The Southern Journal of Philosophy (1989) Vol. XXVII, No. 1

REALISM AND CONCEPTUAL SCHEMES Roberto Salinas Purdue University

Davidson’s famous argument against alternative conceptual schemes is self-described as an effort to undermine the dualism of scheme and world and in this way regain commerce with those “familiar objects whose antics make our opinions and sentences true or false.”’ Notwithstanding the superficial realist import of this conclusion, some philosophers think that Davidson’s antirelativist case issues in the surprising result that realism is false; for realism states that the world is independent of human thought and speech, and hence represents a thesis which presupposes a principled distinction between scheme and reality. Rorty has used this line of argument to bring out the antirealist character of Davidson’s argument and to show tha t the realist interpretation of “the world’’ is “well

Devitt is another who claims to identify an extreme form of antirealism in Davidson’s case.3 He defends a version of realism free of semantic claims and urges that we construe realism as a specifically ontological doctrine about the nature of what there is: about the objective existence of physical entities and their independence from the mental.4 Devitt agrees with Rorty tha t Davidson’s stance belies the independence dimension of realism. But unlike Rorty, he tries to defend realism against Davidson’s claim that the notion of conceptual scheme makes no sense.

My aim in this paper is to examine Devitt’s replies to Davidson’s alleged antirealism and consider an alternative line of argument. I begin with a short sketch of Devitt’s novel naturalistic approach to the realism issue and try to place Davidson’s argument within this “philosophical space.” In sections I1 and 111, I set out Devitt’s objections and argue that they misrepresent the type of antirealism suggested by Davidson’s case and hence fail in their objective to secure

Roberto Salinas has been an instructor at Purdue University since 1984. He is currently completing a Ph.D. thesis on Richard Rorty’s attack on the epistemological enterprise, which will be submitted to Purdue.

101

his ontological formulation of realism from the Davidsonian threat.

In section IV I claim that Devitt has an available line of response which avoids the pitfalls of his own. I develop this argument in detail, modeled upon his claim that the standard objection to realism that it demands the impossible feat of comparing our representations with unconceptualized reality is based on a conflation of the (obvious) mind-dependence of theorizing about what there is with the (dubious) mind- dependence of reality. This reply requires dissociating the construal of “the world” as a noumenal realm beyond our ken from the one to which a proper account of realism is committed: a structured domain of entities independent of human cognitive powers. This, as we shall see, is sufficient to forestall Davidson’s misgivings with the notion of “theory- neutral” reality.5

In section V I shall conclude by responding to the predictable antirealist rejoinder tha t realism presupposes the “incoherent” chance of massive error. I shall argue that this objection is encouraged by an epistemic characterization of realism and loses any force it has when realism is construed in the suitable ontological sense demanded by Devitt’s naturalist approach. This methodological point is but simple fallout of taking Devitt’s approach as a serious challenge to the fashion of treating realism as an esoteric philosophical perspective.

I. The contemporary realism dispute contains numerous

theses presented under the name “realism,” the majority of which designate issue-specific positions in semantic theory and philosophy of science. Devitt thinks that despite the close affinity between realism and doctrines like the correspondence theory of truth, realism properly construed is not constitutive of any semantic/epistemic claim. Rather, it is an exclusively ontological thesis of what there is and how it is: that common- sense and scientific entities like trees and dogs and electrons and curved space-time exist and that their nature and existence is independent of human cognitive capacities. Devitt maintains that realism so construed can be defended without appeals to semantic or epistemic theses and in fact urges that settling the realism issue is methodologically prior to settling any particular issues within semantic theory and epistemology.6

Devitt’s approach to the realism issue is central to understand the nature of his debate with Davidson. For, it

102

is at odds with the practice of describing Davidson’s ontological orientations in terms of the issue-specific positions he holds in semantic theory and its underlying assumption that these bear directly on the realism dispute. As such, he avoids the problem that Davidson’s semantic perspectives are neither readily nor collectively classifiable as definitively realist or antirealist.’ More importantly, Devitt thinks the practice and its assumption are mistaken: semantic controversies on the nature of reference and truth are strictly irrelevant to the issue of what there is and how it is.

However, Devitt thinks Davidson’s rejection of any coherent concept of the world as a theory-neutral realm “outside” all schemes and science does harbor a genuine antirealism. Accordingly, this is the thesis that receives the relevant attention. On Devitt’s view, it implies a picture of what there is as authored by our nature as believer-desirers, one inconsistent with realism.

11. In light of these preliminary remarks, let us address Devitt’s

examination of Davidson’s argument in detail. In outline, Davidson’s thesis is that failure of intertranslatability between the languages of conceptual schemes is required to individuate them as authentic alternatives, but that no sense can be made of the failure of translatability sufficient to accomplish this identification. So no language can express an alternative framework. Devitt thinks this outcome is a reductio ad absurdum of Davidson’s position, since as a result no sense can be made of the idea that people differ in their conceptual schemes: e.g., that Ptolemy’s astronomy is a different scheme from Galileo’s; that a Buddhist’s schem is diqerent from a physicalist’s; that our’s is different from the ancient’s (8 179).

The preanalytic notion of “alternative conceptual schemes” construes conceptual differences between schemes as disagreements between specific sets of opinions. It is in this sense that Devitt claims that Davidson’s case is committed to the deeply counterintuitive “result” that “no sense can be made” of differences and changes in conceptual schemes. Yet the notion of alternative conceptual schemes has ample plausible background, as is demonstrated by standard examples such as competing scientific theories, different cultural perspectives, and the like.

However, Davidson thinks the coherence of representing different “schemes” as conceptual alternatives evaporates under scrutiny. On the one hand, a system we are unable

103

to make sense of cannot exemplify a genuine alternative. We would possess no access to its conceptual content and hence no means to describe it, let alone decide if it differs from ours in crucial and systematic ways. On the other hand, if even minimal comparison between a foreign framework and ours is possible, the system surrenders its status as a serious alternative. Comparison implies the ability to describe and comprehend; thus, recognition of a putative rival presupposes prior conceptual accomodation within our own scheme. As Davidson says, this dual consideration suggests that the notion of alternative conceptual frameworks is incoherent, a subtle contradiction in terms (I 190).

Thus, there seems to be a marked tension between the apparent legitimacy of the notion of alternative conceptual schemes and its alleged underlying incoherence. I suggest this tension arises because there are two ways in which we can talk about conceptual schemes: as local or global. The first poses no real problem: that a system S is an alternative to S’ merely implies a difference of opinion about a certain issue or clearly delineated theory against a commonly held background. Devitt is thus correct to reject the claim that the difference between Ptolemy and Galileo or science and theism has no mutually recognizable content, for such cases represent conflicts between local conceptual schemes. In contrast, a global interpretation of alternative conceptual schemes implies diversity between S and S’ so great as to render both systems incomparable and mutually unintelligible: the lack of neutrality and concepts in common extends from the most theoretical and technical parts of the two systems to their more rudimentary observational and logical domains. Thus conflicts shall surface not only in controversial areas like civil rights or the death of God, but also in core cases as to whether there are rocks, or whether persons exist, or whether modus ponens is a valid law of inference. On this global interpretation, the concept of alternative conceptual schemes does appear dubious and bewildering, and subject to the Davidsonian dilemma set out above.8

Davidson’s argument against the dualism of “organizing system” and a world “waiting to be organized” is clearly restricted to the global interpretation of alternative conceptual scheme^.^ The case is aimed against the radical thesis that truth is variable, determined by the scheme of representations in fashion. This relativism has various formulations: Kuhn’s incommensurability thesis and Whorf‘s linguistic hypothesis are familiar statements. More recent (albeit less obvious) examples include Goodman’s industry of “fact fabrication”

104

and Putnam’s “internal realism”: both positions exemplify the theme “different schemes carve up reality in different ways.”lO All these cases of irrealist relativism must develop global interpretations of conceptual schemes; otherwise we have a basis on which to intertranslate and interpret the contents of competing systems. It follows that without the appeal to global construals of alternative conceptual schemes this kind of relativism is impossible to maintain (I 199).

Davidson makes clear that global relativism depends on a rigid distinction between “total scheme and uninterpreted content” (I 198): different conceptual systems can organize the raw contents of experience in different categories and consequently contain mutually untranslatable languages. As Davidson says:

The failure of intertranslatability is a necessary condition for differences of conceptual schemes; the common relation to experience . . . is what is supposed to help us make sense of the claim that it is languages or schemes that are under consideration when translation fails. It is essential to this idea that there be something common and neutral that lies outside all schemes (I 190).

The first factor required to give weight to genuine cases of massive conceptual change (failure of intertranslation) seems clear: to describe two schemes S and S’ as equally acceptable but incompatible systems is founded on the notion that there is no conceptual overlap between the two alternatives, and so no basis on which to correlate the statements which characterize the two competitors. More precisely, the notion that two vocabularies are incommensurable depends on the holistic thesis that a special range of terms and sentences located at the core of a certain belief-system fixes the meaning and truth-value of the totality of terms and sentences situated at less centered areas, theoretical and peripheral alike. In this way it determines the entire high- and low-level intellectual and doxastic structure of the system. Hence, if the conceptual core of a system S differs widely from the core of S’, the consequence is a complete failure of comparison between the two conceptual rivals. As Feyerabend puts it, “a change in universal principles brings about a change in the entire world.”ll

This remark has obvious application in clear cases where two vocabularies lack common ground, e.g., literary theory and astrophysics. These cases involve a shift of attention to different domains of inquiry with different “universal principles.” But this innocuous situation does not obtain with S and S’, since by hypothesis the two systems are engaged

105

in conceptual competition: a shift from one to the other occasions “a change in the entire world.” So, while the differences between S and S’ embody universal scope, these are not differences in topic or discipline; rather, they are supposed to be alternative reflections of the very same “thing.” And this forces us to suppose that the “thing” being organized by diverse incomparable schemes must be a common field of neutral and uninterpreted data. This, then, is the second factor Davidson says is essential to the possibility of global alternatives: the dualism of scheme and “something neutral and common” outside the totality of schemes. (More on this later.)

The foregoing, while a bit sketchy, highlights the need to distinguish between local and global construals of conceptual schemes. Indeed the distinction suggests that Devitt is simply mistaken in claiming that Davidson is committed to the (extraordinary) view that, e.g., our belief-system is not different from the one prevalent in ancient times. For Davidson can surely countenance local conflicts of this kind. His target is the global interpretation of conceptual frameworks, the one which involves changes in “the entire world,” not the local versions with which Devitt takes issue. In the next section I will diagnose the source and significance of this mistake.

111. Davidson seems to combine a version of his case against

global relativism with considerations of charity, with the thesis that qua persons most of our beliefs must be true. This appears to form the basis of Devitt’s confusion of global and local examples of conceptual schemes, and his subsequent failure to undermine the Davidsonian position. Accordingly, we must consider in what way Devitt’s mistake is invited by the view he attacks and assess the consequences this has for his general critique of Davidson.

The core of Davidson’s argument is that there is no way to make sense of a language with conceptual content radically different from ours. The possibility that an alien alternative scheme contains a belief-structure completely at odds with ours depends on the claim that we cannot match the semantic resources that belong to the foreign and familiar idioms by whose means the respective sets of beliefs find conceptual expression.12 Yet to spot individual discrepancies of this sort presupposes a shared background of opinions against which we can compare and contrast significant disagreements; otherwise we possess no pattern of evidence to confirm whether

106

the alleged alien alternative can be recognized as a “language” or “scheme” at all. This thesis depends on two principles. First, that to understand a language we must ascribe to its speakers a shared picture of the world. Second, that the imputed picture is one we accept as true. These principles together imply that a community with a belief-system utterly unlike ours is-one we cannot “be in a position to judge” (I 197). We identify a belief by its place in a complex network of other beliefs and propositional attitudes. Yet the possibility that the vast majority are false short-circuits the ability to identify the content of single beliefs.13 This means that if communication is possible there must be massive agreement among foreign and familiar speech-communities. In this way the concern over competing global schemes degenerates into an ill-grounded worry which (to paraphrase Hume) admits of no answer, but produces no conviction (at least no “alternative” one).

Davidson uses a modified version of this antirelativist argument to defuse the possibility of a “true but untranslatable” language and plump for the antisceptical thesis that most of our beliefs must be true. The case against global conflict relies on the point that disagreement presupposes prior agreement on a vast quantity of beliefs. But to say that conflicts among two schemes S and S’ can occur only if S and S’ share many beliefs held-true in each system does not show that there cannot be a scheme S* in salient conflict with S and S’. All it shows is that neither S nor S’ are in the “position” to identify the content and truth- status of S*-beliefs that is needed to “judge” the doxastic conflicts between what is held-true in each system. Yet this epistemic point leaves open the possibility that none of the beliefs common to S and S’ are t r ~ e . 1 ~ Hence the issue of whether global conflict is verifiable is now replaced by the issue of whether wholesale but unrecognizable differences between an alien scheme and ours are possible. For Davidson, this issue depends on making sense of a scheme that is mostly true but impossible to translate. His point is that this demands wielding a sharp separation between translation and truth, and that this cannot be done: a language L with true sentences is ips0 fact0 translatable, for if an individual sentence s of L is true it can be exhibited in the disquotational form “s is true (in-L) if and only if p” and this requires (at a minimum) the homophonic translation of the object-language sentence s into the metalanguage of L. Davidson encapsulates this point in his well-known remarks that

107

Since Covention T embodies our best intuition as to how the concept of truth is used, there does not seem to be much hope for a test that a conceptual system is radically different from ours if that test depends on the assumption that we can divorce the notion of truth from that of translation (I 195).

Hence, verifiable or not, the concept of a true but inherently untranslatable language cannot be made coherent without appealing to a distinction that belies the basis on which the “concept of truth” depends. Yet this concept constitutes one of the necessary features for the possibility of an evidentially inscrutable alternative conceptual scheme. So, this possibility cannot be sustained without giving it up.15 And once the link between truth and translation is recognized the view that truth varies across schemes conveys no more than the banal point that true statements can be represented in different languages. Hence, Davidson concludes that there is no warrant for the view that there might be an optional system of beliefs that lies beyond our epistemic reach once we acknowledge that “charity is forced upon us,” that in sharing a language we “share a picture of the world that must, [in large part,] be true.”

The appeal to the principle of charity in the argument against relativism is probably necessary, for the thesis functions as the only viable option once the dualism of concept- content is given up. But this appeal is unfortunate, for it invites the misrepresentation that perhaps no sense can be made of intricate cases of local, yet widespread, divergence of belief; for instance, cases like the ancient view on the surface of the earth versus our own more sophisticated account.17 But it is crucial to note that as an alternative to relativism the principle is a by-product of rescinding the distinction of concept and content required to generate global conceptual differences, and not a premise necessary to execute the argument. The dilemma that focuses on the identity-conditions of alternative conceptual schemes depends on the claim that to interpret a foreign culture we must ascribe to its members a shared and true view of reality. The stronger principle that the imputed view must contain largely true beliefs is parallel, but additional: it is an independent point that is, if at all, an indirect outcome of the case against global relativism.ls

Let us return to Devitt and examine his reservations with the Davidsonian stance in light of the foregoing account. Devitt claims that “Davidsonianism is no threat to realism” without “the principle of charity” and the “controversial premise” that L is a language only if it is translatable into ours (R 180). How do either of these views threaten realism? The challenge posed by charity seems clear: it implies that

108

“in making manifest the features of language we manifest the features of reality” and this renders what there is parasitic on collective opinion in a fashion flatly inconsistent with the realist thesis that the world of common-sense and scientific entities objectively exists independently of the mental. l9 This antirealism is added fallout from the case against relativism and the scheme-content dualism required to sustain it. Yet Davidson’s attack on conceptual schemes works equally well (if it works at all) against any species of realism committed to a rigid distinction between concept and interpretation- invariant reality. Devitt’s version is no exception: the “independence” of what there is from the mental constitutes a relation (or the absence of) between an extra-theoretic domain of objects and human conceptual capacities. This typical feature of realism requires the gap Davidson claims to close.

It appears, then, that Davidson’s argument against global relativism poses a serious threat to realism. The idea of a conceptual scheme is parallel to the idea of interpretation- independent reality, a world “neutral and common” to all schemes. The two notions constitute the least common denominator of relativism and realism, for neither notion makes sense in isolation of each other. Hence, it follows that neither relativism nor realism are sustainable if the so-called dogma of concept and reality is rejected. But since this is the facet of global relativism Davidson attacks, his case automatically applies to realism as well.

Notice that this purely negative part of Davidson’s argument violates the independence proviso of realism without any appeal to the principle of charity. So, suppose we accept Devitt’s critique of charity.20 No comfort ensues, for the rejection of chanty is, while (possibly) necessary, not sufficient to save realism from the Davidsonian onslaught: some sense must be made of the dualism of scheme and reality.21

This means that Devitt’s case rests solely on his rejection of Davidson’s “controversial premise.” However, while the premise is essential to Davidson’s entire argument, and while Devitt offers reasons to think that the realist need not endorse it, I believe these reasons are wholly inadequate. He tells us that the key category in judging an alternative scheme is not translation, but interpretation, or explanation.22 Accordingly, he maintains that discovering a different conceptual system can be achieved with a causal theory of reference plus “our best theory of the world.” But this objection simply misses the major point of Davidson’s case. A system S represents a genuine global alternative to S’ only if conceptual correlation

109

between them is impossible. Thus, to make a difference that makes a difference, they must have structures in total conflict with each other: there is no common basis on which to coordinate translation, explanation, or whatever. But Davidson’s dilemma questions the conditions under which a scheme forms an alternative; and the problem it exposes is a difficulty of demarcation: the so-called “scheme“ is logically bound to be too familiar to qualify as an “alternative,” or too foreign to determine what it is, still less to decide if it is a rival worth our worry. Hence the “key category” we pick is irrelevant: if a system S can “explain” an alien S’ there must be some doxastic basis on which the two can be compared. But cross-comparison entails that the two systems are not strictly incommensurable and so not, after all, alternative conceptual schemes.

Oddly enough, Devitt’s own contrast of the Inuit attitude towards snow and our less discriminating one illustrates this point. Thus, e.g., if communication between Australian and Inuit language-users is possible, there must be some set of statements common to both speech-communities; for instance, “snow is white”! This universal low-level basis of belief functions as the foundation on which the Eskimo system of categories can be translated, interpreted or explained: on which conceptual comparison is possible. To be sure, as Devitt notes, this case involves a partial failure of translatability and hence some degree of doxastic dissimilarity. But this does not affect Davidson’s point. For his claim is that this sort of decidedly local disparity fails to justify representing an alien belief-scheme as an “alternati~e.”~3 Thus, pace Devitt, partial failures of translation are marks of “meaningful disagreement” rather than reliable signals of an alternative system of beliefs. There is, in light of the methodological and formal canons of interpretation, no firm basis on which we can sustain the generalization from expected and explicable disagreement to total disagreement.

Davidson’s central point concerning conceptual schemes can be summed up by saying that “local alternative” is a pleonastic phrase and “global alternative” a self-contradictory one. This point must not be confused with the independent thesis that charity is a necessary condition for any feasible theory of radical interpretation. Davidson’s tendency to mix the two in making his antirelativist case is an unhappy source of misinterpretation. Nonetheless, the two claims are distinct: charity is a separate result of the “refutation” of relativism, not a prerequisite for its success.

110

Hence, I conclude that Devitt has failed to supply an acceptable response to Davidson’s argument; and, a fortiori, to the rejection of the distinction of scheme and a world “outside” all schemes. This, to repeat, has a disastrous consequence for realism, for without a general distinction between concept and reality it is impossible to formulate the “independence” clause of realism. So it behooves Devitt to offer a picture of the dualism of scheme and reality that is both independently defensible and immune to the charge of “incoherence.” In the next section I shall argue that the material to sketch this portrait can be gathered from Devitt’s criticism of the misleading metaphor of “making worlds” and Putnam’s allegation that realism is committed to a “God’s Eye View.” It is surprising that Devitt does not call upon these considerations when confronted with Davidson’s antirealism. For, they are compelling.

IV.

The term “antirealism” is a generic term that designates any position that is incompatible with realism. Davidson’s antirealism results from the rejection of any coherent concept of independent “ theory-neutral” reality. Yet the notion of “ theory-independent reality” is itself ambiguous between the loose notion of an intrinsically interpretation-free world of inaccessible noumena and the much more robust notion of the world as a structured realm of independent items like rocks and trees. Davidson’s argument, if sound, clearly impugns the former. The crucial question for Devitt’s kind of realism is whether this disaster carries over to the latter notion. The answer seems to be “yes,” but I think Devitt has conclusive grounds to support the opposite answer.

Consider this point in light of Devitt’s careless remark that the “world Rorty applauds Davidson for losing” is the very independent world he is otherwise careful to define and defend (R 180). On my view, this claim constitutes a tacit admission of defeat, for the world Rorty commends Davidson for bidding farewell is a notion of reality as utterly uncontaminated by theory, “something completely unspecified and unspecifiable, the thing-in-itself in fact.”24 The Kantian realm of noumena, of unconceptualized reality, is indeed the construal of “the world” required to generate alternative ways of worldmaking: for nature so construed, innocent of conceptual content, stands underneath all schemes, as malleable material “waiting” tol be processed by multiple conceptual frameworks. Truth then becomes importantly ‘relative to schemes’: the neutral

111

unsynthezised content outside all schemes can be registered by various incompatile organizing systems and thereby generate a manifold of different doxastic orders, incapable of making conceptual contact with each other.

It is clear that if realism involved commitment to this Kantian notion of a n “independent world,” then even Devitt would have to concede that it is “well lost.” For he himself thinks that the independent world is not a raw field of featureless content. Hence he implicitly shares the Davidson- Rorty disdain for the “world” as a noumenal substratum devoid of properties, a position he labels “weak realism” and finds implausible and unworthy of defense (R 15). Further, as he notes, this hybrid “realism” is more aptly characterized as a species of antirealism, for it stands opposed to common- sense and scientific realism. But this suggests that Devitt is mistaken in maintaining that Davidson’s rejection of a “world” “outside all schemes” entails a radical antirealism. This is so since the world as thing-in-itself is not the robust world Devitt defends. And this mistake is reflected in his misidentification of the commonplace world of trees and stones “independent” of our experiences with the world the Davidson- Rorty stance deems worthy of disposal. For the former happy world is manifestly not the latter, and hence not the one “Rorty applauds Davidson for losing.”

Devitt mus t nonetheless demonstrate t h a t h i s rich conception of the world is coherent. Rorty suggests that it is not:

I want to claim that “the world” is either the purely vacuous notion of the ineffable cause of sense and goal of intellect, or else a name for those objects that inquiry at the moment is leaving alone: those planks in the boat which are. . . not being moved about.25

The point, more perspicuously, is that we must adopt a feasible but completely pragmatic notion of “the world” as the vast range of beliefs that simply must (by our lights) be true, or else the useless notion of inaccessible reality. So realism is faced with a potentially fatal dilemma: if we represent the world in terms of our present body of beliefs we fail to display in what way it is independent of all schemes of representation; and if we attempt to articulate this we inherit the unintelligible notion of unconceptualized reality. The realistic conception of the world hence collapses into vacuity.

The force of this dilemma depends on the contention that all attempts to disjoin scheme and reality are doomed to fail. Thus, two conditions must be met to sustain Devitt’s realist conception of the world:

112

(1) the independence of the common-sense and scientific world from our scheme of representations does not render the world an ineffable, inaccessible realm of unspecifiable objects.

(2) the realist version of the scheme-reality dualism does not have global relativistic consequences.

These two requirements tell us that a successful defense of robust realism must show that Davidson’s argument cannot be validly extended to the distinction of scheme and reality which figures in a proper statement of realism.

The picture of scheme and common content “waiting to be organized” which Davidson and Rorty both exploit is one in which, to paraphrase Devitt, we must start from scratch (R 194). This picture of nature certainly does breed global conceptual competition and certainly does support the theme that what is “out there” can be “conditioned” by mutually incompatible systems. It is essential to the dilemma Rorty develops on behalf of Davidson that the realist conception of the world involves commitment to this picture of “reality outside schemes,” a picture of the world as tabula rasa, as nature free of all features.

But this commitment is not genuine. The chief point that must be stressed is that working within a theory of the world does not vitiate the independence dimension of realism: it does not render the familiar objects which belong to folk and scientific theory dependent on the mental, on theory itself. To think otherwise is to suppose that the world must be inaccessible to the stones we tell, that content must be uninterpreted and uninterpretable by concepts. This assumption, in turn, is the outcome of a conflation between what Scheffler dubs “versional” and “objectual” interpretations of the “world,” a conflation of the epistemic nature of our judgments on what there is (their bond to theory) with the dependence of what there is on the mental, with theory per se.26 So, suppose we respond to the Davidson-Rorty dilemma by citing paradigm examples of mind-independent items, like cats and trees, and similar tokens of common-sense types. The conflation just described appears vividly in Rorty’s anticipation of this objection:

As soon as we start thinking of “the world” as atoms of the void, or sense data and awareness of them, or as stimuli . . . brought to bear on certain organs, [or as specific objects of common-sense and science], we haue changed the name of the game. For we are now well within some particular theory of how the world is.27

113

The obvious reply to this is that thinking and talking about stones or cats or electrons does not change the name of the game: such objects cannot be said to depend on theory or exist inside a scheme simply on the grounds that they are capable of being represented by a suitable set of descriptions. This conflation underlies the crucial equivocation between the concept-reality dualism as a distinction between a set R of representations and reality “outside” R as malleable stuff on the one hand and a world of specific and structured objects on the other.

So the first condition (1) is satisfied. This is, after all, part of the method employed by Devitt of separating ontological questions of what there is from questions of truth and knowledge. To convey the structure of the world in a conceptual format makes our judgments, not reality, parasitic on a scheme of representations. Indeed, failure to make this distinction in ambiguous phrases like ‘ theory-independence’ and ‘reality outside all schemes’ tends to underlie so-called “short arguments to idealism” and the popular objection that realism requires an outside view. For example, consider Putnam’s inference that “we cut up the world into objects” when we choose a certain scheme of descriptions from the consideration that the question ‘what is there?’ can only be asked “within a theory or description.”28 The success of this inference depends on a subtle equivocation of the theory-dependence of discourse which purports to describe how things are and the theory-dependence of how the world is.

The same unhealthy vacillation between two senses of ‘independent” appears in Rorty’s challenge to “see ourselves as never encountering reality except under a chosen description, as making worlds rather than finding them. ”29

If read literally, this constitutes an attempt to derive a Goodman-style irrealism from the truism that to describe reality we must employ a “chosen description.” Similarly, compare the ambiguity in ‘reality under a description’ with Putnam’s misleading remark that realism presupposes the capacity to say how the world is ‘theory-inde~endently.’~~ As Devitt notes, there is one reading of this claim which places an “absurd condition” on realism; namely, the capacity to describe how the world is without a set of descriptions, which is logically impossible (R 194). Yet if read in the literal realist sense the claim poses no objection, as it simply restates the homely point that we can talk of stones and dogs, and similar items, whose existence in no way depends on our linguistic practices. This equivocation on ‘ theory-independent’ is, I believe, common and crucial to short cases to idealism, Rorty’s

114

dilemma, and the extraordinary conviction that realism is for Him alone.

Thus, to recap, conceptual schemes may “organize” our opinions of reality, but not reality itself. This, in turn, is what permits us to make metatheoretic judgments on what systems offer more developed and more acceptable descriptions of nature. So the correct reply to Davidson is that his argument has a limited scope: it is successful insofar as global relativism is concerned but cannot be validly extended to the realist version of the scheme-reality dualism. For, the argument is sustainable only on the mistaken assumption that the world “outside schemes” alleged by realism must be unspecifiable, and this mischaracterizes the independence dimension of realism by conflating talk of the features of x with the existence of x’s features. Consequently, the realist distinction of concept and reality can be intelligibly maintained: for in this case reality is perfectly accessible to conceptual systems, but no less external or independent for that epistemic reas0n.3~

A similar line of argument can be used to fulfill condition (2). As Devitt says, we can, as realists, “judge whether our theories are true of reality, the nature of which does not depend on any concepts” (R 195n). The possibility that we can make these second-order judgments suggests that the phenomenon of global alternatives is one which “cannot be made defensible” : conceptual comparison is possible, no matter how disparate a set of systems may seem or how difficult it might prove to adjudicate between them. In this way the threat of an “anything goes” global relativism can be forestalled. For with reality fixed the relative acceptability of a certain system depends on its ability to retain some links with those features of the objective world it aims to describe. The restriction this places on the limit and content of a single system precludes complete lack of comparability between schemes. The issue of choosing a putative alternative over another is then decidable on the basis of which candidate better describes how things are.32

Trigg has expressed the antirelativist import of the realist’s distinction of scheme and reality as follows:

[Tlhe notion of alternative conceptual schemes is only dangerous when reality is no longer thought independent of them. The correlation between schemes ie preserved if it is accepted that there is a dichotomy between concept and thing conceptualized.33

The crucial consideration is that the division between system and a structured world blocks global outcomes from ensuing by setting strict constraints. These constraints stem from the

115

uniform nature of reality to which all belief-schemes must answer. Happily, the marked dissimilarity between this fully robust notion of nature and the noumenal notion correlative with radical relativism fulfills the second of two conditions needed to defeat the Davidson-Rorty onslaught.

Hence, I conclude that the dilemma posed by the Davidson- Rorty argument is artificial. Realism can sustain a viable version of the concept-content dualism and nourish the robust sense of reality that the plain world of physical things exists objectively and independently of the mental. My more specific conclusion is that Devitt does himself a disservice with the objection he levels against Davidson both because it fails and because he has at his disposal a far better alternative. In the next section I close my discussion with a response to one foreseeable antirealist rebuttal.

V. The argument considered above exhibits a “too good to be

true” character, primarily because it fails to address the quasi- Cartesian realist argument that since all of our beliefs might be false, the world and our thoughts about what there is must be logically independent of one another. This suggests that to develop (in William’s words) an “absolute conception of reality,” we must take up a transcendental search for a n external “theory-neutral” stance over and above inquiry from which we can inspect the ultimate structure of reality.34

Two influential variations of this attempt to settle the realism debate in well-defined epistemic/semantic terms are the standard reply to evidence-linked definitions of truth (viz., that ideally warranted assertions could still prove false) and Putnam’s more recent urge to employ the theory of reference to block “the disastrous meta-induction” which concludes that “no term ever refers.”35 Both cases deploy the chance of massive error for epistemological purposes: the first to show that truth must be evidence-independent correspondence to reality and the second to ground the need for a “realist” theory of reference.

Nonetheless, both arguments rely on a n assumption Davidson denies, to wit, that we can make sense of drastic differences in truth-values between two sets of beliefs. And to allay this sceptical worry, realism seems to require making manifest an absolute conception of reality to reveal the true nature of a world we might otherwise fail to be in touch with. Yet so construed realism certainly seems to fall prey to the Davidson-Rorty case after all. For the motive behind such cases of epistemological heroism is to find a formula which

116

supplies what normal inquiry cannot some guarantee that our web of belief spins true rather than mostly false beliefs. But this must make sense of ideas like “for all we know none of our beliefs are true,” and similar others that involve the dim and dubious notion of “alternative conceptual

The problem here is that the realist argument@) and the antirealist reply both suppose that realism is an essentially epistemic doctrine. Accordingly, my countersuggestion is that we reject the tacit assumption common to both parties that we must bracket all pretheoretic considerations in resolving the realism dispute. This is, I think, a major part of the point of Devitt’s methodological “maxims.”37 In particular, the claim issued on behalf of realism that we must take a transcendental turn to confirm that truth is correspondence and manifest an absolute conception of reality has very detrimental results. For luring the opposition to such lofty land is what fosters the illusion that realism demands speaking the unspeakable and what invites accusations like Putnam’s that it presupposes the Holy ability “to say how the world is ‘theory-independently’.’’ In this respect, the mistake elaborated in the last section turns out to be as common to friends as to foes of realism.38

This suggestion, if correct, underscores Devitt’s observation that realism and the correspondence theory have suffered wholesale discredit as a result of company kept by dubious epistemology. And it highlights the force of his advice to distinguish realism from epistemic or semantic views and judge its merits on an ontological basis. An appreciation of this point suggests the implausibility of supposing that realism must be defended by a model contrived to rule out the chance that our belief-system could be replaced by a rival set of “truths.” In particular, the view that we should put a premium on the issue of what there is and how it is over specialized issues in epistemic and semantic theory suggests that we should resist the quest for an “absolute conception” of reality. For it is bound to use models that are, prima facie, far more suspect than the fully familiar world of mind- independent objects. The more reasonable option, on this view, is to choose realism as the most reliable starting point to formulate our accounts of language and knowledge. We will then be prompted to seek (the best) explanations of the phenomena under investigation consistent with realism, and reject the theories that fail to meet this constraint on the basis of our prior better-grounded commitment to it.39

117

This point was forcefully advanced by the late Donald Williams, who summed up the main idea in a famous and splendid passage:

Dare I suggest at last that a kind of highmindedness and sportsmanship have conspired against the vulgar plethora of the evidence for realism to protect from bathos the ‘persistent problems’ and the laborious ritual of our profession? To bring such gross implements as Mill’s methods to the limpid regions of philosophic discourse is like dynamiting a trout stream. It gets the fish, but it misses all the exquisite impractical pleasure of angling with the thin line of dialectic. Besides, it depletes the game supply. These punctilios may of course mean simply a resolve that philosophy must be critical of the most obvious of mundane opinions and methods. But so far as they are a mood of gratuitous superiority, the philosopher who does not think of philosophy as mere courtly pastime like parchesi will abandon them. The disclaimer of the earthier sorb of knowledge has isolated philosophy, made it a mystery or a jest, an escape from reality or a visionary interpretation. Philosophy is not higher and suprascientific. It is the lowest and grubbiest inquiry round the roots of things, and when it answers real questions about the world, it is and can only be an inductive science.4o

On this naturalist view of philosophy, it is far more likely that the abstract methods of philosophical “highmindedness” will create (as Hume says) “confusion and amazement” rather than succeed in making a more plausible case for realism than the one suggested by the vast, if vulgar, evidence found in everyday life. Thus, witness the “confusion” of the theory- independent nature of reality with the theory-dependence of reflective discourse on what there is, and the ensuing “amazement” that the external world we all know and love is “well lost.” The main virtue of Devitt’s methodology is that it is designed to correct this “confusion and amazement,” to regenerate and sustain a robust sense of reality, and exhibit the compelling credentials of realism once restored to its proper “vulgar” place, where it is widespread and where it belongs.

It is arguable that this vulgar, robust sense of reality is vital to spin and sustain our web of belief. Yet, unlike the absolute conception, it supplies a direct and simple answer to the global hypothesis that “for all we know, none of our beliefs are true.” For with this sense at our disposal we need not issue an a priori justification for the modal claim that most of our beliefs must be true. Instead, we can recommend the more mundane claim that there are extremely good inductive grounds to think that in actual fact the great majority of them are true-true, moreover, because of the way the world is.41

118

NOTES

1 Donald Davidson, “On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme,” in Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985). All further page references incorporated into the text shall be referred to as 1.

2 See “The World Well Lost,” Consequences of Pragmatism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1981), pp. 3-19. Rorty’s more recent view is that Davidson’s views lead to “post-realism.” The argument in section IV below can, if sound, be easily extended to block Rorty’s deconstruction. See “Pragmatism, Davidson, and Truth,” Truth and Interpretation: Perspectives on the Philosophy of Donald Davidson, ed. Ernest LePore (New York: Basil Blackwell, 1986).

3 Michael Devitt, Realism and Truth (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), especially pp. 179-180. All further page references incorporated into the text shall be referred to as R.

4 See ibid, chapter two, for an extensive discussion of the details involved in this characterization of realism.

5 This raises an important problem of interpretation, namely, whether Davidson himself sees his argument as an attack on the realist notion of the world. Devitt and Rorty, like others, think Davidson does indeed intend to deny the coherence of any idea of an “independent” world. But there are good reasons to believe otherwise, as I point out in note 31. If so, this lends aid and comfort to the line I push in section IV that the realist’s distinction of scheme and world is unscathed by Davidson’s attack on “cookie-cutter” counterparts. I will mostly ignore this exegetical complication, construing Davidson’s argument as trying to issue in antirealist results. My claim then is that try or no, the result does not follow.

6 In particular, Devitt urges adherence to the “maxims” that realism must be distinguished from epistemic/semantic doctrines and that the realism issue is to be settled prior to any epistemic/semantic issue. This approach leads him to defend realism on the basis of inferences to the best explanation, without any appeal to epistemic or semantic notions like convergence, correspondence truth, the theory of reference, and similar others typically associated with realism. I use this strategy to respond to an important antirealist argument in section V below. See Devitt’s discussions in ibid, chapters one, five and seven.

Some positions are construable as clearly realist. This is how Dummett and followers interpret the program of explicating sentential meaning in terms of evidence-transcendent truth-conditions. Yet other views suggest a commitment to an unqualified form of antirealism; for example, the rejection of reference and agreement with Quine’s doctrine of referential inscrutability. And other claims yet tend to admit of opposite construals. Cf. A. C. Genova, “Ambiguities About Realism and Utterly Distinct Objects,” Erkenntnis 28

8 These points parallel the illuminating discussions in Rorty, “World Well Lost,” pp. 6-7, Roger Trigg, Reulity at Risk: A Defense of Realism in the Sciences and Philosophy (Brighton: Harvester Press, 1980), pp. 101-105, and Robert Kraut, “The Third Dogma,” Perspectiues, pp. 400-403.

9 The text in general clearly suggests this. It is most apparent in Davidson’s sharp rejection of the rhetoric of “living in different worlds.’’ See especially “On the Very Idea,” pp. 184-185 and 187-190. In addition, as I point out below, the immense implausibility of denying the cogency of talk of local alternatives suggests that the imputation of this view to Davidson fails the test of charity.

(1988), pp. 87-95.

119

lo Cf. Nelson Goodman, Ways of Worldmaking (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1978) and Hilary Putnam Reason, Truth and History (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981). Putnam’s relativism is less obvious than Goodman’s, given his vigorous rejection of scientific anarchism. However, Davidson thinks Putnam’s “internal realism” is a form of relativism in verbal disguise, and I think correctly so (Inquiries, p. xviii; “A Coherence Theory,” Perspectives, p. 309). Indeed, Putnam moves much in the direction of a “conceptual relativism” in his latest work, The Many Faces of Realism (La Salle, Illinois, 1987).

l 1 Paul Feyerabend, Science in a Free Society (London: New Left Books, 1978), p. 70.

l 2 The generality of the relevant semantic resources vary depending on how the relation between scheme and content is laid out: if in terms of ‘organization,’ then the resources involve referential devices like singular terms, predicates, and so on; if it is done in terms of ‘facing,’ ‘fitting,’ and so on, then the relevant semantic units will instead involve sentences grouped in a collective whole. See “On the Very Idea,” pp. 192-194.

13 Cf. “Thought and Talk,” in Inquiries. l 4 See, for comments on the failure of verificationism to withstand this

form of “sceptical” threat, Rorty’s “World Well Lost,” pp. 12-13 and Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), pp. 303-311; Trigg’s Reality at Risk, pp. 103-104; and (in connection with Carnap’s “linguistic alternatives”) Barry Stroud’s The Significance of Philosophical Scepticism (Oxford: Oxford Clarendon Press, 1984), chapter V.

l 5 A colorful variant of the argument just rehearsed is Davidson’s omniscient interpreter argument in “The Method of Truth in Metaphysics,” Inquiries, pp. 200-201. To suppose that our language is riddled with false statements entails that the Ideal Interpreter could not interpret us, which is absurd, or rightly interpret us as “being massively mistaken,” which is impossible, since “good [and a fortiori ideal] interpretation breeds concurrence.”

l6 This formulation occurs in “The Method of Truth,” Inquiries, p. 200. l7 Thus, consider Davidson’s notorious and counterintuitive uncertainty

about whether the ancient’s “really” believed that “this earth” was flat in view of the conviction that “we can take it as a given” that “most beliefs are correct” (“Thought and Talk” Inquiries, p. 168).

l8 This tends to be obscured by the complexity of Davidson’s general argument and h is admixture of antirelativist with antisceptical considerations (this is done explicitly in “A Coherence Theory,” Perspectives). Yet, both friends and foes of Davidsonianism (including Rorty and Trigg) tend to view the argument as yielding the conclusion that “most of our beliefs must be true.” Also, Davidson himself asserts that the case against global relativity “makes equally well for the conclusion that the general outlines of our view of the world are correct,” thereby implying that charity is not a condition but an indirect result of the argument (Inquiries, pp. xviii-xix.). The lack of essential link among the two is highlighted by the fact that the falsity of the “conclusion” would in no way affect the point that total communicable disagreements between schemes are impossible nor the anti- Kuhn point that complete failure of cross-comparison is something we “cannot be in a position to judge.”

19 This quotation, which comes from “The Method of Truth,” (Inquiries p. 200), certainly seems to suggest that the structure of language determines the structure of reality. But Devitt has changed his mind about this. See note 21.

20 I find Devitt’s critique forceful and well-conceived. In brief, his view is that it is plausible to view the principle as an important heuristic tool, but highly dubious to construe it as making the modal point that having

120

mostly true beliefs is constitutive of being a person. See Realism and Truth, pp. 172-179 and his (co-authored with Kim Sterelny) Language and Reality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), chapter 15. Colin McGinn urged a similar line in “Charity, Interpretation, and Belief,” Journal of Philosophy, 74 (1977).

21 I make the parenthetical qualification since Devitt no longer finds realism incompatible with charity. In correspondence, and in his recent paper “Rorty’s Mirrorless World” (Midwest Studies in Philosophy XII: Realism and Antirealism ed. P. French, et a1 [Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 19871, pp. 165-166) he claims that the independence aspect of realism is not unobtainable from charity. He thinks Davidson’s view is that we cannot interpret an alien as believing that reality is other than the way it actually is, a view he thinks false, but not antirealist it does not make reality dependent on our opinions, but vice versa. For the purposes of this paper this means that realism need not require rejecting the principle; but it must still offer an account of the scheme-reality dualism immune to Davidson’s line of attack. (This point is relevant to the exegetical issue raised in notes 5 and 31 of whether Davidson’s rejection of the dualism is intended to apply to all its varieties. The sort of consistency Devitt discerns is evidence which suggests a negative answer.)

22 Cf. Nicholas Rescher’s “Conceptual Schemes,” Midwest Studies in Philosophy V: Studies in Epistemology, ed. P. French et al. (Minneapolis: Universitv of Minnesota Press. 1980). a paper cited approvingly by Devitt. I think Rischer’s argument also misses Davidson’s p&t that alternatives are necessarily local. It may be true that interpretability is a “weaker” notion than translatability, but if it makes room for comparison, as Rescher supposes, then it opens up the possibility for the type of translation Davidson envisages (see note 23).

23 This is so, in brief, since the strategy of isolating the simple sentences like “snow is white” common to both communities and constructing a recursively specified truth-theory that assigns them Tarskian truth-conditions sets strict structural and formal constraints on the generation of truth- conditions for the more complex kinds of T-sentences and the systematic correlations between them within and across the two languages. According to Davidson, this issues in the result that partial failures of intertranslation are to be explained in terms of “explicable error” rather than by appeals to alternative belief-schemes. See “On the Very Idea,” pp. 195-197.

24 Rorty, “World Well Lost,” p. 14. 25 Rorty, ibid, p. 15. 26 Israel Scheffler, “The Wonderful Worlds of Goodman,” Synthese 45 (1980),

27 Rorty, “World Well Lost,” p. 14 (italics added). 28 Reason, Truth and History, pp. 49-52. The two claims are made at separate

stages, but context clearly suggests that Putnam finds an obvious link between them: both are supposed to be definitive antirealist features of “internalism.” Yet compare the second claim with Winch’s remark that “our idea of what belongs to the realm of reality is given to us by the language we use.” (The Idea of a Social Science [London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 19581, p. 15). This celebrated claim has often been attacked as “relativist,” and yet in light of the present analysis it says no more than the truism that talk about what there is must be couched in a language. More examples of this fallacious equivocation are given by Devitt and Sterelny, Language and Reality, chapters 10,12,13.

29 “Pragmatism and Philosophy,” in Consequences of Pragmatism, p. xxxix (italics added).

pp. 201-209.

121

30 Meaning and the Moral Sciences (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978), p. 133. The equivocation in question reappears, I believe, in Putnam’s The Many Faces of Realism (e.g., pp. 35-36).

31 There are reasons to think that Davidson would agree that his attack on the scheme-world dualism is confined to the “cookie cutter” versions needed to put conceptual relativity in motion. Indeed, he himself plumps for a robust form of realism based on the thesis that objects of belief are the causes of belief (hence the consistency of charity and realism noted in note 21) and claims that his rejection of “confrontational” accounts of the relation between beliefs and the world clears the way for us “to be realists in all departments . . . , accept a realist view of truth, and insist that knowledge is of an objective world independent of our thought or language” (“A Coherence Theory,” Perspectives, p. 307). The issue immediately arises of whether Rorty uses or abuses Davidson’s case. See Dorothea Frede’s “Beyond Realism and Anti- Realism: Rorty on Heidegger and Davidson,” Review of Metaphysics 40 (1987), pp. 741-757, for a discussion of Rorty’s questionable “strong misreading” of Davidson. She maintains that all Davidson wishes to reject is the idea of “scheme” as something which “organizes an otherwise shapeless and neutral flux of reality” (p. 746).

32 This, of course, is only to say that decision-making is possible within a (properly) realist interpretation of independent reality. It is manifestly not an answer to the resulting epistemic “how-to” questions of selecting relevant decision-procedures for adjudicating between conflicting sets of beliefs. These are beside the present issue of whether (2) is satisfiable. In particular, they reflect problems of second-order methodology: evidence-use, evidence- gathering, and the reliability of processes like inference to best explanation in deciding issues of comparison and choice (e.g., caution in where to commit given the past falsity of theories; the problems of whether agnosticism about unobservables is forced on us in view of how to evidentially distinguish empirically equivalent but incompatible systems; cf. David Papineau, Reality and Representation [Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 19871). To paraphrase Devitt, while “positive answers” to these “how-to” questions are certainly “difficult,” “they are not to be dismissed by appeals to transcendental philosophy.” (R 195). Consequently, we can claim that (2) can be met, recognize that such questions surely do arise if a “Kantian” version of scheme and world forms no part of the realist construal of objective reality, and consistently maintain that “positive answers” to decidability-questions are “difficult.” Of course, I claim (2) can be met, but this needs special emphasis in view of the contrary conviction common to, e.g., Rorty and Putnam, that realism requires “transcendental” access to an ineffable realm of “real reality” independently of “alternative phenomenal projections” of what there is-a conviction which forms an important source of their drive towards antirealism. I thank Ken Westphal for urging me to make these points explicit.

33 Trigg, Reality at Risk, p. 104. 34 See Bernard Williams’s use of this notion to respond to Rorty’s dilemma

in Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 137-149. Cf. his Descartes: The Project of Pure Enquiry (New York Penguin Books: 1970), pp. 64-67, for a more general discussion of this notion.

35 See Meaning and the Moral Sciences, pp. 24-25. 36 This link between realism and scepticism is often drawn by friends and

foes of both. Thus Thomas Nagel, who believes scepticism is irrefutable, applauds realism in making scepticism intelligible (The View From Nowhere [New York Basil Blackwell, 19861, p. 90). And Grayling, who labors at length to refute scepticism, rejects realism on the basis that it leads to extreme scepticism (The Refutation of Scepticism [La Salle: Open Court, 19851, pp.

122

27-28). This unhappy tendency of reading explicit epistemic components into realism reappears in Papineau’s fascinating “naturalized” version of the “argument from error to realism” in Reality and Representation. He develops realism as a claim about the coherence of massive error and defends it against Davidson’s “antirealism of belief” from the perspective of a “teleological” theory of representation. I disagree with his strategic approach to realism, but its naturalistic character renders it immune to the criticisms I am making. Cf. notes 38 and 40.

37 See note 6. See Language and Reality, chapter 14, for an illuminating and concise account of this naturalistic methodology.

38 Accordingly, my disagreement with the correspondence and causal theories of truth or reference is not substantive, but purely methodological. Specifically, it is with the counterproductive strategy of using such theories to underwrite views about how the world “really is,” a strategy which instantly activates the irrelevant but otherwise conclusive epistemological objection that realism does indeed require an “impossible attempt to step outside our skins” (Consequences of Pragmatism, p. xix).

39 Thus, I agree with Devitt that if a theory of reference leads to wholesale antirealism about the natural world, then “so much the worse for that theory.” Cf. Realism and Truth, pp. 142-143,218-220, and 227-232.

40 Donald Williams, Principles of Empirical Realism (Springfield: Charles C. Thomas, 1966), pp. 146-147. Williams’s attitude directly parallels Devitt’s own observation that the method of approaching realism issue by first restoring the ontological horse before the epistemic/semantic carte, renders realism “boring, maybe a little vulgar.’’ Cf. Realism and Truth, pp. 4-5 and

4 1 An earlier version of this paper was presented at a colloquium in h r d u e University, February 1987. I am extremely grateful to the following people for written comments and criticisms: Michael Devitt, Ken Westphal, Lilly Russow, and Rod Bertolet.

12-14.

123