In his "Contingency of Language," Richard Rorty talks first about how truth is dependent upon language (and thereby created by language,) opposing the traditional philosophical view that the "truth" is "out there" waiting to be discovered. He argues against the view that many philosophers take toward the world or the human self, that there is an intrinsic nature- or an essence of things, that awaits discovery. Instead, Rorty supports a brand of philosophy that acknowledges that nothing has an intrinsic nature that can be expressed or represented. Rather, Rorty argues that truth is contingent upon language- more specifically it is contingent upon the "language games" that we play at any given time. He sums up this stance when he says "...What was glimpsed at the end of the eighteenth century was that anything could be made to look good or bad, important or unimportant, useful or useless, by being redescribed."
Rorty begins to talk about how our "language games" determine "truth," or how we think. He makes the point that, if truth is determined by the way that we talk about things; truth can be changed by changing our language games. As truth changes, so does a culture change- because "cultural truths" are also contingent upon language. Rorty goes so far as to say that "a talent for speaking differently, rather than for arguing well, is the chief instrument of cultural change." Making a compelling argument inside of an already existing set of language games means that one is confined by that language. The impact of his argument is limited insofar as his argument is limited by the confines of the language. However, if he changes the language, and is able to perpetuate that change; he does not change opinion toward the old language, but could change what is regarded as truth.
Rorty describes this as "a contest between an entrenched vocabulary which has become a nuisance and a half-formed new vocabulary which vaguely promises great things." With my sports background, this idea clicked in thinking about the ways in which statistical methods (or languages) to measure success have changed over the past decade. For my purposes, I will stick specifically with basketball. The existing "language game" I am looking at here is the ways in which people who follow basketball (or cover it as journalists) talk about things like "success" and "dominance." These things were shaped by a statistical language that looked at things such as "margin of victory," "points per game," "rebounds per game" to name a few.
Over the past decade, a new "language" has been spreading- in large part due to one man named Ken Pomeroy. Ken began using new words to describe success, with the main word being "efficiency." And he incorporated a new statistical language that measured things such as "offensive efficiency," "defensive efficiency," "strength of schedule," "rebound percentage," and many others. For my purposes, I will only illustrate how how he used "offensive efficiency" to change the truth about what makes a team good or successful or dominant.
Ken decided not to look at raw numbers, because he thought that the old way of simply looking at points scored was limiting. He decided to use "pace" (or amount of times a team has the ball in a game) to measure "efficiency," rather than raw output. (What is better, to score 100 points in 100 possessions, or to score 80 points in 70 possessions? Points per game would tell you one thing, and offensive efficiency would tell you another.) For example, in the old language Virginia Military Institute was considered to have the "best" offense last season- scoring 87.9 "points per game." However, VMI had the 32nd "most efficient" offense last year. Look at "AdjO" and they have a rating of 112.7- essentially, for every 100 possessions they had last year, they scored 112.7 points. The new way of thinking that this language brings about is this: the merits of a team's offense (or really any of its merits) is determined based on the language of "efficiency."
Rorty states that the kind of philosophy that would bring about change by changing language games is one that would work "holistically and pragmatically." He says that "it suggests that we might want to stop" doing the old things and to do things a different way. This is exactly what has happened with Ken Pomeroy's approach over the last decade. He started his blog in the early 2000's, and today his statistical language is being used more and more in place of the old language. He "created a pattern of linguistic behavior" that did "tempt the rising generation to adopt it" and it is in fact spawning new forms of behavior in relation to basketball's culture. -Joey E
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