-- person - Righard rorty

• https://chatgpt.com/share/68c79dd7-4450-8003-90ec-85eac0faa728

First Encounter

• https://substack.com/profile/986989-ari-nielsen/note/c-154166369

I suspect that for most people, belief has nothing to do with whether or not a proposition is somehow objectively rational or even true. It has to do with some combination of personal experience and what the person needs at that point in their life.

For those who which to drill down, every topic is covered in elaborate detail by Richard Rorty. Below, some selected topics and references.

1. Truth as useful, not mirroring “reality”: see Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, “Truth without Correspondence to Reality”; Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth, “Introduction: Antirepresentationalism, Ethnocentrism, and Liberalism.”

2. Belief adoption via passional motives: see Consequences of Pragmatism, Intro (“truth isn’t a theory‑topic”); Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, Parts I–II on contingency of language/self.

3. Hinge‑like background commitments: Essays on Heidegger and Others, “Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and the Reification of Language”; overview of hinge commitments in Certainty.

4. Ethnocentrism without apology: “Postmodernist Bourgeois Liberalism.”

5. Truth as a rhetorical compliment: Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature