Beyond Realism and Antirealism: John Dewey and the Neopragmatists

Chapter 5: Neopragmatism’s Realism/Antirealism Debate

155 5 Neopragmatism’s Realism/ Antirealism Debate Introduction As the twenty-first century begins, the debates between realists and antirealists show few signs of abating. At the heart of these epistemological and metaphysical debates are questions such as, What makes a sentence true? How does language hook onto the world? And “Is reality intrinsically determinate, or is its determinacy a result of our making?”1 Some attribute the tenacity of these debates to philosophers’ determination to resolve frustrating and obstinate problems. Others lambaste participants in these debates as foolhardy in that, after a century of tumultuous social, economic, and technological change, many philosophers still mistake chasing their own tails for philosophical progress. Though the final half of this book is chiefly concerned with highlighting the differences between Dewey’s pragmatism and the neopragmatisms of Rorty and Putnam, on this basic point they would all agree: philosophy has largely failed to become relevant to life because it still insists upon the centrality of the problem of “realism,” rather than seeing how that problem is fueled largely by its own presuppositions. Of course it’s easy to be a critic; it is harder to actually abandon old debates (and their terminologies) and create solutions that genuinely supersede philosophical paradigms. The final two chapters of this book intend to show that Rorty’s and Putnam’s neopragmatist suggestions for going beyond realism and antirealism retain some of the very presuppositions that generate the dualism in the first place. This not only blocks their movement beyond the dilemma, it is also the main reason their derivations from classical pragmatism are, at present, unacceptably heterodoxical. This chapter shall advance the foregoing claims by (1) stating what is commonly meant by “realism” and “antirealism” and placing Rorty and Beyond Realism and AntiRealism 156 Putnam’s debate within that arena; (2) examining the positions Rorty and Putnam have recently taken vis à vis realism; and (3) examining several of the attacks they have made against one another for “bad faith” relapses to metaphysical realism (MR) and what each takes to be the best trajectory for “postanalytic” philosophy. All these elements provide the last pieces needed for the concluding argument (in Chapter 6) showing why Dewey’s pragmatism—replete with features Rorty and Putnam have either ignored or dismissed—is able to address and move beyond the realism/antirealism debate.2 Terminology: “Realism” and Its Contraries Few philosophical terms are more difficult to pin down than “realism.” Shades of meaning shift with the philosophical context. Since there is neither space nor reason to embark upon a complete lexicography of “realism,” I will instead review the ways Rorty and Putnam use the term (and its opposites) as they characterize themselves, each other, and their various interlocutors. I will not consider “realism” beyond its uses in metaphysics and epistemology (e.g., in morals, aesthetics, jurisprudence, etc.). Rorty and Putnam agree on the definition of “realism” in its most conservative form, and both reject it. Putnam’s Reason, Truth, and History provides as suitable a label as any: MR. To understand what MR is, we might first note that it is based upon (and updates) an older view, “representative realism.” Representative realism is the view that (1) there is a world whose existence and nature is independent of us and our perceptual experience of it, (2) perceiving an object located in that external world necessarily involves causally interacting with that object, and (3) the information acquired on perceiving an object is indirect; it is information most immediately about the perceptual experience caused in us by the object.3 MR can be understood as “globalizing” representative realism in the sense that it extends a general approach to perception to epistemological and metaphysical scopes. Taking a cue from twentieth-century analytic philosophy’s recommendation of the “linguistic turn,” MR substitutes “language” for “mind” and semantic theories for perception theories. Without abandoning the earlier realism’s appearance/reality and human/world dualisms, MR tries to address the subject/object chasm with theories about semantics and reference that can explain how language hooks up with the world. Putnam writes, Neopragmatism’s Realism-Antirealism Debate 157 On this [metaphysical realist] perspective, the world consists of some fixed totality of mind-independent objects. There is exactly one true and complete description of “the way the world is.” Truth involves some sort of correspondence relation between words or thought-signs and external things and sets of things...