Rorty VI 408
Philosophy/AyersVsRorty: the following theses are generally represented by the same people
1. Realism/antirealism is an important distinction
2. Dummett is right: these antirealism/realsim conflicts have been the most decisive in the history of philosophy.
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VI 409
3. Wilson is right when it expresses doubts about the contingency of the problems.
4. Ayers is right, one must not allow one's own metaphysical and epistemic theories to be influenced by one's own politics and morality.
5. Color: the problem of "the nature of color" is not solvable. The same is true of the body-soul problem.
6. Descartes' skepticism is ahistorical.
7. Sellars and Davidson are wrong when they say that the sensory organs merely play a causal role. Pro McDowell: Revival of Empiricism.
8. Identity with oneself is not dependent on description, but on intrinsic, nonrelational features. Some terms are rigid.
9. Recognition of the unspeakable is praiseworthy intellectual modesty.
10. Locke's "Essay concern human understandig" is not a signpost, but a work still to be explored that contains not yet articulated truths.
RortyVsAyers: in all 10 theses above, Ayers and I have diametrically opposed views.
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VI 410
Rorty: we will never be able to establish a "purely logical" argument for or against one of the ten theses.
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VI 411
"Linguistic Idealism"/Rorty: conflict term of AyersVsSellars.
RortyVsAyers: a lot has to be already in the language before a plausible appeal to the taste of onions is possible at all.
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VI 412
This also includes the notion of an inner "Cartesian stage".
This also includes the notion of "consciousness" (as a notion of the 17th century).
