system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Does the existence of useful (but incorrect) ideas in history suggest a seat at the table for useful (but incorrect) ideas in the present? And what does this all say about the relationship of human knowledge to the world?

Should incorrectness or incoherence suggest the immediate dismissal of ideas?

Throughout history, people have successfully used knowledge that we would now consider to be wrong to successfully achieve goals. And the wrong ideas can be seen as steps on a ladder to more "correct" ideas that followed.

For example, roughly speaking, much of pre-Copernican astronomy was built on a completely "wrong" model, but was still useful for navigation, prediction of celestial events, etc.

Does this fact lend credence to Richard Rorty's view that *usefulness* should be the weightier criterion when considering ideas, or should *correctness* in relation to the "actual world" be the more heavily weighed criterion?

Here is a metaphor to help expand the question (Note--I'm not trying to say that I believe this IS THE WAY IT IS, it's just a metaphor to help articulate my question):

In the theory of evolution, it's generally considered that biological organisms are not evolving to reach some hypothetical, pre-existing final state. Instead, evolution is seen as an "accidental process" where random mutations are selected by nature in terms of the fitness (usefulness) they afford the organisms to survive and reproduce.

So in the metaphor, ideas reproduce and mutate. And the usefulness (fitness) of the slightly mutated ideas is the criterion that drives the selection process.

If an organism evolves according to no "correct" version of itself, do ideas evolve according to "correct" versions of themselves? Roughly speaking, some German idealists may consider there to be noumena or something resembling Plato's Forms -- some absolute truth of the universe that our progression of knowledge is working toward understanding bit by bit.

But if ideas evolve like organisms evolve, how does the "real world" (as ideas relate to it) fit into the metaphor?

I'm not sure if I understand Rorty's take on the relationship of  the universe to human enterprise (language, purpose, need, etc).

*"Anti-essentialists deny that there is a way to pick out an object from the rest of the universe except as the object of which a certain set of sentences are true."* (Philosophy and Social Hope)

I want to interpret this statement to mean that language (symbolic thought) brings the world into focus or even brings the world online for people in Rorty's view.

It is a strange idea to consider and I'm not sure if I interpret him correctly, nor am I sure if I'm asking the questions correctly.

(Edited to add Richard Rorty's full name)
gpt
I believe Rorty's fundamental position is:

The world/reality is out there. 

There is an infinite number of ways to interpret and describe said world.  

One set of noises and marks does not better correspond to reality than any other set of noises and marks in any meaningful sense.

Therefore, to get something right/correct in itself is an unachievable and meaningless task.

We should prefer some descriptions of the world/beliefs over others in virtue of their greater pragmatic value, not for their ability to mirror reality.