Rejecting representationalism, Rorty argues that a pragmatist abandons the concept of “truth” altogether. This does not mean, however, that all propositions are equally acceptable or that we can do without making a distinction between warranted and unwarranted or acceptable or unacceptable statements. Following Dewey, he claims that truth is ‘the name of whatever proves to be good in the way of belief,’ whatever helps us to cope with our environment and our community. Warranted statements can be justified to the members of such a community and reinforce our solidarity with them, whereas unwarranted statements cannot be justified to them and weaken our solidarity with them. Hence, Rorty’s account of inquiry is basically ethnocentric, that is, the methods and criteria of inquiry are determined by the community with which we identify. This paper is a critical analysis of Rorty’s solidarity based account of inquiry.
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