Consensus as a synecdoche and consensus as a sign. A critique of Rorty’s conception of truth, justification, and consensus

Abstract

In this essay I shall propose a theoretical model that will help us to understand the meaning and scope of rational agreements. I build this model from a previous conception of the relationship between truth and justification. With this model at hand, that I shall call “agreement as a sign”, it is possible to asses Rorty´s ethnocentric claim according to which any rational agreement that a human community could reach, included scientific communities, can only refer to its idiosyncratic beliefs and to its internal ways of justifying them without reference to reality. Against the background of the “agreement as a sign” model, Rorty´s model of agreements can be seen as a case of synecdoche.