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10 Macroscopic Facts, Quantum Mechanics, and Metaphysical Realism There is a plausible way of understanding quantum mechanics according to which reality has quantum-mechanical structure whether or not quantum phenomena are conceptualizable. Further, reality’s having that structure determines or produces macroscopic facts. If so, then such macroscopic facts arise from or are determined by a reality that is independent of conceptualization. Thus, although macroscopic facts are conceptualizable, they do not owe their reality to being conceptualizable . In this understanding of quantum mechanics, then, macroscopic facts are real apart from any intrinsic relation to conceptualization, and so are metaphysically real. This has negative implications for Kant’s Copernican revolution, according to which studying the conditions of conceptualizability can function as a method for doing metaphysics. 1. macroscopic facts In this section we consider the nature of macroscopic facts themselves . I argue that they exist as part of the macroscopic scientific causal order, and so apart from any role they have in semantic theorizing (as truth conditions for statements). This still leaves it open that the scientific order of things itself exists only in relation to conceptualization. In subsequent sections I shall argue that this macroscopic order is due to the structure of reality apart from any relation to conceptualization. The contention that facts, if they are real at all, are real only in relation to semantic theorizing is held, for example, by Strawson, Davidson, and Putnam.1 Strawson and Davidson then reject facts at least partly on the basis that they have no such semantic function, while Putnam accepts facts, though their reality for him is still internal to conceptualiza1 . Peter Strawson, “Truth,” in Truth, ed. George Pitcher (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice -Hall, 1964); Donald Davidson, “True to the Facts,” in Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), 37–54; Hilary Putnam, Realism and Reason, vol. 3 of Philosophical Papers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). 185 tion.2 A full response to Putnam is the burden of subsequent sections. In this section we argue against Strawson and Davidson that facts are not “shadowy” entities or hypostatised “dummy” entities that are nothing beyond truth of statements. We shall carry out this argument by considering Davidson’s rejection of the existence of facts. Davidson contends that if the only understanding of facts is in the sentential context “_____ corresponds to the fact that _____,” then by substitution of co-referring singular terms and logically equivalent sentences , it follows that there is only one fact. For our purposes we can accept Davidson’s contention. Note, however, that the exact same point applies to the sentential context “_____ in the event that _____.” Hence, if this context were our only understanding of events, it would follow that there is only one event. Davidson avoids this conclusion because he thinks we have an understanding of events apart from this context, as, rather, individual relata of singular causation. What I wish to suggest is that we have an understanding of facts as well outside the sentential context, as individual relata of singular causation. Hence we likewise avoid the conclusion that there is only one fact. Davidson3 explicitly denies that a fact such as there being sufficient oxygen in a room is part of the cause of a match lighting. It is the striking of the match (that event) that is the cause of its lighting. Davidson thinks the striking is the same event as the striking in a room with oxygen , so “sufficient oxygen in the room” functions only as part of a fuller description of the striking event, which is the cause, not as a further component of the cause itself. Consider, however, a case of each of two people pushing on a stalled car to get it moving. The first person’s pushing seems to be the same event as the first person’s pushing near a second person who is pushing. Hence the second person’s pushing functions only as a fuller description of the event of the first person’s pushing and, by parity with Davidson’s argument, we ought to conclude that the second person’s pushing is no part of the cause of the car moving . This, of course, is absurd because the second person’s pushing is clearly involved in the action that gets the car moving. But, similarly, the room’s containing oxygen is involved in the action that leads to the match’s lighting. It is involved not merely in law-like explanation but...

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