ABSTRACT
In our culture, the notions of “science,” “rationality,” “objectivity,” and “truth” are bound up with one another. Science is thought of as offering “hard,” “objective” truth: truth as correspondence to reality, the only sort of truth worthy of the name. In this chapter, the authors identify seeking “objective truth” with “using reason,” and so they think of the natural sciences as paradigms of rationality. Pragmatists would like to replace the desire for objectivity—the desire to be in touch with a reality which is more than some community with which we identify ourselves—with the desire for solidarity with that community. John Dewey’s best argument for doing philosophy this way is also the best argument we partisans of solidarity have against partisans of objectivity: it is Friedrich Nietzsche’s argument that the traditional Western metaphysico-epistemological way of firming up our habits is not working anymore.
