Epistemologie și pragmatism la Richard Rorty și Thomas Kuhn

In pragmatism the status of truth is changed. Although the truth still remains the ultimate goal of the epistemological approach, pragmatism nuances the distancing from the notion of absolute and definitive truth. The central relation becomes that of epistemic truth established as the sum of true beliefs, grounded in justified beliefs. A brief foray into the major contributions to the formation of American pragmatism is necessary to provide a background and foundation for highlighting the pragmatism of Richard Rorty and Thomas Kuhn. We start from the founding figure, Charles Sanders Peirce, a logician, who imposes pragmatism (“pragmaticism”) in the context of a dual general theory, of “good thinking”. and of “signs”. From the perspective of Rorty-Kuhn, science is seen in project and in progress, it is inscribed in human culture and it is subject to change. This change is captures by the histories of science but sometimes also by scientific textbooks, following discontinuities of vision, theory and methodology-technology changes, “revolutions” that follow each other and that modify or eliminate, in time, each paradigm of interpretation and investigation that dominated previously. At a quick glance this aspect seems to imply a weakening of the objective status of science. In fact, it only emphasizes the historicity of science, the contingency and contextuality of scientific endeavour no different than any human activity. Both scientific rationality and the norms that establish scientific legitimacy are contextual and depend on the historical context, as conceived by epistemological behaviourism.