Raw Meat is a quoteblog by Aaron Swartz.

One More Argument for Realism

There is a world that works the way Richard Rorty describes: the world of fiction. Take the question “Did Greedo shoot first?” There are no facts of the matter, no external reality, that the answer to this question could actually correspond to. Instead, the question operates exactly the way Rorty says all factual questions operate: we’ve developed a complicated social system which endorses certain methods of argument and reasoning and commends the results of this process. Thus the statements of George Lucas have some weight as do close examination of textual evidence and reasoning about the appropriateness of each answer and so on. But, in some sense, it would be equally reasonable for our society to have alternative rules for determining such things.

This seems to me very different from the case of “Did Aaron Burr shoot first?” Here there is an actual reality the answer corresponds to. There is something outside our linguistic system to which the question refers and the answer can be held to account. It would not be equally reasonable to have alternative rules for determining the answer — the notion that we could agree that Sarah Vowell would decide the question is absurd.

Do Rortyites reject this difference or do they have some other way of explaining it?