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ironick.bsky.social
Contingently i-RON-ick
@ironick.bsky.social
160 followers 390 following 130 posts
I am an Ironist: http://wikiwand.com/en/Ironism
I am a Rorty stan.
I am an Entropy stan.
Blog: ironick.medium.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ironick
Mastodon: http://mastodon.online/@ironick17
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rortyquotes.bsky.social
The last thing the ironist theorist wants or needs is a theory of ironism.
CIS p.97
#Pragmatism
#Rorty
#Irony
For the ironist theorist, the story of belief in, and love of, an ahistorical wisdom is the story of successive attempts to find a final vocabulary which is not just the final vocabulary of the individual philosopher but a vocabulary final in every sense - a vocabulary which is no mere idiosyncratic historical product but the last word, the one to which inquiry and history have converged, the one which renders further inquiry and history superfluous. The goal of ironist theory is to understand the metaphysical urge, the urge to theorize, so well that one becomes entirely free of it. Ironist theory is thus a ladder which is to be thrown away as soon as one has figured out what it was that drove one's predecessors to theorize. The last thing the ironist theorist wants or needs is a theory of ironism. He is not in the business of supplying himself and his fellow ironists with a method, a platform, or a rationale.
December 22, 2025 at 3:03 PM
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rortyquotes.bsky.social
The goal of ironist theory is to understand the metaphysical urge, the urge to theorize, so well that one becomes entirely free of it.
CIS p.97
#Pragmatism
#Rorty
#Irony
For the ironist theorist, the story of belief in, and love of, an ahistorical wisdom is the story of successive attempts to find a final vocabulary which is not just the final vocabulary of the individual philosopher but a vocabulary final in every sense - a vocabulary which is no mere idiosyncratic historical product but the last word, the one to which inquiry and history have converged, the one which renders further inquiry and history superfluous. The goal of ironist theory is to understand the metaphysical urge, the urge to theorize, so well that one becomes entirely free of it. Ironist theory is thus a ladder which is to be thrown away as soon as one has figured out what it was that drove one's predecessors to theorize. The last thing the ironist theorist wants or needs is a theory of ironism. He is not in the business of supplying himself and his fellow ironists with a method, a platform, or a rationale.
December 20, 2025 at 3:01 PM
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rortyquotes.bsky.social
Ironist theory is a ladder which is to be thrown away as soon as one has figured out what it was that drove one's predecessors to theorize.
CIS p.97
#Pragmatism
#Rorty
#Irony
December 21, 2025 at 3:01 PM
ironick.bsky.social
I've recently come to embrace the proposal that we should decouple the normative constraints distinguishing fiction vs truth from the normative constraints distinguishing useful vs useless.

In other words, if something is useful, why label it as true or false?
bsky.app/profile/iron...
December 19, 2025 at 5:59 PM
ironick.bsky.social
Fruitfulness: Science, Metaphor, and the Puzzle of Promise
by Chris Haufe

'The rationality of use is subject to a different set of normative constraints than those governing the rationality of belief.'

This might be the best expression of Pragmatism I've ever heard.
#Pragmatism
#Utility
#Truth
December 19, 2025 at 5:55 PM
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rortyquotes.bsky.social
The liberal ironist just wants our chances of being kind, of avoiding the humiliation of others, to be expanded by redescription.
CIS p.91
#Pragmatism
#Rorty
#Humiliation
There are, then, two differences between the liberal ironist and the liberal metaphysician. The first concerns their sense of what redescription can do for liberalism; the second, their sense of the connection between public hope and private irony. The first difference is that the ironist thinks that the only redescriptions which serve liberal purposes are those which answer the question "What humiliates?" whereas the metaphysician also wants to answer the question "Why should I avoid humiliating?" The liberal metaphysician wants our wish to be kind to be bolstered by an argument, one which entails a self-redescription which will highlight a common human essence, an essence which is something more than our shared ability to suffer humiliation. The liberal ironist just wants our chances of being kind, of avoiding the humiliation of others, to be expanded by redescription. She thinks that recognition of a common susceptibility to humiliation is the only social bond that is needed.
December 19, 2025 at 3:03 PM
ironick.bsky.social
'Ethically Charged Machines: Rethinking Artificial Intelligence through Tiantai Buddhism and New Materialism'
by J.D.A. Kumara

Wow! Tiantai Buddhism is now a solution to AI Ethics and AI Alignment because it breaks down the sentient/insentient dualism.
www.nepjol.info/index.php/dj...
December 19, 2025 at 4:32 PM
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rortyquotes.bsky.social
The metaphysician thinks that there is a connection between redescription and power, and that the right redescription can make us free. The ironist offers no similar assurance.
CIS p.90
#Pragmatism
#Rorty
#Redescription
The convert to Christianity or Marxism is made to feel that being redescribed amounts to an uncovering of his true self or his real interests. He comes to believe that his acceptance of that redescription seals an alliance with a power mightier than any of those which have oppressed him in the past. The metaphysician, in short, thinks that there is a connection between redescription and power, and that the right redescription can make us free. The ironist offers no similar assurance. She has to say that our chances of freedom depend on historical contingencies which are only occasionally influenced by our self-redescriptions.
December 18, 2025 at 3:03 PM
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rortyquotes.bsky.social
There is something potentially very cruel about the claim that the language they speak is up for grabs. For the best way to cause people long-lasting pain is to humiliate them by making the things that seemed most important to them look futile, obsolete, and powerless.
CIS p.89
#Rorty
#Redescription
Although some of these inferences may be fallacious and some of these assumptions ungrounded, nevertheless there is something right about the suspicion which ironism arouses. Ironism, as I have defined it, results from awareness of the power of redescription. But most people do not want to be redescribed. They want to be taken on their own terms—taken seriously just as they are and just as they talk. The ironist tells them that the language they speak is up for grabs by her and her kind. There is something potentially very cruel about that claim. For the best way to cause people long-lasting pain is to humiliate them by making the things that seemed most important to them look futile, obsolete, and powerless. Consider what happens when a child's precious possessions—the little things around which he weaves fantasies that make him a little different from all other children - are redescribed as "trash," and thrown away.
December 17, 2025 at 3:04 PM
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rortyquotes.bsky.social
An appeal to real essence is the antithesis of ironism.
CIS p.88
#Pragmatism
#Rorty
#Irony
Metaphysics...tries to make sense of the claim that human beings are something more than centerless webs of beliefs and desires. The reason many people think such a claim essential to liberalism is that if men and women were, indeed, nothing more than sentential attitudes—nothing more than the presence or absence of dispositions toward the use of sentences phrased in some historically conditioned vocabulary—then not only human nature, but human solidarity, would begin to seem an eccentric and dubious idea. For solidarity with all possible vocabularies seems impossible. Metaphysicians tell us that unless there is some sort of common ur-vocabulary, we have no "reason" not to be cruel to those whose final vocabularies are very unlike ours. A universalistic ethics seems incompatible with ironism, simply because it is hard to imagine stating such an ethic without some doctrine about the nature of man. Such an appeal to real essence is the antithesis of ironism.
December 15, 2025 at 3:01 PM
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rortyquotes.bsky.social
Solidarity with all possible vocabularies seems impossible.
CIS p.88
#Pragmatism
#Rorty
#Solidarity
Metaphysics...tries to make sense of the claim that human beings are something more than centerless webs of beliefs and desires. The reason many people think such a claim essential to liberalism is that if men and women were, indeed, nothing more than sentential attitudes—nothing more than the presence or absence of dispositions toward the use of sentences phrased in some historically conditioned vocabulary—then not only human nature, but human solidarity, would begin to seem an eccentric and dubious idea. For solidarity with all possible vocabularies seems impossible. Metaphysicians tell us that unless there is some sort of common ur-vocabulary, we have no "reason" not to be cruel to those whose final vocabularies are very unlike ours. A universalistic ethics seems incompatible with ironism, simply because it is hard to imagine stating such an ethic without some doctrine about the nature of man. Such an appeal to real essence is the antithesis of ironism.
December 14, 2025 at 3:01 PM
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rortyquotes.bsky.social
Metaphysics—in the sense of a search for theories which will get at real essence—tries to make sense of the claim that human beings are something more than centerless webs of beliefs and desires.
CIS p.88
#Pragmatism
#Rorty
#Vocabulary
Metaphysics—in the sense of a search for theories which will get at real essence—tries to make sense of the claim that human beings are something more than centerless webs of beliefs and desires. The reason many people think such a claim essential to liberalism is that if men and women were, indeed, nothing more than sentential attitudes—nothing more than the presence or absence of dispositions toward the use of sentences phrased in some historically conditioned vocabulary—then not only human nature, but human solidarity, would begin to seem an eccentric and dubious idea. For solidarity with all possible vocabularies seems impossible. Metaphysicians tell us that unless there is some sort of common ur-vocabulary, we have no "reason" not to be cruel to those whose final vocabularies are very unlike ours. A universalistic ethics seems incompatible with ironism, simply because it is hard to imagine stating such an ethic without some doctrine about the nature of man.
December 13, 2025 at 3:01 PM
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rortyquotes.bsky.social
I cannot imagine a culture whose public rhetoric is ironist, which socialized its youth in such a way as to make them continually dubious about their own process of socialization. Irony seems inherently a private matter.
CIS p.87
#Pragmatism
#Rorty
#Irony
But even if I am right in thinking chat a liberal culture whose public rhetoric is nominalist and historicist is both possible and desirable, I cannot go on to claim that there could or ought to be a culture whose public rhetoric is ironist. I cannot imagine a culture which socialized its youth in such' a way as to make them continually dubious about their own process of socialization. Irony seems inherently a private matter.
December 12, 2025 at 3:04 PM
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rortyquotes.bsky.social
If we take care of political freedom, truth and goodness will take care of themselves.
CIS p.84
#Pragmatism
#Rorty
#Freedom
Habermas, and other metaphysicians who are suspicious of a merely "literary" conception of philosophy, think that liberal political freedoms require some consensus about what is universally human. We ironists who are also liberals think that such freedoms require no consensus on any topic more basic than their own desirability. From our angle, all that matters for liberal politics is the widely shared conviction that, as I said in Chapter 3 , we shall call "true" or "good" whatever is the outcome of free discussion - that if we take care of political freedom, truth and goodness will take care of themselves.
December 11, 2025 at 3:01 PM
ironick.bsky.social
Explanation of Hume's Law: You can't derive an ought from an is because is derives from ought, ie our ontologies derive from our teleologies (purposes).

Just ask any information science ontologist.
#Philosophy
#Ontology
#InformationScience
#LibraryScience
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontolog...
Ontology (information science) - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
December 11, 2025 at 4:23 PM
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rortyquotes.bsky.social
The rise of literary criticism to preeminence within the high culture of the democracies—its gradual…assumption of the cultural role once claimed (successively) by religion, science, and philosophy—has paralleled the rise in the proportion of ironists to metaphysicians.
CIS p.82
#Rorty
#Criticism
The rise of literary criticism to preeminence within the high culture of the democracies—its gradual and only semiconscious assumption of the cultural role once claimed (successively) by religion, science, and philosophy—has paralleled the rise in the proportion of ironists to metaphysicians among the intellectuals. This has widened the gap between the intellectuals and the public. For metaphysics is woven into the public rhetoric of modem liberal societies. So is the distinction between the moral and the "merely" aesthetic - a distinction which is often used to relegate "literature" to a subordinate position within culture and to suggest that novels and poems are irrelevant to moral reflection. Roughly speaking, the rhetoric of these societies takes for granted most of the oppositions which I claimed (at the beginning of Chapter 3) have become impediments to the culture of liberalism.
December 10, 2025 at 3:00 PM
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rortyquotes.bsky.social
One of the easiest ways to express the difference between "analytic" and "Continental" philosophy is to say that the former sort trades in propositions and the latter in proper names.
CIS p.81
#Pragmatism
#Rorty
#AnalyticVsContinental
I am here borrowing Rawls's notion of "reflective equilibrium. " One might say that literary criticism tries to produce such equilibrium between the proper names of writers rather than between propositions. One of the easiest ways to express the difference between "analytic" and "Continental" philosophy is to say that the former sort trades in propositions and the latter in proper names. When Continental philosophy made its appearance in Anglo-American literature departments, in the guise of "literary theory," this was not the discovery of a new method or approach but simply the addition of further names (the names of philosophers) to the range of those among which equilibrium was sought.
December 9, 2025 at 3:03 PM
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rortyquotes.bsky.social
The task of enlarging the canon takes the place, for the ironist, of the attempt by moral philosophers to bring commonly accepted moral intuitions about particular cases into equilibrium with commonly accepted general moral principles.
CIS p.81
#Pragmatism
#Rorty
#Criticism
In particular, ironists hope that critics will help them perform the sort of dialectical feat which Hegel was so good at. That is, they hope critics will help them continue to admire books which are prima facie antithetical by performing some sort of synthesis. We would like to be able to admire both Blake and Arnold, both Nietzsche and Mill, both Marx and Baudelaire, both Trotsky and Eliot, both Nabokov and Orwell. So we hope some critic will show how these men's books can be put together to form a beautiful mosaic. We hope that critics can redescribe these people in ways which will enlarge the canon, and will give us a set of classical texts as rich and diverse as possible. This task of enlarging the canon takes the place, for the ironist, of the attempt by moral philosophers to bring commonly accepted moral intuitions about particular cases into equilibrium with commonly accepted general moral principles.
December 8, 2025 at 3:02 PM
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rortyquotes.bsky.social
The ideal citizen will take for granted that it is the revolutionary artist and the revolutionary scientist, not the academic artist or the normal scientist, who most clearly exemplifies the virtues which she hopes her society will itself embody.
CIS p.61
#Pragmatism
#Rorty
#Liberalism
To see one's language, one's conscience, one's morality, and one's highest hopes as contingent products, as literalizations of what once were accidentally produced metaphors, is to adopt a self-identity which suits one for citizenship in such an ideally liberal state. That is why the ideal citizen of such an ideal state would be someone who thinks of the founders and the preservers of her society as such poets, rather than as people who had discovered or who clearly envisioned the truth about the world or about humanity. ... She will be commonsensically Bloomian enough to take for granted that it is the revolutionary artist and the revolutionary scientist, not the academic artist or the normal scientist, who most clearly exemplifies the virtues which she hopes her society will itself embody.
November 23, 2025 at 3:01 PM
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rortyquotes.bsky.social
Ironists hope that critics can redescribe authors who are prima facie antithetical in ways which will enlarge the canon, and will give us a set of classical texts as rich and diverse as possible.
CIS p.81
#Pragmatism
#Rorty
#Criticism
In particular, ironists hope that critics will help them perform the sort of dialectical feat which Hegel was so good at. That is, they hope critics will help them continue to admire books which are prima facie antithetical by performing some sort of synthesis. We would like to be able to admire both Blake and Arnold, both Nietzsche and Mill, both Marx and Baudelaire, both Trotsky and Eliot, both Nabokov and Orwell. So we hope some critic will show how these men's books can be put together to form a beautiful mosaic. We hope that critics can redescribe these people in ways which will enlarge the canon, and will give us a set of classical texts as rich and diverse as possible. This task of enlarging the canon takes the place, for the ironist, of the attempt by moral philosophers to bring commonly accepted moral intuitions about particular cases into equilibrium with commonly accepted general moral principles.
December 7, 2025 at 3:01 PM
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rortyquotes.bsky.social
I want to see common purposes against the background of an increasing sense of the radical diversity of private purposes, the radically poetic character of individual lives, and the merely poetic foundations of the "we-consciousness" which lies behind our institutions.
CIS p.67
#Rorty
#Poetry
I want to see freely arrived at agreement as agreement on how to accomplish common purposes (e.g. , prediction and control of the behavior of atoms or people, equalizing life-chances, de­ creasing cruelty), but I want to see these common purposes against the background of an increasing sense of the radical diversity of private purposes, of the radically poetic character of individual lives, and of the merely poetic foundations of the "we-consciousness" which lies behind our social institutions.
November 26, 2025 at 3:01 PM
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rortyquotes.bsky.social
Ironists hope critics will help them continue to admire books which are prima facie antithetical by performing some sort of synthesis. We would like to be able to admire both Blake & Arnold, Nietzsche & Mill, Marx & Baudelaire, Trotsky & Eliot, Nabokov & Orwell.
CIS p.81
#Rorty
#Criticism
In particular, ironists hope that critics will help them perform the sort of dialectical feat which Hegel was so good at. That is, they hope critics will help them continue to admire books which are prima facie antithetical by performing some sort of synthesis. We would like to be able to admire both Blake and Arnold, both Nietzsche and Mill, both Marx and Baudelaire, both Trotsky and Eliot, both Nabokov and Orwell. So we hope some critic will show how these men's books can be put together to form a beautiful mosaic. We hope that critics can resdescribe these people in ways which will enlarge the canon, and will give us a set of classical texts as rich and diverse as possible. This task of enlarging the canon takes the place, for the ironist, of the attempt by moral philosophers to bring commonly accepted moral intuitions about particular cases into equilibrium with commonly accepted general moral principles.
December 6, 2025 at 3:01 PM
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rortyquotes.bsky.social
Ironists are afraid that they will get stuck in the vocabulary in which they were brought up if they only know the people in their own neighborhood, so they try to get acquainted with strange people, strange families, and strange communities.
CIS p.80
#Pragmatism
#Rorty
#Vocabulary
For us ironists, nothing can serve as a criticism of a final vocabulary save another such vocabulary; there is no answer to a redescription save a re-re-redescription. ... Nothing can serve as a criticism of a person save another person, or of a culture save an alternative culture—for persons and cultures are, for us, incarnated vocabularies. So our doubts about our own characters or our own culture can be resolved or assuaged only by enlarging our acquaintance. The easiest way of doing that is to read books, and so ironists spend more of their time placing books than in placing real live people. Ironists are afraid that they will get stuck in the vocabulary in which they were brought up if they only know the people in their own neighborhood, so they try to get acquainted with strange people (Alcibiades, Julien Sorel), strange families (the Karamazovs, the Casaubons), and strange communities (the Teutonic Knights, the Nuer, the mandarins of the Sung).
December 5, 2025 at 3:02 PM
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rortyquotes.bsky.social
Nothing can serve as a criticism of a person save another person, or of a culture save an alternative culture—for persons and cultures are, for us, incarnated vocabularies.
CIS p.80
#Pragmatism
#Rorty
#Criticism
For us ironists, nothing can serve as a criticism of a final vocabulary save another such vocabulary; there is no answer to a redescription save a re-re-redescription. Since there is nothing beyond vocabularies which serves as a criterion of choice between them, criticism is a matter of looking on this picture and on that, not of comparing both pictures with the original. Nothing can serve as a criticism of a person save another person, or of a culture save an alternative culture—for persons and cultures are, for us, incarnated vocabularies. So our doubts about our own characters or our own culture can be resolved or assuaged only by enlarging our acquaintance. The easiest way of doing that is to read books, and so ironists spend more of their time placing books than in placing real live people. Ironists are afraid that they will get stuck in the vocabulary in which they were brought up if they only know the people in their own neighborhood, so they try to get acquainted with...
December 4, 2025 at 3:02 PM
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rortyquotes.bsky.social
The opposite of irony is common sense. For that is the watchword of those who unselfconsciously describe everything important in terms of the final vocabulary to which they and those around them are habituated.
CIS p.74
#Pragmatism
#Rorty
#Irony
The opposite of irony is common sense. For that is the watchword of those who unselfconsciously describe everything important in terms of the final vocabulary to which they and those around them are habituated. To be commonsensical is to take for granted that statements formulated in that final vocabulary suffice to describe and judge the beliefs, actions and lives of those who employ alternative final vocabularies. People who pride themselves on common sense will find the line of thought developed in Part I distasteful.
November 29, 2025 at 3:01 PM