Varieties of anti-representationalism

Anti-representationalism is the hallmark of Richard Rorty’s critique of the epistemological tradition. According to it, knowledge does not “mirror” reality and the human mind is not a representational device. Anti-representationalism is a family of philosophical theses, respectively dealing with the notion of “representation” in different ways. Though prima facie one may feel entitled to think about anti-representationalism as a kind of uniform philosophical movement, things stand quite differently. In fact, among many anti-representationalist options, we can identify two main versions: a global anti-representationalism that entirely rejects the philosophical uses of the notion of “representation”, and a local version that just removes the notion of “representation” from the explanatory toolbox. In this chapter I try to compare Rorty’s global anti-representationalism and Robert Brandom’s local version, exploiting a recent discussion by Brandom and a famous exchange between Rorty and Bjørn Ramberg about Donald Davidson’s take on the special role of the intentional vocabulary.