In his essay “Getting Rid of the Appearance-Reality Distinction,” Richard Rorty argues that the philosophical trend of searching for a supposedly purer form of existence – or as he calls it “Reality with a capital R” (67) – is flawed and unnecessary. His reasoning is that the overwhelming majority of the world pays no heed to the possibility that what they are seeing in front of them is an impure form of reality. Therefore, any such distinction made between the appearance of an item and its nature in Reality must be artificially imposed. Rorty suggests instead that practitioners of ontology, the study of being and reality, should instead accept that there are certain insurmountable limitations to human perception that would prevent us from even acknowledging Reality: that is, if it exists or ever has existed. Our natural creativity allows for great freedom in what we can imagine, but even that has its limitations. Rorty hypothesizes that ontologists fear this truth, and seek a direct access to reality, without any mediators, such as language or any other form of expression.
To counter their fallacy, Rorty suggests a fundamental chance in how we perceive human reason; it is not a matter of seeking the truth, but “ a social practice—the practice of enforcing social norms on the use of marks and noises, thereby making it possible to use words rather than blows as a way of getting things done”(69). In other words, we should not think of ambiguous terms – Rorty uses gravity and inalienable human rights as examples – as the name of a mysterious true entity whose form has been diluted in purity by the nature of language and expression, but as “noises and marks”(70) which serve as bases that constantly change as our understanding of them improve. Therefore, the purpose of philosophy should not be to search for a purer form of Reality, but to build upon our own knowledge.
Source:
“Getting Rid of the Appearance-Reality Distinction.” Philosophy as Poetry, by Richard Rorty, University of Virginia Press, 2016.
