In his Realism with a Human Face, Hilary Putnam says that he is “often asked just where I disagree with Rorty.” I am often asked the converse question. People ask us these questions because Putnam and I agree on a number of points that a lot of other philosophers do not accept.

For example, I wholeheartedly agree with what Putnam says in the following passages:

1. (I) “… elements of what we call ‘language’ or ‘mind’ penetrate so deeply into what we call ‘reality’ that the very project of representing ourselves as being ‘mappers’ of something ‘language-independent’ is fatally compromised from the start. Like Relativism, but in a different way, Realism is an impossible attempt to view the world from Nowhere.”

2. (II) “[We should] accept the position we are fated to occupy in any case, the position of beings who cannot have a view of the world that does not reflect our interests and values, but who are, for all that, committed to regarding some views of the world – and, for that matter, some interests and values – as better than others.”

3. (III) “What Quine called ‘the indeterminacy of translation’ should rather be viewed as the ‘interest relativity of translation.’… ‘[I] merest relativity’ contrasts with absoluteness, not with objectivity. It can be objective that an interpretation or an explanation is the correct one, given the interests which are relevant in the context.”

4. […]