Semantic Challenges to Realism: Dummett and Putnam by Mark Quentin Gardiner (review)

146 LETTERS IN CANADA 2000 philosophy from its wayward wanderings and redirecting it back to developing further the tradition of Plato and Aristotle is compelled to operate on a broad front. Meynell writes clearly. But having to operate on such a broad front precludes him from offering sustained in-depth explorations of the thought of the various authors he treats. Now unless one is a poseur, one is bound to be nonplussed if one is shown that one holds a self-destructive statement to be true. So, given the recurring theme of selfdestructive statements in Meynell=s book, perhaps its value for the reader lies not in finding any sustained in-depth discussions of the thought of the various authors Meynell mentions, but in having been alerted to the fact that adopting one or other of the currently influential philosophical trends may lead one to hold one or more self-destructive statements to be true. Stated more positively, the value of Meynell=s book for the reader lies in having been alerted to the possibility of adopting a philosophical path that is more in accord with oneself as a conscious subject endowed with an exigence to be attentive, intelligent, reasonable, and responsible. (DANIEL MONSOUR) Mark Quentin Gardiner. Semantic Challenges to Realism: Dummett and Putnam University of Toronto Press. x, 268. $85.00 If God is dead, it was not the death of disproof. Nor is it liable to be, if Metaphysical Realism dies. Mark Quentin Gardiner convincingly argues that the best attempts to date to refute Metaphysical Realism B hereafter >realism= B have failed to show in a non-question-begging way that there are unresolvable difficulties for realism from which anti-realism is immune. But while not yet dead, realism has recently shown signs of ill health, and its steady deterioration may continue, notwithstanding Gardiner=s efforts B perhaps perversely even because of them, for in replying to the anti-realists= arguments he is thorough to a fault! Yet, whatever the final disposition of realism, the philosophical interest in Gardiner=s book lies in its thoroughness . The realist holds that the world consists of objects, events, and states of affairs whose existence is mind-independent. Our thoughts about the world, as expressed in our utterances and systematized in our theories, are true just when an appropriate relation of representational correspondence obtains between them and constituents of the world. It is not a foregone conclusion that our cognitive capacities are up to the task of truly and adequately representing the world. For the realist, the truth-conditions of our representations of the world are, as Gardiner puts it, >recognition transcendent=: their obtaining or failing to obtain is independent of our capacity to determine whether or not they do. Gardiner focuses on two prominent anti-realists= arguments against the recognition-transcendence of HUMANITIES 147 truth. Michael Dummett argues that languages are learnable, and that learning a language involves coming to know the applicability-conditions of its assertoric sentences and predicates. Knowing such conditions involves a capacity to discriminate situations in which they are satisfied or exemplified from situations in which they are not. But take the concept of recognitiontranscendent truth itself. In order for that concept to be central to our understanding of the world in the way that realists suppose, it must be possible to have acquired it. And in order to have acquired it we must have acquired a manifestable capacity to distinguish situations in which it is exemplified from situations in which it is not. But then, given what recognition-transcendent truth is supposed to be, there simply is not any means by which we could have acquired the concept. Gardiner responds that Dummett is committed to our being able to acquire the concept of >recognizable= truth conditions B that is, truth conditions such that we have the manifestable capacity to determine whether or not they have been met by some state of affairs. So, acquiring this concept must require the ability to distinguish recognizable from unrecognizable states of affairs. But given the notion of an unrecognizable state of affairs, plus standard logic, the notion of recognition-transcendent truthconditions may readily be induced. While prepared to challenge standard...