ABSTRACT
Somewhere past the midpoint of our overlong exchange about radical constructionism, Meehl wrote, “I think we’re both tired of OY Rorty, but here’s a short easy task: Write me a sentence stating what Rorty says that’s literally correct by your lights, that’s helpful to you as a scientist, and that you didn’t know before. Please, I don’t ask you to defend it, merely write such a sentence. Then I’ll ask (not you, but me) whether it applies to me as well.” I knew immediately that I would not be able to find anything in the Rorty I had read that would satisfy all of the conditions Paul specified, but thought some of my colleagues might, so I sent the challenge to them, and several of them responded. I made the mistake of passing their efforts on to Meehl, whose patience with the whole issue finally gave way. He quoted a sentence from Rorty: “There is nothing to be said about either truth or rationality apart from description of the familiar procedures of justification which a given society—ours—uses in one or another area of inquiry.” Then Paul wrote, “Take this literally, that there is ‘nothing to be said.’ I just read my philosophy center colleague Hellman’s superb 108book on mathematical truth. Hellman has Feigl-level IQ. If Rorty’s dumb remark—the CORE idea of his view mind you—is taken literally, that book is ‘saying nothing.’ My next letter is FINAL on the damn Rorty matter.”
