Abstract
Michael Devitt tells us that metaphysical realism has a kind of immunity from considerations concerning the nature of truth. Part of this immunity comes from Devitt’s insistence that realism is a metaphysical issue, not a semantic one. Most of Devitt’s critics have focused on this point, arguing that a proper understanding of the realism question necessarily involves semantic considerations (Appiah in Philos Stud 61(1):65–74, 1991; Miller in Synthese 136(2):191–217, 2003; Putnam in Comments on Michael Devitt’s ‘Hilary and Me’, in: Baghramian (ed) Reading Putnam. Taylor and Francis, Hoboken, 2012; Taylor in Models, truth, and realism. Oxford University Press, New York, 2006). But Devitt also argues at length that semantic considerations should not lead us to give up on realism regardless of whether we admit that the correct characterization of realism is metaphysical in character or not. Devitt’s view hinges on the viability of a strategy which he calls Putting Metaphysics First (Devitt in Putting metaphysics first. Oxford University Press, New York, 2010), which essentially involves giving “a certain temporal and explanatory priority to metaphysical concerns” (1998, p. 499). Fully explicated, Devitt’s strategy is seen to be based on an epistemological naturalism in the vein of Quine. The main idea is that if we assume a naturalism according to which the only way to know anything is empirically through experience, then we will be able to establish a version of metaphysical realism early on in our investigations. According to Devitt, the empirical evidence for this realism is much stronger than the empirical evidence for the numerous semantical and epistemological views which are put forward in favor of antirealism. So, Devitt argues, we should hold on to the realism that we establish first and build our other theories on top of it. After detailing Devitt’s approach, I offer two objections. The first problem for Devitt is that in the process of putting metaphysics first, he puts epistemological naturalism first. This fact is in tension with his claim that epistemology is a weak starting place and a poor basis of theoretical revision. The second problem is that while our experiences of objects give us evidence that those objects exist, our experiences do not tell us that the objects exist mind-independently in all the ways required for metaphysical realism, or so I contend. Thus, I argue, even if we do put naturalized metaphysics first as Devitt recommends, realism is not secured as a starting point.
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Notes
Great thanks to an anonymous referee for Erkenntnis for helping me to disentangle what is Moorean about Devitt’s approach from other aspects of Moore’s commitment to common sense which Devitt would not countenance.
Thanks to two anonymous referees for Erkenntnis and James Beebe for pushing me to consider this way of understanding Devitt.
Many thanks to an anonymous referee for Erkenntnis for making clear to me the significance of the threats to Realism from the a priori tradition in the context of Devitt’s view that we should put naturalized metaphysics first.
Thanks to an anonymous referee for Erkenntnis for helping me to appreciate that Devitt had moved on from his earlier view that skepticism was not only “unanswerable,” but also “uninteresting” (Devitt 1997, pp. 64, 75).
An interesting question, suggested to me by an anonymous referee for Erkenntnis, is whether Devitt ought to be seen as a direct realist in the philosophy of perception. The direct realist would take our experiences to count as immediate evidence for the existence of objects, whereas the indirect realist would infer the existence of objects from the experience of some kind of perceptual intermediary, such as a sense-datum. The debate between direct and indirect realism is of great importance to the realism debate generally, but a thorough analysis of the issue is beyond the scope of this paper. Since I grant Devitt the existence dimension of his Realism, my arguments are consistent with either view. Many thanks to the anonymous referee for the suggestion as well as for helpful guidance and commentary on the topic.
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank James Beebe, David Braun, Shyam Nair, David Sackris, Scott Scheall, Neil Williams, an anonymous referee for the Southwestern Philosophical Review, and especially two anonymous referees for Erkenntnis for helpful comments on this paper.
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Gifford, M. Reconsidering Devitt on Realism and Truth. Erkenn 86, 1367–1380 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-019-00158-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-019-00158-7