4 - The Paradox of Definitism

Summary

This paper and the one that follows it exemplify Rorty’s use of his early metaphilosophical insights to take on then-prominent topics in linguistic philosophy. “The Paradox of Definitism” critiques modern philosophy’s pervasive privileging, in metaphysics and epistemology, of sharp-edged definiteness over fuzzy indefiniteness, where the latter is deemed a function of human “ignorance and confusion,” rather than, with Aristotle, seen as something existing in nature. Dubbing this bias “definitism,” Rorty characterizes it as “the view that there is nothing which can reasonably be called a statement which is neither true nor false.” A “resurrection’ of pragmatism, he argues, with its contextualism, creates problems for definitists. But he also invites definitists into the pragmatist camp to avoid the paradox they face by recognizing Dewey’s insight that “every transaction will involve both fuzzy and non-fuzzy elements” and Peirce’s view of logic “as a normative rather than a descriptive discipline.”