But anyway, my task in this investigation is to move myself onto Rorty's ground and off my own - that's the reason for a close reading of the text - and to take Rorty's interpretation of Kant as given (except Rorty doesn't give enough of it), even if the interpretation turns out to be wrong. But that doesn't mean it isn't important to know if it is wrong.
Rorty's basic targets are:
(a) Locke makes a basic mistake in believing that a semi-mechanical causal explanation of how we come to believe something can be used as a basis for saying we are justified in believing it.
(b) Locke did this because he was committed to knowledge being of something (rather than taking the form "I know that..."), so knowledge is based on direct acquaintance, except he creatively tangled this up by sometimes treating our perception as taking something of the object into our minds and other times treating what we take in as merely representing what is out there.
(c) Hume having disentangled Locke for him, Kant nonetheless carries forward both the predilection for "knowledge of" rather than "knowledge that" (though Kant's deciding that we are not conscious of intuitions or concepts on their own but only as they are combined is a step away from "knowledge of," says Rorty), and also carries forward the confusion between explanation and justification [but I will have to read more attentively and think harder before understanding Rorty's argument here].*
(d) Rorty's ultimate targets are two: the first is Kant's idea that you can distinguish between what is "given" and what is "added by the mind."
(e) The second is between (i) what's "contingent" because influenced by the the given and (ii) what's "necessary" because entirely within the mind and under its control. Chapter four is about how the first distinction (the given versus mental additives) is stomped to death by Sellars and the second (contingent versus necessary) is stomped to death by Quine (though those guys aren't the only two stompers, just the two he concentrates on). And I'm not sure how you distinguish between the two distinctions, to tell you the truth. They both seem to be variations on the content-form distinction, and both try to make "form" philosophy's special province.
*Rorty, p. 161: Kant did not, however, free us from Locke's confusion between justification and causal explanation, the basic confusion contained in the idea of a "theory of knowledge." For the notion that our freedom depends on an idealistic epistemology - that to see ourselves as "rising above mechanism" we have to go transcendental and claim to have "constituted" atoms and the void ourselves - is just Locke's mistake all over again. It is to assume that the logical space of giving reasons - of justifying our utterances and our other actions - needs to stand in some special relationship to the logical space of causal explanation so as to insure either an accord between the two (Locke) or the inability of the one to interfere with the other (Kant). Kant was right in thinking accord was senseless and interference impossible, but wrong in thinking that establishing the latter point required the notion of the "constitution" of nature by the knowing subject. Kant's advance in the direction of a propositional rather than a perceptual view of knowledge went only halfway because it was contained within the framework of causal metaphors - "constitution," "making," "shaping," "synthesizing," and the like.
I'd put "social" and "conversational" in place of "logical" and "propositional."
Re: Things that are slightly wrong here, Kant-wise (ii)
Rorty's basic targets are:
(a) Locke makes a basic mistake in believing that a semi-mechanical causal explanation of how we come to believe something can be used as a basis for saying we are justified in believing it.
(b) Locke did this because he was committed to knowledge being of something (rather than taking the form "I know that..."), so knowledge is based on direct acquaintance, except he creatively tangled this up by sometimes treating our perception as taking something of the object into our minds and other times treating what we take in as merely representing what is out there.
(c) Hume having disentangled Locke for him, Kant nonetheless carries forward both the predilection for "knowledge of" rather than "knowledge that" (though Kant's deciding that we are not conscious of intuitions or concepts on their own but only as they are combined is a step away from "knowledge of," says Rorty), and also carries forward the confusion between explanation and justification [but I will have to read more attentively and think harder before understanding Rorty's argument here].*
(d) Rorty's ultimate targets are two: the first is Kant's idea that you can distinguish between what is "given" and what is "added by the mind."
(e) The second is between (i) what's "contingent" because influenced by the the given and (ii) what's "necessary" because entirely within the mind and under its control. Chapter four is about how the first distinction (the given versus mental additives) is stomped to death by Sellars and the second (contingent versus necessary) is stomped to death by Quine (though those guys aren't the only two stompers, just the two he concentrates on). And I'm not sure how you distinguish between the two distinctions, to tell you the truth. They both seem to be variations on the content-form distinction, and both try to make "form" philosophy's special province.
*Rorty, p. 161: Kant did not, however, free us from Locke's confusion between justification and causal explanation, the basic confusion contained in the idea of a "theory of knowledge." For the notion that our freedom depends on an idealistic epistemology - that to see ourselves as "rising above mechanism" we have to go transcendental and claim to have "constituted" atoms and the void ourselves - is just Locke's mistake all over again. It is to assume that the logical space of giving reasons - of justifying our utterances and our other actions - needs to stand in some special relationship to the logical space of causal explanation so as to insure either an accord between the two (Locke) or the inability of the one to interfere with the other (Kant). Kant was right in thinking accord was senseless and interference impossible, but wrong in thinking that establishing the latter point required the notion of the "constitution" of nature by the knowing subject. Kant's advance in the direction of a propositional rather than a perceptual view of knowledge went only halfway because it was contained within the framework of causal metaphors - "constitution," "making," "shaping," "synthesizing," and the like.
I'd put "social" and "conversational" in place of "logical" and "propositional."