SUSAN HAACK
",\YT
P
.
"
we ragmatlsts ... :
Peirce and Rorty in Conversation
SUSAN HAACK:
Let me begin by asking Professor Rorty to explain how
he feels about philosophers like you, Mr. Peirce, who take themselves to be
seeking the truth.
RICHARD RORTY:
It is ... more difficult than it used to be to locate a
real live metaphysical prig. [But] you can still find [philosophers] who will
solemnly tell you that they are seeking
the truth,
not just a story or a con–
sensus but an honest-to- God, down - home, accurate representation of the
way the world is .. . lovably old-fashioned prigs
(EHO,
p.86).
SUSAN HAACK:
Mr. Peirce?
CHARLES SANDERS PEIRCE:
In order to reason well ... , it is absolutely
necessary to possess ... such virtues as intellectual honesty and sincerity
and a real love of truth (2.82). The cause lofthe success of scientific inquir–
ers] has been that the motive which has carried them to the laboratory and
the field has been a craving to know how things really were ... (1.34).
[Genuine inquiry consists] in diligent inquiry into truth for truth's sake
(1.44), ...
in actually drawing the bow upon truth with intentness in the
eye, with energy in the arm (1.235).
[When] it is no longer the reasoning which determines what the con–
clusion shall be, but.
the conclusion which determines what the
reasoning shall be ... this is sham reasoning. . . . The effect of this sham–
ming is that men come to look upon reasoning as mainly decorative ...
The result of this state of things is, of course, a rapid deterioration of intel–
lectual vigor ... (1.57-8).
RR: "Justification" li s] a social phenomenon rather than a transaction
between "the knowing subject" and "reality" (PMN, p.9), ... not a matter
of a ... relation between ideas (or words) and objects, but of conversation,
of social practice ... We understand knowledge when we understand the
Editor's Note:
This piece is an imaginary confrontation between Charles Sanders Peirce and
Richard R.orty.
