4.3 - Goodman, Michael F. - Rorty, Pershonhood, Relativism (en)

7/30/2019 4.3 - Goodman, Michael F. - Rorty, Pershonhood, Relativism (en)

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Rorty, Pershonhood, Relativism

Rorty, Pershonhood, Relativism

by Michael F. Goodman

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PRAXIS International (PRAXIS International), issue: 4 / 1986, pages: 427-441, on www.ceeol.com.
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CONTEMPORARY PHILOSOPHICAL DEBATES

RORTY, PERSONHOOD, RELATIVISM*Michael F. Goodman

The richness and scope of Richard Rorty's Philosophy and the Mirror ofNature1 will very likely keep the philosophic community occupied for quitesome time. With its superabundance of themes, its criticisms of "traditional"philosophy and epistemology, its descent into fantasy and fiction, and itswell-wrought vision of the nature and future of philosophy, the reader ispresented with a plethora of ideas for research programs/projects.In what follows I will treat an issue ofwhich Rorty makes only cursory andrare mention. The topic is the problem of personhood. The problem can beexpressed, for the purposes of this paper, by asking the specific question,What is the extension of 'person'? I have adopted Quine's definition that "Theclass of all entities of which a general term is true is called the extension of theterm."z Put in just this way, I am not supposing that there indeed is a class ofentities in the world to be picked out as the "class of persons." In fact, this isjust the point in question. Persons cannot, for Rorty, be simply picked outfrom among the many varieties of creatures inhabiting the world and universe.Rather, personhood is a matter of being one of us, of fitting into thecommunity, of being accepted as a fellow in what he calls the "conversation ofmankind."The crucial reasoning behind an entire essay on Richard Rorty's work inthis area is that underlying his conception ofwho is to count as a person is thenotion that persons are to be decided upon rather than discovered. That is, aswill become clear, it is persons who will decide what sort ofbeings will count aspersons. It is not the case that those beings who are persons will somehow bediscovered to be persons. This is an important thesis because it appears, primafacie, to leave the gate wide open for any body of persons, that is, beings whoare considered persons here and now, simply to make arbitrary decisionsabout who is to count as a person, here and there, now and in the future.As might be guessed, my central thesis is that Rorty's position on thequestion of personhood is essentially relativistic in the negative (pejorative)sense. Using the concept of a person espoused by Rorty, I will maintain that itis impossible for him to make cross-cultural moral judgments that can haveany force whatever from either an historical or an anthropological perspective.

* This is an expanded version of a paper read at the American Catholic Philosophical AssociationRoundtable of Philosophy, 23 March 1985, Iona College, Rochester , New York. I wish to express mydebt to the following people for valuable comments, criticism, and conversation: Professors MartinBenjamin, Howard Brody, and Bruce Miller at Michigan State University; Gene Cline of Albion College;Dominic Balestra and Norris Clarke of Fordham University; Mary Clark of Manhattanville College;Susan Armstrong-Buck at Humboldt State University; and Stanley Mortal at Michigan State University.

Praxis International 6:4January 1987 0260-8448 $2.00


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Praxis International 427The relationship between Rorty's conception of how personhood is to bedetermined/decided and his moral relativism rests on my contention that onecrucial feature ofethical theories in general is thatwe have a clear notion aboutwho is to count as a moral agent. Moral agency is bound up, in large measure,with such things as duties, rights, rewards and punishments, and so on, and itseems agreed on all hands that persons are moral agents and that nonpersonsare not. The natural question arising from this consideration is, Whoshall/should/must count as a person, if anyone?In Section I, three ways (there are certainly more) of approaching theproblem of personhood are presented. Various proponents of each approachare contrasted and Rorty's position is outlined. Section II will comprise acritical exposition of his position, concentrating on his conceptions of what aperson is and how our criteria are [to be] determined. In Section Ill, I willexplore the sense(s) of moral relativism implicit in Rorty's position.

IThree possible ways people of differing posItIons might approach theproblem of personhood and ask the question, "What is a Person?," can bepresented as follows:(1) How should persons decide who is within their (the) community ofpersons?(2) What are the characteristics of a being in virtue of which we attributemoral agency to it?(3) What are the necessary and sufficient conditions which distinguishpersons from other kinds of beings?Question (1) is roughly equivalent to asking what sort of being will beconsidered a person by those beings who are already considered persons. Thiscarries with it the idea that perhaps the entire conception of the personwill/could be altered at some future time. Question (2) is roughly equivalent toasking about the moral proprieties regarding question (1). Question (2) is alsoa logical question. It may be construed as rhetorical in the sense that thosebeings who are similar in all the relevant respects to those beings consideredpersons now are to be considered persons. Question (3) is roughly equivalentto directly asking what a being must be like to be a person. In this sense, itaffirms what Rorty, and others, deny, i.e., that there is some determinate,discoverable property, or set of properties, that is possessed by all and onlypersons. (3), like (2), is a logical question. There is, further, somethingmandated by (3): that who are persons is not merely a matter of arbitrarydecision, but something to be discovered, perhaps by everyday experience, orin conjuction with the tools of science and technology, or whatever.Philosophers such as Rorty and Hilary Putnam might ask (1).3 The answerthey would presumably give is that the ascription of personhood is a matter of

decision, not a matter of discovery. As mentioned, Rorty remarks thatpersonhood is ". . . a matter ofdecision rather than knowledge, an acceptanceof another being into fellowship rather than a recognition of a commonessence."4

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428 Praxis InternationalPutnam, on the other hand, might also ask (2), given the preference heexemplifies in the following passage:If we are to make a decision, it seems preferable to me to extend our concept sothat robots are conscious--for "discrimination" based on the "softness" or"hardness" of bodily parts of a synthetic "organism" seems as silly as discriminatory treatment of humans on the basis of skin color.5An argument from this in favor of asking (2) might run as follows: Giventhe lack of relevant reasons for discriminatory treatment of human beingssolely on the basis of skin color, if it has been decided that human color-groupX is comprised of persons, then members of human color-group Y should alsobe considered to be persons.6Who should count as persons, then? Clearly, anybeing who displays those qualities which have been relevant to our decision ofwho counts as a person. No doubt Rorty would add, "at least here and now."Harry Frankfurt, in his excellent paper "Freedom of the Will and theConcept of a Person,"7 is a prime example of one who would ask (2). In histalk of the person, Frankfurt is concerned to show that in its most interestingphilosophical sense, the term "person" can be, but has not been" used to"distinguish the members of our own species from members of otherspecies."g Recall that a person, for Frankfurt, will be a being able to form"second-order volitions." A second-order desire is a desire not to have acertain first-order desire for something. For example, ifKen wants to smoke acigarette because, say, he thinks it will steady his nerves, then a second-orderdesire Ken might have is the desire not to want to smoke because, perhaps,

whenever he smokes, he gets short of breath.9Second-order desires are, for Frankfurt, a particularly human characteristic. As such, humans, i.e., those able to form these special volitions, arepersons. Young children and wantons 10 should not be counted as persons inthe full sense of the term just precisely because they are not at a suitable levelof mental capacity in the first case, and simply don't care about theirwill/desires in the second.Putnam and Frankfurt both start out with basic assumptions, i.e., respectively that most humans are conscious and most humans are persons.Humanity is the measure here. What we are to do is discover how like humansrobots are, e.g., whether or not their behaviour is indistinguishable fromhuman behaviour, or, in another case, whether dolphins have the requisitesecond-order desires, and then adopt, or rather decide to adopt, the attitude totreat them accordingly. Of crucial import here is that it has already beendecided who are clear-cut instances of persons. So far as I can detect, this hasbeen done either arbitrarily or on the view that the way we see ourselves, aspersons, is simply"... an ineliminable part of our conceptual scheme".11However this may be, that is, whether the concept of a person isineliminable to our conceptual scheme, it is not certain whether what Dennettfurther says is actually true. He believes that the concept of a person isinescapably normative. 12 Rorty, on the contrary, urges that,Words do not intrinsically have or lack "normative" meaning. If we concentrateon use rather than meaning, we are no better off. If you ask someone whether he


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Praxis International 429is using "repression" or "primitive" or "working class" normatively or descriptively, he might be able to answer in the case of a given statement made on agiven occasion. But if you ask him whether he uses the term only when he isdescribing, only when he is engaging in moral reflection, or both, the answer isalmost always going to be "both."13

This is perfectly consistent with other statements made by Rorty on theconcept of a person; it looks prima facie relativistic and further supports theview that persons, as well as the meaning of 'person,' is and will be somethingto be decided about, rather than discovered by somehow tapping into theNature of actual persons.Those who are somewhat more dogmatic about personhood will be inclinedto approach the problem by asking the third question (Who must count as aperson?) I am thinking of such religious philosophers as John Noonan andJoseph Fletcher. 14While it is the case that both these writers take humanity tobe the starting point, they would argue that further ascriptions of personhoodare neither matters of decision nor weak prescriptions ofwhat should be done.Fletcher argues that our "inventory of personhood" must be carried out on thebasis of humaneness and rationality. On the other hand, Noonan argues forthe humanity of the fetus from traditional Roman Catholic historical grounds:"In the weighing, the fetus was always given a value greater than zero, alwaysa value separate and independent from its parents.,,15 There is a certainnecessity here for treating the fetus as a person, and that is why I supposeNoonan and Fletcher approach personhood by asking (3) rather than (1) or(2). This is so even though their criteria for, and conceptions of, personhoodare so very different.If the presentation of these ways of characterizing various approaches to theproblem of personhood is to be at all fruitful, as I think it can be, then theanalysis ought to shed some light on how the concept of the person is, and hasbeen, viewed in the past. The only seemingly indispensable feature of themany ways of characterizing the problem of personhood is that the startingpoint, the paradigm, is humanity. This seems always to have been presumedby previous writers, and Rorty is no deviant here. We are the ones looking atthe world, describing behaviour, predicting and controlling, forming societies, communities and groups. And we cannot get out of our own skins.These are simply platitudinous matters of fact. The problem is, of course,which part of humanity, which set of humans, is to serve as the paradigm ofpersonhood? All human beings? Adult human beings? These questionsillustrate a main bone of contention in the recently fired-up debate onpersonhood.Where I think Rorty differs from other more recent thinkers on this point,however, is on how far we are to extend the importance of humanity as theparadigm ofwho will count as a person. It seems that, given personhood basedon [human] decision, the decision could be made that even humans themselves, or at least the majority, are not persons strictly. The reason I feelconfident making this claim is that Rorty never seriously outlines specificdecision processes, and certainly not for decisions on who persons are now andwho will be persons in the future. Something called "the conversation of


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430 Praxis Internationalmankind," and its continuation, is what is sought by him. Personhood, then,will be decided upon within this ongoing conversation. But although humans,at least for now, are the "speakers" in this conversation, it does not followwith logical necessity that we will continue to be convinced of our ownpersonhood. The existence of persons is only logically entailed by a conversation ofmankind if it is logically impossible for there to be humans who are not,at the same time, persons. Considering much of the current writing on, forexample, animal rights, genetic engineering, abortion, and so forth, it seemsclear that there are humans who are considered to be nonpersons. The perfectexample of this kind of being is Frankfurt's wanton. The "conversation,"then, could well continue without persons.It seems to me that Rorty's vision of the future does not necessarily includehumanity as a measure of anything. I realize that he is, in part at least,attempting to give renewed credence to the sophist dictum that "man is the

measure of all things." However, given the ongoing conversation, there is nological contradiction involved in the idea that humans will, or could, cease toconsider humanity as the measure. We (humanity) are part of it all, part of theconstantly occurring redistribution of the world, part of that which ispredicted, explained, and controlled. We are not separated from all that is.We are neither on the inside looking out, nor on the outside looking in.Actually, the inside-outside metaphor would make no literal sense for Rorty.Rather, without becoming overly ontological, there are just things in theworld; perhaps beliefs, desires, as well as libraries, dinner plates, and so on,and the conversation is about all these things, one and another, in combinations, relations, and modes. All the items of the world/universe hangtogether in various ways-we see it all as hanging together in our ownways-and the conversation itself is also part of all that hangs together. 16The fact remains, for all that, that we are the ones who will decide who shallcount as persons in Rorty's view. This is so at least for now. It would make nosense for him to ask who must be persons. And it is only in a very weak sense, Ithink, that we could imagine him asking who should be persons. For the sakeof consistency, he might argue that if it has been decided that X is a person,then if Y is similar to X in every way which was relevant for the decision onX's personhood, then Y should count as a person as well. But again, sinceRorty has not fastened onto any specific decision process, except "conversation," it is at least conceivable that rational consistency will hold no specialplace in the conversation of the future. This is as much as to say that it isuncertain how the conversation will really continue, its direction, its bases,and its biases.

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Throughout Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, and in various papersrecently collected in Consequences of Pragmatism, Rorty has argued that wehave no special ability to get out of ourselves for discovering the Truth aboutthings. He follows Dewey and Williain James in the thought that truth will


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Praxis International 431consist in "warranted assertibility" and "what it is better for us to believe",rather than the "accurate representation of reality." It will follow, then, onthis view, that what we decide about, say, persons, will be true, but not True.'True', with the lower case 't ', will be understood as "that which is agreedupon as true by a consensus of the infonned participants of a language-game."For the Rortian pragmatic program, there would be agreement with Jamesthat". . . ideas become true just insofar as they help us to get into satisfactoryrelation with other parts of our experience."17With this conception of truth in mind, and the idea that persons aresomehow "decided upon," I want to take an excursion into Rorty's notion ofwhat a person is and how our criteria for personhood are to be determinedunder that notion. There are a number of passages in various places that maybring his views to light.We can dig in our heels and say that terms like 'person', 'belief, 'desire', and'language' are ultimately as token-reflexive as 'here' and 'now' or 'morally right',so that in each case essential reference is made to where we are. But that will bethe only way of ruling out the Galactic [as a person; as a being with beliefs,desires and a language, etc.], and thus the only way of ruling out the butterfly.18Babies and themore attractive sorts of animal are credited with "having feelings"rather than (like photoelectric cells and animals which no one feels sentimentalabout--e.g., flounders and spiders) "merely responding to stimulus". This is tobe explained on the basis of that sort of community feeling which unites us withanything humanoid. To be humanoid is to have a human face, and the mostimportant part of that face is a mouth which we can imagine uttering sentences insynchrony with appropriate expressions of the face as a whole. 19Here Rorty cites an interesting paper by Virgil Aldrich, "On what it is Liketo be a Man."20 Aldrich is lauding Wittgenstein's view that the human body isthe best picture of the human soul, and he (Aldrich) takes up the idea that fora mouth to talk, it must be in the right place. And for such talk to bemeaningful, in the full, "thick" sense, it must come from a rightly placedmouth. The following passage from Aldrich's paper is quite similar to some ofRorty's own more direct statements on personhood. Aldrich writes:But I should say that to be looking at and listening to someone speak, in theintimacy of understanding him, is to perceive another human body-as-subject,another person. In this rapport, what the speaker feels, thinks, intends to do andwhy, is 'bodied forth' in the complex gesture that speaking is, including learnedverbalization as the central part. This essential relation between mental andbodily performance conditions the sense that is made with the language. So,again, we run into the notion that the place of saying has to be right if a strain isnot to be put on understanding what is said, in the thick or full sense of sayingsomething. The form of the body must be right for this. A piano-shapedanimal-to use lames Thurber's picture-with a hole in the side, out of whichcome sounds that are like English words in grammatical order simply cannot betaken to 'mean what it says', since it cannot be taken to be capable of a totalspeech act. The form of the body-including the stuff-is wrong for that. It isnot a body-as-subject. If you complain that you do understand the sentenceformed out of the hole in the side of the piano-shaped animal, you can only mean


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432 Praxis Internationalthat you know how to use the sentence, not that you understand what theanimal-like piano means by it or what it says.A lion's producing the same sounds may seem to put a little less strain onunderstanding what it says because it does have the form of an animate thing, andit does have a mouth. But the mouth protrudes too far out in front, leaving theeyes behind and too subservient to the function of killing and eating. There canbe no speculation in eyes like that. So such notions as its 'thinkingwhat it intendsto say' collapse. The face is not right for that. 21Recalling Rorty's decision maxim, it is we who will decide what sort of faceis right for talking in the thick sense. But this is quite misleading. We mostcertainly do recognize humans by their bodies, including the shapes andtextures of their faces. But, lest Rorty's text refute him on this point, thoughhis Antipodeans were outwardly indistinguishable from Terrans (earthlings,humans, persons), it is not clear that they (the Antipodeans) were humanoid.He refers to them as "beings like ourselves," "featherless bipeds," "people,""persons," and "the new race of intelligent beings." He says that onlymembers of their species were treated as persons. What he does not say is thatthey were human. I think a reasonable case might be made for the view that,given their existence in such a remote part of the universe, and given that theywere not some "distant" relations of the Terrans, i.e., having come from earthand traveled to their own planet, that they were of a distinct species from ourown, and should be referred to as Antipodeanoid and not Humanoid. In thelong run this cannot be much of a bother for Rorty, since a crucial point in his

scenario is captured by the title of the chapter in which the Antipodeans maketheir appearance, i.e., "Persons Without Minds".22 The essential feature oftheir being used at all by Rorty is that they were like us in all respects exceptin having what we would call "minds." 'Like us in all respects' has onerousduty, for it is intended to include the idea that the Antipodeans were persons.I want to suggest that even though these Galactics were like us in all outwardappearances, they were not humanoid, that is, in the sense of having sprungfrom human, earthling parents, with human, earthling genetic codes. 23Hence, 'to be humanoid is having a human face' is either tautologous, and is atbest uninteresting, or is sheer nonsense, given the case of the Antipodeans,and John Noonan's polemic on genetic coding as one crucial determinant ofspecies. But Rorty goes on to maintain an even more questionable position.The hint here is that even morality is to be decided upon, rather thandiscovered, by the "relevant community of language users," based on a unityof sentiment within the community. He writes:The moral prohibitions are expressions of a sense of community based on theimagined possibility of conversation, and the attribution of feelings is little morethan a reminder of these prohibitions. This can be seen by noticing that nobodyexcept philosophers of mind cares whether the raw feel of pain or redness isdifferent for koalas than for us, but we all care quite a bit about a koala when wesee it writhing about. This fact does not mean that our or the koala's pain "isnothing but its behaviour"; it just means that writhing is more important to ourability to imagine the koala asking us for help than what is going on inside thekoala. Pigs rate much higher than koalas on intelligence tests, but pigs don't


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Praxis International 433writhe in quite the right humanoid way, and the pig's face is the wrong shape forthe facial expressions which go with ordinary conversation. So we send pigs toslaughter with equanimity, but form societies for the protection of koalas. This isnot "irrational", any more than it is irrational to extend or deny civil rights to themoronic (or fetuses, or aboriginal tribes, or Martians). Rationality when viewedas the formation of syllogisms based on discovery of "the facts" and theapplication of such principles as "Pain should be minimized" or "intelligent life isalways more valuable than beautiful unintelligent beings", is a myth. Only thePlatonic urge to say that every moral sentiment, and indeed every emotion of anysort, should be based on the recognition of an objective quality in the recipientmakes us think that our treatment of koalas or whites or Martians is a "matter ofmoral principle". For the "facts" which must be discovered to apply theprinciples are, in the case of the koala's or the white's "feelings", not discoverableindependently of sentiment. The emotions we have toward borderline casesdepend on the liveliness of our imaginations and conversely.24Rorty's relativism is clear, I presume, from this passage. Just what sort andhow extensive it is will be discussed in the following section. What I would'like to concentrate on for the moment is the idea that attributing moral rightsto beings is a matter of sentiment insofar as it depends on how human-like thecreature is, or, better, on how human-like we decide the creature is, based onour perception of the potential the creature has for being "like us." I shall pickout three points which seem to me to present particular difficulties foraccepting the claims Rorty makes.(1) The Problem of Sentiment. Rorty is, at least in part, presenting a

sociological account of how we go about conferring rights upon beings.According to him we don't have the same feelings for pigs as we do for koalas.Pigs don't move (writhe) in the way that makes us uncomfortable. We strainour imagination when we try to conceive of carrying on an ordinaryconversation with a pig, because the pig's face simply doesn't have the rightshape for the "expressions which go with ordinary conversation." We cannotimagine the pig asking us for help, but we can imagine the koala doing so.Hence, we slaughter the former while we protect the latter. The description iscertainly correct. Whoever heard of "sweet-and-sour koala," of "koala-andSwiss on rye"? However, considered solely as a source offood, it is not clear tome that simply feeling a certain [sentimental] way about an animal is sufficientto keep the product off the consumer market. We are becoming increasinglyaware that killing fish, cows, pigs, dolphins, sheep, etc., causes/can causethem physical pain, not to mention the possibility of stress created by theconditions under which many animals are bred and raised. Whether theywrithe about in just the right sort of humanoid way when their throats are slitseems to me completely irrelevant for determining how we either should orshould not treat such creatures.Emotions have been notoriously problematic in the history of intellectualinquiry, and especially so for philosopohy, theology, psychology, andsociology. The jury is still out on just what emotions are, their reliability, andhow seriously to attend to them at any given time. For instance, a youngcouple wants to marry because they "love one another". Is love what they are


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434 Praxis Internationalfeeling? Should they trust their emotions now, or wait awhile? Is love anemotion at all? These are hard questions, not to be considered lightly simplybecause they "feel" a certain way.It strikes me that our feelings for, or against, certain human and nonhumanbeings is much the same. In fact, rather than solving some age-old problems,an appeal to emotions seems to generate some problems of its own. Forexample, the murders committed by Charles Manson and his followers weregrotesque; certainly some view them as inhuman. Many people have veryspecific feelings aboutManson as a human being and would no doubt advocatepunishment demanded by a capital crime, which does not, in some people'seyes, necessarily preclude torture. Now, at the same time as we recognizethese "feelings" about Manson, we also recognize that the desired objectivityof a judge obviates the judge's having an emotional prejudice, one way oranother, regarding the case to be adjudicated. If anything, we ask that thejudge have a bias toward justice. We would have the judge pronounce asentence reflective of the consensus of the community, and it is not at all clearthat any community becomes united in a consensus on the basis of sharedfeelings rather than shared need, or some other shared phenomena. In the caseofRorty, then, the shared feelings we have about human as well as nonhumanbeings, even though per chance based on the "imagined possibility ofconversation," does not yield a resolution of our dilemma concerning how wethink such beings should, in the end, be treated. It can only multiply andcomplicate our problems when our sentiments are hypostatized in a waywhich determines how we should go about making decisions on moral issues.

(2) Imagined Possibility of Conversation. When Rorty writes that,". . . moral prohibitions are expressions ofa sense of community based on theimagined possibility of conversation ... ," I get the distinct feeling that he istoying with us to see if we're paying attention. Can "don't beat that dog!"really be an expression of our feeling of community with a dog insofar as wecan imagine carrying on an ordinary conversation with it? I think not, but notbecause I can't imagine having a conversation with a dog, nor because I thinkthere is no sense of community to be had with a beaten dog. In fact, the latterpoint seems of the utmost importance here. "Don't beat that dog!" is utteredat least partially because we recognize that the animal is in pain. The dog issomehow a member of the community of "pain-feelers," of which we also aremembers. This is at once a metaphysical and a moral community. That thedog indeed is perceived by us to be a member of this community accounts, insome measure, for our sense of community with the dog.It seems that Rorty is making a false claim when he says that our sense ofcommunity is based on our ability to imagine having a conversation with somecreature. It may well be the case that being able to communicate with a beingis good reason to treat it as having some rights, perhaps even for treating it as aperson. But it does not logically follow that not being capable of communicating, here and now, with some being automatically precludes our treating itas a member of the/our moral community, or even as a person, if certainnecessary though insufficient conditions for personhood were displayed by thecreature. I think Rorty's false claim is based on false sociology. We don't set


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Praxis International 435up societies for the protection of bald eagles, koala bears, whales, baby seals,and so on, because we can imagine having a conversation with them. Thereare other reasons for "saving" them, e.g., insuring the survival of species,seeing to it that pain is not inflicted unnecessarily, and providing continuingaesthetic pleasure for ourselves by just having them around to be with.

(3) Like Us. Rorty's main point in his polemics about personhood centerson the fact that we shall decide who shall count as persons on the basis of howlike us the creatures are that we're deciding about. 'Like us' means somethinghaving to do with how these creatures move, and also about the shape(s) oftheir bodies. Pigs don't have the right sort of faces for talking. But koalas do?Pigs don't writhe very well. But koalas do? If we recall Aldrich's statementthat there can be no speculation in the lion's eyes, our natural question is,"Why can't there be?" Why can there be no speech from the pig's mouth? Wecan certainly imagine these things. What would our bedtime stories bewithout porridge-eating bears, house-building pigs, and wolves in grandmother's clothing, all of which talk. It is all fantasy, yes. But still, we imagineit. Perhaps, finally, the eyes of the lion portray a brand of speculationforgotten by us during the long expanse of continuing conversation, orperhaps it is merely speculation of a kind wholly and perhaps foreverunknown to us. Perhaps, again, it is simply speculation unlike our own, oreven no speculation at all. To say, however, that the face just isn't right, orisn't sufficiently like our faces for us to give serious thought to the possibilityof our having moral prohibitions against "mistreating" it, seems not onlyspeciesist on Rorty's and Aldrich's part, but inconsiderate of the factsregarding our societies for "animal" protection. The California condor, on thisview, is just not enough like us to warrant protection, and certainly not for itsown sake.I am not advocating treating condors as persons. But I am urging that werethink our conception of personhood to allow for the possibility that evenbeings quite unlike ourselves may demand a measure of moral concern fromus. I am also exhorting the attitude that being "like us" is not the only, or eventhe most appropriate, criterion for personhood we might consider. Pigwrithing, that is, the way they move when their throats are slit, which is still acommon practice in slaughterhouses, should cause us concern, but notbecause of how we would feel if our throats were slit, not because we can orcannot imagine the pig asking us for help, not because of the shapes of theirfaces, including the positions of their mouths.So far as I can determine, then, the extension of 'person,' for Rorty, will bethe class of human beings. But, apparently, not all human beings arenecessarily persons, in the strict sense. The notion of "having a language"must be a significant factor, as noted in the following passages:To say that human beings wouldn't be human, would be merely animal, unlessthey talked a lot is true enough. If we can't figure out the relation between aperson, the noises that person makes, and other people, then we won't knowmuch about them.2sNor do I think that "possessing intentionality" means more than "suitable to bedescribed anthropomorphically, as if it were a language user. "26


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436 Praxis InternationalThere are "hard cases" though, such as fetuses, the moronic, as well asaboriginal tribes and Martians. In borderline instances, as much as in themore straightforward circumstances, e.g., the cases of koalas and whites, thediscoverable "facts" concerning who shall count as a person, a) will be basedon how human the creature seems, including language traits, if any, and b) arenot discoverable independently of sentiment.27

IIIThe relativism of Richard Rorty's position has been mentioned previously,and now that it is clear what his general criteria for personhood are, as well aswho shall count as persons, I shall move to a discussion of this relativism, as Iperceive it. My point of departure will be a passage from a paper by RichardBernstein, who attempts to clarify and defend the senses of Rorty's

relativism. 28 Bernstein writes:If by relativism we mean that there is no truth, objectivity, and standards forjudging better or worse arguments or moral positions, then Rorty is certainly nota relativist, and [Rorty] suggests that such a relativism has become something of astraw man for philosophers to attack. Rorty's aim is not to deny or denigrate"truth" and "objectivity" but to demystify these "honorific" labels. If byrelativism we mean epistemological behaviourism, that there is no other way tojustify knowledge claims or claims to truth than by appealing to those socialpractices which have been hammered out in the course of human history and arethe forms of inquiry within which we distinguish what is true and false, what isobjective and idiosyncratic, then Rorty advocates such a relativism. But this doesnot mean "anything goes.,,29Let us now examine the concept of personhood in light of Bernstein'sinterpretation of Rorty's relativism. Given epistemological behaviourism, aperson will be, for Rorty, a being which we have decided is a person, based onour social practices, appealing to our human history.First question: What is the extension of 'we'? Where 'we' refers to the classof all humans, an immediate problem presents itself. Conflicts between, say,Europeans and South Africans on who shall count as a person will be quiteirresolvable given each culture's distinct histories, social practices, and"hammerings out." If we can only resort to appeals to these diverse historiesand practices to justify our conception(s) of personhood, then it is notinconceivable that slavery, say, might be right (intentional lower case "r" on'right') in one part of the world and wrong ("w") in another. It is beyond mehow Rorty can deny this relativism. Further, as mentioned at the outset, nocross-cultural moral judgements will be possible within this framework, andall that would be left is "conversation", if that.On the other hand, if 'we' refers to Rorty's community, within which he

carries on, and contributes to, his part in the conversation, then it will beequally impossible to make cross-cultural value judgments, and perhaps evenjust as impossible to talk at all. meaningfully about other practices, let alonecarrying on a conversation with the people immersed in those cultures. On


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Praxis Intemational 437either interpretation of 'we', then, there could be no force whatever tocondemnations of other people's practices, beliefs, desires, and so on, such asthe current practice of apartheid in the Republic of South Africa.Second question: What can Bernstein mean by saying that it is not the casethat "anything goes"? The traditional position on this would be that there aresome propositions that are True, some actions that are Right and some thatare Wrong, quite independent of our histories, cultures, and social practices,i.e., wholly exclusive of how we perceive the world. This is as much as to saythat there are universal truths, absolute moral values, and so on. This is to layclaim to specific foundations for going about things in the Correct manner, nomatter how anyone individual, or culture, or nation interprets perceptions ofthe world. Rorty is very clear in his full rejection of this traditional stance.Again and again, in Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature he denies thatepistemology, philosophy, and morality have any foundations whatever, i.e.,Truths to which everyone, at all times, can appeal.A further point the foundationalist might make is that if we give up thesearch for that which is True, Good, and Just, we will be driven to chaos. Wewill have no firm ground upon which to get a foothold; our systems will bebuilt upon loose gravel and will topple the moment disagreement approaches;no one will be able ever to lay claim to have finally gotten it all right. This lastpoint is just where Rorty comes in. He would say that there can be very littlesense in claiming ever to have finally gotten it all right. That is not what we'reabout. No one ever has gotten it right, using foundations, and no one couldhonestly expect such results. So, let's give up the search (stop beating a deadhorse?) for Truth, Beauty, and Goodness, and simply admit that what we'vegot, here and now, is all we could reasonably expect to have, here and now.What we must do is continue the coversation, learning from one another,without appeals to the Absolute, without some permanent, neutral, ahistoricalframework with which to guide ourselves.In light of this, I suspect that "it is not the case that anything goes" is tomean that sincewe know nothing better than what we have here and now, andsince what we have now commends and endorses some practices andcondemns and rejects other practices, there are prima facie grounds formaking judgments. Part of the meaning of this is that conversation must beopened up with those whose practices we disapprove of and an attempt mustbe made to either educate or be educated. In this way, "normal" discoursebecomes laced with "abnormal" disclosure and new knowledge is acquired. Inthis way things change, hopefully for the better, and we change as well, sincewe continue the process of redescribing ourselves as we form new descriptionsof the world within which the conversation is formed, takes place andcontinues.Now, what does Rorty have to say about relativism? It should come as nosurprise that he has quite a number of things to say. First, he denies thatanyone is a relativist in the traditional sense of holding the position that". . . every belief on a certain topic, or perhaps about any topic, is as good asevery other."30 But this is, in fact, exactly the sort of relativism to which mycharge refers. Second, Rorty writes,


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438 Praxis InternationalRelativism certainly is self-refuting, but there is a difference between saying thatevery community is as good as every other and saying that we have to work outfrom the networks we are, from the communities with which we presentlyidentify.31I think that the attempt to avoid "relativism" by finding "universals" is, onceagain, the idea that someday we shall hit upon a vocabulary which bears its"objectivity"-its being "nature's own"---on its face. This vocabulary, or theprinciples stated in it, are fantasized to be so compelling that to be acquaintedwith them is sufficient to bring everyone into line, once and for all. 32I stated my primary thesis at the outset, i.e., that Rorty's position on thequestion of who shall count as a person is essentially relativistic. Now, if wetake his first statement in the above paragraph as true, then it logically followsthat he is no relativist, at least in the "traditional" sense. However, on his viewof the traditional sense of relativism, terms such as "truth," "goodness," as

well as "beauty" deserve, in that sense, capital first letters, yielding 'Truth,''Goodness,' and 'Beauty'. We might, then, acquiesce in Bernstein's defense ofRorty's relativism by admitting that we really cannot get out of our own skinsand somehow discover The Truth about Goodness, or Beauty, or perhapseven about Personhood. At most we can simply detail and describe thenecessary and sufficient conditions for personhood as we have come tounderstand these concepts, here and now, from our past experiences.And if we should discover other cultures wherein different sets of criteriafor personhood are employed, then what? The answer must be that we engagethe members of these communities in conversation in order that each curiousmember might understand each of the others. And let's say we converse withsuch seriousness that we reach a point where we think we understand oneanother, but still disagree on who shall count as a person? What then?According to Rorty, the conversation must continue. But more than this, Ithink, for understanding is just not the ultimate goal of conversation; neitheris it consensus or agreement between conversants. Success is not to be judgedas having finally gotten it Right about personhood (not even "right"); successis achieved if, and only if, the conversation continues. Rorty writes again:The pragmatists tell us that the conversation which it is our moral duty tocontinue is merely our project, the European intellectual's form of life. It has nometaphysical nor epistemological guarantee of success. Further, and this is thecrucial point, we do not know what "success" would mean except simply"continuance. " We are not conversing because we have a goal, but becauseSocratic conversation is an activity which is its own goal.33On one point, at least, Rorty is correct, viz., we are searching, must search,for a new sort of success. However, the quasi-circular success of merelycontinuing the conversation, while admittedly a good thing, is just not enough

success. What is wanted is agreement on certain topics within the conversation: some will want a final solution to the problems of nuclear armament,others will seek solutions to the problem of treatment or termination of infantswith birth defects, while still others will desire a final resolution to apartheid.


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Praxis International 439And everyone will decry the continuation of the conversation qua Successunless these "little" successes are achieved.This is precisely where I think Rorty's relativism is most evident, that is,though he doesn't come right out and say it, it follows from his thesis thatsuccess between conversing parties, nations, and individuals who disagree onthe moral status of apartheid, say, is contingent upon only keeping theconversation going. Success wouldn't be had by the achievement of freedomor equality for Black people in South Africa (who are, incidentally, part of theconversation), but by continuance. My assertion remains: Rorty cannot makecross-cultural moral judgments without violating the thesis that we cannot getout of our own skins to discover some truth about the world. The same can besaid for getting out of our skins to become members of a community so vastlyat variance with our own original. And since there is no. such thing as the"world community," we are stuck with understanding only a minute portionof the conversation.I cautiously embrace Bernstein's characterization of conversation as hewrites, "It means turning away from the obsession 'to get things right' andturning our attention to coping with the contingencies of human life."34 Oneof these contingencies is that people from different cultures might vehementlydisagree with one another on vital moral questions. At most, Rorty couldassert that apartheid is wrong in his community, in that sub-conversation withwhich he is most intimately connected. Given this, I think Rorty is relativistic,since he will be forced into the position of affirming just what he holds no one(except the cooperative freshling) affirms, viz., that every community is asgood (not 'Good') as every other on the view that they have each arisen fromtheir own unique historical backgrounds. And even if truth becomes thatwhich it is better for us to believe, it does not logically follow that the sheercontinuance of the conversation will lead necessarily in that direction. ButRorty surely can not hope for this, for this is not success. Continuance issuccess. And if, in the continuing conversation, the proponent of apartheid isbrought around to the belief that Black humans are persons, fine. And if not,fine. At least the conversation continues.It is still far from clear that it is not the case that anything goes in Rorty'sprogram. One feature of the utter open-mindedness in the characterization ofthe conversation is that it might be possible, for example, that the SouthAfrican proponent of apartheid could bring us around to apartheid. If the"facts" about personhood are to be decided upon rather than discovered, andif there are no principles that can withstand the pressure of abnormaldiscourse, then in fact anything may be permissable at one time or another,past, present, and future. But more than this, ifwe are open-minded enoughto seriously entertain the possibility of our minds being changed by theapartheid advocate, then our closed-mindedness and dogmatism will show ifwe condemn racial segregation and discrimination against Blacks rather thanlisten to and engage in ongoing conversation with the advocates of thesepractices.If we cannot condemn apartheid outright, without any further conversation, then anything goes. If we cannot prohibit, on moral grounds, the


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440 Praxis Internationalclubbing of baby seals, the methods of factory farming in current use, and themany instances of discriminatory treatment of human persons, here and now,and from all time, then it seems to me that anything goes. And if we cancondemn these practices here and now, but leave open the possibility of theirbeing permissible at some future time, given further knowledge via conversation, again, our condemnations will lack the necessary force for making ourworld better, and anything goes.

NOTES1. Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,1979).2. W.v.O. Quine, "Two Dogmas of Empiricism", in Prom a Logical Point ofView, (New York: HarperTorchbooks, 1963), p. 21.3. See Putnam's "Robots: Machines or Artificially Created Life," Journal ofPhilosophy, Vol. LXI, No.21, November 12, 1964. While the specific question of Putnam's essay is "Are Robots Conscious?,"his treatment of this question has wide implications for what is to be said about persons andpersonhood.4. Philosophy and the Mirror ofNature, p. 38.5. Putnam, op. cit ., p. 691.6. Putnam's hints in the above cited paper lead to this: If we decide that robots are conscious, then themanner in which we treat conscious beings qua conscious beings should be extended, at least for thesake of consistency, to robots. It is important to note that if it is decided that robots are consciousbeings, then consciousness, e.g., desires, beliefs, etc., will be the basis of the kind of treatment theyshould receive. Robots will receive treatment that "other" conscious beings receive, but not treatmentthat conscious beings who also display freedom of the will, desires, beliefs, goals, etc., receive. (In

"Could There be a Conscious Automaton?" Michael Arthur Simon argues that consciousness is notsomething to be decided upon. See the American Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 6, No. 1, January1969).7. Harry C. Frankfurt, "Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person", Journal ofPhilosophy, Vol.LXVIII, No. 1, January 14, 1971.8. Ibid. , p. 6.9. It is well to note here that Frankfurt's characterization of 'will' denotes that which motivates one toact. An "effective desire" is one that "moves a person all the way to action."10. Ibid., p. 11.11. See Daniel Dennett, Brainstorms, (Cambridge, Mass: The MIT Press, 1978), p. 268.12. Ibid., p. 285.13. Richard Rorty, "Method and Morality", in Norma Hann, et aI., eds., Social Science as Moral Inquiry,

(New York: Columbia University Press, 1983), p. 161.14. See John T. Noonan, "An Almost Absolute Value in History," in The Morality of Abortion, JohnNoonan, ed. , (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1970), and Joseph Feltcher,"Humanness", in Humanhood: Essays in Biomedical Ethics, (Prometheus Books, 1979).15. Noonan, ibid., p. 58.16. See Rorty's introduction to Consequences ofPragmatism, (Minneapolis: University ofMinnesota Press,1982), "Pragmatism and Philosophy", xiv, for a discussion of the Sellarsian notion that philosophy is"an attempt to see how things, in the broadest sense of the term, hang together, in the broadest senseof the term."17. William James, Pragmatism, (New York: Longmans Green, 1947), p. 58. Also see Rorty's "Method,Social Science, and Social Hope," in Consequence of Pragmatism, where the concern is with such

"badly posed" questions as "What should be the method of the social sciences?" and "What are thecriteria of an objective moral theory?" This paper is a later version of "Method and Morality", op.cit., n. 12.18. Rorty, "The World Well Lost", Consequences ofPragmatism, p. 10.19 . Philosophy and the Mirror ofNature, p. 189.


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Praxis International 44120. Inquiry, Vol. 16, No. 4 (Winter 1973).21. Ibid., p. 364.22. Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, pp. 7-127.23. See Noonan, op. cit., for further discussion of this point. He writes, "A being with a human geneticcode is man". (p. 57).24. Philosophy and the Mirror ofNature, p. 190.25. Rorty, "Method and Morality", op. cit., p. 165.26. Ibid., p. 167. Note the seeming truth by stipulation that identifies 'anthropomorphic' with 'languageuser'.27. Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, p. 191.28. Richard J. Bernstein, "Philosophy in the Conversation of Mankind", Review ofMetaphysics, Vol.XXXIII, No. 4, (June 1980). Anyone attempting to understand some of Rorty's more subtledistinctions in Philosophy and the Mirror ofNature will find Bernstein's article elucidating, critical in apositive sense, and quite readable, the last of which is at times not true of Rorty.29. Ibid., p. 762.30. Richard Rorty, "Pragmatism, Relativism and Irrationalism", Consequences of Pragmatism, p. 166.31. Richard Rorty, "Postmodemist Bourgeois Liberalism", Journal ofPhilosophy, Vol. LXXX, No. 10

(October, 1983), p. 589.32. Rorty, "Method and Morality", op. cit., p. 176, n. 17.33. "Pragmatism, Relativism, and Irrationalism", op. cit., p. 172.34. Richard J. Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism, (Philadelphia: University of PennsylvaniaPress, 1983), p. 203.

4.3 - Goodman, Michael F. - Rorty, Pershonhood, Relativism (en)

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