Defending "truth"

The philosopher Richard Rorty (1931-2007) thought that proving “truth” was difficult if not impossible, since any philosophical conclusion uses language, which itself differs from culture to culture and over time.  The philosopher can’t stand outside his or her own language.  

Nonetheless, Rorty wrote that Western liberal thought was worth defending because of its results.  He said that believers in the Western enlightenment tradition should be proudly “ethnocentric,” since the tests for truth in politics, science, and, I would add, objective news reporting, led to results that have been beneficial.

Scientific progress, individual freedom, and self-government all result from the project which began with the Enlightenment.  We have a scientific method for establishing what works.  Without that method, I wouldn’t even be alive.  We have a method for establishing the truth of statements; we use evidence and verification.  We don’t believe that Hillary Clinton ran a sex ring out of a pizza restaurant or that Obama was born in Kenya or that global warming is a hoax, because we don’t have independent evidence to back up those claims.

Rorty did not live to see current the attack on Western values.  I think he expected other cultures (for example, various religious groups) to have their own definition of “truth,” i.e., the world was created in six days by an entity who evidently looks like man.  What I don’t think he would have anticipated is a President of the United States breaking with our Enlightenment tradition.