Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature: Thirtieth-Anniversary Edition (Princeton Classics)

by Richard Rorty

What, then, is it? There is no answer to this question, no such “criterion.” The considerations which dictate choice between strategies (1)–(4) above are so diverse that the request for a criterion is out of place. We might be tempted to say that “really talking about” is a relation that can hold between an expression and what we think exists, as opposed to “talking about,” which holds between an expression and what its user thinks exists, and to “refers,” which can hold only between an expression and what really and truly does exist. But this would be wrong, since, once again, not only can we talk about nonexistent entities, but we can be discovered to have really been talking about nonexistent entities. Really talking about X is not the same as talking about a real X. “Really” here is just a matter of “placing” the relative ignorance of the person being discussed in the context of the relatively greater knowledge claimed by the speaker. There are as many ways of doing that as there are contexts of discourse. Consider, for example, “You think you are talking about Thales, but you are really talking about a tale told by Herodotus”; “You think you are talking about your analyst, but you are really talking about yourself”; “You think you are talking about a fictional deity named Artemis, but you are actually talking about a flesh-and-blood woman who lived in Thebes in the ninth century B.C.”; “You think you are talking about lithium, but you are really talking about kryptoni...

December 2, 2020. Page 293.