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Hilary Putnam on Richard Rorty*: \ 

[I\]n the same period

Although ... Rorty seemed to me perilously close to giving up the idea that there is a world out there at all,

Wiki Markup\*"A HalfCentury of Philosophy, Viewed from Within,"_\ [sc. _ _ the 1970s and 1980s\] Richard Rorty broke with scientific with scientific realism and moved in a direction that he associated first with
Derrida's s 'deconstruction' and later with American pragmatism. Like Quine, Rorty rejects the rejects the idea that there is any determinate reference relation between words and thingsand things, but (unlike Quine) he holds that statements ofscience of science have no greater right greater right to be called 'true' than statements that give us satisfaction in anyone ofa variety ofother anyone of a variety of other ways. 'True,' for Rorty is simply an adjective we use to to 'commend' beliefs we like._ _I_ _was pleased that \[he\] saw some ofthe same difficulties with what had become the standard realist metaphysics in analytic philosophy that\] was seeing._ _Daedalus, 126,_ _I \[Winter 1997\]: 199._ .

Although . . . Rorty seemed to me perilously close to giving up the idea that there is a world out there at all, I was pleased that [he] saw some of the same difficulties with what had become the standard realist metaphysics in analytic philosophy that Iwas seeing. 

*"A Half Century of Philosophy, Viewed from Within," Daedalus, 126, 1 [Winter 1997]: 199.