Pragmatism--Not Pynchon related

[Terrance]

Dewey and Rorty:


If we believe Rorty, then we believe that our identities are
(and only can be) our
individual and communal self-descriptions. But then we must
also believe that such
descriptions are not descriptions of anything, are not about
anything, are not to be
taken as expressing views about anything. In this kind of
game, the only safety lies
in having no position, no view at all. And so Rorty's humble
philosopher, rather
than asserting his superiority by claiming to know how to
recognize truth and how
to evaluate the truth of statements, asserts his superiority
by refusing to make any
claims at all -- even refusing the claim that he lacks
claims. The edifying
philosopher can only assert that the ground-rules of
description are in flux, that
self-created identities are inherently unstable, and that
the philosopher, instead of
sitting on the eternal throne of truth, must ride the waves
of fashion, the power
patterns of the consensus as they shift across time. The
really successful
philosopher will be the one who succeeds in floating just
above the consensus as
the analyst of time. And, in the conversation hall, he will
flit from table to table,
propelled by his commitment to the relativity, the
temporality, the emptiness of all
subjectivities and intersubjectivities -- and thus of the
results of all conversations.

Is this the NEO in Pragmatism? No, just kidding, this is the
Sophistic in Postmodern thought. Dewey's pragmatism is only
1/4 sophistic, the other 
3/4ths being Aristotelian, but here, Rorty seems to have
taken this creativity (as opposed to Dewey's reversal,
rejection of Greek fixed principles for history with
evolving principles--see Dewey on Darwin) to an extreme end.
No! not an end of course, but some where out there.  

In my post on Kant I referenced Aristotle's critique of the
sophists, here, it applies to Rorty. 

Because they saw that all this world of nature is in
movement, and that about that which changes no true
statement can be made, they said that of course, regarding
that which everywhere in every respect is changing, nothing
could truly be affirmed. It was this belief that blossomed
into the most extreme of the views above mentioned, that of
the professed Heracliteans, such as was held by Cratylus,
who finally did not think it right to say anything but only
move his finger, and criticized Heraclitus for saying that
it is impossible to step into the same river; for HE thought
one could not do it even once.


http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/gthursby/pub/rorty.htm