Richard Rorty. 
 
Princeton: 1988. First edition, second printing. Hardcover in a jacket. Near fine book, very good jacket. Book has shelf wear at the tail of the spine, jacket has a tear on the cover as well as smaller ones along the edges. 
 
"It is pictures rather than propositions, metaphors rather than statements, which determine most of our philosophical convictions. The picture which holds traditional philosophy captive is that of the mind as a great mirror, containing various representations - some accurate, some not - and capable of being studied by pure, nonempirical methods. Without the notion of the mind as mirror, the notion of knowledge as accuracy of representation would not have suggested itself. Without this latter notion, the strategy common to Descartes and Kant - getting more accurate representations by inspecting, repairing, and polishing the mirror, so to speak - would not have made sense. Without this strategy in mind, recent claims that philosophy could consist of 'conceptual analysis' or 'phenomenological analysis' or 'explication of meanings' or exmination of 'the logic of our language' or of 'the structure of the constituting activity of consciousness' would not have made sense."