies that our common- sense understanding of the world is systematically misleading--a highly improbable hypothesis. Because of the curious way in which this dia- lectic stalemates, Kant would situate it among his "antinomies of rea- son". It will be recalled that Kant assigns to reason a non-constitu- tive role in cognition--which is to say, the difference between realism and idealism would not be manifested simply in terms of different descriptions of the world but in terms of different explanations, which, as we have seen, are distinguished by their reference to counterfactual possibilities. Is causality an intrinsically physical relation that would obtain without the presence of minds? If so, then it is to be explained by physics; if not, then by psychology. But since Kant believed that nothing determinate could be said about counterfactuals, it makes no sense to argue about the relative merits of the two posi- tions--although there may be some value in conducting empirical inquiry as if one or the other were true. Rorty shares Kant's sensibility as

no longer ask what kind of thing is an illusion, but, rather, in what kind of relation does one need to stand to something in order to say that it is an illusion. It can be easily seen that the problematics which follow from these two opening queries are radically different. But notice too that only the latter query preserves the integrity of the philosophical by acknowledging Rorty's point that philosophy has no unique subject-matter.

This observation also suggests an answer to why certain philosophical problems--especially "metaphysical" ones--are so difficult. The re- ceived view is that difficulty arises from an intractable subject- matter, one that does not readily yield to analytical methods and clear argument structures. Since metaphysical problems often seem to demand that some defining feature of reality be encompassed within a single proposition, their insolubility has usually been attributed to the impossibility of arriving at a synoptic vision through the modest methods of discursive reasoning. As a result, and as we have seen, modern intellectual history has been marked by the breakdown of reality into the more manageable pieces that are now the respective phenomena of the sciences. But while this conception of philosophical difficulty plays right into Rorty's hands, I would argue that there is good reason to suspect that it misses the mark entirely, namely, that our actual philosophical diffculties are not illuminated by regarding them as the products of an intractable subject-matter. Rorty may render philoso- phical difficulties insignificant, but he goes no way toward addressing them on their own terms. Intuitively, the symptoms of philosophical difficulty do not so much involve trying to get a sense of the vast range of phenomena under consideration as trying to find an approach that will allow the phenomena to be considered. Once again, the prob- lem is setting up the correct combination of perspectives on which a narrative structure can be built.

Consider the typically metaphysical dialectic between idealist and realist. The idealist argues that only a paradox would allow the realist's view to be tested--namely, that we would somehow "see" that the world was not dependent on our seeing it, while the realist argues that the correctness of the idealist's view implies that our common- sense understanding of the world is systematically misleading--a highly improbable hypothesis. Because of the curious way in which this dia- lectic stalemates, Kant would situate it among his "antinomies of rea- son". It will be recalled that Kant assigns to reason a non-constitu- tive role in cognition--which is to say, the difference between realism and idealism would not be manifested simply in terms of different descriptions of the world but in terms of different explanations, which, as we have seen, are distinguished by their reference to counterfactual possibilities. Is causality an intrinsically physical relation that would obtain without the presence of minds? If so, then it is to be explained by physics; if not, then by psychology. But since Kant believed that nothing determinate could be said about counterfactuals, it makes no sense to argue about the relative merits of the two posi- tions--although there may be some value in conducting empirical inquiry as if one or the other were true. Rorty shares Kant's sensibility as

no longer ask what kind of thing is an illusion, but, rather, in what kind of relation does one need to stand to something in order to say that it is an illusion. It can be easily seen that the problematics which follow from these two opening queries are radically different. But notice too that only the latter query preserves the integrity of the philosophical by acknowledging Rorty's point that philosophy has no unique subject-matter.

This observation also suggests an answer to why certain philosophical problems--especially "metaphysical" ones--are so difficult. The re- ceived view is that difficulty arises from an intractable subject- matter, one that does not readily yield to analytical methods and clear argument structures. Since metaphysical problems often seem to demand that some defining feature of reality be encompassed within a single proposition, their insolubility has usually been attributed to the impossibility of arriving at a synoptic vision through the modest methods of discursive reasoning. As a result, and as we have seen, modern intellectual history has been marked by the breakdown of reality into the more manageable pieces that are now the respective phenomena of the sciences. But while this conception of philosophical difficulty plays right into Rorty's hands, I would argue that there is good reason to suspect that it misses the mark entirely, namely, that our actual philosophical diffculties are not illuminated by regarding them as the products of an intractable subject-matter. Rorty may render philoso- phical difficulties insignificant, but he goes no way toward addressing them on their own terms. Intuitively, the symptoms of philosophical difficulty do not so much involve trying to get a sense of the vast range of phenomena under consideration as trying to find an approach that will allow the phenomena to be considered. Once again, the prob- lem is setting up the correct combination of perspectives on which a narrative structure can be built.

Consider the typically metaphysical dialectic between idealist and realist. The idealist argues that only a paradox would allow the realist's view to be tested--namely, that we would somehow "see" that the world was not dependent on our seeing it, while the realist argues that the correctness of the idealist's view implies that our common- sense understanding of the world is systematically misleading--a highly improbable hypothesis. Because of the curious way in which this dia- lectic stalemates, Kant would situate it among his "antinomies of rea- son". It will be recalled that Kant assigns to reason a non-constitu- tive role in cognition--which is to say, the difference between realism and idealism would not be manifested simply in terms of different descriptions of the world but in terms of different explanations, which, as we have seen, are distinguished by their reference to counterfactual possibilities. Is causality an intrinsically physical relation that would obtain without the presence of minds? If so, then it is to be explained by physics; if not, then by psychology. But since Kant believed that nothing determinate could be said about counterfactuals, it makes no sense to argue about the relative merits of the two posi- tions--although there may be some value in conducting empirical inquiry as if one or the other were true. Rorty shares Kant's sensibility as

no longer ask what kind of thing is an illusion, but, rather, in what kind of relation does one need to stand to something in order to say that it is an illusion. It can be easily seen that the problematics which follow from these two opening queries are radically different. But notice too that only the latter query preserves the integrity of the philosophical by acknowledging Rorty's point that philosophy has no unique subject-matter.

This observation also suggests an answer to why certain philosophical problems--especially "metaphysical" ones--are so difficult. The re- ceived view is that difficulty arises from an intractable subject- matter, one that does not readily yield to analytical methods and clear argument structures. Since metaphysical problems often seem to demand that some defining feature of reality be encompassed within a single proposition, their insolubility has usually been attributed to the impossibility of arriving at a synoptic vision through the modest methods of discursive reasoning. As a result, and as we have seen, modern intellectual history has been marked by the breakdown of reality into the more manageable pieces that are now the respective phenomena of the sciences. But while this conception of philosophical difficulty plays right into Rorty's hands, I would argue that there is good reason to suspect that it misses the mark entirely, namely, that our actual philosophical diffculties are not illuminated by regarding them as the products of an intractable subject-matter. Rorty may render philoso- phical difficulties insignificant, but he goes no way toward addressing them on their own terms. Intuitively, the symptoms of philosophical difficulty do not so much involve trying to get a sense of the vast range of phenomena under consideration as trying to find an approach that will allow the phenomena to be considered. Once again, the prob- lem is setting up the correct combination of perspectives on which a narrative structure can be built.

Consider the typically metaphysical dialectic between idealist and realist. The idealist argues that only a paradox would allow the realist's view to be tested--namely, that we would somehow "see" that the world was not dependent on our seeing it, while the realist argues that the correctness of the idealist's view implies that our common- sense understanding of the world is systematically misleading--a highly improbable hypothesis. Because of the curious way in which this dia- lectic stalemates, Kant would situate it among his "antinomies of rea- son". It will be recalled that Kant assigns to reason a non-constitu- tive role in cognition--which is to say, the difference between realism and idealism would not be manifested simply in terms of different descriptions of the world but in terms of different explanations, which, as we have seen, are distinguished by their reference to counterfactual possibilities. Is causality an intrinsically physical relation that would obtain without the presence of minds? If so, then it is to be explained by physics; if not, then by psychology. But since Kant believed that nothing determinate could be said about counterfactuals, it makes no sense to argue about the relative merits of the two posi- tions--although there may be some value in conducting empirical inquiry as if one or the other were true. Rorty shares Kant's sensibility as

no longer ask what kind of thing is an illusion, but, rather, in what kind of relation does one need to stand to something in order to say that it is an illusion. It can be easily seen that the problematics which follow from these two opening queries are radically different. But notice too that only the latter query preserves the integrity of the philosophical by acknowledging Rorty's point that philosophy has no unique subject-matter.

This observation also suggests an answer to why certain philosophical problems--especially "metaphysical" ones--are so difficult. The re- ceived view is that difficulty arises from an intractable subject- matter, one that does not readily yield to analytical methods and clear argument structures. Since metaphysical problems often seem to demand that some defining feature of reality be encompassed within a single proposition, their insolubility has usually been attributed to the impossibility of arriving at a synoptic vision through the modest methods of discursive reasoning. As a result, and as we have seen, modern intellectual history has been marked by the breakdown of reality into the more manageable pieces that are now the respective phenomena of the sciences. But while this conception of philosophical difficulty plays right into Rorty's hands, I would argue that there is good reason to suspect that it misses the mark entirely, namely, that our actual philosophical diffculties are not illuminated by regarding them as the products of an intractable subject-matter. Rorty may render philoso- phical difficulties insignificant, but he goes no way toward addressing them on their own terms. Intuitively, the symptoms of philosophical difficulty do not so much involve trying to get a sense of the vast range of phenomena under consideration as trying to find an approach that will allow the phenomena to be considered. Once again, the prob- lem is setting up the correct combination of perspectives on which a narrative structure can be built.

Consider the typically metaphysical dialectic between idealist and realist. The idealist argues that only a paradox would allow the realist's view to be tested--namely, that we would somehow "see" that the world was not dependent on our seeing it, while the realist argues that the correctness of the idealist's view implies that our common- sense understanding of the world is systematically misleading--a highly improbable hypothesis. Because of the curious way in which this dia- lectic stalemates, Kant would situate it among his "antinomies of rea- son". It will be recalled that Kant assigns to reason a non-constitu- tive role in cognition--which is to say, the difference between realism and idealism would not be manifested simply in terms of different descriptions of the world but in terms of different explanations, which, as we have seen, are distinguished by their reference to counterfactual possibilities. Is causality an intrinsically physical relation that would obtain without the presence of minds? If so, then it is to be explained by physics; if not, then by psychology. But since Kant believed that nothing determinate could be said about counterfactuals, it makes no sense to argue about the relative merits of the two posi- tions--although there may be some value in conducting empirical inquiry as if one or the other were true. Rorty shares Kant's sensibility as

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to how disagreements should be resolved--namely, by appealing to whe- ther one saw the right thing, and not whether he saw it from the right perspective. Since metaphysical disputes do not fit the former cate- gory, they are difficult; and historically speaking, since Kant they have become disagreeably difficult, such that today it is taken for granted that differences in perspective cannot be evaluated. But given the current rejection of any simple-minded empiricism, we should also say that the Kantian intuition behind counterfactuals having indeter- minate truth-values--namely, the impossibility of there ever being suf- ficiently "direct" evidence either to confirm or disconfirm them--is at least questionable. Indeed, we should consider what we need to see not happening in order to "merely" describe the impact of one ball on another, to explain it as something psychological, and to explain it as something physical. We would see then that what happens and what does not happen are equally "direct" and of equal evidentiary worth--and, as we have suggested, this is all in virtue of the explainer's stance toward the phenomena being integral to his explanation.

And again we see how the literary critic may help the philosopher, insofar as the former is a "strategist of difficulty", an expert in making judgments about what combination of voices will yield a narra- tive structure more or less capable of accomodating certain plots, ad- dressing certain themes, and so forth. Posing a problem can be fruit- fully regarded as "setting the stage" for an explanation, a metaphor that the critic Kenneth Burke has in fact used as a reduction language for reconstituting and evaluating metaphysical systems. The fact that he uses this metaphor for both constitutive and evaluative purposes reveals an interesting anti-Kantian intuition that deserves to be cultivated in philosophy. The intuition, common to many species of idealism, is that if you believe everything in the universe to be cau- sally or intentionally interconnected, then it is reasonable to con- clude that something epitomizes these connections so as to clearly reflect the structure of reality. Burke's microcosm is the drama; for many theists it is man himself ("the image and likeness of God"). Modern science has been drawn between the machine and the organism. But although these two metaphors also mix constitutive and evaluative concerns, most philosophers of science would argue that they function only in a pseudo-constitutive capacity. In other words, a metaphor models the phenomena until it gets evaluated as a literally false des- cription. Still, the evaluative relation may be reversed, with confor- mity to or enrichment of the metaphor being the basis on which to judge the relevance, rather than the truth, of a given phenomenon. In other words, something that does not fit the metaphor well is not very sig- nificant.

But how is one to argue about significance? Before succumbing to Rorty's counsel of self-negation, I suggest that philosophers look at the very conceptual apparatus of contemporary literary criticism-- semiotics and rhetoric--that Peirce, a century ago, said formed (with logic) the cornerstone of philosophical thinking. It might well be that we will need to start conceiving of argumentation in a new light, and here I can only offer a clue. Suppose I propose that "p" is

to how disagreements should be resolved--namely, by appealing to whe- ther one saw the right thing, and not whether he saw it from the right perspective. Since metaphysical disputes do not fit the former cate- gory, they are difficult; and historically speaking, since Kant they have become disagreeably difficult, such that today it is taken for granted that differences in perspective cannot be evaluated. But given the current rejection of any simple-minded empiricism, we should also say that the Kantian intuition behind counterfactuals having indeter- minate truth-values--namely, the impossibility of there ever being suf- ficiently "direct" evidence either to confirm or disconfirm them--is at least questionable. Indeed, we should consider what we need to see not happening in order to "merely" describe the impact of one ball on another, to explain it as something psychological, and to explain it as something physical. We would see then that what happens and what does not happen are equally "direct" and of equal evidentiary worth--and, as we have suggested, this is all in virtue of the explainer's stance toward the phenomena being integral to his explanation.

And again we see how the literary critic may help the philosopher, insofar as the former is a "strategist of difficulty", an expert in making judgments about what combination of voices will yield a narra- tive structure more or less capable of accomodating certain plots, ad- dressing certain themes, and so forth. Posing a problem can be fruit- fully regarded as "setting the stage" for an explanation, a metaphor that the critic Kenneth Burke has in fact used as a reduction language for reconstituting and evaluating metaphysical systems. The fact that he uses this metaphor for both constitutive and evaluative purposes reveals an interesting anti-Kantian intuition that deserves to be cultivated in philosophy. The intuition, common to many species of idealism, is that if you believe everything in the universe to be cau- sally or intentionally interconnected, then it is reasonable to con- clude that something epitomizes these connections so as to clearly reflect the structure of reality. Burke's microcosm is the drama; for many theists it is man himself ("the image and likeness of God"). Modern science has been drawn between the machine and the organism. But although these two metaphors also mix constitutive and evaluative concerns, most philosophers of science would argue that they function only in a pseudo-constitutive capacity. In other words, a metaphor models the phenomena until it gets evaluated as a literally false des- cription. Still, the evaluative relation may be reversed, with confor- mity to or enrichment of the metaphor being the basis on which to judge the relevance, rather than the truth, of a given phenomenon. In other words, something that does not fit the metaphor well is not very sig- nificant.

But how is one to argue about significance? Before succumbing to Rorty's counsel of self-negation, I suggest that philosophers look at the very conceptual apparatus of contemporary literary criticism-- semiotics and rhetoric--that Peirce, a century ago, said formed (with logic) the cornerstone of philosophical thinking. It might well be that we will need to start conceiving of argumentation in a new light, and here I can only offer a clue. Suppose I propose that "p" is

to how disagreements should be resolved--namely, by appealing to whe- ther one saw the right thing, and not whether he saw it from the right perspective. Since metaphysical disputes do not fit the former cate- gory, they are difficult; and historically speaking, since Kant they have become disagreeably difficult, such that today it is taken for granted that differences in perspective cannot be evaluated. But given the current rejection of any simple-minded empiricism, we should also say that the Kantian intuition behind counterfactuals having indeter- minate truth-values--namely, the impossibility of there ever being suf- ficiently "direct" evidence either to confirm or disconfirm them--is at least questionable. Indeed, we should consider what we need to see not happening in order to "merely" describe the impact of one ball on another, to explain it as something psychological, and to explain it as something physical. We would see then that what happens and what does not happen are equally "direct" and of equal evidentiary worth--and, as we have suggested, this is all in virtue of the explainer's stance toward the phenomena being integral to his explanation.

And again we see how the literary critic may help the philosopher, insofar as the former is a "strategist of difficulty", an expert in making judgments about what combination of voices will yield a narra- tive structure more or less capable of accomodating certain plots, ad- dressing certain themes, and so forth. Posing a problem can be fruit- fully regarded as "setting the stage" for an explanation, a metaphor that the critic Kenneth Burke has in fact used as a reduction language for reconstituting and evaluating metaphysical systems. The fact that he uses this metaphor for both constitutive and evaluative purposes reveals an interesting anti-Kantian intuition that deserves to be cultivated in philosophy. The intuition, common to many species of idealism, is that if you believe everything in the universe to be cau- sally or intentionally interconnected, then it is reasonable to con- clude that something epitomizes these connections so as to clearly reflect the structure of reality. Burke's microcosm is the drama; for many theists it is man himself ("the image and likeness of God"). Modern science has been drawn between the machine and the organism. But although these two metaphors also mix constitutive and evaluative concerns, most philosophers of science would argue that they function only in a pseudo-constitutive capacity. In other words, a metaphor models the phenomena until it gets evaluated as a literally false des- cription. Still, the evaluative relation may be reversed, with confor- mity to or enrichment of the metaphor being the basis on which to judge the relevance, rather than the truth, of a given phenomenon. In other words, something that does not fit the metaphor well is not very sig- nificant.

But how is one to argue about significance? Before succumbing to Rorty's counsel of self-negation, I suggest that philosophers look at the very conceptual apparatus of contemporary literary criticism-- semiotics and rhetoric--that Peirce, a century ago, said formed (with logic) the cornerstone of philosophical thinking. It might well be that we will need to start conceiving of argumentation in a new light, and here I can only offer a clue. Suppose I propose that "p" is

to how disagreements should be resolved--namely, by appealing to whe- ther one saw the right thing, and not whether he saw it from the right perspective. Since metaphysical disputes do not fit the former cate- gory, they are difficult; and historically speaking, since Kant they have become disagreeably difficult, such that today it is taken for granted that differences in perspective cannot be evaluated. But given the current rejection of any simple-minded empiricism, we should also say that the Kantian intuition behind counterfactuals having indeter- minate truth-values--namely, the impossibility of there ever being suf- ficiently "direct" evidence either to confirm or disconfirm them--is at least questionable. Indeed, we should consider what we need to see not happening in order to "merely" describe the impact of one ball on another, to explain it as something psychological, and to explain it as something physical. We would see then that what happens and what does not happen are equally "direct" and of equal evidentiary worth--and, as we have suggested, this is all in virtue of the explainer's stance toward the phenomena being integral to his explanation.

And again we see how the literary critic may help the philosopher, insofar as the former is a "strategist of difficulty", an expert in making judgments about what combination of voices will yield a narra- tive structure more or less capable of accomodating certain plots, ad- dressing certain themes, and so forth. Posing a problem can be fruit- fully regarded as "setting the stage" for an explanation, a metaphor that the critic Kenneth Burke has in fact used as a reduction language for reconstituting and evaluating metaphysical systems. The fact that he uses this metaphor for both constitutive and evaluative purposes reveals an interesting anti-Kantian intuition that deserves to be cultivated in philosophy. The intuition, common to many species of idealism, is that if you believe everything in the universe to be cau- sally or intentionally interconnected, then it is reasonable to con- clude that something epitomizes these connections so as to clearly reflect the structure of reality. Burke's microcosm is the drama; for many theists it is man himself ("the image and likeness of God"). Modern science has been drawn between the machine and the organism. But although these two metaphors also mix constitutive and evaluative concerns, most philosophers of science would argue that they function only in a pseudo-constitutive capacity. In other words, a metaphor models the phenomena until it gets evaluated as a literally false des- cription. Still, the evaluative relation may be reversed, with confor- mity to or enrichment of the metaphor being the basis on which to judge the relevance, rather than the truth, of a given phenomenon. In other words, something that does not fit the metaphor well is not very sig- nificant.

But how is one to argue about significance? Before succumbing to Rorty's counsel of self-negation, I suggest that philosophers look at the very conceptual apparatus of contemporary literary criticism-- semiotics and rhetoric--that Peirce, a century ago, said formed (with logic) the cornerstone of philosophical thinking. It might well be that we will need to start conceiving of argumentation in a new light, and here I can only offer a clue. Suppose I propose that "p" is

to how disagreements should be resolved--namely, by appealing to whe- ther one saw the right thing, and not whether he saw it from the right perspective. Since metaphysical disputes do not fit the former cate- gory, they are difficult; and historically speaking, since Kant they have become disagreeably difficult, such that today it is taken for granted that differences in perspective cannot be evaluated. But given the current rejection of any simple-minded empiricism, we should also say that the Kantian intuition behind counterfactuals having indeter- minate truth-values--namely, the impossibility of there ever being suf- ficiently "direct" evidence either to confirm or disconfirm them--is at least questionable. Indeed, we should consider what we need to see not happening in order to "merely" describe the impact of one ball on another, to explain it as something psychological, and to explain it as something physical. We would see then that what happens and what does not happen are equally "direct" and of equal evidentiary worth--and, as we have suggested, this is all in virtue of the explainer's stance toward the phenomena being integral to his explanation.

And again we see how the literary critic may help the philosopher, insofar as the former is a "strategist of difficulty", an expert in making judgments about what combination of voices will yield a narra- tive structure more or less capable of accomodating certain plots, ad- dressing certain themes, and so forth. Posing a problem can be fruit- fully regarded as "setting the stage" for an explanation, a metaphor that the critic Kenneth Burke has in fact used as a reduction language for reconstituting and evaluating metaphysical systems. The fact that he uses this metaphor for both constitutive and evaluative purposes reveals an interesting anti-Kantian intuition that deserves to be cultivated in philosophy. The intuition, common to many species of idealism, is that if you believe everything in the universe to be cau- sally or intentionally interconnected, then it is reasonable to con- clude that something epitomizes these connections so as to clearly reflect the structure of reality. Burke's microcosm is the drama; for many theists it is man himself ("the image and likeness of God"). Modern science has been drawn between the machine and the organism. But although these two metaphors also mix constitutive and evaluative concerns, most philosophers of science would argue that they function only in a pseudo-constitutive capacity. In other words, a metaphor models the phenomena until it gets evaluated as a literally false des- cription. Still, the evaluative relation may be reversed, with confor- mity to or enrichment of the metaphor being the basis on which to judge the relevance, rather than the truth, of a given phenomenon. In other words, something that does not fit the metaphor well is not very sig- nificant.

But how is one to argue about significance? Before succumbing to Rorty's counsel of self-negation, I suggest that philosophers look at the very conceptual apparatus of contemporary literary criticism-- semiotics and rhetoric--that Peirce, a century ago, said formed (with logic) the cornerstone of philosophical thinking. It might well be that we will need to start conceiving of argumentation in a new light, and here I can only offer a clue. Suppose I propose that "p" is

to how disagreements should be resolved--namely, by appealing to whe- ther one saw the right thing, and not whether he saw it from the right perspective. Since metaphysical disputes do not fit the former cate- gory, they are difficult; and historically speaking, since Kant they have become disagreeably difficult, such that today it is taken for granted that differences in perspective cannot be evaluated. But given the current rejection of any simple-minded empiricism, we should also say that the Kantian intuition behind counterfactuals having indeter- minate truth-values--namely, the impossibility of there ever being suf- ficiently "direct" evidence either to confirm or disconfirm them--is at least questionable. Indeed, we should consider what we need to see not happening in order to "merely" describe the impact of one ball on another, to explain it as something psychological, and to explain it as something physical. We would see then that what happens and what does not happen are equally "direct" and of equal evidentiary worth--and, as we have suggested, this is all in virtue of the explainer's stance toward the phenomena being integral to his explanation.

And again we see how the literary critic may help the philosopher, insofar as the former is a "strategist of difficulty", an expert in making judgments about what combination of voices will yield a narra- tive structure more or less capable of accomodating certain plots, ad- dressing certain themes, and so forth. Posing a problem can be fruit- fully regarded as "setting the stage" for an explanation, a metaphor that the critic Kenneth Burke has in fact used as a reduction language for reconstituting and evaluating metaphysical systems. The fact that he uses this metaphor for both constitutive and evaluative purposes reveals an interesting anti-Kantian intuition that deserves to be cultivated in philosophy. The intuition, common to many species of idealism, is that if you believe everything in the universe to be cau- sally or intentionally interconnected, then it is reasonable to con- clude that something epitomizes these connections so as to clearly reflect the structure of reality. Burke's microcosm is the drama; for many theists it is man himself ("the image and likeness of God"). Modern science has been drawn between the machine and the organism. But although these two metaphors also mix constitutive and evaluative concerns, most philosophers of science would argue that they function only in a pseudo-constitutive capacity. In other words, a metaphor models the phenomena until it gets evaluated as a literally false des- cription. Still, the evaluative relation may be reversed, with confor- mity to or enrichment of the metaphor being the basis on which to judge the relevance, rather than the truth, of a given phenomenon. In other words, something that does not fit the metaphor well is not very sig- nificant.

But how is one to argue about significance? Before succumbing to Rorty's counsel of self-negation, I suggest that philosophers look at the very conceptual apparatus of contemporary literary criticism-- semiotics and rhetoric--that Peirce, a century ago, said formed (with logic) the cornerstone of philosophical thinking. It might well be that we will need to start conceiving of argumentation in a new light, and here I can only offer a clue. Suppose I propose that "p" is

to how disagreements should be resolved--namely, by appealing to whe- ther one saw the right thing, and not whether he saw it from the right perspective. Since metaphysical disputes do not fit the former cate- gory, they are difficult; and historically speaking, since Kant they have become disagreeably difficult, such that today it is taken for granted that differences in perspective cannot be evaluated. But given the current rejection of any simple-minded empiricism, we should also say that the Kantian intuition behind counterfactuals having indeter- minate truth-values--namely, the impossibility of there ever being suf- ficiently "direct" evidence either to confirm or disconfirm them--is at least questionable. Indeed, we should consider what we need to see not happening in order to "merely" describe the impact of one ball on another, to explain it as something psychological, and to explain it as something physical. We would see then that what happens and what does not happen are equally "direct" and of equal evidentiary worth--and, as we have suggested, this is all in virtue of the explainer's stance toward the phenomena being integral to his explanation.

And again we see how the literary critic may help the philosopher, insofar as the former is a "strategist of difficulty", an expert in making judgments about what combination of voices will yield a narra- tive structure more or less capable of accomodating certain plots, ad- dressing certain themes, and so forth. Posing a problem can be fruit- fully regarded as "setting the stage" for an explanation, a metaphor that the critic Kenneth Burke has in fact used as a reduction language for reconstituting and evaluating metaphysical systems. The fact that he uses this metaphor for both constitutive and evaluative purposes reveals an interesting anti-Kantian intuition that deserves to be cultivated in philosophy. The intuition, common to many species of idealism, is that if you believe everything in the universe to be cau- sally or intentionally interconnected, then it is reasonable to con- clude that something epitomizes these connections so as to clearly reflect the structure of reality. Burke's microcosm is the drama; for many theists it is man himself ("the image and likeness of God"). Modern science has been drawn between the machine and the organism. But although these two metaphors also mix constitutive and evaluative concerns, most philosophers of science would argue that they function only in a pseudo-constitutive capacity. In other words, a metaphor models the phenomena until it gets evaluated as a literally false des- cription. Still, the evaluative relation may be reversed, with confor- mity to or enrichment of the metaphor being the basis on which to judge the relevance, rather than the truth, of a given phenomenon. In other words, something that does not fit the metaphor well is not very sig- nificant.

But how is one to argue about significance? Before succumbing to Rorty's counsel of self-negation, I suggest that philosophers look at the very conceptual apparatus of contemporary literary criticism-- semiotics and rhetoric--that Peirce, a century ago, said formed (with logic) the cornerstone of philosophical thinking. It might well be that we will need to start conceiving of argumentation in a new light, and here I can only offer a clue. Suppose I propose that "p" is

to how disagreements should be resolved--namely, by appealing to whe- ther one saw the right thing, and not whether he saw it from the right perspective. Since metaphysical disputes do not fit the former cate- gory, they are difficult; and historically speaking, since Kant they have become disagreeably difficult, such that today it is taken for granted that differences in perspective cannot be evaluated. But given the current rejection of any simple-minded empiricism, we should also say that the Kantian intuition behind counterfactuals having indeter- minate truth-values--namely, the impossibility of there ever being suf- ficiently "direct" evidence either to confirm or disconfirm them--is at least questionable. Indeed, we should consider what we need to see not happening in order to "merely" describe the impact of one ball on another, to explain it as something psychological, and to explain it as something physical. We would see then that what happens and what does not happen are equally "direct" and of equal evidentiary worth--and, as we have suggested, this is all in virtue of the explainer's stance toward the phenomena being integral to his explanation.

And again we see how the literary critic may help the philosopher, insofar as the former is a "strategist of difficulty", an expert in making judgments about what combination of voices will yield a narra- tive structure more or less capable of accomodating certain plots, ad- dressing certain themes, and so forth. Posing a problem can be fruit- fully regarded as "setting the stage" for an explanation, a metaphor that the critic Kenneth Burke has in fact used as a reduction language for reconstituting and evaluating metaphysical systems. The fact that he uses this metaphor for both constitutive and evaluative purposes reveals an interesting anti-Kantian intuition that deserves to be cultivated in philosophy. The intuition, common to many species of idealism, is that if you believe everything in the universe to be cau- sally or intentionally interconnected, then it is reasonable to con- clude that something epitomizes these connections so as to clearly reflect the structure of reality. Burke's microcosm is the drama; for many theists it is man himself ("the image and likeness of God"). Modern science has been drawn between the machine and the organism. But although these two metaphors also mix constitutive and evaluative concerns, most philosophers of science would argue that they function only in a pseudo-constitutive capacity. In other words, a metaphor models the phenomena until it gets evaluated as a literally false des- cription. Still, the evaluative relation may be reversed, with confor- mity to or enrichment of the metaphor being the basis on which to judge the relevance, rather than the truth, of a given phenomenon. In other words, something that does not fit the metaphor well is not very sig- nificant.

But how is one to argue about significance? Before succumbing to Rorty's counsel of self-negation, I suggest that philosophers look at the very conceptual apparatus of contemporary literary criticism-- semiotics and rhetoric--that Peirce, a century ago, said formed (with logic) the cornerstone of philosophical thinking. It might well be that we will need to start conceiving of argumentation in a new light, and here I can only offer a clue. Suppose I propose that "p" is

to how disagreements should be resolved--namely, by appealing to whe- ther one saw the right thing, and not whether he saw it from the right perspective. Since metaphysical disputes do not fit the former cate- gory, they are difficult; and historically speaking, since Kant they have become disagreeably difficult, such that today it is taken for granted that differences in perspective cannot be evaluated. But given the current rejection of any simple-minded empiricism, we should also say that the Kantian intuition behind counterfactuals having indeter- minate truth-values--namely, the impossibility of there ever being suf- ficiently "direct" evidence either to confirm or disconfirm them--is at least questionable. Indeed, we should consider what we need to see not happening in order to "merely" describe the impact of one ball on another, to explain it as something psychological, and to explain it as something physical. We would see then that what happens and what does not happen are equally "direct" and of equal evidentiary worth--and, as we have suggested, this is all in virtue of the explainer's stance toward the phenomena being integral to his explanation.

And again we see how the literary critic may help the philosopher, insofar as the former is a "strategist of difficulty", an expert in making judgments about what combination of voices will yield a narra- tive structure more or less capable of accomodating certain plots, ad- dressing certain themes, and so forth. Posing a problem can be fruit- fully regarded as "setting the stage" for an explanation, a metaphor that the critic Kenneth Burke has in fact used as a reduction language for reconstituting and evaluating metaphysical systems. The fact that he uses this metaphor for both constitutive and evaluative purposes reveals an interesting anti-Kantian intuition that deserves to be cultivated in philosophy. The intuition, common to many species of idealism, is that if you believe everything in the universe to be cau- sally or intentionally interconnected, then it is reasonable to con- clude that something epitomizes these connections so as to clearly reflect the structure of reality. Burke's microcosm is the drama; for many theists it is man himself ("the image and likeness of God"). Modern science has been drawn between the machine and the organism. But although these two metaphors also mix constitutive and evaluative concerns, most philosophers of science would argue that they function only in a pseudo-constitutive capacity. In other words, a metaphor models the phenomena until it gets evaluated as a literally false des- cription. Still, the evaluative relation may be reversed, with confor- mity to or enrichment of the metaphor being the basis on which to judge the relevance, rather than the truth, of a given phenomenon. In other words, something that does not fit the metaphor well is not very sig- nificant.

But how is one to argue about significance? Before succumbing to Rorty's counsel of self-negation, I suggest that philosophers look at the very conceptual apparatus of contemporary literary criticism-- semiotics and rhetoric--that Peirce, a century ago, said formed (with logic) the cornerstone of philosophical thinking. It might well be that we will need to start conceiving of argumentation in a new light, and here I can only offer a clue. Suppose I propose that "p" is

to how disagreements should be resolved--namely, by appealing to whe- ther one saw the right thing, and not whether he saw it from the right perspective. Since metaphysical disputes do not fit the former cate- gory, they are difficult; and historically speaking, since Kant they have become disagreeably difficult, such that today it is taken for granted that differences in perspective cannot be evaluated. But given the current rejection of any simple-minded empiricism, we should also say that the Kantian intuition behind counterfactuals having indeter- minate truth-values--namely, the impossibility of there ever being suf- ficiently "direct" evidence either to confirm or disconfirm them--is at least questionable. Indeed, we should consider what we need to see not happening in order to "merely" describe the impact of one ball on another, to explain it as something psychological, and to explain it as something physical. We would see then that what happens and what does not happen are equally "direct" and of equal evidentiary worth--and, as we have suggested, this is all in virtue of the explainer's stance toward the phenomena being integral to his explanation.

And again we see how the literary critic may help the philosopher, insofar as the former is a "strategist of difficulty", an expert in making judgments about what combination of voices will yield a narra- tive structure more or less capable of accomodating certain plots, ad- dressing certain themes, and so forth. Posing a problem can be fruit- fully regarded as "setting the stage" for an explanation, a metaphor that the critic Kenneth Burke has in fact used as a reduction language for reconstituting and evaluating metaphysical systems. The fact that he uses this metaphor for both constitutive and evaluative purposes reveals an interesting anti-Kantian intuition that deserves to be cultivated in philosophy. The intuition, common to many species of idealism, is that if you believe everything in the universe to be cau- sally or intentionally interconnected, then it is reasonable to con- clude that something epitomizes these connections so as to clearly reflect the structure of reality. Burke's microcosm is the drama; for many theists it is man himself ("the image and likeness of God"). Modern science has been drawn between the machine and the organism. But although these two metaphors also mix constitutive and evaluative concerns, most philosophers of science would argue that they function only in a pseudo-constitutive capacity. In other words, a metaphor models the phenomena until it gets evaluated as a literally false des- cription. Still, the evaluative relation may be reversed, with confor- mity to or enrichment of the metaphor being the basis on which to judge the relevance, rather than the truth, of a given phenomenon. In other words, something that does not fit the metaphor well is not very sig- nificant.

But how is one to argue about significance? Before succumbing to Rorty's counsel of self-negation, I suggest that philosophers look at the very conceptual apparatus of contemporary literary criticism-- semiotics and rhetoric--that Peirce, a century ago, said formed (with logic) the cornerstone of philosophical thinking. It might well be that we will need to start conceiving of argumentation in a new light, and here I can only offer a clue. Suppose I propose that "p" is

to how disagreements should be resolved--namely, by appealing to whe- ther one saw the right thing, and not whether he saw it from the right perspective. Since metaphysical disputes do not fit the former cate- gory, they are difficult; and historically speaking, since Kant they have become disagreeably difficult, such that today it is taken for granted that differences in perspective cannot be evaluated. But given the current rejection of any simple-minded empiricism, we should also say that the Kantian intuition behind counterfactuals having indeter- minate truth-values--namely, the impossibility of there ever being suf- ficiently "direct" evidence either to confirm or disconfirm them--is at least questionable. Indeed, we should consider what we need to see not happening in order to "merely" describe the impact of one ball on another, to explain it as something psychological, and to explain it as something physical. We would see then that what happens and what does not happen are equally "direct" and of equal evidentiary worth--and, as we have suggested, this is all in virtue of the explainer's stance toward the phenomena being integral to his explanation.

And again we see how the literary critic may help the philosopher, insofar as the former is a "strategist of difficulty", an expert in making judgments about what combination of voices will yield a narra- tive structure more or less capable of accomodating certain plots, ad- dressing certain themes, and so forth. Posing a problem can be fruit- fully regarded as "setting the stage" for an explanation, a metaphor that the critic Kenneth Burke has in fact used as a reduction language for reconstituting and evaluating metaphysical systems. The fact that he uses this metaphor for both constitutive and evaluative purposes reveals an interesting anti-Kantian intuition that deserves to be cultivated in philosophy. The intuition, common to many species of idealism, is that if you believe everything in the universe to be cau- sally or intentionally interconnected, then it is reasonable to con- clude that something epitomizes these connections so as to clearly reflect the structure of reality. Burke's microcosm is the drama; for many theists it is man himself ("the image and likeness of God"). Modern science has been drawn between the machine and the organism. But although these two metaphors also mix constitutive and evaluative concerns, most philosophers of science would argue that they function only in a pseudo-constitutive capacity. In other words, a metaphor models the phenomena until it gets evaluated as a literally false des- cription. Still, the evaluative relation may be reversed, with confor- mity to or enrichment of the metaphor being the basis on which to judge the relevance, rather than the truth, of a given phenomenon. In other words, something that does not fit the metaphor well is not very sig- nificant.

But how is one to argue about significance? Before succumbing to Rorty's counsel of self-negation, I suggest that philosophers look at the very conceptual apparatus of contemporary literary criticism-- semiotics and rhetoric--that Peirce, a century ago, said formed (with logic) the cornerstone of philosophical thinking. It might well be that we will need to start conceiving of argumentation in a new light, and here I can only offer a clue. Suppose I propose that "p" is

to how disagreements should be resolved--namely, by appealing to whe- ther one saw the right thing, and not whether he saw it from the right perspective. Since metaphysical disputes do not fit the former cate- gory, they are difficult; and historically speaking, since Kant they have become disagreeably difficult, such that today it is taken for granted that differences in perspective cannot be evaluated. But given the current rejection of any simple-minded empiricism, we should also say that the Kantian intuition behind counterfactuals having indeter- minate truth-values--namely, the impossibility of there ever being suf- ficiently "direct" evidence either to confirm or disconfirm them--is at least questionable. Indeed, we should consider what we need to see not happening in order to "merely" describe the impact of one ball on another, to explain it as something psychological, and to explain it as something physical. We would see then that what happens and what does not happen are equally "direct" and of equal evidentiary worth--and, as we have suggested, this is all in virtue of the explainer's stance toward the phenomena being integral to his explanation.

And again we see how the literary critic may help the philosopher, insofar as the former is a "strategist of difficulty", an expert in making judgments about what combination of voices will yield a narra- tive structure more or less capable of accomodating certain plots, ad- dressing certain themes, and so forth. Posing a problem can be fruit- fully regarded as "setting the stage" for an explanation, a metaphor that the critic Kenneth Burke has in fact used as a reduction language for reconstituting and evaluating metaphysical systems. The fact that he uses this metaphor for both constitutive and evaluative purposes reveals an interesting anti-Kantian intuition that deserves to be cultivated in philosophy. The intuition, common to many species of idealism, is that if you believe everything in the universe to be cau- sally or intentionally interconnected, then it is reasonable to con- clude that something epitomizes these connections so as to clearly reflect the structure of reality. Burke's microcosm is the drama; for many theists it is man himself ("the image and likeness of God"). Modern science has been drawn between the machine and the organism. But although these two metaphors also mix constitutive and evaluative concerns, most philosophers of science would argue that they function only in a pseudo-constitutive capacity. In other words, a metaphor models the phenomena until it gets evaluated as a literally false des- cription. Still, the evaluative relation may be reversed, with confor- mity to or enrichment of the metaphor being the basis on which to judge the relevance, rather than the truth, of a given phenomenon. In other words, something that does not fit the metaphor well is not very sig- nificant.

But how is one to argue about significance? Before succumbing to Rorty's counsel of self-negation, I suggest that philosophers look at the very conceptual apparatus of contemporary literary criticism-- semiotics and rhetoric--that Peirce, a century ago, said formed (with logic) the cornerstone of philosophical thinking. It might well be that we will need to start conceiving of argumentation in a new light, and here I can only offer a clue. Suppose I propose that "p" is

to how disagreements should be resolved--namely, by appealing to whe- ther one saw the right thing, and not whether he saw it from the right perspective. Since metaphysical disputes do not fit the former cate- gory, they are difficult; and historically speaking, since Kant they have become disagreeably difficult, such that today it is taken for granted that differences in perspective cannot be evaluated. But given the current rejection of any simple-minded empiricism, we should also say that the Kantian intuition behind counterfactuals having indeter- minate truth-values--namely, the impossibility of there ever being suf- ficiently "direct" evidence either to confirm or disconfirm them--is at least questionable. Indeed, we should consider what we need to see not happening in order to "merely" describe the impact of one ball on another, to explain it as something psychological, and to explain it as something physical. We would see then that what happens and what does not happen are equally "direct" and of equal evidentiary worth--and, as we have suggested, this is all in virtue of the explainer's stance toward the phenomena being integral to his explanation.

And again we see how the literary critic may help the philosopher, insofar as the former is a "strategist of difficulty", an expert in making judgments about what combination of voices will yield a narra- tive structure more or less capable of accomodating certain plots, ad- dressing certain themes, and so forth. Posing a problem can be fruit- fully regarded as "setting the stage" for an explanation, a metaphor that the critic Kenneth Burke has in fact used as a reduction language for reconstituting and evaluating metaphysical systems. The fact that he uses this metaphor for both constitutive and evaluative purposes reveals an interesting anti-Kantian intuition that deserves to be cultivated in philosophy. The intuition, common to many species of idealism, is that if you believe everything in the universe to be cau- sally or intentionally interconnected, then it is reasonable to con- clude that something epitomizes these connections so as to clearly reflect the structure of reality. Burke's microcosm is the drama; for many theists it is man himself ("the image and likeness of God"). Modern science has been drawn between the machine and the organism. But although these two metaphors also mix constitutive and evaluative concerns, most philosophers of science would argue that they function only in a pseudo-constitutive capacity. In other words, a metaphor models the phenomena until it gets evaluated as a literally false des- cription. Still, the evaluative relation may be reversed, with confor- mity to or enrichment of the metaphor being the basis on which to judge the relevance, rather than the truth, of a given phenomenon. In other words, something that does not fit the metaphor well is not very sig- nificant.

But how is one to argue about significance? Before succumbing to Rorty's counsel of self-negation, I suggest that philosophers look at the very conceptual apparatus of contemporary literary criticism-- semiotics and rhetoric--that Peirce, a century ago, said formed (with logic) the cornerstone of philosophical thinking. It might well be that we will need to start conceiving of argumentation in a new light, and here I can only offer a clue. Suppose I propose that "p" is

to how disagreements should be resolved--namely, by appealing to whe- ther one saw the right thing, and not whether he saw it from the right perspective. Since metaphysical disputes do not fit the former cate- gory, they are difficult; and historically speaking, since Kant they have become disagreeably difficult, such that today it is taken for granted that differences in perspective cannot be evaluated. But given the current rejection of any simple-minded empiricism, we should also say that the Kantian intuition behind counterfactuals having indeter- minate truth-values--namely, the impossibility of there ever being suf- ficiently "direct" evidence either to confirm or disconfirm them--is at least questionable. Indeed, we should consider what we need to see not happening in order to "merely" describe the impact of one ball on another, to explain it as something psychological, and to explain it as something physical. We would see then that what happens and what does not happen are equally "direct" and of equal evidentiary worth--and, as we have suggested, this is all in virtue of the explainer's stance toward the phenomena being integral to his explanation.

And again we see how the literary critic may help the philosopher, insofar as the former is a "strategist of difficulty", an expert in making judgments about what combination of voices will yield a narra- tive structure more or less capable of accomodating certain plots, ad- dressing certain themes, and so forth. Posing a problem can be fruit- fully regarded as "setting the stage" for an explanation, a metaphor that the critic Kenneth Burke has in fact used as a reduction language for reconstituting and evaluating metaphysical systems. The fact that he uses this metaphor for both constitutive and evaluative purposes reveals an interesting anti-Kantian intuition that deserves to be cultivated in philosophy. The intuition, common to many species of idealism, is that if you believe everything in the universe to be cau- sally or intentionally interconnected, then it is reasonable to con- clude that something epitomizes these connections so as to clearly reflect the structure of reality. Burke's microcosm is the drama; for many theists it is man himself ("the image and likeness of God"). Modern science has been drawn between the machine and the organism. But although these two metaphors also mix constitutive and evaluative concerns, most philosophers of science would argue that they function only in a pseudo-constitutive capacity. In other words, a metaphor models the phenomena until it gets evaluated as a literally false des- cription. Still, the evaluative relation may be reversed, with confor- mity to or enrichment of the metaphor being the basis on which to judge the relevance, rather than the truth, of a given phenomenon. In other words, something that does not fit the metaphor well is not very sig- nificant.

But how is one to argue about significance? Before succumbing to Rorty's counsel of self-negation, I suggest that philosophers look at the very conceptual apparatus of contemporary literary criticism-- semiotics and rhetoric--that Peirce, a century ago, said formed (with logic) the cornerstone of philosophical thinking. It might well be that we will need to start conceiving of argumentation in a new light, and here I can only offer a clue. Suppose I propose that "p" is

to how disagreements should be resolved--namely, by appealing to whe- ther one saw the right thing, and not whether he saw it from the right perspective. Since metaphysical disputes do not fit the former cate- gory, they are difficult; and historically speaking, since Kant they have become disagreeably difficult, such that today it is taken for granted that differences in perspective cannot be evaluated. But given the current rejection of any simple-minded empiricism, we should also say that the Kantian intuition behind counterfactuals having indeter- minate truth-values--namely, the impossibility of there ever being suf- ficiently "direct" evidence either to confirm or disconfirm them--is at least questionable. Indeed, we should consider what we need to see not happening in order to "merely" describe the impact of one ball on another, to explain it as something psychological, and to explain it as something physical. We would see then that what happens and what does not happen are equally "direct" and of equal evidentiary worth--and, as we have suggested, this is all in virtue of the explainer's stance toward the phenomena being integral to his explanation.

And again we see how the literary critic may help the philosopher, insofar as the former is a "strategist of difficulty", an expert in making judgments about what combination of voices will yield a narra- tive structure more or less capable of accomodating certain plots, ad- dressing certain themes, and so forth. Posing a problem can be fruit- fully regarded as "setting the stage" for an explanation, a metaphor that the critic Kenneth Burke has in fact used as a reduction language for reconstituting and evaluating metaphysical systems. The fact that he uses this metaphor for both constitutive and evaluative purposes reveals an interesting anti-Kantian intuition that deserves to be cultivated in philosophy. The intuition, common to many species of idealism, is that if you believe everything in the universe to be cau- sally or intentionally interconnected, then it is reasonable to con- clude that something epitomizes these connections so as to clearly reflect the structure of reality. Burke's microcosm is the drama; for many theists it is man himself ("the image and likeness of God"). Modern science has been drawn between the machine and the organism. But although these two metaphors also mix constitutive and evaluative concerns, most philosophers of science would argue that they function only in a pseudo-constitutive capacity. In other words, a metaphor models the phenomena until it gets evaluated as a literally false des- cription. Still, the evaluative relation may be reversed, with confor- mity to or enrichment of the metaphor being the basis on which to judge the relevance, rather than the truth, of a given phenomenon. In other words, something that does not fit the metaphor well is not very sig- nificant.

But how is one to argue about significance? Before succumbing to Rorty's counsel of self-negation, I suggest that philosophers look at the very conceptual apparatus of contemporary literary criticism-- semiotics and rhetoric--that Peirce, a century ago, said formed (with logic) the cornerstone of philosophical thinking. It might well be that we will need to start conceiving of argumentation in a new light, and here I can only offer a clue. Suppose I propose that "p" is

to how disagreements should be resolved--namely, by appealing to whe- ther one saw the right thing, and not whether he saw it from the right perspective. Since metaphysical disputes do not fit the former cate- gory, they are difficult; and historically speaking, since Kant they have become disagreeably difficult, such that today it is taken for granted that differences in perspective cannot be evaluated. But given the current rejection of any simple-minded empiricism, we should also say that the Kantian intuition behind counterfactuals having indeter- minate truth-values--namely, the impossibility of there ever being suf- ficiently "direct" evidence either to confirm or disconfirm them--is at least questionable. Indeed, we should consider what we need to see not happening in order to "merely" describe the impact of one ball on another, to explain it as something psychological, and to explain it as something physical. We would see then that what happens and what does not happen are equally "direct" and of equal evidentiary worth--and, as we have suggested, this is all in virtue of the explainer's stance toward the phenomena being integral to his explanation.

And again we see how the literary critic may help the philosopher, insofar as the former is a "strategist of difficulty", an expert in making judgments about what combination of voices will yield a narra- tive structure more or less capable of accomodating certain plots, ad- dressing certain themes, and so forth. Posing a problem can be fruit- fully regarded as "setting the stage" for an explanation, a metaphor that the critic Kenneth Burke has in fact used as a reduction language for reconstituting and evaluating metaphysical systems. The fact that he uses this metaphor for both constitutive and evaluative purposes reveals an interesting anti-Kantian intuition that deserves to be cultivated in philosophy. The intuition, common to many species of idealism, is that if you believe everything in the universe to be cau- sally or intentionally interconnected, then it is reasonable to con- clude that something epitomizes these connections so as to clearly reflect the structure of reality. Burke's microcosm is the drama; for many theists it is man himself ("the image and likeness of God"). Modern science has been drawn between the machine and the organism. But although these two metaphors also mix constitutive and evaluative concerns, most philosophers of science would argue that they function only in a pseudo-constitutive capacity. In other words, a metaphor models the phenomena until it gets evaluated as a literally false des- cription. Still, the evaluative relation may be reversed, with confor- mity to or enrichment of the metaphor being the basis on which to judge the relevance, rather than the truth, of a given phenomenon. In other words, something that does not fit the metaphor well is not very sig- nificant.

But how is one to argue about significance? Before succumbing to Rorty's counsel of self-negation, I suggest that philosophers look at the very conceptual apparatus of contemporary literary criticism-- semiotics and rhetoric--that Peirce, a century ago, said formed (with logic) the cornerstone of philosophical thinking. It might well be that we will need to start conceiving of argumentation in a new light, and here I can only offer a clue. Suppose I propose that "p" is

to how disagreements should be resolved--namely, by appealing to whe- ther one saw the right thing, and not whether he saw it from the right perspective. Since metaphysical disputes do not fit the former cate- gory, they are difficult; and historically speaking, since Kant they have become disagreeably difficult, such that today it is taken for granted that differences in perspective cannot be evaluated. But given the current rejection of any simple-minded empiricism, we should also say that the Kantian intuition behind counterfactuals having indeter- minate truth-values--namely, the impossibility of there ever being suf- ficiently "direct" evidence either to confirm or disconfirm them--is at least questionable. Indeed, we should consider what we need to see not happening in order to "merely" describe the impact of one ball on another, to explain it as something psychological, and to explain it as something physical. We would see then that what happens and what does not happen are equally "direct" and of equal evidentiary worth--and, as we have suggested, this is all in virtue of the explainer's stance toward the phenomena being integral to his explanation.

And again we see how the literary critic may help the philosopher, insofar as the former is a "strategist of difficulty", an expert in making judgments about what combination of voices will yield a narra- tive structure more or less capable of accomodating certain plots, ad- dressing certain themes, and so forth. Posing a problem can be fruit- fully regarded as "setting the stage" for an explanation, a metaphor that the critic Kenneth Burke has in fact used as a reduction language for reconstituting and evaluating metaphysical systems. The fact that he uses this metaphor for both constitutive and evaluative purposes reveals an interesting anti-Kantian intuition that deserves to be cultivated in philosophy. The intuition, common to many species of idealism, is that if you believe everything in the universe to be cau- sally or intentionally interconnected, then it is reasonable to con- clude that something epitomizes these connections so as to clearly reflect the structure of reality. Burke's microcosm is the drama; for many theists it is man himself ("the image and likeness of God"). Modern science has been drawn between the machine and the organism. But although these two metaphors also mix constitutive and evaluative concerns, most philosophers of science would argue that they function only in a pseudo-constitutive capacity. In other words, a metaphor models the phenomena until it gets evaluated as a literally false des- cription. Still, the evaluative relation may be reversed, with confor- mity to or enrichment of the metaphor being the basis on which to judge the relevance, rather than the truth, of a given phenomenon. In other words, something that does not fit the metaphor well is not very sig- nificant.

But how is one to argue about significance? Before succumbing to Rorty's counsel of self-negation, I suggest that philosophers look at the very conceptual apparatus of contemporary literary criticism-- semiotics and rhetoric--that Peirce, a century ago, said formed (with logic) the cornerstone of philosophical thinking. It might well be that we will need to start conceiving of argumentation in a new light, and here I can only offer a clue. Suppose I propose that "p" is

to how disagreements should be resolved--namely, by appealing to whe- ther one saw the right thing, and not whether he saw it from the right perspective. Since metaphysical disputes do not fit the former cate- gory, they are difficult; and historically speaking, since Kant they have become disagreeably difficult, such that today it is taken for granted that differences in perspective cannot be evaluated. But given the current rejection of any simple-minded empiricism, we should also say that the Kantian intuition behind counterfactuals having indeter- minate truth-values--namely, the impossibility of there ever being suf- ficiently "direct" evidence either to confirm or disconfirm them--is at least questionable. Indeed, we should consider what we need to see not happening in order to "merely" describe the impact of one ball on another, to explain it as something psychological, and to explain it as something physical. We would see then that what happens and what does not happen are equally "direct" and of equal evidentiary worth--and, as we have suggested, this is all in virtue of the explainer's stance toward the phenomena being integral to his explanation.

And again we see how the literary critic may help the philosopher, insofar as the former is a "strategist of difficulty", an expert in making judgments about what combination of voices will yield a narra- tive structure more or less capable of accomodating certain plots, ad- dressing certain themes, and so forth. Posing a problem can be fruit- fully regarded as "setting the stage" for an explanation, a metaphor that the critic Kenneth Burke has in fact used as a reduction language for reconstituting and evaluating metaphysical systems. The fact that he uses this metaphor for both constitutive and evaluative purposes reveals an interesting anti-Kantian intuition that deserves to be cultivated in philosophy. The intuition, common to many species of idealism, is that if you believe everything in the universe to be cau- sally or intentionally interconnected, then it is reasonable to con- clude that something epitomizes these connections so as to clearly reflect the structure of reality. Burke's microcosm is the drama; for many theists it is man himself ("the image and likeness of God"). Modern science has been drawn between the machine and the organism. But although these two metaphors also mix constitutive and evaluative concerns, most philosophers of science would argue that they function only in a pseudo-constitutive capacity. In other words, a metaphor models the phenomena until it gets evaluated as a literally false des- cription. Still, the evaluative relation may be reversed, with confor- mity to or enrichment of the metaphor being the basis on which to judge the relevance, rather than the truth, of a given phenomenon. In other words, something that does not fit the metaphor well is not very sig- nificant.

But how is one to argue about significance? Before succumbing to Rorty's counsel of self-negation, I suggest that philosophers look at the very conceptual apparatus of contemporary literary criticism-- semiotics and rhetoric--that Peirce, a century ago, said formed (with logic) the cornerstone of philosophical thinking. It might well be that we will need to start conceiving of argumentation in a new light, and here I can only offer a clue. Suppose I propose that "p" is

to how disagreements should be resolved--namely, by appealing to whe- ther one saw the right thing, and not whether he saw it from the right perspective. Since metaphysical disputes do not fit the former cate- gory, they are difficult; and historically speaking, since Kant they have become disagreeably difficult, such that today it is taken for granted that differences in perspective cannot be evaluated. But given the current rejection of any simple-minded empiricism, we should also say that the Kantian intuition behind counterfactuals having indeter- minate truth-values--namely, the impossibility of there ever being suf- ficiently "direct" evidence either to confirm or disconfirm them--is at least questionable. Indeed, we should consider what we need to see not happening in order to "merely" describe the impact of one ball on another, to explain it as something psychological, and to explain it as something physical. We would see then that what happens and what does not happen are equally "direct" and of equal evidentiary worth--and, as we have suggested, this is all in virtue of the explainer's stance toward the phenomena being integral to his explanation.

And again we see how the literary critic may help the philosopher, insofar as the former is a "strategist of difficulty", an expert in making judgments about what combination of voices will yield a narra- tive structure more or less capable of accomodating certain plots, ad- dressing certain themes, and so forth. Posing a problem can be fruit- fully regarded as "setting the stage" for an explanation, a metaphor that the critic Kenneth Burke has in fact used as a reduction language for reconstituting and evaluating metaphysical systems. The fact that he uses this metaphor for both constitutive and evaluative purposes reveals an interesting anti-Kantian intuition that deserves to be cultivated in philosophy. The intuition, common to many species of idealism, is that if you believe everything in the universe to be cau- sally or intentionally interconnected, then it is reasonable to con- clude that something epitomizes these connections so as to clearly reflect the structure of reality. Burke's microcosm is the drama; for many theists it is man himself ("the image and likeness of God"). Modern science has been drawn between the machine and the organism. But although these two metaphors also mix constitutive and evaluative concerns, most philosophers of science would argue that they function only in a pseudo-constitutive capacity. In other words, a metaphor models the phenomena until it gets evaluated as a literally false des- cription. Still, the evaluative relation may be reversed, with confor- mity to or enrichment of the metaphor being the basis on which to judge the relevance, rather than the truth, of a given phenomenon. In other words, something that does not fit the metaphor well is not very sig- nificant.

But how is one to argue about significance? Before succumbing to Rorty's counsel of self-negation, I suggest that philosophers look at the very conceptual apparatus of contemporary literary criticism-- semiotics and rhetoric--that Peirce, a century ago, said formed (with logic) the cornerstone of philosophical thinking. It might well be that we will need to start conceiving of argumentation in a new light, and here I can only offer a clue. Suppose I propose that "p" is

to how disagreements should be resolved--namely, by appealing to whe- ther one saw the right thing, and not whether he saw it from the right perspective. Since metaphysical disputes do not fit the former cate- gory, they are difficult; and historically speaking, since Kant they have become disagreeably difficult, such that today it is taken for granted that differences in perspective cannot be evaluated. But given the current rejection of any simple-minded empiricism, we should also say that the Kantian intuition behind counterfactuals having indeter- minate truth-values--namely, the impossibility of there ever being suf- ficiently "direct" evidence either to confirm or disconfirm them--is at least questionable. Indeed, we should consider what we need to see not happening in order to "merely" describe the impact of one ball on another, to explain it as something psychological, and to explain it as something physical. We would see then that what happens and what does not happen are equally "direct" and of equal evidentiary worth--and, as we have suggested, this is all in virtue of the explainer's stance toward the phenomena being integral to his explanation.

And again we see how the literary critic may help the philosopher, insofar as the former is a "strategist of difficulty", an expert in making judgments about what combination of voices will yield a narra- tive structure more or less capable of accomodating certain plots, ad- dressing certain themes, and so forth. Posing a problem can be fruit- fully regarded as "setting the stage" for an explanation, a metaphor that the critic Kenneth Burke has in fact used as a reduction language for reconstituting and evaluating metaphysical systems. The fact that he uses this metaphor for both constitutive and evaluative purposes reveals an interesting anti-Kantian intuition that deserves to be cultivated in philosophy. The intuition, common to many species of idealism, is that if you believe everything in the universe to be cau- sally or intentionally interconnected, then it is reasonable to con- clude that something epitomizes these connections so as to clearly reflect the structure of reality. Burke's microcosm is the drama; for many theists it is man himself ("the image and likeness of God"). Modern science has been drawn between the machine and the organism. But although these two metaphors also mix constitutive and evaluative concerns, most philosophers of science would argue that they function only in a pseudo-constitutive capacity. In other words, a metaphor models the phenomena until it gets evaluated as a literally false des- cription. Still, the evaluative relation may be reversed, with confor- mity to or enrichment of the metaphor being the basis on which to judge the relevance, rather than the truth, of a given phenomenon. In other words, something that does not fit the metaphor well is not very sig- nificant.

But how is one to argue about significance? Before succumbing to Rorty's counsel of self-negation, I suggest that philosophers look at the very conceptual apparatus of contemporary literary criticism-- semiotics and rhetoric--that Peirce, a century ago, said formed (with logic) the cornerstone of philosophical thinking. It might well be that we will need to start conceiving of argumentation in a new light, and here I can only offer a clue. Suppose I propose that "p" is

to how disagreements should be resolved--namely, by appealing to whe- ther one saw the right thing, and not whether he saw it from the right perspective. Since metaphysical disputes do not fit the former cate- gory, they are difficult; and historically speaking, since Kant they have become disagreeably difficult, such that today it is taken for granted that differences in perspective cannot be evaluated. But given the current rejection of any simple-minded empiricism, we should also say that the Kantian intuition behind counterfactuals having indeter- minate truth-values--namely, the impossibility of there ever being suf- ficiently "direct" evidence either to confirm or disconfirm them--is at least questionable. Indeed, we should consider what we need to see not happening in order to "merely" describe the impact of one ball on another, to explain it as something psychological, and to explain it as something physical. We would see then that what happens and what does not happen are equally "direct" and of equal evidentiary worth--and, as we have suggested, this is all in virtue of the explainer's stance toward the phenomena being integral to his explanation.

And again we see how the literary critic may help the philosopher, insofar as the former is a "strategist of difficulty", an expert in making judgments about what combination of voices will yield a narra- tive structure more or less capable of accomodating certain plots, ad- dressing certain themes, and so forth. Posing a problem can be fruit- fully regarded as "setting the stage" for an explanation, a metaphor that the critic Kenneth Burke has in fact used as a reduction language for reconstituting and evaluating metaphysical systems. The fact that he uses this metaphor for both constitutive and evaluative purposes reveals an interesting anti-Kantian intuition that deserves to be cultivated in philosophy. The intuition, common to many species of idealism, is that if you believe everything in the universe to be cau- sally or intentionally interconnected, then it is reasonable to con- clude that something epitomizes these connections so as to clearly reflect the structure of reality. Burke's microcosm is the drama; for many theists it is man himself ("the image and likeness of God"). Modern science has been drawn between the machine and the organism. But although these two metaphors also mix constitutive and evaluative concerns, most philosophers of science would argue that they function only in a pseudo-constitutive capacity. In other words, a metaphor models the phenomena until it gets evaluated as a literally false des- cription. Still, the evaluative relation may be reversed, with confor- mity to or enrichment of the metaphor being the basis on which to judge the relevance, rather than the truth, of a given phenomenon. In other words, something that does not fit the metaphor well is not very sig- nificant.

But how is one to argue about significance? Before succumbing to Rorty's counsel of self-negation, I suggest that philosophers look at the very conceptual apparatus of contemporary literary criticism-- semiotics and rhetoric--that Peirce, a century ago, said formed (with logic) the cornerstone of philosophical thinking. It might well be that we will need to start conceiving of argumentation in a new light, and here I can only offer a clue. Suppose I propose that "p" is

to how disagreements should be resolved--namely, by appealing to whe- ther one saw the right thing, and not whether he saw it from the right perspective. Since metaphysical disputes do not fit the former cate- gory, they are difficult; and historically speaking, since Kant they have become disagreeably difficult, such that today it is taken for granted that differences in perspective cannot be evaluated. But given the current rejection of any simple-minded empiricism, we should also say that the Kantian intuition behind counterfactuals having indeter- minate truth-values--namely, the impossibility of there ever being suf- ficiently "direct" evidence either to confirm or disconfirm them--is at least questionable. Indeed, we should consider what we need to see not happening in order to "merely" describe the impact of one ball on another, to explain it as something psychological, and to explain it as something physical. We would see then that what happens and what does not happen are equally "direct" and of equal evidentiary worth--and, as we have suggested, this is all in virtue of the explainer's stance toward the phenomena being integral to his explanation.

And again we see how the literary critic may help the philosopher, insofar as the former is a "strategist of difficulty", an expert in making judgments about what combination of voices will yield a narra- tive structure more or less capable of accomodating certain plots, ad- dressing certain themes, and so forth. Posing a problem can be fruit- fully regarded as "setting the stage" for an explanation, a metaphor that the critic Kenneth Burke has in fact used as a reduction language for reconstituting and evaluating metaphysical systems. The fact that he uses this metaphor for both constitutive and evaluative purposes reveals an interesting anti-Kantian intuition that deserves to be cultivated in philosophy. The intuition, common to many species of idealism, is that if you believe everything in the universe to be cau- sally or intentionally interconnected, then it is reasonable to con- clude that something epitomizes these connections so as to clearly reflect the structure of reality. Burke's microcosm is the drama; for many theists it is man himself ("the image and likeness of God"). Modern science has been drawn between the machine and the organism. But although these two metaphors also mix constitutive and evaluative concerns, most philosophers of science would argue that they function only in a pseudo-constitutive capacity. In other words, a metaphor models the phenomena until it gets evaluated as a literally false des- cription. Still, the evaluative relation may be reversed, with confor- mity to or enrichment of the metaphor being the basis on which to judge the relevance, rather than the truth, of a given phenomenon. In other words, something that does not fit the metaphor well is not very sig- nificant.

But how is one to argue about significance? Before succumbing to Rorty's counsel of self-negation, I suggest that philosophers look at the very conceptual apparatus of contemporary literary criticism-- semiotics and rhetoric--that Peirce, a century ago, said formed (with logic) the cornerstone of philosophical thinking. It might well be that we will need to start conceiving of argumentation in a new light, and here I can only offer a clue. Suppose I propose that "p" is

to how disagreements should be resolved--namely, by appealing to whe- ther one saw the right thing, and not whether he saw it from the right perspective. Since metaphysical disputes do not fit the former cate- gory, they are difficult; and historically speaking, since Kant they have become disagreeably difficult, such that today it is taken for granted that differences in perspective cannot be evaluated. But given the current rejection of any simple-minded empiricism, we should also say that the Kantian intuition behind counterfactuals having indeter- minate truth-values--namely, the impossibility of there ever being suf- ficiently "direct" evidence either to confirm or disconfirm them--is at least questionable. Indeed, we should consider what we need to see not happening in order to "merely" describe the impact of one ball on another, to explain it as something psychological, and to explain it as something physical. We would see then that what happens and what does not happen are equally "direct" and of equal evidentiary worth--and, as we have suggested, this is all in virtue of the explainer's stance toward the phenomena being integral to his explanation.

And again we see how the literary critic may help the philosopher, insofar as the former is a "strategist of difficulty", an expert in making judgments about what combination of voices will yield a narra- tive structure more or less capable of accomodating certain plots, ad- dressing certain themes, and so forth. Posing a problem can be fruit- fully regarded as "setting the stage" for an explanation, a metaphor that the critic Kenneth Burke has in fact used as a reduction language for reconstituting and evaluating metaphysical systems. The fact that he uses this metaphor for both constitutive and evaluative purposes reveals an interesting anti-Kantian intuition that deserves to be cultivated in philosophy. The intuition, common to many species of idealism, is that if you believe everything in the universe to be cau- sally or intentionally interconnected, then it is reasonable to con- clude that something epitomizes these connections so as to clearly reflect the structure of reality. Burke's microcosm is the drama; for many theists it is man himself ("the image and likeness of God"). Modern science has been drawn between the machine and the organism. But although these two metaphors also mix constitutive and evaluative concerns, most philosophers of science would argue that they function only in a pseudo-constitutive capacity. In other words, a metaphor models the phenomena until it gets evaluated as a literally false des- cription. Still, the evaluative relation may be reversed, with confor- mity to or enrichment of the metaphor being the basis on which to judge the relevance, rather than the truth, of a given phenomenon. In other words, something that does not fit the metaphor well is not very sig- nificant.

But how is one to argue about significance? Before succumbing to Rorty's counsel of self-negation, I suggest that philosophers look at the very conceptual apparatus of contemporary literary criticism-- semiotics and rhetoric--that Peirce, a century ago, said formed (with logic) the cornerstone of philosophical thinking. It might well be that we will need to start conceiving of argumentation in a new light, and here I can only offer a clue. Suppose I propose that "p" is

to how disagreements should be resolved--namely, by appealing to whe- ther one saw the right thing, and not whether he saw it from the right perspective. Since metaphysical disputes do not fit the former cate- gory, they are difficult; and historically speaking, since Kant they have become disagreeably difficult, such that today it is taken for granted that differences in perspective cannot be evaluated. But given the current rejection of any simple-minded empiricism, we should also say that the Kantian intuition behind counterfactuals having indeter- minate truth-values--namely, the impossibility of there ever being suf- ficiently "direct" evidence either to confirm or disconfirm them--is at least questionable. Indeed, we should consider what we need to see not happening in order to "merely" describe the impact of one ball on another, to explain it as something psychological, and to explain it as something physical. We would see then that what happens and what does not happen are equally "direct" and of equal evidentiary worth--and, as we have suggested, this is all in virtue of the explainer's stance toward the phenomena being integral to his explanation.

And again we see how the literary critic may help the philosopher, insofar as the former is a "strategist of difficulty", an expert in making judgments about what combination of voices will yield a narra- tive structure more or less capable of accomodating certain plots, ad- dressing certain themes, and so forth. Posing a problem can be fruit- fully regarded as "setting the stage" for an explanation, a metaphor that the critic Kenneth Burke has in fact used as a reduction language for reconstituting and evaluating metaphysical systems. The fact that he uses this metaphor for both constitutive and evaluative purposes reveals an interesting anti-Kantian intuition that deserves to be cultivated in philosophy. The intuition, common to many species of idealism, is that if you believe everything in the universe to be cau- sally or intentionally interconnected, then it is reasonable to con- clude that something epitomizes these connections so as to clearly reflect the structure of reality. Burke's microcosm is the drama; for many theists it is man himself ("the image and likeness of God"). Modern science has been drawn between the machine and the organism. But although these two metaphors also mix constitutive and evaluative concerns, most philosophers of science would argue that they function only in a pseudo-constitutive capacity. In other words, a metaphor models the phenomena until it gets evaluated as a literally false des- cription. Still, the evaluative relation may be reversed, with confor- mity to or enrichment of the metaphor being the basis on which to judge the relevance, rather than the truth, of a given phenomenon. In other words, something that does not fit the metaphor well is not very sig- nificant.

But how is one to argue about significance? Before succumbing to Rorty's counsel of self-negation, I suggest that philosophers look at the very conceptual apparatus of contemporary literary criticism-- semiotics and rhetoric--that Peirce, a century ago, said formed (with logic) the cornerstone of philosophical thinking. It might well be that we will need to start conceiving of argumentation in a new light, and here I can only offer a clue. Suppose I propose that "p" is

to how disagreements should be resolved--namely, by appealing to whe- ther one saw the right thing, and not whether he saw it from the right perspective. Since metaphysical disputes do not fit the former cate- gory, they are difficult; and historically speaking, since Kant they have become disagreeably difficult, such that today it is taken for granted that differences in perspective cannot be evaluated. But given the current rejection of any simple-minded empiricism, we should also say that the Kantian intuition behind counterfactuals having indeter- minate truth-values--namely, the impossibility of there ever being suf- ficiently "direct" evidence either to confirm or disconfirm them--is at least questionable. Indeed, we should consider what we need to see not happening in order to "merely" describe the impact of one ball on another, to explain it as something psychological, and to explain it as something physical. We would see then that what happens and what does not happen are equally "direct" and of equal evidentiary worth--and, as we have suggested, this is all in virtue of the explainer's stance toward the phenomena being integral to his explanation.

And again we see how the literary critic may help the philosopher, insofar as the former is a "strategist of difficulty", an expert in making judgments about what combination of voices will yield a narra- tive structure more or less capable of accomodating certain plots, ad- dressing certain themes, and so forth. Posing a problem can be fruit- fully regarded as "setting the stage" for an explanation, a metaphor that the critic Kenneth Burke has in fact used as a reduction language for reconstituting and evaluating metaphysical systems. The fact that he uses this metaphor for both constitutive and evaluative purposes reveals an interesting anti-Kantian intuition that deserves to be cultivated in philosophy. The intuition, common to many species of idealism, is that if you believe everything in the universe to be cau- sally or intentionally interconnected, then it is reasonable to con- clude that something epitomizes these connections so as to clearly reflect the structure of reality. Burke's microcosm is the drama; for many theists it is man himself ("the image and likeness of God"). Modern science has been drawn between the machine and the organism. But although these two metaphors also mix constitutive and evaluative concerns, most philosophers of science would argue that they function only in a pseudo-constitutive capacity. In other words, a metaphor models the phenomena until it gets evaluated as a literally false des- cription. Still, the evaluative relation may be reversed, with confor- mity to or enrichment of the metaphor being the basis on which to judge the relevance, rather than the truth, of a given phenomenon. In other words, something that does not fit the metaphor well is not very sig- nificant.

But how is one to argue about significance? Before succumbing to Rorty's counsel of self-negation, I suggest that philosophers look at the very conceptual apparatus of contemporary literary criticism-- semiotics and rhetoric--that Peirce, a century ago, said formed (with logic) the cornerstone of philosophical thinking. It might well be that we will need to start conceiving of argumentation in a new light, and here I can only offer a clue. Suppose I propose that "p" is

to how disagreements should be resolved--namely, by appealing to whe- ther one saw the right thing, and not whether he saw it from the right perspective. Since metaphysical disputes do not fit the former cate- gory, they are difficult; and historically speaking, since Kant they have become disagreeably difficult, such that today it is taken for granted that differences in perspective cannot be evaluated. But given the current rejection of any simple-minded empiricism, we should also say that the Kantian intuition behind counterfactuals having indeter- minate truth-values--namely, the impossibility of there ever being suf- ficiently "direct" evidence either to confirm or disconfirm them--is at least questionable. Indeed, we should consider what we need to see not happening in order to "merely" describe the impact of one ball on another, to explain it as something psychological, and to explain it as something physical. We would see then that what happens and what does not happen are equally "direct" and of equal evidentiary worth--and, as we have suggested, this is all in virtue of the explainer's stance toward the phenomena being integral to his explanation.

And again we see how the literary critic may help the philosopher, insofar as the former is a "strategist of difficulty", an expert in making judgments about what combination of voices will yield a narra- tive structure more or less capable of accomodating certain plots, ad- dressing certain themes, and so forth. Posing a problem can be fruit- fully regarded as "setting the stage" for an explanation, a metaphor that the critic Kenneth Burke has in fact used as a reduction language for reconstituting and evaluating metaphysical systems. The fact that he uses this metaphor for both constitutive and evaluative purposes reveals an interesting anti-Kantian intuition that deserves to be cultivated in philosophy. The intuition, common to many species of idealism, is that if you believe everything in the universe to be cau- sally or intentionally interconnected, then it is reasonable to con- clude that something epitomizes these connections so as to clearly reflect the structure of reality. Burke's microcosm is the drama; for many theists it is man himself ("the image and likeness of God"). Modern science has been drawn between the machine and the organism. But although these two metaphors also mix constitutive and evaluative concerns, most philosophers of science would argue that they function only in a pseudo-constitutive capacity. In other words, a metaphor models the phenomena until it gets evaluated as a literally false des- cription. Still, the evaluative relation may be reversed, with confor- mity to or enrichment of the metaphor being the basis on which to judge the relevance, rather than the truth, of a given phenomenon. In other words, something that does not fit the metaphor well is not very sig- nificant.

But how is one to argue about significance? Before succumbing to Rorty's counsel of self-negation, I suggest that philosophers look at the very conceptual apparatus of contemporary literary criticism-- semiotics and rhetoric--that Peirce, a century ago, said formed (with logic) the cornerstone of philosophical thinking. It might well be that we will need to start conceiving of argumentation in a new light, and here I can only offer a clue. Suppose I propose that "p" is

to how disagreements should be resolved--namely, by appealing to whe- ther one saw the right thing, and not whether he saw it from the right perspective. Since metaphysical disputes do not fit the former cate- gory, they are difficult; and historically speaking, since Kant they have become disagreeably difficult, such that today it is taken for granted that differences in perspective cannot be evaluated. But given the current rejection of any simple-minded empiricism, we should also say that the Kantian intuition behind counterfactuals having indeter- minate truth-values--namely, the impossibility of there ever being suf- ficiently "direct" evidence either to confirm or disconfirm them--is at least questionable. Indeed, we should consider what we need to see not happening in order to "merely" describe the impact of one ball on another, to explain it as something psychological, and to explain it as something physical. We would see then that what happens and what does not happen are equally "direct" and of equal evidentiary worth--and, as we have suggested, this is all in virtue of the explainer's stance toward the phenomena being integral to his explanation.

And again we see how the literary critic may help the philosopher, insofar as the former is a "strategist of difficulty", an expert in making judgments about what combination of voices will yield a narra- tive structure more or less capable of accomodating certain plots, ad- dressing certain themes, and so forth. Posing a problem can be fruit- fully regarded as "setting the stage" for an explanation, a metaphor that the critic Kenneth Burke has in fact used as a reduction language for reconstituting and evaluating metaphysical systems. The fact that he uses this metaphor for both constitutive and evaluative purposes reveals an interesting anti-Kantian intuition that deserves to be cultivated in philosophy. The intuition, common to many species of idealism, is that if you believe everything in the universe to be cau- sally or intentionally interconnected, then it is reasonable to con- clude that something epitomizes these connections so as to clearly reflect the structure of reality. Burke's microcosm is the drama; for many theists it is man himself ("the image and likeness of God"). Modern science has been drawn between the machine and the organism. But although these two metaphors also mix constitutive and evaluative concerns, most philosophers of science would argue that they function only in a pseudo-constitutive capacity. In other words, a metaphor models the phenomena until it gets evaluated as a literally false des- cription. Still, the evaluative relation may be reversed, with confor- mity to or enrichment of the metaphor being the basis on which to judge the relevance, rather than the truth, of a given phenomenon. In other words, something that does not fit the metaphor well is not very sig- nificant.

But how is one to argue about significance? Before succumbing to Rorty's counsel of self-negation, I suggest that philosophers look at the very conceptual apparatus of contemporary literary criticism-- semiotics and rhetoric--that Peirce, a century ago, said formed (with logic) the cornerstone of philosophical thinking. It might well be that we will need to start conceiving of argumentation in a new light, and here I can only offer a clue. Suppose I propose that "p" is

to how disagreements should be resolved--namely, by appealing to whe- ther one saw the right thing, and not whether he saw it from the right perspective. Since metaphysical disputes do not fit the former cate- gory, they are difficult; and historically speaking, since Kant they have become disagreeably difficult, such that today it is taken for granted that differences in perspective cannot be evaluated. But given the current rejection of any simple-minded empiricism, we should also say that the Kantian intuition behind counterfactuals having indeter- minate truth-values--namely, the impossibility of there ever being suf- ficiently "direct" evidence either to confirm or disconfirm them--is at least questionable. Indeed, we should consider what we need to see not happening in order to "merely" describe the impact of one ball on another, to explain it as something psychological, and to explain it as something physical. We would see then that what happens and what does not happen are equally "direct" and of equal evidentiary worth--and, as we have suggested, this is all in virtue of the explainer's stance toward the phenomena being integral to his explanation.

And again we see how the literary critic may help the philosopher, insofar as the former is a "strategist of difficulty", an expert in making judgments about what combination of voices will yield a narra- tive structure more or less capable of accomodating certain plots, ad- dressing certain themes, and so forth. Posing a problem can be fruit- fully regarded as "setting the stage" for an explanation, a metaphor that the critic Kenneth Burke has in fact used as a reduction language for reconstituting and evaluating metaphysical systems. The fact that he uses this metaphor for both constitutive and evaluative purposes reveals an interesting anti-Kantian intuition that deserves to be cultivated in philosophy. The intuition, common to many species of idealism, is that if you believe everything in the universe to be cau- sally or intentionally interconnected, then it is reasonable to con- clude that something epitomizes these connections so as to clearly reflect the structure of reality. Burke's microcosm is the drama; for many theists it is man himself ("the image and likeness of God"). Modern science has been drawn between the machine and the organism. But although these two metaphors also mix constitutive and evaluative concerns, most philosophers of science would argue that they function only in a pseudo-constitutive capacity. In other words, a metaphor models the phenomena until it gets evaluated as a literally false des- cription. Still, the evaluative relation may be reversed, with confor- mity to or enrichment of the metaphor being the basis on which to judge the relevance, rather than the truth, of a given phenomenon. In other words, something that does not fit the metaphor well is not very sig- nificant.

But how is one to argue about significance? Before succumbing to Rorty's counsel of self-negation, I suggest that philosophers look at the very conceptual apparatus of contemporary literary criticism-- semiotics and rhetoric--that Peirce, a century ago, said formed (with logic) the cornerstone of philosophical thinking. It might well be that we will need to start conceiving of argumentation in a new light, and here I can only offer a clue. Suppose I propose that "p" is

to how disagreements should be resolved--namely, by appealing to whe- ther one saw the right thing, and not whether he saw it from the right perspective. Since metaphysical disputes do not fit the former cate- gory, they are difficult; and historically speaking, since Kant they have become disagreeably difficult, such that today it is taken for granted that differences in perspective cannot be evaluated. But given the current rejection of any simple-minded empiricism, we should also say that the Kantian intuition behind counterfactuals having indeter- minate truth-values--namely, the impossibility of there ever being suf- ficiently "direct" evidence either to confirm or disconfirm them--is at least questionable. Indeed, we should consider what we need to see not happening in order to "merely" describe the impact of one ball on another, to explain it as something psychological, and to explain it as something physical. We would see then that what happens and what does not happen are equally "direct" and of equal evidentiary worth--and, as we have suggested, this is all in virtue of the explainer's stance toward the phenomena being integral to his explanation.

And again we see how the literary critic may help the philosopher, insofar as the former is a "strategist of difficulty", an expert in making judgments about what combination of voices will yield a narra- tive structure more or less capable of accomodating certain plots, ad- dressing certain themes, and so forth. Posing a problem can be fruit- fully regarded as "setting the stage" for an explanation, a metaphor that the critic Kenneth Burke has in fact used as a reduction language for reconstituting and evaluating metaphysical systems. The fact that he uses this metaphor for both constitutive and evaluative purposes reveals an interesting anti-Kantian intuition that deserves to be cultivated in philosophy. The intuition, common to many species of idealism, is that if you believe everything in the universe to be cau- sally or intentionally interconnected, then it is reasonable to con- clude that something epitomizes these connections so as to clearly reflect the structure of reality. Burke's microcosm is the drama; for many theists it is man himself ("the image and likeness of God"). Modern science has been drawn between the machine and the organism. But although these two metaphors also mix constitutive and evaluative concerns, most philosophers of science would argue that they function only in a pseudo-constitutive capacity. In other words, a metaphor models the phenomena until it gets evaluated as a literally false des- cription. Still, the evaluative relation may be reversed, with confor- mity to or enrichment of the metaphor being the basis on which to judge the relevance, rather than the truth, of a given phenomenon. In other words, something that does not fit the metaphor well is not very sig- nificant.

But how is one to argue about significance? Before succumbing to Rorty's counsel of self-negation, I suggest that philosophers look at the very conceptual apparatus of contemporary literary criticism-- semiotics and rhetoric--that Peirce, a century ago, said formed (with logic) the cornerstone of philosophical thinking. It might well be that we will need to start conceiving of argumentation in a new light, and here I can only offer a clue. Suppose I propose that "p" is

to how disagreements should be resolved--namely, by appealing to whe- ther one saw the right thing, and not whether he saw it from the right perspective. Since metaphysical disputes do not fit the former cate- gory, they are difficult; and historically speaking, since Kant they have become disagreeably difficult, such that today it is taken for granted that differences in perspective cannot be evaluated. But given the current rejection of any simple-minded empiricism, we should also say that the Kantian intuition behind counterfactuals having indeter- minate truth-values--namely, the impossibility of there ever being suf- ficiently "direct" evidence either to confirm or disconfirm them--is at least questionable. Indeed, we should consider what we need to see not happening in order to "merely" describe the impact of one ball on another, to explain it as something psychological, and to explain it as something physical. We would see then that what happens and what does not happen are equally "direct" and of equal evidentiary worth--and, as we have suggested, this is all in virtue of the explainer's stance toward the phenomena being integral to his explanation.

And again we see how the literary critic may help the philosopher, insofar as the former is a "strategist of difficulty", an expert in making judgments about what combination of voices will yield a narra- tive structure more or less capable of accomodating certain plots, ad- dressing certain themes, and so forth. Posing a problem can be fruit- fully regarded as "setting the stage" for an explanation, a metaphor that the critic Kenneth Burke has in fact used as a reduction language for reconstituting and evaluating metaphysical systems. The fact that he uses this metaphor for both constitutive and evaluative purposes reveals an interesting anti-Kantian intuition that deserves to be cultivated in philosophy. The intuition, common to many species of idealism, is that if you believe everything in the universe to be cau- sally or intentionally interconnected, then it is reasonable to con- clude that something epitomizes these connections so as to clearly reflect the structure of reality. Burke's microcosm is the drama; for many theists it is man himself ("the image and likeness of God"). Modern science has been drawn between the machine and the organism. But although these two metaphors also mix constitutive and evaluative concerns, most philosophers of science would argue that they function only in a pseudo-constitutive capacity. In other words, a metaphor models the phenomena until it gets evaluated as a literally false des- cription. Still, the evaluative relation may be reversed, with confor- mity to or enrichment of the metaphor being the basis on which to judge the relevance, rather than the truth, of a given phenomenon. In other words, something that does not fit the metaphor well is not very sig- nificant.

But how is one to argue about significance? Before succumbing to Rorty's counsel of self-negation, I suggest that philosophers look at the very conceptual apparatus of contemporary literary criticism-- semiotics and rhetoric--that Peirce, a century ago, said formed (with logic) the cornerstone of philosophical thinking. It might well be that we will need to start conceiving of argumentation in a new light, and here I can only offer a clue. Suppose I propose that "p" is

to how disagreements should be resolved--namely, by appealing to whe- ther one saw the right thing, and not whether he saw it from the right perspective. Since metaphysical disputes do not fit the former cate- gory, they are difficult; and historically speaking, since Kant they have become disagreeably difficult, such that today it is taken for granted that differences in perspective cannot be evaluated. But given the current rejection of any simple-minded empiricism, we should also say that the Kantian intuition behind counterfactuals having indeter- minate truth-values--namely, the impossibility of there ever being suf- ficiently "direct" evidence either to confirm or disconfirm them--is at least questionable. Indeed, we should consider what we need to see not happening in order to "merely" describe the impact of one ball on another, to explain it as something psychological, and to explain it as something physical. We would see then that what happens and what does not happen are equally "direct" and of equal evidentiary worth--and, as we have suggested, this is all in virtue of the explainer's stance toward the phenomena being integral to his explanation.

And again we see how the literary critic may help the philosopher, insofar as the former is a "strategist of difficulty", an expert in making judgments about what combination of voices will yield a narra- tive structure more or less capable of accomodating certain plots, ad- dressing certain themes, and so forth. Posing a problem can be fruit- fully regarded as "setting the stage" for an explanation, a metaphor that the critic Kenneth Burke has in fact used as a reduction language for reconstituting and evaluating metaphysical systems. The fact that he uses this metaphor for both constitutive and evaluative purposes reveals an interesting anti-Kantian intuition that deserves to be cultivated in philosophy. The intuition, common to many species of idealism, is that if you believe everything in the universe to be cau- sally or intentionally interconnected, then it is reasonable to con- clude that something epitomizes these connections so as to clearly reflect the structure of reality. Burke's microcosm is the drama; for many theists it is man himself ("the image and likeness of God"). Modern science has been drawn between the machine and the organism. But although these two metaphors also mix constitutive and evaluative concerns, most philosophers of science would argue that they function only in a pseudo-constitutive capacity. In other words, a metaphor models the phenomena until it gets evaluated as a literally false des- cription. Still, the evaluative relation may be reversed, with confor- mity to or enrichment of the metaphor being the basis on which to judge the relevance, rather than the truth, of a given phenomenon. In other words, something that does not fit the metaphor well is not very sig- nificant.

But how is one to argue about significance? Before succumbing to Rorty's counsel of self-negation, I suggest that philosophers look at the very conceptual apparatus of contemporary literary criticism-- semiotics and rhetoric--that Peirce, a century ago, said formed (with logic) the cornerstone of philosophical thinking. It might well be that we will need to start conceiving of argumentation in a new light, and here I can only offer a clue. Suppose I propose that "p" is

to how disagreements should be resolved--namely, by appealing to whe- ther one saw the right thing, and not whether he saw it from the right perspective. Since metaphysical disputes do not fit the former cate- gory, they are difficult; and historically speaking, since Kant they have become disagreeably difficult, such that today it is taken for granted that differences in perspective cannot be evaluated. But given the current rejection of any simple-minded empiricism, we should also say that the Kantian intuition behind counterfactuals having indeter- minate truth-values--namely, the impossibility of there ever being suf- ficiently "direct" evidence either to confirm or disconfirm them--is at least questionable. Indeed, we should consider what we need to see not happening in order to "merely" describe the impact of one ball on another, to explain it as something psychological, and to explain it as something physical. We would see then that what happens and what does not happen are equally "direct" and of equal evidentiary worth--and, as we have suggested, this is all in virtue of the explainer's stance toward the phenomena being integral to his explanation.

And again we see how the literary critic may help the philosopher, insofar as the former is a "strategist of difficulty", an expert in making judgments about what combination of voices will yield a narra- tive structure more or less capable of accomodating certain plots, ad- dressing certain themes, and so forth. Posing a problem can be fruit- fully regarded as "setting the stage" for an explanation, a metaphor that the critic Kenneth Burke has in fact used as a reduction language for reconstituting and evaluating metaphysical systems. The fact that he uses this metaphor for both constitutive and evaluative purposes reveals an interesting anti-Kantian intuition that deserves to be cultivated in philosophy. The intuition, common to many species of idealism, is that if you believe everything in the universe to be cau- sally or intentionally interconnected, then it is reasonable to con- clude that something epitomizes these connections so as to clearly reflect the structure of reality. Burke's microcosm is the drama; for many theists it is man himself ("the image and likeness of God"). Modern science has been drawn between the machine and the organism. But although these two metaphors also mix constitutive and evaluative concerns, most philosophers of science would argue that they function only in a pseudo-constitutive capacity. In other words, a metaphor models the phenomena until it gets evaluated as a literally false des- cription. Still, the evaluative relation may be reversed, with confor- mity to or enrichment of the metaphor being the basis on which to judge the relevance, rather than the truth, of a given phenomenon. In other words, something that does not fit the metaphor well is not very sig- nificant.

But how is one to argue about significance? Before succumbing to Rorty's counsel of self-negation, I suggest that philosophers look at the very conceptual apparatus of contemporary literary criticism-- semiotics and rhetoric--that Peirce, a century ago, said formed (with logic) the cornerstone of philosophical thinking. It might well be that we will need to start conceiving of argumentation in a new light, and here I can only offer a clue. Suppose I propose that "p" is

to how disagreements should be resolved--namely, by appealing to whe- ther one saw the right thing, and not whether he saw it from the right perspective. Since metaphysical disputes do not fit the former cate- gory, they are difficult; and historically speaking, since Kant they have become disagreeably difficult, such that today it is taken for granted that differences in perspective cannot be evaluated. But given the current rejection of any simple-minded empiricism, we should also say that the Kantian intuition behind counterfactuals having indeter- minate truth-values--namely, the impossibility of there ever being suf- ficiently "direct" evidence either to confirm or disconfirm them--is at least questionable. Indeed, we should consider what we need to see not happening in order to "merely" describe the impact of one ball on another, to explain it as something psychological, and to explain it as something physical. We would see then that what happens and what does not happen are equally "direct" and of equal evidentiary worth--and, as we have suggested, this is all in virtue of the explainer's stance toward the phenomena being integral to his explanation.

And again we see how the literary critic may help the philosopher, insofar as the former is a "strategist of difficulty", an expert in making judgments about what combination of voices will yield a narra- tive structure more or less capable of accomodating certain plots, ad- dressing certain themes, and so forth. Posing a problem can be fruit- fully regarded as "setting the stage" for an explanation, a metaphor that the critic Kenneth Burke has in fact used as a reduction language for reconstituting and evaluating metaphysical systems. The fact that he uses this metaphor for both constitutive and evaluative purposes reveals an interesting anti-Kantian intuition that deserves to be cultivated in philosophy. The intuition, common to many species of idealism, is that if you believe everything in the universe to be cau- sally or intentionally interconnected, then it is reasonable to con- clude that something epitomizes these connections so as to clearly reflect the structure of reality. Burke's microcosm is the drama; for many theists it is man himself ("the image and likeness of God"). Modern science has been drawn between the machine and the organism. But although these two metaphors also mix constitutive and evaluative concerns, most philosophers of science would argue that they function only in a pseudo-constitutive capacity. In other words, a metaphor models the phenomena until it gets evaluated as a literally false des- cription. Still, the evaluative relation may be reversed, with confor- mity to or enrichment of the metaphor being the basis on which to judge the relevance, rather than the truth, of a given phenomenon. In other words, something that does not fit the metaphor well is not very sig- nificant.

But how is one to argue about significance? Before succumbing to Rorty's counsel of self-negation, I suggest that philosophers look at the very conceptual apparatus of contemporary literary criticism-- semiotics and rhetoric--that Peirce, a century ago, said formed (with logic) the cornerstone of philosophical thinking. It might well be that we will need to start conceiving of argumentation in a new light, and here I can only offer a clue. Suppose I propose that "p" is

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382

necessary for "q", yet everyone else seems to think that "q" can obtain without "p" (and they even offer counterexamples to that effect). Has my attempt at a transcendental argument been foiled? Not if I can set up an explanation such that it makes sense for me to see that "q" requires "p" and for my opponents to see what they see instead, given how I have posed the problem. Thus, it is not that they misunderstood my claim or argued fallaciously against me--or even that they are just plain wrong, but, rather, that they have in fact seen what I have seen --only from a systematically distorted perspective. And the burden is then on me to reconstitute the significance of their perspective in light of my own.

382

necessary for "q", yet everyone else seems to think that "q" can obtain without "p" (and they even offer counterexamples to that effect). Has my attempt at a transcendental argument been foiled? Not if I can set up an explanation such that it makes sense for me to see that "q" requires "p" and for my opponents to see what they see instead, given how I have posed the problem. Thus, it is not that they misunderstood my claim or argued fallaciously against me--or even that they are just plain wrong, but, rather, that they have in fact seen what I have seen --only from a systematically distorted perspective. And the burden is then on me to reconstitute the significance of their perspective in light of my own.

382

necessary for "q", yet everyone else seems to think that "q" can obtain without "p" (and they even offer counterexamples to that effect). Has my attempt at a transcendental argument been foiled? Not if I can set up an explanation such that it makes sense for me to see that "q" requires "p" and for my opponents to see what they see instead, given how I have posed the problem. Thus, it is not that they misunderstood my claim or argued fallaciously against me--or even that they are just plain wrong, but, rather, that they have in fact seen what I have seen --only from a systematically distorted perspective. And the burden is then on me to reconstitute the significance of their perspective in light of my own.

382

necessary for "q", yet everyone else seems to think that "q" can obtain without "p" (and they even offer counterexamples to that effect). Has my attempt at a transcendental argument been foiled? Not if I can set up an explanation such that it makes sense for me to see that "q" requires "p" and for my opponents to see what they see instead, given how I have posed the problem. Thus, it is not that they misunderstood my claim or argued fallaciously against me--or even that they are just plain wrong, but, rather, that they have in fact seen what I have seen --only from a systematically distorted perspective. And the burden is then on me to reconstitute the significance of their perspective in light of my own.

382

necessary for "q", yet everyone else seems to think that "q" can obtain without "p" (and they even offer counterexamples to that effect). Has my attempt at a transcendental argument been foiled? Not if I can set up an explanation such that it makes sense for me to see that "q" requires "p" and for my opponents to see what they see instead, given how I have posed the problem. Thus, it is not that they misunderstood my claim or argued fallaciously against me--or even that they are just plain wrong, but, rather, that they have in fact seen what I have seen --only from a systematically distorted perspective. And the burden is then on me to reconstitute the significance of their perspective in light of my own.

382

necessary for "q", yet everyone else seems to think that "q" can obtain without "p" (and they even offer counterexamples to that effect). Has my attempt at a transcendental argument been foiled? Not if I can set up an explanation such that it makes sense for me to see that "q" requires "p" and for my opponents to see what they see instead, given how I have posed the problem. Thus, it is not that they misunderstood my claim or argued fallaciously against me--or even that they are just plain wrong, but, rather, that they have in fact seen what I have seen --only from a systematically distorted perspective. And the burden is then on me to reconstitute the significance of their perspective in light of my own.

382

necessary for "q", yet everyone else seems to think that "q" can obtain without "p" (and they even offer counterexamples to that effect). Has my attempt at a transcendental argument been foiled? Not if I can set up an explanation such that it makes sense for me to see that "q" requires "p" and for my opponents to see what they see instead, given how I have posed the problem. Thus, it is not that they misunderstood my claim or argued fallaciously against me--or even that they are just plain wrong, but, rather, that they have in fact seen what I have seen --only from a systematically distorted perspective. And the burden is then on me to reconstitute the significance of their perspective in light of my own.

382

necessary for "q", yet everyone else seems to think that "q" can obtain without "p" (and they even offer counterexamples to that effect). Has my attempt at a transcendental argument been foiled? Not if I can set up an explanation such that it makes sense for me to see that "q" requires "p" and for my opponents to see what they see instead, given how I have posed the problem. Thus, it is not that they misunderstood my claim or argued fallaciously against me--or even that they are just plain wrong, but, rather, that they have in fact seen what I have seen --only from a systematically distorted perspective. And the burden is then on me to reconstitute the significance of their perspective in light of my own.

382

necessary for "q", yet everyone else seems to think that "q" can obtain without "p" (and they even offer counterexamples to that effect). Has my attempt at a transcendental argument been foiled? Not if I can set up an explanation such that it makes sense for me to see that "q" requires "p" and for my opponents to see what they see instead, given how I have posed the problem. Thus, it is not that they misunderstood my claim or argued fallaciously against me--or even that they are just plain wrong, but, rather, that they have in fact seen what I have seen --only from a systematically distorted perspective. And the burden is then on me to reconstitute the significance of their perspective in light of my own.

382

necessary for "q", yet everyone else seems to think that "q" can obtain without "p" (and they even offer counterexamples to that effect). Has my attempt at a transcendental argument been foiled? Not if I can set up an explanation such that it makes sense for me to see that "q" requires "p" and for my opponents to see what they see instead, given how I have posed the problem. Thus, it is not that they misunderstood my claim or argued fallaciously against me--or even that they are just plain wrong, but, rather, that they have in fact seen what I have seen --only from a systematically distorted perspective. And the burden is then on me to reconstitute the significance of their perspective in light of my own.

382

necessary for "q", yet everyone else seems to think that "q" can obtain without "p" (and they even offer counterexamples to that effect). Has my attempt at a transcendental argument been foiled? Not if I can set up an explanation such that it makes sense for me to see that "q" requires "p" and for my opponents to see what they see instead, given how I have posed the problem. Thus, it is not that they misunderstood my claim or argued fallaciously against me--or even that they are just plain wrong, but, rather, that they have in fact seen what I have seen --only from a systematically distorted perspective. And the burden is then on me to reconstitute the significance of their perspective in light of my own.

382

necessary for "q", yet everyone else seems to think that "q" can obtain without "p" (and they even offer counterexamples to that effect). Has my attempt at a transcendental argument been foiled? Not if I can set up an explanation such that it makes sense for me to see that "q" requires "p" and for my opponents to see what they see instead, given how I have posed the problem. Thus, it is not that they misunderstood my claim or argued fallaciously against me--or even that they are just plain wrong, but, rather, that they have in fact seen what I have seen --only from a systematically distorted perspective. And the burden is then on me to reconstitute the significance of their perspective in light of my own.

382

necessary for "q", yet everyone else seems to think that "q" can obtain without "p" (and they even offer counterexamples to that effect). Has my attempt at a transcendental argument been foiled? Not if I can set up an explanation such that it makes sense for me to see that "q" requires "p" and for my opponents to see what they see instead, given how I have posed the problem. Thus, it is not that they misunderstood my claim or argued fallaciously against me--or even that they are just plain wrong, but, rather, that they have in fact seen what I have seen --only from a systematically distorted perspective. And the burden is then on me to reconstitute the significance of their perspective in light of my own.

382

necessary for "q", yet everyone else seems to think that "q" can obtain without "p" (and they even offer counterexamples to that effect). Has my attempt at a transcendental argument been foiled? Not if I can set up an explanation such that it makes sense for me to see that "q" requires "p" and for my opponents to see what they see instead, given how I have posed the problem. Thus, it is not that they misunderstood my claim or argued fallaciously against me--or even that they are just plain wrong, but, rather, that they have in fact seen what I have seen --only from a systematically distorted perspective. And the burden is then on me to reconstitute the significance of their perspective in light of my own.

382

necessary for "q", yet everyone else seems to think that "q" can obtain without "p" (and they even offer counterexamples to that effect). Has my attempt at a transcendental argument been foiled? Not if I can set up an explanation such that it makes sense for me to see that "q" requires "p" and for my opponents to see what they see instead, given how I have posed the problem. Thus, it is not that they misunderstood my claim or argued fallaciously against me--or even that they are just plain wrong, but, rather, that they have in fact seen what I have seen --only from a systematically distorted perspective. And the burden is then on me to reconstitute the significance of their perspective in light of my own.

382

necessary for "q", yet everyone else seems to think that "q" can obtain without "p" (and they even offer counterexamples to that effect). Has my attempt at a transcendental argument been foiled? Not if I can set up an explanation such that it makes sense for me to see that "q" requires "p" and for my opponents to see what they see instead, given how I have posed the problem. Thus, it is not that they misunderstood my claim or argued fallaciously against me--or even that they are just plain wrong, but, rather, that they have in fact seen what I have seen --only from a systematically distorted perspective. And the burden is then on me to reconstitute the significance of their perspective in light of my own.

382

necessary for "q", yet everyone else seems to think that "q" can obtain without "p" (and they even offer counterexamples to that effect). Has my attempt at a transcendental argument been foiled? Not if I can set up an explanation such that it makes sense for me to see that "q" requires "p" and for my opponents to see what they see instead, given how I have posed the problem. Thus, it is not that they misunderstood my claim or argued fallaciously against me--or even that they are just plain wrong, but, rather, that they have in fact seen what I have seen --only from a systematically distorted perspective. And the burden is then on me to reconstitute the significance of their perspective in light of my own.

382

necessary for "q", yet everyone else seems to think that "q" can obtain without "p" (and they even offer counterexamples to that effect). Has my attempt at a transcendental argument been foiled? Not if I can set up an explanation such that it makes sense for me to see that "q" requires "p" and for my opponents to see what they see instead, given how I have posed the problem. Thus, it is not that they misunderstood my claim or argued fallaciously against me--or even that they are just plain wrong, but, rather, that they have in fact seen what I have seen --only from a systematically distorted perspective. And the burden is then on me to reconstitute the significance of their perspective in light of my own.

382

necessary for "q", yet everyone else seems to think that "q" can obtain without "p" (and they even offer counterexamples to that effect). Has my attempt at a transcendental argument been foiled? Not if I can set up an explanation such that it makes sense for me to see that "q" requires "p" and for my opponents to see what they see instead, given how I have posed the problem. Thus, it is not that they misunderstood my claim or argued fallaciously against me--or even that they are just plain wrong, but, rather, that they have in fact seen what I have seen --only from a systematically distorted perspective. And the burden is then on me to reconstitute the significance of their perspective in light of my own.

382

necessary for "q", yet everyone else seems to think that "q" can obtain without "p" (and they even offer counterexamples to that effect). Has my attempt at a transcendental argument been foiled? Not if I can set up an explanation such that it makes sense for me to see that "q" requires "p" and for my opponents to see what they see instead, given how I have posed the problem. Thus, it is not that they misunderstood my claim or argued fallaciously against me--or even that they are just plain wrong, but, rather, that they have in fact seen what I have seen --only from a systematically distorted perspective. And the burden is then on me to reconstitute the significance of their perspective in light of my own.

382

necessary for "q", yet everyone else seems to think that "q" can obtain without "p" (and they even offer counterexamples to that effect). Has my attempt at a transcendental argument been foiled? Not if I can set up an explanation such that it makes sense for me to see that "q" requires "p" and for my opponents to see what they see instead, given how I have posed the problem. Thus, it is not that they misunderstood my claim or argued fallaciously against me--or even that they are just plain wrong, but, rather, that they have in fact seen what I have seen --only from a systematically distorted perspective. And the burden is then on me to reconstitute the significance of their perspective in light of my own.

382

necessary for "q", yet everyone else seems to think that "q" can obtain without "p" (and they even offer counterexamples to that effect). Has my attempt at a transcendental argument been foiled? Not if I can set up an explanation such that it makes sense for me to see that "q" requires "p" and for my opponents to see what they see instead, given how I have posed the problem. Thus, it is not that they misunderstood my claim or argued fallaciously against me--or even that they are just plain wrong, but, rather, that they have in fact seen what I have seen --only from a systematically distorted perspective. And the burden is then on me to reconstitute the significance of their perspective in light of my own.

382

necessary for "q", yet everyone else seems to think that "q" can obtain without "p" (and they even offer counterexamples to that effect). Has my attempt at a transcendental argument been foiled? Not if I can set up an explanation such that it makes sense for me to see that "q" requires "p" and for my opponents to see what they see instead, given how I have posed the problem. Thus, it is not that they misunderstood my claim or argued fallaciously against me--or even that they are just plain wrong, but, rather, that they have in fact seen what I have seen --only from a systematically distorted perspective. And the burden is then on me to reconstitute the significance of their perspective in light of my own.

382

necessary for "q", yet everyone else seems to think that "q" can obtain without "p" (and they even offer counterexamples to that effect). Has my attempt at a transcendental argument been foiled? Not if I can set up an explanation such that it makes sense for me to see that "q" requires "p" and for my opponents to see what they see instead, given how I have posed the problem. Thus, it is not that they misunderstood my claim or argued fallaciously against me--or even that they are just plain wrong, but, rather, that they have in fact seen what I have seen --only from a systematically distorted perspective. And the burden is then on me to reconstitute the significance of their perspective in light of my own.

382

necessary for "q", yet everyone else seems to think that "q" can obtain without "p" (and they even offer counterexamples to that effect). Has my attempt at a transcendental argument been foiled? Not if I can set up an explanation such that it makes sense for me to see that "q" requires "p" and for my opponents to see what they see instead, given how I have posed the problem. Thus, it is not that they misunderstood my claim or argued fallaciously against me--or even that they are just plain wrong, but, rather, that they have in fact seen what I have seen --only from a systematically distorted perspective. And the burden is then on me to reconstitute the significance of their perspective in light of my own.

382

necessary for "q", yet everyone else seems to think that "q" can obtain without "p" (and they even offer counterexamples to that effect). Has my attempt at a transcendental argument been foiled? Not if I can set up an explanation such that it makes sense for me to see that "q" requires "p" and for my opponents to see what they see instead, given how I have posed the problem. Thus, it is not that they misunderstood my claim or argued fallaciously against me--or even that they are just plain wrong, but, rather, that they have in fact seen what I have seen --only from a systematically distorted perspective. And the burden is then on me to reconstitute the significance of their perspective in light of my own.

382

necessary for "q", yet everyone else seems to think that "q" can obtain without "p" (and they even offer counterexamples to that effect). Has my attempt at a transcendental argument been foiled? Not if I can set up an explanation such that it makes sense for me to see that "q" requires "p" and for my opponents to see what they see instead, given how I have posed the problem. Thus, it is not that they misunderstood my claim or argued fallaciously against me--or even that they are just plain wrong, but, rather, that they have in fact seen what I have seen --only from a systematically distorted perspective. And the burden is then on me to reconstitute the significance of their perspective in light of my own.

382

necessary for "q", yet everyone else seems to think that "q" can obtain without "p" (and they even offer counterexamples to that effect). Has my attempt at a transcendental argument been foiled? Not if I can set up an explanation such that it makes sense for me to see that "q" requires "p" and for my opponents to see what they see instead, given how I have posed the problem. Thus, it is not that they misunderstood my claim or argued fallaciously against me--or even that they are just plain wrong, but, rather, that they have in fact seen what I have seen --only from a systematically distorted perspective. And the burden is then on me to reconstitute the significance of their perspective in light of my own.

382

necessary for "q", yet everyone else seems to think that "q" can obtain without "p" (and they even offer counterexamples to that effect). Has my attempt at a transcendental argument been foiled? Not if I can set up an explanation such that it makes sense for me to see that "q" requires "p" and for my opponents to see what they see instead, given how I have posed the problem. Thus, it is not that they misunderstood my claim or argued fallaciously against me--or even that they are just plain wrong, but, rather, that they have in fact seen what I have seen --only from a systematically distorted perspective. And the burden is then on me to reconstitute the significance of their perspective in light of my own.

382

necessary for "q", yet everyone else seems to think that "q" can obtain without "p" (and they even offer counterexamples to that effect). Has my attempt at a transcendental argument been foiled? Not if I can set up an explanation such that it makes sense for me to see that "q" requires "p" and for my opponents to see what they see instead, given how I have posed the problem. Thus, it is not that they misunderstood my claim or argued fallaciously against me--or even that they are just plain wrong, but, rather, that they have in fact seen what I have seen --only from a systematically distorted perspective. And the burden is then on me to reconstitute the significance of their perspective in light of my own.

382

necessary for "q", yet everyone else seems to think that "q" can obtain without "p" (and they even offer counterexamples to that effect). Has my attempt at a transcendental argument been foiled? Not if I can set up an explanation such that it makes sense for me to see that "q" requires "p" and for my opponents to see what they see instead, given how I have posed the problem. Thus, it is not that they misunderstood my claim or argued fallaciously against me--or even that they are just plain wrong, but, rather, that they have in fact seen what I have seen --only from a systematically distorted perspective. And the burden is then on me to reconstitute the significance of their perspective in light of my own.

382

necessary for "q", yet everyone else seems to think that "q" can obtain without "p" (and they even offer counterexamples to that effect). Has my attempt at a transcendental argument been foiled? Not if I can set up an explanation such that it makes sense for me to see that "q" requires "p" and for my opponents to see what they see instead, given how I have posed the problem. Thus, it is not that they misunderstood my claim or argued fallaciously against me--or even that they are just plain wrong, but, rather, that they have in fact seen what I have seen --only from a systematically distorted perspective. And the burden is then on me to reconstitute the significance of their perspective in light of my own.

382

necessary for "q", yet everyone else seems to think that "q" can obtain without "p" (and they even offer counterexamples to that effect). Has my attempt at a transcendental argument been foiled? Not if I can set up an explanation such that it makes sense for me to see that "q" requires "p" and for my opponents to see what they see instead, given how I have posed the problem. Thus, it is not that they misunderstood my claim or argued fallaciously against me--or even that they are just plain wrong, but, rather, that they have in fact seen what I have seen --only from a systematically distorted perspective. And the burden is then on me to reconstitute the significance of their perspective in light of my own.

Page 12: Fuller, S., Recovering Philosphy From Rorty

383

References

Burke, Kenneth. (1967). A Grammar of Ptotives. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Cavell, Stanley. (1979). The Clainm of Reason. New York: Oxford University Press.

Derrida, Jacques. (1967). De a Grammatooogie. Paris: Editions de Minuit. (As reprinted as Of Grammatologv, (trans.) G. Spivak. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976.)

Rorty, Richard. (ed.). (1967). The Linguistic Turn. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

-?..------ . (1979). PhilosoDhy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

383

References

Burke, Kenneth. (1967). A Grammar of Ptotives. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Cavell, Stanley. (1979). The Clainm of Reason. New York: Oxford University Press.

Derrida, Jacques. (1967). De a Grammatooogie. Paris: Editions de Minuit. (As reprinted as Of Grammatologv, (trans.) G. Spivak. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976.)

Rorty, Richard. (ed.). (1967). The Linguistic Turn. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

-?..------ . (1979). PhilosoDhy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

383

References

Burke, Kenneth. (1967). A Grammar of Ptotives. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Cavell, Stanley. (1979). The Clainm of Reason. New York: Oxford University Press.

Derrida, Jacques. (1967). De a Grammatooogie. Paris: Editions de Minuit. (As reprinted as Of Grammatologv, (trans.) G. Spivak. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976.)

Rorty, Richard. (ed.). (1967). The Linguistic Turn. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

-?..------ . (1979). PhilosoDhy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

383

References

Burke, Kenneth. (1967). A Grammar of Ptotives. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Cavell, Stanley. (1979). The Clainm of Reason. New York: Oxford University Press.

Derrida, Jacques. (1967). De a Grammatooogie. Paris: Editions de Minuit. (As reprinted as Of Grammatologv, (trans.) G. Spivak. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976.)

Rorty, Richard. (ed.). (1967). The Linguistic Turn. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

-?..------ . (1979). PhilosoDhy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

383

References

Burke, Kenneth. (1967). A Grammar of Ptotives. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Cavell, Stanley. (1979). The Clainm of Reason. New York: Oxford University Press.

Derrida, Jacques. (1967). De a Grammatooogie. Paris: Editions de Minuit. (As reprinted as Of Grammatologv, (trans.) G. Spivak. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976.)

Rorty, Richard. (ed.). (1967). The Linguistic Turn. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

-?..------ . (1979). PhilosoDhy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

383

References

Burke, Kenneth. (1967). A Grammar of Ptotives. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Cavell, Stanley. (1979). The Clainm of Reason. New York: Oxford University Press.

Derrida, Jacques. (1967). De a Grammatooogie. Paris: Editions de Minuit. (As reprinted as Of Grammatologv, (trans.) G. Spivak. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976.)

Rorty, Richard. (ed.). (1967). The Linguistic Turn. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

-?..------ . (1979). PhilosoDhy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

383

References

Burke, Kenneth. (1967). A Grammar of Ptotives. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Cavell, Stanley. (1979). The Clainm of Reason. New York: Oxford University Press.

Derrida, Jacques. (1967). De a Grammatooogie. Paris: Editions de Minuit. (As reprinted as Of Grammatologv, (trans.) G. Spivak. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976.)

Rorty, Richard. (ed.). (1967). The Linguistic Turn. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

-?..------ . (1979). PhilosoDhy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

383

References

Burke, Kenneth. (1967). A Grammar of Ptotives. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Cavell, Stanley. (1979). The Clainm of Reason. New York: Oxford University Press.

Derrida, Jacques. (1967). De a Grammatooogie. Paris: Editions de Minuit. (As reprinted as Of Grammatologv, (trans.) G. Spivak. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976.)

Rorty, Richard. (ed.). (1967). The Linguistic Turn. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

-?..------ . (1979). PhilosoDhy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

383

References

Burke, Kenneth. (1967). A Grammar of Ptotives. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Cavell, Stanley. (1979). The Clainm of Reason. New York: Oxford University Press.

Derrida, Jacques. (1967). De a Grammatooogie. Paris: Editions de Minuit. (As reprinted as Of Grammatologv, (trans.) G. Spivak. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976.)

Rorty, Richard. (ed.). (1967). The Linguistic Turn. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

-?..------ . (1979). PhilosoDhy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

383

References

Burke, Kenneth. (1967). A Grammar of Ptotives. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Cavell, Stanley. (1979). The Clainm of Reason. New York: Oxford University Press.

Derrida, Jacques. (1967). De a Grammatooogie. Paris: Editions de Minuit. (As reprinted as Of Grammatologv, (trans.) G. Spivak. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976.)

Rorty, Richard. (ed.). (1967). The Linguistic Turn. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

-?..------ . (1979). PhilosoDhy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

383

References

Burke, Kenneth. (1967). A Grammar of Ptotives. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Cavell, Stanley. (1979). The Clainm of Reason. New York: Oxford University Press.

Derrida, Jacques. (1967). De a Grammatooogie. Paris: Editions de Minuit. (As reprinted as Of Grammatologv, (trans.) G. Spivak. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976.)

Rorty, Richard. (ed.). (1967). The Linguistic Turn. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

-?..------ . (1979). PhilosoDhy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

383

References

Burke, Kenneth. (1967). A Grammar of Ptotives. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Cavell, Stanley. (1979). The Clainm of Reason. New York: Oxford University Press.

Derrida, Jacques. (1967). De a Grammatooogie. Paris: Editions de Minuit. (As reprinted as Of Grammatologv, (trans.) G. Spivak. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976.)

Rorty, Richard. (ed.). (1967). The Linguistic Turn. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

-?..------ . (1979). PhilosoDhy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

383

References

Burke, Kenneth. (1967). A Grammar of Ptotives. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Cavell, Stanley. (1979). The Clainm of Reason. New York: Oxford University Press.

Derrida, Jacques. (1967). De a Grammatooogie. Paris: Editions de Minuit. (As reprinted as Of Grammatologv, (trans.) G. Spivak. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976.)

Rorty, Richard. (ed.). (1967). The Linguistic Turn. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

-?..------ . (1979). PhilosoDhy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

383

References

Burke, Kenneth. (1967). A Grammar of Ptotives. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Cavell, Stanley. (1979). The Clainm of Reason. New York: Oxford University Press.

Derrida, Jacques. (1967). De a Grammatooogie. Paris: Editions de Minuit. (As reprinted as Of Grammatologv, (trans.) G. Spivak. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976.)

Rorty, Richard. (ed.). (1967). The Linguistic Turn. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

-?..------ . (1979). PhilosoDhy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

383

References

Burke, Kenneth. (1967). A Grammar of Ptotives. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Cavell, Stanley. (1979). The Clainm of Reason. New York: Oxford University Press.

Derrida, Jacques. (1967). De a Grammatooogie. Paris: Editions de Minuit. (As reprinted as Of Grammatologv, (trans.) G. Spivak. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976.)

Rorty, Richard. (ed.). (1967). The Linguistic Turn. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

-?..------ . (1979). PhilosoDhy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

383

References

Burke, Kenneth. (1967). A Grammar of Ptotives. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Cavell, Stanley. (1979). The Clainm of Reason. New York: Oxford University Press.

Derrida, Jacques. (1967). De a Grammatooogie. Paris: Editions de Minuit. (As reprinted as Of Grammatologv, (trans.) G. Spivak. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976.)

Rorty, Richard. (ed.). (1967). The Linguistic Turn. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

-?..------ . (1979). PhilosoDhy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

383

References

Burke, Kenneth. (1967). A Grammar of Ptotives. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Cavell, Stanley. (1979). The Clainm of Reason. New York: Oxford University Press.

Derrida, Jacques. (1967). De a Grammatooogie. Paris: Editions de Minuit. (As reprinted as Of Grammatologv, (trans.) G. Spivak. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976.)

Rorty, Richard. (ed.). (1967). The Linguistic Turn. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

-?..------ . (1979). PhilosoDhy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

383

References

Burke, Kenneth. (1967). A Grammar of Ptotives. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Cavell, Stanley. (1979). The Clainm of Reason. New York: Oxford University Press.

Derrida, Jacques. (1967). De a Grammatooogie. Paris: Editions de Minuit. (As reprinted as Of Grammatologv, (trans.) G. Spivak. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976.)

Rorty, Richard. (ed.). (1967). The Linguistic Turn. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

-?..------ . (1979). PhilosoDhy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

383

References

Burke, Kenneth. (1967). A Grammar of Ptotives. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Cavell, Stanley. (1979). The Clainm of Reason. New York: Oxford University Press.

Derrida, Jacques. (1967). De a Grammatooogie. Paris: Editions de Minuit. (As reprinted as Of Grammatologv, (trans.) G. Spivak. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976.)

Rorty, Richard. (ed.). (1967). The Linguistic Turn. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

-?..------ . (1979). PhilosoDhy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

383

References

Burke, Kenneth. (1967). A Grammar of Ptotives. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Cavell, Stanley. (1979). The Clainm of Reason. New York: Oxford University Press.

Derrida, Jacques. (1967). De a Grammatooogie. Paris: Editions de Minuit. (As reprinted as Of Grammatologv, (trans.) G. Spivak. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976.)

Rorty, Richard. (ed.). (1967). The Linguistic Turn. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

-?..------ . (1979). PhilosoDhy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

383

References

Burke, Kenneth. (1967). A Grammar of Ptotives. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Cavell, Stanley. (1979). The Clainm of Reason. New York: Oxford University Press.

Derrida, Jacques. (1967). De a Grammatooogie. Paris: Editions de Minuit. (As reprinted as Of Grammatologv, (trans.) G. Spivak. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976.)

Rorty, Richard. (ed.). (1967). The Linguistic Turn. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

-?..------ . (1979). PhilosoDhy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

383

References

Burke, Kenneth. (1967). A Grammar of Ptotives. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Cavell, Stanley. (1979). The Clainm of Reason. New York: Oxford University Press.

Derrida, Jacques. (1967). De a Grammatooogie. Paris: Editions de Minuit. (As reprinted as Of Grammatologv, (trans.) G. Spivak. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976.)

Rorty, Richard. (ed.). (1967). The Linguistic Turn. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

-?..------ . (1979). PhilosoDhy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

383

References

Burke, Kenneth. (1967). A Grammar of Ptotives. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Cavell, Stanley. (1979). The Clainm of Reason. New York: Oxford University Press.

Derrida, Jacques. (1967). De a Grammatooogie. Paris: Editions de Minuit. (As reprinted as Of Grammatologv, (trans.) G. Spivak. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976.)

Rorty, Richard. (ed.). (1967). The Linguistic Turn. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

-?..------ . (1979). PhilosoDhy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

383

References

Burke, Kenneth. (1967). A Grammar of Ptotives. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Cavell, Stanley. (1979). The Clainm of Reason. New York: Oxford University Press.

Derrida, Jacques. (1967). De a Grammatooogie. Paris: Editions de Minuit. (As reprinted as Of Grammatologv, (trans.) G. Spivak. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976.)

Rorty, Richard. (ed.). (1967). The Linguistic Turn. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

-?..------ . (1979). PhilosoDhy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

383

References

Burke, Kenneth. (1967). A Grammar of Ptotives. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Cavell, Stanley. (1979). The Clainm of Reason. New York: Oxford University Press.

Derrida, Jacques. (1967). De a Grammatooogie. Paris: Editions de Minuit. (As reprinted as Of Grammatologv, (trans.) G. Spivak. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976.)

Rorty, Richard. (ed.). (1967). The Linguistic Turn. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

-?..------ . (1979). PhilosoDhy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

383

References

Burke, Kenneth. (1967). A Grammar of Ptotives. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Cavell, Stanley. (1979). The Clainm of Reason. New York: Oxford University Press.

Derrida, Jacques. (1967). De a Grammatooogie. Paris: Editions de Minuit. (As reprinted as Of Grammatologv, (trans.) G. Spivak. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976.)

Rorty, Richard. (ed.). (1967). The Linguistic Turn. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

-?..------ . (1979). PhilosoDhy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

383

References

Burke, Kenneth. (1967). A Grammar of Ptotives. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Cavell, Stanley. (1979). The Clainm of Reason. New York: Oxford University Press.

Derrida, Jacques. (1967). De a Grammatooogie. Paris: Editions de Minuit. (As reprinted as Of Grammatologv, (trans.) G. Spivak. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976.)

Rorty, Richard. (ed.). (1967). The Linguistic Turn. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

-?..------ . (1979). PhilosoDhy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

383

References

Burke, Kenneth. (1967). A Grammar of Ptotives. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Cavell, Stanley. (1979). The Clainm of Reason. New York: Oxford University Press.

Derrida, Jacques. (1967). De a Grammatooogie. Paris: Editions de Minuit. (As reprinted as Of Grammatologv, (trans.) G. Spivak. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976.)

Rorty, Richard. (ed.). (1967). The Linguistic Turn. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

-?..------ . (1979). PhilosoDhy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

383

References

Burke, Kenneth. (1967). A Grammar of Ptotives. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Cavell, Stanley. (1979). The Clainm of Reason. New York: Oxford University Press.

Derrida, Jacques. (1967). De a Grammatooogie. Paris: Editions de Minuit. (As reprinted as Of Grammatologv, (trans.) G. Spivak. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976.)

Rorty, Richard. (ed.). (1967). The Linguistic Turn. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

-?..------ . (1979). PhilosoDhy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

383

References

Burke, Kenneth. (1967). A Grammar of Ptotives. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Cavell, Stanley. (1979). The Clainm of Reason. New York: Oxford University Press.

Derrida, Jacques. (1967). De a Grammatooogie. Paris: Editions de Minuit. (As reprinted as Of Grammatologv, (trans.) G. Spivak. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976.)

Rorty, Richard. (ed.). (1967). The Linguistic Turn. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

-?..------ . (1979). PhilosoDhy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

383

References

Burke, Kenneth. (1967). A Grammar of Ptotives. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Cavell, Stanley. (1979). The Clainm of Reason. New York: Oxford University Press.

Derrida, Jacques. (1967). De a Grammatooogie. Paris: Editions de Minuit. (As reprinted as Of Grammatologv, (trans.) G. Spivak. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976.)

Rorty, Richard. (ed.). (1967). The Linguistic Turn. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

-?..------ . (1979). PhilosoDhy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

383

References

Burke, Kenneth. (1967). A Grammar of Ptotives. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Cavell, Stanley. (1979). The Clainm of Reason. New York: Oxford University Press.

Derrida, Jacques. (1967). De a Grammatooogie. Paris: Editions de Minuit. (As reprinted as Of Grammatologv, (trans.) G. Spivak. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976.)

Rorty, Richard. (ed.). (1967). The Linguistic Turn. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

-?..------ . (1979). PhilosoDhy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

383

References

Burke, Kenneth. (1967). A Grammar of Ptotives. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Cavell, Stanley. (1979). The Clainm of Reason. New York: Oxford University Press.

Derrida, Jacques. (1967). De a Grammatooogie. Paris: Editions de Minuit. (As reprinted as Of Grammatologv, (trans.) G. Spivak. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976.)

Rorty, Richard. (ed.). (1967). The Linguistic Turn. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

-?..------ . (1979). PhilosoDhy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton: Princeton University Press.