Scientific Psychology as Hermeneutics?

Rorty's Philosophy of Mind

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John Furlong

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, VoL 48, No.3 (Mar., 1988),489-503.

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Philosophy and Phenomenological Research VoL XLVIU, NO.3, March I988

Scientific Psychology as Hermeneutics?

Rorty's Philosophy of Mind

JOHN fURLONG Coppin State College

One might have expected sharper scrutiny of Rorry's thesis on the waning of philosophy than has appeared until now, for his is the only sustained, encompassing attempt in the latter half of the twentieth century to understand the nature and role of philosophy. One must confess, however, that it is difficult to know how to take issue with Rorty. The social practice of taking-issue-with in philosophy is part of the historical baggage that Rorty advocates jettisoning in order to save the imperiled Ship of Culture. "In the end, the pragmatists tell us, what matters is our loyalty to other human beings clinging together against the dark, not our hope of getting things right.''' Minor disputes of exegesis, the casual inconsistency, the occasional imprecision in the use of technical terms - these faults, the discovery and examination of which have made philosophical careers and filled scholarly journals, Rorty seems to be saying, should be shown a certain «pragmatic tolerance," l. and should not, in any case, inhibi t the Conversation of Mankind.' One can hardly, then, expect Rorty to take seriously such criticisms of himself.

, Richard Rorey, "Pragmatism, Relativism, Irrationalism," in Consequences of Pragmatism (Minneapolis: U niversiry of Minnesota Press, 1':1 S L), p. I66. Hereafter this book will be referred to as CP. See also his "Solidarity or Objecriviry?" in John Ra jchman and Cornel West, eds., Post-Analvuc Philosophy (New York: Columbia Universiey Press, 1':185 I, p. I5·

, Richard Rorry, "Philosophy in America Today," in cr, p. 12':1. The context of this phrase is the amelioration of "analytic-continental" differences, but the thrust of the article is that philosophers' claims to rigor amount to making them lawyers rather than the scholars or scientists they should be (p, n I).

, Richard Rorey, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, I97':11, chapter S. Hereafter this book will be referred to as PMN.

RORTY'S PHILOSOPHY OF MIND 489

But what of major infactions, a contradiction or inconsistency in the main argument? Here, of course, the radical pragmatist response would depend on what the failing is. Pragmatism, especially Rortian pragmatism, is in principle tolerant of certain kinds of structural ambiguity and inconsistency, and in fact will argue for the probity of these cognitive holidays! There is one type of inconsistency, however, that even the most benevolent pragmatist would have to condemn: the importation, at a certain point of one's pragmatic philosophy, of a stricter criterion of truth than the pragmatic criterion, a tightening of the safety net at a certain point, for nonpragmatic reasons. It is this sort of inconsistency that Rorty and other pragmatists would have co recognize and repair. Yet just this sort of inconsistency can be found in Rorty's work if one compares his position on mind with his general philosophical stance. I will try to show that while in his general thesis on the nature of philosophy Rorty relegates the epistemological authority of science to one among many sorts of discourse, he seems to want to restore this authority to its primacy in his philosophy of mind.

For the sake of argument, we might set out Rorty's positions on the nature of philosophy and the nature of mind in the following way:

A. Pursuing its own negative dialectic, contemporary philosophy is destroying itself from within (or has destroyed itself from within: it is difficult to tell whether Rorty's work is a eulogy or mere philippics') and with it the whole project of Western philosophy.

B. One of the "few recent cases in which philosophy professors have actually performed a service for culture as a whole.'" is the self immolation of philosophy of mind, wherein, by showing why mind-talk is incoherent and vapid, these philosophers have

• Rorry's argument, in general, seems to be that when philosophers aim at precision and rigor alone they abdicate their true place as moral teachers (PMN, p. 5; cr, p. 68). It is edification, solidarity, participation in creating incommensurable vocabularies that shou ld be the main task of the philosopher, not bare analysis and cririq ue. This is the consistent message threading through rMN, essays 4, 5, 6, 8, ~, and I1 in CP, and most recently in Rorry's plenary address to the lnrer-Arnerican Congress {published in the Proceedings and Addruses of the Am<"rican Philosophical Association 59 (June, I986): 747'53·

5 Dennett remarks " ... like many other revolutionaries before him, Rorry has trouble deciding whether to declare victory, declare that victory is inevitable, or implore you to join in a difficult and uncertain struggle against the powers of darkness. ~ "Comments on Rorry, H Svntheses 53 (i<:l8l.)' 34~.

,; See R. Rorty, "Contemporary Philosophy of Mind/ Synthu<"s 53 (I981.): 316. Hereafter rh is a rti cl e is refe r red to as CP M.

490 JOHN FURLONG

sacrificed their subject to make straight the path for a scientific psychology .

C. Because of A, the only respectable thing left for a philosopher to practice is hermeneutics - developing and understanding "abnormal" modes of discourse.

D. Because of B the only thing left for a student of mind to be concerned with is scientific psychology (cognitive science or neuropsychology, however that controversy works our).'

E. But any science is a specialized, well-entrenched type of hermeneutic discourse."

F. Therefore scientific psychology is a form of hermeneutics.

As they stand A-F seem consistent, and the inference A-E to F appears unobjectionable. Traditionally, however, the two endeavors of scientific psychology and hermeneutics have been regarded as antithetical. For Dilthey, the conflict between Geistesuiissenschaften and Natunoissenschaften was principled. Nature, says Dilthey, can be studied by the q uantitative methods of the natural sciences, but it makes no sense to study the mind in this fashion. To take a topical example, in order to understand nuclear reactions I do not have to undergo one. But in order really to understand dreams, I must myself have dreamed. I can study nerve action potentials, pain gating, environment-behavior interactions, but I do not have a prayer of quantifying what it feels like to be depressed or how I feel about the environment I am in. In order to understand "inner experience," claims Dilrhey, we must abandon physical categories and take up hermeneutical ones - instead of using the metaphor of power we must employ the metaphor of hisrory.? Even Gadamer, who criticizes Dilthey's stark opposition, asserts that "the experience of the socio-historical world cannot be raised to a science by the inductive procedure of the natural sciences." [0 And, in fact, philosophers on this side of the Atlantic who

1 See John Searle's Mil1.d'5, Brains and Science (New York: Oxford University Press, I9851 and Barbara Church land's Neurophilosophy (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, I986) for the argument for neuropsychology. D. C. Dennett's Brainstorms (Montgomery, Vermont: Bradford Books, 1978) has become the locus classicus for the cognin ve science position.

• PMN, chapter 4, for an early formulation and "Harberrnas and Lyotard on Posrmoderniry" in Richard j. Bernstein, ed., Habermas and Modernity (Cambridge, Massachuserts: The MIT Press, 1985), pp. l6 1-75, tor a less complete but more current formulation.

j See W. Dilrhey, Gessamelte Schriften, V, VII.

,0 H.-C. Gadarner, Truth and Method (New York: Humanities Press, 1970), p. 6.

RORTY'S PHILOSOPHY OF MIND 49 I

tend to sympathize with hermeneutics, Dreyfus and Haugeland among others, split predictably with those urging a thoroughgoing scientific psychology - Ryle to Dennett.

Yet despite the traditional divide, Rorry argues, on the strength of his study of contemporary philosophy, that it is not only consistent but inevitable that philosophers face the z r st century with a science based not on epistemology but on hermeneutics, and that human beings will be, in principle, understood completely by a scientific account. Now, either Rorry has discovered serious concessions that could be acceded to by one or both parties, [[ or he has discovered the key to ending the most acrimonious, and perhaps the central," battle in philosophy of mind. Or he is being inconsistent in the way described earlier.

I. Rortian Hermeneutics

Rorty makes his case for viewing science as hermeneutics by showing that the Geistes-Naturioissenschaften distinction betokens an unwarranted confidence in the prospects of epistemology. In fact, he argues, the distinction accurately represents neither the project of the natural sciences nor the pretensions of the "sciences of man." The work of Thomas Kuhn aids Rorty in revealing the former distortion, while Rorty's own critique of philosophy of mind adumbrates the latter.

Regarding Kuhn's influence, one need only observe that Rorty defines his sense of hermeneutics in Kuhn's argot. Kuhn seeks to cast doubt on the attempt of philosophers of science to "construct an algorithm for choice among scienri fic theories. " Specificall y, he assails the views that I) science has progressed from unacceptable models such as Aristotle's physics and Robert Bellarmine's astronomy to well-grounded, modern scientific theories and 2) that one can distinguish the old, bad theories from the good, new ones by how well the new ones obey canons of rationality. Instead of this progressivism, Kuhn offers a sort of cultural relativism, applying to the science of every age the distinction between "normal" scientific practice, where agreed-upon methods are enjoined and "abnormal" science, where a new "paradigm" seeks employment. Kuhn's views are so ubiquitous now that there is no need to go into detail here. Nor is it difficult to see how these views fit the almost equally well-known story Rorty wants to tell about the demise of epistemology. What is worthy of attention,

" Charles Taylor imagines one possibility: "Old-guard Diltheyans, their shoulders hunched from years-long resistance against the encroaching pressure of positi vist natural science, suddenly pitch forward on their faces as all opposition ceases to the reign of universal hermeneutics." Review of Metaphysics H (September, 198o): :>6.

" As Rorry argues in both PMN, chaprer a and CPM.

492 JOHN FURLONG

however, is the neatness of the fit - Rorty's replacing the normal/abnormal distinction for the hermeneutics/scientific epistemology distinction:

We will be epistemological where we understand perfectly well what is happening but want to codify it in order to extend, or strengthen, or teach, or "ground" it. We must be hermeneutical where we do not understand what is happening but are honest enough to admit it, rather than being blatantly ~ Whiggish" about it. This means that we can get epistemological commensuration only where we already have agreed-upon practices of inquiry. 'J

The novel manoeuver here is not so much the aligning of 'abnormal' with 'herrnenu tical,' but the matching 0 f 'normal' with 'epistemological'. The old philosophy of science was epistemology, the attempt to ground all scientific theories in a theory of knowledge. But the 'ground' of Rorrian epistemology is normal discourse, a soft loam. There is no ultimate appeal or set of rules of rationality that makes all discourses commensurable-inprinciple. Normal discourse, Rorrian "epistemology," describes a language so well-entrenched in human practice that it can be used "as if" it were grounded in certainty, whereas, in fact, it is only more familiar to us than other discourses. Despite its apparent contrast to hermeneutics, then, normal discourse lies well within the hermeneutic circle. "Epistemology" is a nom d'estime, and the hermeneutics/science distinction is one 0 f degree, not of ki nd. Whatever priori ty, then, science has over other endeavors, it is not one of a superior level of address to reality.

One does not need to read far into the Rortian corpus to find him rejecting the traditional distinction between hermeneutics and epistemology. Regarding the respective objects of physical sciences and "human sciences," Rorty states that

Nature is whatever is so routine and familiar and manageable that we trust our own language implicitly. Spirit is whatever is so unfamiliar and unmanageable that we begin to wonder whether our 'language' is 'adequate' to it. l<

This rather trivializes Dilthey's attempt to describe the two realms in distinctly different sets of terms. And the triviality is even more pronounced when considering the respective methods. Rorty's pragmatism

. . . views science as one genre of literature - or put the other way around, literature and the arts as inquires, on the same footing as scientific inquires. Thus it sees ethics as neither more 'relative' nor 'subjective' than scientific theory, nor as needing to be made 'scientific'. Physics is a way of trying to cope with bits of the universe; ethics is a matter of trying to cope with other bits. 'f

'J PMN, p. 32.I. " PMN, p. 352.. 'f CP, p. xliii,

RORTY's PHILOSOPHY OF MIND 493

AU inquiry is the same because no inquiry anchors any of the others in reality. There is no discourse that lays itself against reality like a measure, as the author of the Tractatus once put it (2. 15 12). Or, to employ a different spa tial metaphor, all inq uiry 'bottoms ou t' into social practice, and all criteria of confirmation are pragmatic:

On the pragmatist account, a criterion is a criterion because some particular social practice needs to block the road to inquiry, halt the regress of interpretations, in order to get something done. ,6

In this way, hermeneutics and pragmarized science both stand on the same side against the modern project of epistemology: "James' dictum about truth says that the vocabulary of practice is uneliminable, that no distinction of kind separates the sciences from the crafts, from moral reflection, or from art. "'7 Hermeneutics and science had been seen in the past to be mutually exclusive only when scientific claims were epistemological and threatened the human sciences into insignificance. Yet if science is just another discourse arising from human beliefs and desires, just another social practice, there is no need for combative hermeneutics. Indeed, Rorty seems to have no commitment to the project of hermeneutics as he does to the tradition of pragmatism. It is merely a pleasant discovery, one supposes Rorty thinking, that two major traditions of contemporary thought can be merged in the process of doing some much needed consciousness raising.

II. Rortian Philosophy of Mind Extrapolated

Given this conception of the way science fits in with other human practices, one might plausibly find himself second guessing Rorty about his philosophy of mind. What would Rorty's conception of mind look like embedded in his hermeneuricized philosophy of science? If one were unfamiliar with Rorty's philosophy of mind but so far conversant with his philosophy of science, one might attempt a derivation of Rorty's philosophy of mind from his hermeneutics. Going on clues from Rorty's herrneneuticized science, we migh t extrapolate at least four theses regarding the study of mind.

1. Rarty will be a monist. Since there is no principled distinction between the realms of nature and spirit, then both realms are merely different [aeons de parler. Any distinction to be drawn between the two will be conventional and will not cary the weight of ontology with it. To claim that there is a separate mental realm apart from the physical is as confused

,,; cr, p. xlii. " CP, p. q6.

494 JOHN FURLONG

as thinking that there is a separate physical realm that validates true assertions. Monism is a default position: dualism cannot be true.

2. Rorty will be a nonreduaionist. Since it is social practice that drives distinctions and priorities - this is not only Rortian philosophy of science but Rortian pragmatism in general's - then reductive explanations have only pragmatic value. The whole program of reducing mind talk to brain talk assumes that brain talk has privileged authority over mind talk, which would raise science in general to the very status Rorty wants to deny it. Both styles of speaking have their places.

3. Rorty will be neutral on scientific materialisms. How do we decide whether a particular brand of materialism is true? We ask whether some form of scientific materialism will provide better prediction and control than any competing theory. But how do we know when we have such a theory? No matter what stripe the materialist these days, he is committed to an empirical answer to that question - we will know when, in principie, a theory explains all or most of the empirical data and when it allows us maximum powers of prediction. We know for sure that we do not have such a theory. Hence, as good pragmatists, we should refrain from espousing one theory over another; we should keep our options open as James might have said.

4. Rorty will be soft on folk psychology and qualia. Since social practice is the form and utility is the telos of human endeavor, it would be inconsistent co urge throwing oue the set piece of social practice - the ascribing of beliefs, desires, pains and mental images to oneself and others. Rorty cannot be caught urging the elimination of such talk while it is a, perhaps, the catalyst of the social magma. Rorty might want co argue, after Ryle, that our linguistic practices do not need to be interpreted in the Official Doctrine's dualist gedanksprache, and this is certainly acceptable: we are monists after all. But what motive would we have for urging that our common intuirio ns of agency and pri vacy of q ualia should be dispensed with? What cash value would it have? Prediction and control? But how would we know dispensing with inner experience would produce more prediction and control? Consistency with all we know about science? But science is just another language game, and there is no reason why we should change our social practices just because it would make it easier for scientific materialists to understand human beings. This position, it goes without saying, hardly leaves us "neodualisrs." As pragmatists we play the bemused agnostic with this option, as with many oth-

,8 See ~ Dewey's Meraphisics," "Overcoming the T radition," and "Pragmatism, Relarivism, Irrationalism" in CP, and" A Reply to Dreyfus and Ta ylor " in the Review of Metaphysics 34 (September, 1980).

RORTY'S PHILOSOPHY OF MIND 495

ers, [9 We do not expect science to explain everything about us, only that which is useful for prediction and control. Although recent experiments have cast doubt about its range and accuracy, '0 folk psychology is still not a bad tool for normal social purposes; it is certainly better than anything we have as yet."

We might stop at this point to admire Rorty's extrapolated position, which manages to avoid the dogmatism of dualist and materialist alike and to undercut the dissensions among different styles of materialism. For instance, Rorty can remain neu tral regarding the prospect 0 f cogniti ve science and "strong AI" for although it is certainly possible that human minds are digital computers of some description, why urge that they are until this paradigm shows itself the best instrument for prediction and control? Let a thousand flowers bloom in psychological theory! On the other hand, what good does it do to go on - as Dreyfus does, for instance - about how taking social practice seriously nullifies the eliminative materialism of cognitive science? Dreyfusian holism does not work the same as Rortian pragmatism {about which more later}. If one's aim is utility and if certain social practices stand in the way, then so much the worse for social practices. If, at some fu ture date, we can best predict and control our behavior by viewing ourselves as Turing Machines, then let us do it and abandon the idea that we are mysterious, at least for the purposes of prediction and control. Let a thousand flowers bloom, to be sure, but let us be free to select only the best for our purposes.

It appears that Rorry projected exhibits a philosophy that incorporates the best of Dewey and Heidegger but that rejects the limiting physicalism of the former and the excessive and irritating mysticism of the latter. Rorry projected is American pragmatism matured.

III. Rorty's Real Philosophy of Mind

When we turn to Rorey's actual position on mind, however, we find something quite significantly, and surprisingly, different. It turns out that, while accepting I and 2, Rorty snubs 3 and 4 for the stronger theses 3' and 4' :

" See PMN, pp. 6 and 394, and Cl', pp. xiv, xxxiii, 30' 32, and 98 for Rorty's comparison of 17th century religious agnosticism and pragmatism.

,0 See Richard Nisbett and Lee Ross, Human Inference: Strategies and Shortcomings of Social Judgment (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, lnc., 1980), for a comprehensive summary of the research.

" See Terence Horgan and James Woodward, "Folk Psychology is Here to Stay," in The Philosophical Review ':14 (April, I 98 ~): 197-126.

496 JOHN FURLONG

3'. Rorty subscribes to Functionalism, which, he contends, is the "pragmarical attitude towards persons and minds.""

" ', Rorty takes a hard line on folk psychology and qualia. Since all mental states are functional states, intuitions about qualia, beliefs and desires are groundless.

Why does Rorty take this tough-minded approach co science in 3' and " ' when I and 2. seem to lead to neu trali ty and tendermindedness ? To discover the answer we must return briefly to the hermeneutics-science dichotomy. For Rorty, paradoxically, hermeneutics has the proper analysis of the ontological and epistemological status of science, and the Naturtoissenschaften provide the right method for studying man. Their respective rightness does not play to their respective strong suits. The hermeneutic analysis of the ground of human sciences applies equally well to the natural sciences, but the natural scientific method yields all we will ever want to know about human beings:

Huxley and Darwin thus turn out to have cold us all we need to know about our place in nature -for what needs to be explained is simply our behavior. Once we know all about our behavior we shall automatically know all about our nature and our place."

And why is this? Because functionalism is true, at least along the broad lines Rorty wants to take:

Functionalism comes down to saying that anything you want to say about persons will have an analogue in something you can say about computers, and that if you know as much about a person as a team consisting of the ideal design engineer and the ideal programmer know about a computer, then you know all there is to know about the person."

Hermeneutics wins on the analysis of grounds and loses on the analysis of its favorite phenomenon. There is nothing we cannot know about us, since all we need to know is behavior. Hence, functionalism is true.

Moreover, avers Rorry, this doctrine seems sanctioned by both sides in the dichotomy:

. . . the hermeneutical attitude recommended by Heidegger and Gadamer and the operatronalist attitude recommended by Mach are the same attitude - they are different applications of the doctrine that neither text nor people nor anything else have essences, or insides, or natures, or true mea ni rigs." 5

.. CPM, p. 33 S. But see the earlier "Functionalism, Machines, and Incorrigibility," The

Journal of Philosophy 69 (April, I972): 203-20. " CPM, p. 332.

'4 CPM, p. 335 .

• , See "Comments on Dennett," Synthese 53 (1982): I84.

RORTY'S PHILOSOPHY OF MIND 497

But, of course, we cannot leap from empty insides to functionalism; there is something that Heidegger and Mach do not share and that is regard for science. Mach is the old-style epistemologist and Heidegger the up-scale herrneneuticist. We must ask, then, what makes functionalism the line to take here rather than some other form of materialism, a neutral monism, agnoticisrn, or Jamesian or Deweyian pragmatism? And if these amount to the same thing- namely, functionalism - what is the nature of this expansive hybrid?

Rorry cannot very well plead for functionalism on the basis of its superior fit with reality, even "psychological reality," though his Antipodean thought experiment in Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature comes dose to it. Correspondence is out, and so, therefore, is the availab iliry of the most powerful arguments for functionalism. Textbooks in epistemology , however, usual! y offer at least two other options, coherentism and pragmatism, and, in fact, we find in Rorry's corpus two distinct arguments for the truth of functionalism corresponding roughly to these options, one strong and coherentist, and one weak and pragmatist. The Strong Argument runs something like this: since science is the measure of all things (Sellars) and since what fits the scientific story we currently fa vor should be accepted as true and what does not fit should be treated as abnormal discourse, then, since functionalism currently best fits the scientific story about human beings, functionalism should be accepted as true. This position seems to be Quine's web of belief viewed from those tendrils that branch toward mind.

Before we evaluate this argument let us set out the weaker one so that we have it for comparison. The purpose of science-talk, goes the Weak Argument, is prediction and control. But functionalism seems to allow the greatest measure of prediction and can trol of human beings. Since we will be able to predict and control ourselves better with functionalism, we should employ it.

It ought to be fairly clear that the weaker argument is the more consistent with Rorty's pragmatism since it happens to be an instantiation of the pragmatic theory of truth. It is weak because in order for it to be true we would have to be able to show that functionalism is in fact the best theory for prediction and control, and nobody wants to do that at this stage of our knowledge of mind." In other words, a pragmatist does not neces-

,,' Even Jerry Fodor, the most outspoken advocate of the so-called representational theory of mind, has often acknowledged the formidable difficulties of making a functionalist theory of mind work while urging that it is currently the only plausible theory of mind available. See his The Modularity of Mind (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 19831, Pan V, and "Fodor's Guide to Mental Representation: The Intelligent Auntie's Vade-Mecum" Mind 9-1 (198~): 76-roo.

498 JOHN FURLONG

sarily have to be a functionalist, and if so, 3' and 4' must be modified downward towards 3 and 4.

What of the Strong Argument? Certainly it is robust enough, if valid, co warrant 3' and 4', but is it consistent with some recognizable form of pragmatism? We might say a priori that holding the Strong Argument and pragmatism is at least as inconsistent as maintaining both coherentism and pragmatism at the same time. Although both theories of truth hold many similar assumptions in common, they are, nonetheless quite di Uerentl y motivated, and there is no reason to think that everything that counts as true under the one will count as true under the other. But the real difficulty lies in Rorty's according too much prominence to science in his philosophy of mind to fit his holistic, pragmatic, hermeneutic philosophy of science.

Compare, for instance, the passages quoted in section I of this paper to Rorry's hard line stance on qualia, Rorty (rightly, I think) contends that his difference with "intuitive realists" like Nagel and Searle amounts to the relative weights given co nonlinguistic intuitions:

. . . the verificarionisr's complaint about intuitions is that they cannot be integrated into the explanatory scheme of science and are U wheels which pla y no part in the mechanism." '7

In this passage, in contrast to those quoted above, Rorty's hermeneutics is science-driven. Not every way of talking about mind is equal; only that discourse which can be integra ted into the" explanatory scheme" of science is appropriate. Hence, "intuitions" of hu man uniqueness and subjectivity are wheels that do not work in the "mechanism," where this term is obviously meant to refer to science, not to mind or to social practice.

To mark the difficulty more dearly, let us juxtapose two texts, the first having already appeared in part:

Pragmatism, by contrast, does not erect "Science as an idol" to fill the place once held by God. It views science as one genre of literature - or, put the other way around, literature and the arts as inquires, on the same footing as scientific inquires."

We should substitute the question '·What further descriptions of ourselves do we need, in addition to those with which science. provides us!" for the question "What knowledge of ourselves can theologians or philosophers gi ve us which scientists cannot!" '!

" CPM, p. 343. ,8 cr, p. xliii,

" CrM, p. 345. Also, "The ineffability of the mental serves the same cultural function as the ineffability of the divine - it vaguely suggests that science does not have the last word." CrM, p. 344.

RORTY'S PHILOSOPHY OF MIND 499

In the first passage, where the context is philosophy of science, science is one hermeneutic enterprise among many and would, presumably, yield one description of man among many. In the second passage, where the context is philosophy of mind, science ushers its description in first and all others are appended "in addition." If not the infallible guide, science is at the very least primus inter pares.

Hence, there still remains the choice to be made between Quinean and Heideggerian prescriptions for the role of science. If scientia mensura is the guide, then an argument could be made in favor of Rorry's functionalism, an argument, by the way, that Rorty has yet to make. On the other hand, if science is one social practice among many, then Rorty's functionalism as a claim to explain human beings must take its place along with its brothers from literature, history, law, and medicine.

In the D reyfus- T ay lor- Rorry discussion on hermeneutics and the human sciences appearing in a past volume of The Review of Metaphysics, Dreyfus, in order to get a better purchase on Rorty's position, distinguishes what he calls theoretical and practical holism from Rortian pragmatism. Theoretical holism takes science as the measure; hence, whatever theory is consistent with science is to be selected over any competing theory that does not fit so well. This position, roughed out for philosophy of mind, would correspond to Rorry's Strong Argument. On the other hand, practical holism, which Dreyfus attributes to Heidegger, maintains that there is no deep background theory or rneratheory called "science" which guides our adjustment of all other theories. Any theory 'bottoms out' into skills, habits, customs, "rrucropractices." Dreyfus reminds us of Wittgenstein's formulation: "it is our acting which lies at the bottom of our language games." J" Conceptual schemata are not just holistic, as theoretical holists like Quine and Davidson argue; rather, they are essentially incomplete, needing to be set in context by everyday practice. This sounds very much like Rorty in some of his formulations, and could be made consistent with the Weak Argument.

Yet Dreyfus sees that Rorry fits neither category exactly, and it is fairly dear that Rorry could as little embrace both these positions as he could both the Strong and Weak Arguments. Like theoretical holists the Rorty of the Strong Argument sees no difference between the natural and the human sciences, but unlike them the Rorty of the Weak Argument also sees no important difference between theory and practice. In fact, Dreyfus argues, it is because Rorry sees no difference between theory and practice that he sees no difference between the two sciences. Thus, a tertium quid

,0 Hubert L. Dreyfus, "Holism and Hermeneutics" Review of Metaphysics 34 (September, I 9 So): 12.. The Wittgenstein quotation is from Philosophical Investigations, § ;1.4 I.

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emerges, " ... a pragmatism which holds that there isn't any important difference berween theory and practice, and therefore there is no important difference between kinds of discipline. ")' Dreyfus creates this third category for Rorty reluctantly, for he questions whether it can be maintained without contradiction at the level of political consequences.

However that works itself politically - whether Rorty is forced by his own position co lay himself open for the 'disciplinary society' or whether he can consistently embrace Dreyfusian 'salvation', Dreyfus' helpful distinction gives us another way of talking about the source of conflict between Rorty's philosophy of science and his philosophy of mind. What Rorty needs to say to make his position work is something like this: normal science will give us all we need to know about human beings theoretically. Practically, there are many ways co describe ourselves. And this very propensity to describe ourselves is one element that will be explained by our scientific psychology. But this will not work unless all the claims to knowledge, all theory about human beings, falls to science. Rorty often argues such a position and does so in his debate with Dreyfus and Taylor: ". . . the notions of cognition and control have been inseparable since the days of Galileo and Bacon." l' Hence, in the sense that knowledge is power, we know all we need to know about human beings when we can control them completely. If we can so conveniently fit the hand of cognition into the glove of control, the theoretical/practical distinctions and the Weak/Strong arguments collapse into one another.

Or do they? Rortian pragmatism is not so easily made whole. We might recall the Heideggerian side of Rorty's position. Rorty used this side to bring out the 'practical holisr' feature of pragmatism, the position that all discourses are equal and incommensurable since all are grounded in human practices. Doesn't this make what counts as cognition relative to one's context or to the relative 'normality' of one's discourse? And what makes scientific discourse any more normal than legal or political discourse?" Isn't "cognitive" for Rorty an honorific and, hence, "never anything more than an expression of the presence of, or the hope for, agreement among inquirers?"!' If that is the case, then how can Rorey urge that it be given to science over any other pretender to the title? Perhaps we will find that music or literature or religion or torture controls human beings better than science does. Certainly, as Rorty himself has

l' Dreyfus, p. So.

l' Richard Rorty, "A Reply to Dreyfus and Taylor," Review of MetaphY5ir:;s H (September, 1980): 45.

'J PMN, p. 32I.

l4 PMN, p. 335.

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admitted, a future scientific psychology can scarcely improve very much the sort of control over human beings developed by the current methods of brain washi ng, torture, and the use of psychotropic drugs.' I It might be objected that none of the discourses in competition with science will produce the prospects for a healthy society that biomedical technology wilt. But Rorty made it dear as early as Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature that appeals to scientific progress in any field are bogus for establishing the priority of science."

v. Conclusion

Let us return to our original construal of Rorty's strategy, which we set out In premises A-F. What have we to say about the argument now? Is scientific psychology a form of hermeneutics or is it the case that Rorey's type of scientific psychology, functionalism, is inconsistent with his hermeneutics? We have sought to show that Rorty's argument fails because of the ambiguity of the roles that science plays in his argument. If we take E seriously, and science is a form of discourse arrsmg out of and dependent for its validation upon social exigencies and practices, then the inference B-D loses its punch. Even if we preserve B, we would have to alter D to read:

D': because of B, students of mind are free to search for better ways to predict and control behavior than previous models have provided.

And then F would have to read:

F': therefore, any future psychology will be a form of hermeneutics and its most successful form will eventually be 'normalized.'

B' and D' together, give us our derived Rorrian philosophy of mind, a proj ect with its own prob lerns, which we ha ve not discussed, but free from those internal tensions troubling the real Rortian position on mind.

But there are more general consequences of this analysis for the philosophy of mind. Assuming that Rorey eventually adopts a position something like the one we derived, how would he stand on the most pressing issue in the scientific study of mind today - the plausibility of cognitive science? As I noted earlier, he would have to remain agnostic, even while admitting Fodor's constantly made point that cogniuvism seems to be the only adequate theory on the market. Even if it soon becomes obvious that functionalism is true and cognitive science explains and predicts with all the accuracy we can expect from such a theory, Rorty's attitude toward it

H Rorty, "A Reply to Dreyfus and Taylor," p. 44. j' PMN, pp. 34°.41.

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would have to be pragmatic. The Turing Machine metaphor has yielded some important results already, Rorry would have to argue, and rna y yield many more. But are we machines? The very question shows that the questioner is still enslaved by mirror metaphors. The better assertion would be that we can look at ourselves as machines for purposes of repair, just as we can look at ourselves as free spirits for the purposes of reproduction, edification, etc.

This response, of course, is what we originally expected of Rorty, He has helped create the atmosphere in which this type of thinking is being taken seriously. Why, then, does Rorty revert to those old positivist habits w hen he expounds his ph i losoph y of mind? In an article entitled" Dewey's Metaphysics," Rorty says of Dewey:

Throughout his life [Dewey I wavered between a therapeutic stance toward philosophy and another, quite different, stance - one in which philosophy was to become "scientific" and "empirical" and to do something serious, systematic, important, and constructive. Dewey sometimes described philosophy as the criticism of culture, but he was never quite content to think of himself as a kibitzer or a therapist or an intellectual historian. He wanted to have things both wa ys."

Perhaps what Rorty says of Dewey is equally true of himself.

" CP, p. 73.

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