Rorty On "The Mirror Of The Mind"

The study of the mind is one of the important lines of Richard Rorty’s reflection on the history of philosophy.He found that in the traditional western philosophy,the concept of mind has a very unique status and role.The topic studied here is not the physical heart,but the concept of the "mind" of a spiritual entity that is independent of the existence of matter and is intrinsic to the human body.Rorty believes that because of the concept of mind,the world is divided into the material world and the spiritual world;because of the mind,people can understand the outside world;because of the mind,philosophy can exist as the foundation of other disciplines.Rorty studied tje evolution of the concept of "mind" in the development of modem philosophy.He revealed how "mind" was created,and revealed how traditional Western philosophy used "mind"to ensure that human beings can generate knowledge,and reveals the deep relations between the traditional rationalism and the mind,,and revealed how does philosophy define itself as a theory of"knowledge",that is,knowledge as something that should have "theory" and "foundation".Therefore,Rorty discovers that there is a metaphor of "mirror of nature" in the epistemological tradition."Mind" likes a mirror,reflecting the nature by reproducing the function of representation,and treating the result as a kind of knowledge.He finally reveals that Epistemology is actually a"Mirror-philosophy." Rorty not only found the representation in the modem epistemology,but also found a series of special representations in the modem philosophy.By the impression from Quinn and Silas,Rorty clean-up the epistemology of traditional western philosophy,and criticize the analysis tradition in philosophy which he spent the most time to study,he prove that the "mind"does not exist actually,the same to the nature of mind.He argues that we should give up our faith to "mind"-standing on the position of a kind of psychology of nominalism-and completely cancel it from our language system.The future’s language system is no longer a rigid structure,no longer a mirror of language;we will gradually improve it in a game and eommunication process.Rationalism created "mind","mind" created foundationalism.By abolishing "mind",Rorty achieved the objective of criticizing the rational thinking mode of traditional western philosophy and anti-essentialism and foundationalism.Rorty stand on the position of New pragmatism to rebuild a new self-image for philosophy.Philosophy will no longer has a dominant status in the cultural circle,and philosophy will conduct with other disciplines equally and harmoniously.