Two Forms of Contemporary Antirepresentationalism: Pragmatism and Expressivism
Week 1. August 18, 2020
Introduction. The Concept of Representation
Descriptivism and Semantic Representationalism
Two Kinds of Anti-Representationalism
Week 1 Materials
Part One
Antirepresentationalism as Pragmatism:
Richard Rorty and Cheryl Misak
Week 2. August 25, 2020
Rorty’s Critique of Enlightenment Representationalism, and (so) of Analytic Philosophy
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Read Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979) Introduction.
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Read Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979) Ch. 3.
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Read Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979) Ch. 4.
Week 2 Materials
Supplementary
- Rorty, “The World Well Lost” (1972).
- Bruce Kuklick, “40 Years After Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature” (2019).
Week 3. September 1, 2020
Rorty Finds His Pragmatist Voice
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Read Rorty, “Pragmatism, Relativism, and Irrationalism” (APA Presidential Address, 1980).
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Read Rorty, “Antirepresentationalism, ethnocentrism, and liberalism” (1991).
(which is the Introduction to Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth) -
Read Rorty, “Overcoming the Tradition: Heidegger and Dewey” (1976).
Week 3 Materials
- Handout for Week 3–Some Rorty Quotations
- Presentation Notes for Week 3
- Video of Week 3
- Audio of Week 3
Supplementary
- John McDowell, “Towards Rehabilitating Objectivity” (in Brandom (ed.) Rorty and His Critics, 1999).
- Yvonne Huetter-Almerigi “Two Forms of Realism:Making Sense of Rorty’s Controversy with Brandom and Ramberg over Objectivity” (2020).
Week 4. September 8, 2020
Cheryl Misak’s Critique of Rorty’s Pragmatism
- Read Misak, “Rorty, Pragmatism, and Analytic Philosophy” (2013).
- Read Misak, “American Pragmatism and Indispensability Arguments” (Presidential Address, 2011).
- Read Björn Ramberg, “Being Constructive: Misak’s Creation of Pragmatism” (2013).
- Read Bruce Kuklick “Who Owns Pragmatism?” (2017).
- Read Misak, “Pragmatism and Pluralism” (2005).
Week 4 Materials
Supplementary
- Robert B. Talisse, “Pragmatism Deflated” (on Misak’s Cambridge Platonism, 2018).
- Rorty, “Pragmatism Without Method” (from Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth, 1991).
- Christopher Hookway “Review of Cheryl Misak’s The American Pragmatists” (2013).
- Alan Richardson, “What Good is a (Indeed This) History of Pragmatism”(Review of Misak’s The American Pragmatists, 2013)
- Robert B. Talisse, “Recovering American Philosophy” (Review of Misak’s The American Pragmatists, 2013).
- Misak, “Reply to Four Instructive Critics” (2013).
- H. O. Mounce “Review of Cheryl Misak’s The American Pragmatists” (2015).
Week 5. September 15, 2020
Rorty’s Literary Kehre
- Read Rorty, “Nineteenth Century Idealism and Twentieth Century Textualism” (1981).
- Read Brandom “Vocabularies of Pragmatism: Synthesizing Naturalism and Historicism” (1999).
- [For short version see:] Brandom “Rorty on Vocabularies” (2017).
- Read Rorty, “Solidarity or Objectivity?” (Howison Lecture, 1983).
Week 5 Materials
- Handout for Week 5
- Handout II for Week 5: Rorty’s Romanticism
- Presentation Notes for Week 5
- Video of Week 5
- Audio of Week 5
Supplementary
- Ramberg “For the Sake of His Own Generation: Rorty on Destruction and Edification” (2010).
- Ramberg, “Rorty, Davidson, and the Future of Metaphysics in America” (in Cheryl Misak (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of American Philosophy, 2008).
- Christopher Voparil, “Rorty and Brandom: Pragmatism and the Ontological Priority of the Social” (2011). In Pragmatism Today, Volume 2
- Bush, “Nothing Outside the Text: Derrida and Brandom on Language and World”
Week 6. September 22, 2020
Rorty’s Political Kehre
- Read Rorty, “Pragmatism as Anti-Authoritarianism” (1999).
- Read Rorty, Preface to Pragmatism, a View (1999).
- Read Rorty, “Pragmatism as Romantic Polytheism” (Girona Lectures #2, 1996).
- Read Brandom, “Achieving the Enlightenment” (Foreword to Richard Rorty, Pragmatism: A View, Eduardo Emendieta (ed.), Harvard University Press, forthcoming in 2021.)
Week 6 Materials
- Handout for Week 6
- Girona Rorty Poster
- Pragmatism: A Version. ToC of Girona Lectures
- Presentation Notes for Week 6
- Video of Week 6
- Audio of Week 6
Supplementary
Rorty, “Pragmatism and Religion” (Girona Lectures #1, 1996).
Week 7. September 29, 2020
Assessing Rorty’s Pragmatism as Anti-Representationalism
- Read Brandom, “Fetishism, Anti-Authoritarianism, and the Second Enlightenment: Rorty and Hegel on Representation and Reality” (2020).
- Read Lecture 1: “A Rortyan Master-Argument—Its Premises and Development.”
- Read Lecture 2: “Hegel’s Recollective Account of Representation.”
Week 7 Materials
Supplementary
- Brandom, from Articulating Reasons: “A Social Route from Reasoning to Representing” (2000).
- Paul Redding, “Pragmatism, Idealism, and the Modal Menace: Rorty, Brandom, and the Truths about Photons” (2013).
- Steven Levine, “Rehabilitating Objectivity: Rorty, Brandom, and the New Pragmatism” (2010)
- Paul Redding, “Rorty on Hegel on the Mind in History” (2020).
Part Two
Antirepresentationalism as Expressivism:
Huw Price and Simon Blackburn
Week 8. October 6, 2020
Anti-Representationalism, Pragmatism, and Expressivism
- Read Huw Price, “Naturalism without Representationalism” (2007).
- Read Huw Price and David Macarthur, “Pragmatism, Quasi-Realism, and the Global Challenge” (from Cheryl Misak, The New Pragmatists, 2007).
Week 8 Materials
Supplementary
- Brandom “Expressive vs. Explanatory Deflationism About Truth”.
- Lionel Shapiro, “Linguistic Function and Content: Reflections on Price’s Pragmatism” (2014).
- Brandon Beasley, “Naturalism Without a Subject: Huw Price’s Pragmatism” (2020).
- Brandom, “The Significance of Complex Numbers for Frege’s Philosophy of Mathematics”.
Week 9. October 13, 2020
Huw Price on Representationalism, Rorty, and Expressivism
- Read Price, “One Cheer for Representationalism” (2008).
- Read Price, “Expressivism for Two Voices” (2010).
- Read Price, “Two Expressivist Programmes, Two Bifurcations” (2013).
- Read Simon Blackburn, “Pragmatism: All or Some?” (in Price, Expressivism, Pragmatism, and Representationalism 2013).
Week 9 Material
Supplementary
David Macarthur, “Pragmatism, Metaphysical Quietism, and the Problem of Normativity” (2008).
Week 10. October 20, 2020
Simon Blackburn on Expressivism and Pragmatism
- Read Blackburn, “Landscapes of Pragmatism” (2009).
- Read Blackburn, “Pragmatism: Some or All or Some and All?” [Not the same as the essay from Week 9.]
Week 10 Materials
- Handout for Week 10
- Handout for Week 10 Part 2 Eliatic Strategies
- Presentation Notes for Week 10
- Video of Week 10 Audio of Week 10
Supplementary
- Blackburn, “Wittgenstein, Wright, Rorty and Minimalism” (1998).
- Misak, “Deflating Truth: Pragmatism vs. Minimalism” (1998).
- Price Times Arrow Chapters 1 and 10 (1996)
- Brandom “Reference Explained Away” (1984).
Week 11. October 27, 2020
Price on Sellars and McDowell, Blackburn on Brandom and McDowell
- Read Price: “Wilfrid Sellars Meets Cambridge Pragmatism” (2016).
- Read Price “Idling and Sidling Towards Philosophical Peace” (2010).
- Read Blackburn, “The Steps from Doing to Saying” (Presidential Address to Aristotelian Society, 2009).
- Read Blackburn, “Pragmatism, Minimalism, and the Space of Reasons” (2001).
Week 11 Materials
Supplementary
Sarin Marchetti, “Brandom and Pragmatism: Remarks on a Still Open Question” (2016).
Week 12. November 3, 2020
Price’s Pragmatist Philosophy of Language
- Read Price, “Truth as Convenient Friction” (2003).
- Read Price, Rorty “Exchange on ‘Truth as Convenient Friction’” (2005).
- Read Price, “Three Norms of Assertibility, or How the MOA Went Extinct” (1998).
- Read Price, “Why ‘Not’?” (1990).
- Read Brandom, “Truth and Assertibility” (1976).
Week 12 Materials
Supplementary
- Price, “Quining Naturalism” (2007).
- Albert Atkin, “Intellectual Hope as Convenient Friction” (2015).
- Price, “Truth and the Nature of Assertion” (1987).
- Price, “Metaphysical Pluralism” (1992).
- Michael Williams, “How Pragmatists Can Be Local Expressivists” (in Huw Price, Expressivism, Pragmatism, and Representationalism 2013).
Week 13. November 10, 2020
Global or Local Expressivism? The Current State of Play
- Read Brandom, “Global Anti-Representationalism?” (in Huw Price, Expressivism, Pragmatism, and Representationalism 2013).
- Read Price, “From Quasirealism to Global Expressivism – and Back Again?” (2015).
- Read Price, “Global Expressivism by the Method of Differences” (2019).
Week 13 Materials
Supplementary
Ramberg, “Do Pragmatic Naturalists Have Souls?” (2018).
Week 14. November 17, 2020
Conclusion: Rationales and Prospects for Anti-Representationalism
Week 14 Materials
Supplementary
Brandom “The Institution of Normative Statuses by Normative Attitudes” (2019).
Some Further Resources
- Richard Rorty’s webpage, with bibliography
- Richard Rorty Society.
- Rorty, “Intellectual Autobiography” (2010).
- Richard Rorty entry in International Encyclopedia of Social and Behavioral Sciences.
- Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (1989).
- The Roots of Rorty’s Philosophy—Pragmatism Today (vol 2, Issue 1, Summer 2011).
- Pragmatism and Literature—Pragmatism Today (vol2, Issue 2, Winter 2011).