Moral Realism,Social Construction,and Realism,Social Construction,and Communal Ontology

The paper examines two forms of naturalistic moral realism, “Microstructure realism” (MSR) and “Reason realism” (RR). The latter, as we defend it, locates the objectivity of moral facts in socially constructed reality, but the former, as exemplified by David Brink’s model of naturalistic moral realism, secures the objectivity of moral facts in their micro-structure and a nomic supervenience relationship. We find MSR’s parity argument for this account of moral facts implausible; it yields a relationship between moral facts and their natural-scientific constitution that has a queer, slapped-together quality. We argue that the relationship needs to be spelled out by a process of social construction, involving collective intentionality and constitutive rules. We explain how our constructivist model of RR differs from a form of it defended by Michael Smith (1994), which analyzes moral facts by reference not to construction but rather to a hypothetical situation of full rationality. We agree with Smith, as against Bernard Williams, that a rational agent may have reasons for acting that go beyond the agent’s “subjective motivational set,” but we locate such reasons by reference to the agent’s membership in an actual community, and we explore the prospects for moral objectivity given this constraint on moral reasons.     

Perception, Color, and Realism

One reason philosophers have addressed the metaphysics of color is its apparent relevance to the sciences concerned with color phenomena. In the light of such thinking, this paper examines a pairing of views that has received much attention: color physicalism and externalism about the content of perceptual experience. It is argued that the latter is a dubious conception of the workings of our perceptual systems. Together with flawed appeals to the empirical literature, it has led some philosophers to grant color physicalism a scientific legitimacy it does not merit. This discussion provides a useful entry into broader points pertaining to debates about color realism and the relationship between philosophical theories of color and the relevant empirical literatures. A sketch of a novel form of color realism is offered, as is an example that fills in some details of that sketch.     

Realism,Positivism and Reference

Summary  Depending on the realist or instrumentalist twist that is given to positivism, interesting arguments can be made for both causal and classical theories of reference with regard to the use of scientific terms in the language of theory. But my claim is that the rigid foundationalism that supports the theoretical terms via the correspondence rules of the Received View undercuts the notion that it is possible to argue coherently for a causal theory of reference as allied to a positivistic view.     

Color,Relativism, and Realism

It is plausible to think that some animals perceive the world as coloreddifferently from the way humans perceive it. I argue that the best way ofaccommodating this fact is to adopt perceiver-relativism, the view that colorpredicates express relations between objects and types of perceivers.Perceiver-relativism makes no claim as to the identity of color properties;it is compatible with both physicalism and dispositionalism. I arguehowever for a response-dependence version of it according to which an object counts as red (for a type of perceiver) iff it standardly looks red to normal perceivers (of that type). Finally, I develop a notion of minimal realism on which this account counts as realist despite its subjectivist elements, in that it is committed to the objectivityof truth.     

Realism,relativism, and constructivism

This paper gives a critical evaluation of the philosophical presuppositions and implications of two current schools in the sociology of knowledge: the Strong Programme of Bloor and Barnes; and the Constructivism of Latour and Knorr-Cetina. Bloor's arguments for his externalist symmetry thesis (i.e., scientific beliefs must always be explained by social factors) are found to be incoherent or inconclusive. At best, they suggest a Weak Programme of the sociology of science: when theoretical preferences in a scientific community, SC, are first internally explained by appealing to the evidence, e, and the standards or values, V, accepted in SC, then a sociologist may sometimes step in to explain why e and V were accepted in SC. Latour's story about the social construction of facts in scientific laboratories is found to be misleading or incredible. The idea that scientific reality is an artifact turns out to have some interesting affinities with classical pragmatism, instrumentalism, phenomenology, and internal realism. However, the constructivist account of theoretical entities in terms of negotiation and social consensus is less plausible than the alternative realist story which explains consensus by the preexistence of mind-independent real entities. The author concludes that critical scientific realism, developed with the concept of truthlikeness, is compatible with the thesis that scientific beliefs or knowledge claims may be relative to various types of cognitive and practical interests. However, the realist denies, with good reasons, the stronger type of relativism which takes reality and truth to be relative to persons, groups, or social interests.This paper was presented at the 8th Inter-Nordic Philosophical Symposium, Oslo, 18–20 May 1989. Some ideas from this paper were first expressed in a lecture in Professor Aant Elzinga's seminar in Gothenburg, 22 April 1988.     

Belief-Ful Realism and Scientific Realism

Despite tensions between Tillich's category of belief-ful realism and a view of science that embraces metaphysical and epistemological realism, a constructive relationship can be developed between the two. Both are based on common understandings about reality. Belief-ful or theonomous realism thus affirms scientific realism. On the other hand, scientific realism is open to the ecstatic, self-transcending elements of belief-ful realism. Finally, Tillich's formulation of the relationship between culture and religion can be reformulated specifically to include scientific and technological culture.     

Phenomenology,Realism and Logic

One never gets beyond time. Husserl, says only that there are many ways of living time. On the one hand, there is the passive way, in which one is inside time and submits to it—being in time [Innerzeitigkeit], On the other hand, one can take over this time and live it through for oneself. But in either case one is temporal and never gets beyond time.¹     

Realism,Mind and Evolution

Perceptual experience is perspectival, and human minds occupy a variety of “viewpoints.” These considerations provide grounds for both realist and anti‐realist philosophies. Each is represented in adjacent areas of thought, and often connects with familiar debates between “conservatives” and “liberals,” which in turn are commonly related to disputes about religious and naturalistic accounts of the world and of the place of human beings within it. These have been joined from an orthogonal direction by Thomas Nagel in his recent book Mind and Cosmos. This is considered and contrasted with the ideas of Thomas Aquinas before returning to the possibility of reconciling perspectivalism with an account of what it could mean to speak of the world as it is in itself.     

The Truth about Realism: Natural Realism,Many Worlds,and Global M-Realism

Philosophia - An attempt was made to show how we can plausibly commit to mathematical realism. For the purpose of illustration, a defence of natural realism for arithmetic was developed that draws...     

Realism,morality, and liberal democracy

Conclusions The picture of liberal democratic realism that we have presented can withstand a powerful set of criticisms that have emerged in the last two decades. We have argued that realism does not misconstrue the value of the state, it does not justify the ruthless suppression of every domestic threat that could face the state, it does not depend upon a conception of international politics that rules out moral constraints, and it does not misunderstand the relationship between self-interest and morality. The defense of liberal democratic reason of state depends upon the state protecting and securing the values and welfare of individuals and groups living within its domain. Realism cannot be justified if the state has lost its legitimacy.This version of realism, however, generates its own distinctive problems. The most significant of these is that it does not offer a clean, unambiguous solution to the problems raised by the survival of the liberal democratic regime. Unlike extreme realist or idealist conceptions of the role of morality in international relations, we have argued that for the liberal democratic state this problem cannot be settled without moral remainders. On this account, realism presents leaders with a moral dilemma that is theoretically unresolvable. But this is not a failure of realism. Indeed, it is an acknowledgement that the liberal democratic state can be seen as no more, and no less, than a necessary condition of value.     

Psychological Realism, Morality, and Chimpanzees

The parsimonious consideration of research into food sharing among chimpanzees suggests that the type of social regulation found among our closest genetic relatives can best be understood as a form of morality. Morality is here defined from a naturalistic perspective as a system in which self-aware individuals interact through socially prescribed, psychologically realistic rules of conduct which provide these individuals with an awareness of how one ought to behave. The empirical markers of morality within chimpanzee communities and the traditional moral traits to which they correspond are (1) self-awareness/agency; (2) calculated reciprocity/obligation; (3) moralistic aggression/blame; and (4) consolation/empathy.     

Spacetime,Ontology, and Structural Realism

This essay explores the possibility of constructing a structural realist interpretation of spacetime theories that can resolve the ontological debate between substantivalists and relationists. Drawing on various structuralist approaches in the philosophy of mathematics, as well as on the theoretical complexities of general relativity, our investigation will reveal that a structuralist approach can be beneficial to the spacetime theorist as a means of deflating some of the ontological disputes regarding similarly structured spacetimes.     

Realism,Utopianism, and Radical Values

One of the more debated topics in the recent realist literature concerns the compatibility of realism and utopianism. Perhaps the greatest challenge to utopian political thought comes from Bernard Williams' realism, which argues, among other things, that political values should be subject to what he calls the ‘realism constraint’, which rules out utopian arguments based on values which cannot be offered by the state as unrealistic and therefore inadmissible. This article challenges that conclusion in two ways. First, it argues that the rationale for accepting Williams' original argument for the ‘realism constraint’ fails. Secondly, it argues that there is at least one genuinely political value of liberty available which is both compatible with realism and something that cannot be offered by the state, namely that of the political anarchist. This opens the way for far more ambitious and utopian forms of realist political thought and implies that the arguments of what we call political anarchists must be met by (realist) political argumentation, not simply ruled out by methodological stipulation.