Thinking about Naturalism and Pragmatism: Wittgenstein and Rorty

My paper is about the contrasting views of philosophy of Rorty and Wittgenstein. Rorty takes himself to be a kind of pragmatist. He understands the aim of philosophy to be that of changing our social practices, enabling us to cope better with our environment, to find more useful ways of speaking and to discard those that turn out to be unhelpful. Rorty also takes himself to be a kind of naturalist. His form of naturalism is close to that of Huw Price. Their sort of naturalism is concerned with the function in our lives of the terms and concepts and forms of discourse we use. As is explicit in Price’s work, this kind of naturalism involves a kind of external theoretical stance in relation to our forms of thought. My paper contrasts their approach with Wittgenstein’s understanding of philosophy and what he thought it could accomplish. Rorty explicitly contrasts Wittgenstein’s clarificatory aims with what he takes philosophy to aim for; and I tie that contrast to their contrasting understanding of naturalism.