Remnants of Representationalism: Rorty as Reﬁned by Ramberg - Nordic Studies in Pragmatism 5 - Essay

Sep 28, 2026

Uploaded by McQueen

The text presents a philosophical analysis of a shift in the pragmatist tradition connected to exchanges between Bjørn Ramberg and Richard Rorty. It examines how Rorty’s anti-representationalism relates to Davidson’s continued use of representationalist elements, especially regarding truth and the vocabulary of intentionality. It argues that extending Ramberg’s vocabulary/theory distinction shows the distinction’s limits, and proposes that the agency vocabulary’s real importance lies in its normative dimension. The discussion links this normative inquiry to classical pragmatist empirical methods.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryLiterature

FormatPDF

Pages15

Reading Time23 min

AccessFree to download

Remnants of Representationalism: Rorty as Reﬁned by Ramberg

Two concerns with Davidson

Nordic NSP Studies in Pragmatism Helsinki—2026 Henrik Rydenfelt “Remnants of Representationalism: Rorty as Reﬁned by Ramberg” In: Yvonne Huetter–Almerigi and Robert Sinclair (Eds.) (2026) . Pragmatism, Metaphysics and Method—Essays for Bjørn Ramberg (pp. 175–188) . Nordic Studies in Pragmatism 5. Helsinki: Nordic Pragmatism Network. issn-l 1799-3954 issn 1799-3954 isbn 978-952-67497-4-7 Copyright © 2026 The Authors and the Nordic Pragmatism Network. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License. CC BY NC For more information, see [http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) NPN Nordic Pragmatism Network, Helsinki 2026 [www.nordprag.org](www.nordprag.org) Remnants of Representationalism: Rorty as Reﬁned by Ramberg Henrik Rydenfelt University of Helsinki A remarkable philosophical shift within the pragmatist tradition occurred 25 years ago as a result of an exchange between Bjørn Ramberg and Richard Rorty. In several articles, Rorty had raised the suspicion that Donald Davidson, despite his anti-representationalist commitments, remains tethered to representationalism by privileging certain vocabularies as of particular philosophical interest and attaching particular signiﬁcance to the concept of truth. In his paper “Post-ontological Philosophy of Mind: Rorty versus Davidson”, Ramberg (2000) addresses these concerns. Ramberg not only defends Davidson’s position but also the relevance of the vocabulary of intentionality. Davidson’s anomalous monism serves to underwrite the distinctiveness of this vocabulary of agency, as Ramberg also refers to it, situating it as needful in understanding ourselves as agents and countering reductive tendencies. In his response to this paper, Rortyreorients his stance on truth and on the philosophical interest in vocabularies considerably, concluding that he was mistaken to take his criticism of representationalism to imply a denial of the view that true statements get things right.1 In the following, I examine the resulting position, Rorty’s anti-representationalism as shaped by Ramberg’s friendly criticism. Ramberg introduces a distinction between vocabularies—deﬁned primarily by the purposes they serve—and the claims or theories articulated within those vo- 1 Rorty’s shift has confounded some of his readers to the extent they have argued he was prepared to relinquish his anti-representationalist views (see Huetter-Almerigi, 2020 for discussion of some examples) . 176 Pragmatism, Metaphysics and Method cabularies. I argue that taking this vocabulary/theory distinction to its extremes leads to Rorty’s revised stance, ultimately revealing the untenability of the distinction itself. The philosophical interest in the vocabulary of agency is to be sought elsewhere. I suggest that the real signiﬁcance of that vocabulary lies in its normative dimension highlighted by Rorty’s discussion. Beyond explaining intentional actions, the normative dimension of the vocabulary of agency enables us to detect certain causal patterns of our experience, something that Ramberg’s discussion also appears to suggest, even if only in passing. These patterns were central to the classical pragmatists, who proposed an empirical and experimental approach to normative inquiry. This possibility, I argue, has been obscured by lingering elements of representationalism in Rorty’s thought—speciﬁcally, the contention that if normative vocabulary is geared toward empirical inquiry, it loses its distinctiveness. Two concerns with Davidson In a number of papers, Rorty had raised two central concerns regarding Davidson’s philosophy. First, he questioned why Davidson accords special signiﬁcance to the concept of truth, rather than interpreting it as merely an empirical theory of truth-conditions in a language that predicts regularities in speakers’ behaviour. Second, Rorty critiqued the positio

FAQs

How does the text reinterpret the significance of the vocabulary of agency?

It argues that the key importance of the agency vocabulary lies in its normative dimension, which helps detect causal patterns in experience. This potential, tied to classical pragmatists’ empirical methods, is said to be obscured by lingering representationalist elements in Rorty’s thought.

Sep 28, 2026

Uploaded by McQueen