that there are brute facts has no greater intellectual authority
than the view that there are not, since it cannot be rationally
adjudicated against it. It can be, only, preferred, the way you
prefer one flavour of ice cream to another.

An alternative line of thought is that vocabularies and lan-
guage games are commensurable. I hope so. Because it doesn't
make a whole lot of difference precisely how the world is
lost, whether quickly as in (1), or just a bit more slowly as in
(2). Either way, if the facts are wholly internalized to the lan-
guage game, the implications are not good. If there is no truth,
there is no injustice. Morally and politically anything goes.
There are appalling language games always in preparation
somewhere, now as much as ever. They will be 'played' by
those looking for the chance of it in deadly earnest. It remains
to be shown that, amongst our defences against them, we
have anything better than the concepts of a common human-
ity, of universal rights, and of reasoning together to try to
discover how things are, in order to minimize avoidable
suffering and injustice.

Bibliographical details for the works of Rorty referred to here, and the
abbreviations used for them, may be found at p. 147.

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