Search Results

This chapter focuses on reflective commonsensical reasoning and argues that reflective common sense leads the way toward a refined commonsense metaphysical realism, to be put in lieu of the naive version that is here referred to as simple realism. Austere realism is essentially dependent on the idea of truth is an indirect form of correspondence rather than being direct correspondence. This idea is further developed in this chapter, and is positioned within a more general approach to thought-world relations and language-world relations that is referred to here as contextual semantics. The discussion is initiated with methodological remarks regarding how to pursue a suitable refinement of simple realism. It is shown here that, in order to address the challenges presented in the previous chapter, it is necessary to apply commonsensical modes of reasoning.

This chapter criticizes the position taken by the authors of Chapter 7 along several fronts. A principal criticism is that the theory of contextual semantics requires that we are cognizant in some way of shifts in semantic context, which allows us to subtly interpret utterances as true or false depending on our evaluation of which is the appropriate context at the moment. But if so, then we should be sensitive to the possibility that some claims of the form that there are Fs are true even when the ultimate ‘real’ ontology would reject Fs as nonexistent. It is implausible that we are sensitive to such a possibility. The chapter ends with a reflection on the methodology of the realism debate.

This chapter continues with the synthesis stage in the dialectic of reflective common sense as started in the previous chapter. It sets forth the theses of austere realism in a way that draws directly upon what is said about truth in the previous chapter, and explains how austere realism can provide natural and reflectively plausible solutions to the problems that undermine simple realism. The specific version of austere realism promoted here incorporates the wider framework of contextual semantics—although the defining theses of austere realism do not presuppose this entire framework, and in principle these theses could be embraced even without embracing all of contextual semantics. The distinction between direct and indirect correspondence fits especially well within this wider semantic framework because the framework treats numerous terms and concepts as governed by implicit contextual parameters, making it natural to treat truth itself this way within the framework.

In this chapter the adoption of an eliminativist stance towards objects is shown not to generate the devastating implications that some take it to have. In particular, it is argued that one can still utter truths about, and in general talk of, physical objects, while eliminating them from the fundamental ontology in favour of structure. To do this the resources of recent metaphysics can be drawn upon, such as a form of contextual semantics, for example, or a recent version of truth-maker theory. Alternatively, one of various forms of ‘bundle’ ontology could be adopted, which shifts the ontological focus to relations and structure in general.