Donald Davidson and Richard Rorty in Conversation (Full + Synced Audio)

This conversation has been uploaded by a few other people but with out of sync audio. Enjoy this great conversation between two very interesting (and adorable) philosophers!
Thank you to Philosophy International and Richard Fara, who are responsible for this clip. None of this material belongs to me.

[@lucascruz7988]

Among all interviews where I've seen Rorty that is the one which he seems more excited. Davidson was a intelectual hero for him. Perhaps only a conversation with Wittgenstein would cause this mood on Rorty.

[@dirtycelinefrenchman]

Don’t leave out Dewey and James

[@scepticrat]

Thanks so much for sharing this. Richard Rorty and his work mean a great deal to me, and it's great to see him in conversation with a contemporary of whom he made much use. Rorty is such an assured writer; in conversation he seems to me to exhibit some of the awkwardness he claims plagued his youth. anyway, great conversation!

[@youtubecustodian4872]

Thank you so so much!!!

[@tnvheiseler]

Davidson: "... [they] are confusing being true with what people think is true", Rorty: "Perhaps, yeah."

[@richardburt9812]

Thank you.

[@micahnewman]

Epochal.
As cantankerous a philosopher as Rorty is, I think it's cute how much he admires Davidson (whatever quibbles he might have with him).

[@Mnimosa]

A wonderful conversation. Priceless actually. Thank you for sharing this.
As others have asked: do we know what year this took place?

[@vammanenmies]

The VHS was released in 1997 so probably around that period.

[@danielsacilotto6235]

I think there is a potential conflation here between two things that should be distinguished:
1) One ought to implicitly be capable of reliably differentiating between truth and falsity in relation in order to even as much as have a belief, or propositional attitudes.
2) One ought to have an explicit concept or semantic metalanguage including the concept "truth" (alongside other concepts) in order to have propositional attitudes.
I think both Rorty and Davidson endorse the former, which seems highly plausible, but formulate the issue in a way that suggests the latter, which is at least less intuitive. Whether premise (2) is plausible evidently turns on what 'concept possession' entails; with a sufficiently broad definition (e.g. that used by nativist representationalists like Fodor or Carey) reliable differential responsiveness might suffice for concept possession, while a more restrictive view (e.g. that used by normativist inferentialists like Brandom) would say that differential responsiveness is necessary but not sufficient, since one needs also to be able to localize explicitly a verbal performance within a space of implications.
In any case I think it is highly implausible that one ought to have explicitly parts of a semantic metalanguage to have epistemic states / propositional attitudes, and particularly the 'truth' concept, even if (1) holds.

[@TheTalkWatcher]

What year was this recorded?

[@thadtuiol1717]

The Year of the Cat

[@gravytopic]

Year?

[@jonbrandon6793]

Yeah, why is it that these videos always include the year of uploading (don't care), but never the year the thing was actually recorded, which would add some historical context?

[@NathanWHill]

29:14 this historian who said the thing about us revising the truth, can't he just be a Hegelian. He clearly thinks his new truth is better or he wouldn't be writing a book.

[@gerhitchman]

He could be lots of things, Davidson would still take issue with it.

[@galek75]

The very idea of the absence of a inventing/discovering distinction is catastrophic.

[@galek75]

@Greg Alpacca For us people especially. I don't see how this is a controversial statement, despite what rorty thinks.

[@galek75]

@Greg Alpacca I'm getting the feeling that you already found your answer

[@galek75]

@Greg Alpacca Rorty's philosophy leaves no room for talk of "truth" or "objectivity," as you know. But that makes, for example, empirical description impossible, or at least problematic. But Rorty goes further and says that the distinction between discovery and invention is also something that must be thrown away. So we are now left with the question of whether we have objective knowledge or not.

[@gerhitchman]

Nonsense. Rorty views have room for truth, albeit a deflated one without any loaded realist baggage. It's a perfectly good word with an indispensable use.

[@galek75]

@@gerhitchman Can you clarify what you even mean by "realism?"