Imagination and Justification

Abstract

My objective in this paper is to defend the possibility of epistem ologica! justification against Richard Rorty's pragmatic, postphilo sophical critique of traditional philosophy.1 By epistemological justifi cation I mean the establishment of reasons for holding beliefs extralin guistically true. My inclination is to understand truth and justification in a Davidsonian holistic coherentist way, as opposed to the traditional cor respondist way. But for my present purpose the coherentist/correspondist issue is deferrable. I am, nonetheless, concerned with objective epistemic justification, as opposed to subjective justification or warrantedness. I shall proceed by discussing justification and Rorty's challenge to it, and then attribute to Rorty a conception of imagination which I think under mines that challenge. I want to suggest that a philosophical conception of imagination plays a crucial role in Rorty's pragmatic critique of philosophy and epistem ological justification. My project is deconstructive in that I hope to show that Rorty's allegedly /?o5fphilosophical critique is vulnerable to the philosophical criticism he tries to deflect as question-begging because Ror ty's critique incorporates a philosophical presupposition.2 My objective is to show Rorty's position less than the radical break with the philosophical tradition that he takes it to be; to show it open to traditional philosophical assessment, and so less than a new and distinct conversation requiring complete endorsement as the price of participation. I want to be able to ac cept much of what Rorty says without accepting the impossibility of epistemological justification and the consequent preclusion of extra linguistic correctness?and hence the reduction of science to just one more conversation.3