Realism anthology
James Beebe
Does anyone know of a good collection of essays on
realism and antirealism that would be suitable for an
upper-level undergraduate course on realism and truth?
I've used amazon.com, the Philosopher's Index, library
catalogs, and the webpages of some academic publishers
and I've come up short. Any tips would be greatly
appreciated.
Thanks in advance,
James Beebe
=====
*************************************************
* James R. Beebe *
* 106 Coates Hall *
* Dept. of Philosophy and Religious Studies *
* Louisiana State University *
* Baton Rouge, LA 70803-3901 225-LSU-7023 *
*************************************************
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James Beebe
Yes, I am qualified. One researcher who specializes
in the topic of realism emailed me and said that he
has searched for the same kind of anthology. He is as
surprised as I am to find that there doesn't seem to
be such a thing. The topic of realism is a central
philosophical topic and one wonders why there doesn't
seem to be an appropriate anthology. I thought I
would see if any others have had any more luck than I
have.
I do not appreciate your arrogant, insulting comment.
James Beebe
--- Geoff Bowe <gb...@bilkent.edu.tr> wrote:
> Hi - i don't mean to sound negative, but I am
> amazed at how many people ask
> for simple things about teaching their courses on
> this list. I mean, are you
> qualified for the jobs you have or not?
>
> sorry,
> g
J L Speranza
:). God knows who contributed, even.
Good luck and keep us posted.
Personally, _I_'d work with one book by one author, viz. M. Dummett's Seas
of Language, or Devitt's book (now in paperback) if you're more of a
realist, or Blackburn's Essays in Quasi-Realism if you're neither here nor
there.
Realism & Representation: Essays on the Problem of Realism in Relation to
Science, Literature & Culture / edited by George Levine
ISBN: 0299136302
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
Publish Date: 05/01/1993
Science & Literature Series Hardcover 7
List Price: $24.95
The essays gathered here-except for the Introduction-were originally
written for the conference on Realism and Representation, which took place
from 10 to 12 November 1989 at Rutgers University. The volume is organized
to move from direct confrontation with epistemological issues (framed in
the discourse of science), to (in the middle sections) a series of attempts
to think about the relations of literature and science side by side, with
particular reference to questions of interpretation, epistemological
authority, realism, and representation.
>List members,
>Does anyone know of a good collection of essays on
>realism and antirealism that would be suitable for an
>upper-level undergraduate course on realism and truth?
>I've used amazon.com, the Philosopher's Index, library
>catalogs, and the webpages of some academic publishers
>and I've come up short. Any tips would be greatly
>appreciated.
>Thanks in advance,
>James Beebe
>* 106 Coates Hall *
>* Dept. of Philosophy and Religious Studies *
>* Louisiana State University *
>* Baton Rouge, LA 70803-3901 225-LSU-7023
==
J L Speranza, Esq
Country Town
St Michael's Hall Suite 5/8
Calle 58, No 611 Calle Arenales 2021
La Plata CP 1900 Recoleta CP 1124
Tel 541148241050 Tel 542214257817
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina
http://www.netverk.com.ar/~jls/
j...@netverk.com.ar
J L Speranza
Interpretation: perspectives on the philosophy of Donald Davidson_ might
do, since who can do realism, antirealism or quasi-realism without having
to go thru Davidson's _Synthese_ essay? Unfortunately, the Blackwell site
is so sophisticated that I can't seem to find the list of the contributors,
but I recall that Dummett did contribute.
Again, good luck and keep us posted.
>Does anyone know of a good collection of essays on
>realism and antirealism that would be suitable for an
>upper-level undergraduate course on realism and truth?
>I've used amazon.com, the Philosopher's Index, library
>catalogs, and the webpages of some academic publishers
>and I've come up short. Any tips would be greatly
>appreciated.
>Thanks in advance,
>James Beebe
>*************************************************
>* James R. Beebe *
>* 106 Coates Hall *
>* Dept. of Philosophy and Religious Studies *
>* Louisiana State University *
>* Baton Rouge, LA 70803-3901 225-LSU-7023 *
>*************************************************
==
J L Speranza, Esq
Country Town
St Michael's Hall Suite 5/8
Calle 58, No 611 Calle Arenales 2021
La Plata CP 1900 Recoleta CP 1124
Tel 541148241050 Tel 542214257817
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina
http://www.netverk.com.ar/~jls/
j...@netverk.com.ar
Messages to the list are archived at http://listserv.liv.ac.uk/archives/philos-l.html.
J L Speranza
recalled this anthology that we surveyed with the Analytic group.
Interestingly, while searching for "realism" with yahoo books, I came
across a book by Dummett called something like "Guide to Grammar and Style
for Undergraduates", 1996. Can _he_ teach style? :) (what we are coming to)=
:)
Brian McGuiness & G. Olivieri, eds. The Philosophy of Michael Dummett.
Kluwer Academic Publishers 1994,
Dordrecht/Boston/London. xi + 390 pp.
Dummett is well-known not only as the most significant late representative
of this century's golden era of Oxford philosophy, but before all as a
thinker who has brought extremely vigorous impulses to contemporary
philosophy of language, philosophy of logic and of mathematics, as well as
philosophy without attributes. The collection of papers on his
philosophical views constituting the volume under the present review is
based on a conference which took place in Sicilia in 1991. It contains not
only essays commenting and criticising Dummett's notions, but also
Dummett's responses; and thereby it lets various aspects of his philosophy
emerge in a truly illuminating way.
1. The social aspect of language, by Donald Davidson.
The essay concentrates on the problem of the relation between language and
idiolect: while Dummett takes the Wittgensteinian vein in claiming that an
idiolect is thinkable only on the background of a language, Davidson
counters by arguing that there is in fact nothing as a language (at least
nothing as what many philosophers and linguists understand under the term
language), that there are only idiolects. Davidson rejects the idea that
speaking be viewed as based on participating in shared practices, as
accepting an obligation to succumb to a unique norm. "What matters," he
claims (p.11), "the point of language or speech or whatever you want to
call it, is communicating, getting across to someone else what you have in
mind by means of words that they interpret (understand) as you want them
to." Therefore, Davidson concludes in effect, there is no really shared
language, but only plurality of idiolects. The way in which speaking is
conditioned by society (and Davidson does not deny that it is) thus should
not be seen in terms of a shared linguistic norm, but rather in terms of
the permanent desire, on part of the speakers, to be understood.
In his reply, Dummett stresses the important fact that his quarrel with
Davidson does not concern the Wittgensteinian question whether there could
be a language without a society, a private language - they both take
Wittgenstein's side in answering it negatively. Dummett expresses his
conviction that language could not serve as a vehicle of thought unless it
were first an instrument of communication; and he thinks Davidson is of the
same opinion. Dummett construes Davidson's picture of a society in which
everybody speaks his own idiolect in terms of the distinction between
active and passive knowledge of language; he sees it as a society in which
everybody has to have at least the passive knowledge of his
fellow-speaker's idiolects. However, he concludes, passive knowledge is
only a weaker version of the active one (there can be the passive knowledge
without the active one, but hardly vice versa), and so the Davidson's
community turns out to be simply community in which everybody speaks plenty
of languages - albeit passively. The second contribution is by Bob Hale and
it concentrates on Singular Terms. Frege's logic has come to divide the
grammatically homogenous class of noun phrases into two compartments, and
the logical treatment of each them is essentially different. The noun
phrases of the first kind, proper names and singular terms, are analyzed as
terms; those of the other kind, terms like everything or somebody, give way
to quantificational constructions (studied in detail especially by
Russell). If the view of semantics of language based on this distinction is
correct, then these two kinds of noun phrases are really different and
speakers should be seen as possessing some straightforward criteria to tell
them apart. In his book about Frege's philosophy Dummett has outlined such
criteria based on inferences in which noun phrases can figure; on which
Hale now elaborates. Dummett seems to be - on the whole - sympathetic with
the author's advancement.
2. Philosophical theorizing and particularism: Michael Dummett on
Wittgenstein's later philosophy of language
by D. F. Pears, Christ Church, Oxford.
The essay tries to advocate the programmatic unsystematicity of
Wittgenstein's later philosophy against Dummett's claim that philosophy of
language should be systematic and produce a comprehensive theory of
meaning. Pears construes Wittgenstein's later philosophy as based on the
conviction that positing fixed senses or meanings of expressions blocks the
right understanding of the nature of language, that it misleads to
pseudoexplanations assuming "that there are two levels of reality: on the
higher level senses exist independently of sentences and thoughts, and on
the lower level sentences and thoughts are linked to those senses" (p. 48).
To say that an expression has a certain sense seems to be claiming that we
have penetrated to the level of senses, discovered there something and
found out that this something happens to be associated with the
expressions. But this is what Wittgenstein considered as a fraud: the level
of senses has no life independent of the level of expression and is not
accessible save through the level of expressions. Pears further stresses
another idea which prevented Wittgenstein from attempting to construct a
comprehensive theory of meaning: the conviction that language continually
grows out of a network of pre-linguistic causal connections (such as that
between the feeling of pain and a shriek) and thus cannot be presented as a
purely intellectual achievement based on voluntary associations of
expressions with senses.
Dummett's reply is a defence of systematicity. He rejects the
Wittgensteinian disapproval of the level of senses by claiming that the
task of the theory of meaning is not "to explain why anything is so, or how
anything could be so" (which could lead to an exploitation of meanings
within a pseudoexplanation of the kind rejected by Wittgenstein), its task
is merely to display "what meaning is". (p.278). He sees Wittgenstein's
later work as impaired by the author's particularism, which, according to
Dummett, lead Wittgenstein to say 'sometimes' even in cases when it was his
business to say when; another aspect of Wittgenstein's later philosophy,
which is depreciated by Dummett, is that Wittgenstein - allegedly - chooses
the most obvious feature of our use of an expression in characterizing its
meaning.
3. Convention and Assertion, by E. Picardi.
The essay focuses on Dummett's proposal (from his paper What is a theory of
meaning II) that the theory of meaning should be decomposed into three
subtheories: a theory of truth, a theory of sense, and a theory of force.
Picardi discusses the concept of assertion in the light of this trichotomy
- she questions the possibility of developing a positive account of
assertoric force as a 'supplement' to a Fregean and Davidsonian
truth-conditional theory of meaning.
In his reply, Dummett defends his conception by elucidating the grounds
which have made him urge the theory of force: no theory of truth conditions
is, according to him, in itself capable of explaining the workings of
language - to say that asserting is saying what is true it is not enough.
We need an analysis of grounds which license the assertibility of
particular sentences on particular occasions. However, with respect to the
possibility of analyzing truth conditions and then adding an analysis of
force he essentially agrees with Picardi: "Perhaps a comprehensive theory
of meaning may be segmented into component theories of truth and force;" he
states (p. 287), "but whether or not this is a correct strategy, the
components are undetachable, and form an interlocking whole."
4. Meaning Theory and Anti-realism, by D Prawitz,
The essay aims directly into the hearth of Dummett's philosophical views.
The author discusses Dummett's argument against the reasonability of basing
the theory of meaning on truth understood in the classical, bivalent way;
an argument based on the insight that although we have to be said to know
meanings of undecidable sentences, we cannot be said to know their
classically conceived truth conditions. Prawitz challenges the details of
this argument; his considerations result into the proposal to consider a
statement true just in case it can be directly verified.
In his reply, Dummett's reply brings out the intricacy of Prawitz
proposal: it is hard to see if we can make sense of the 'can' in 'can be
directly verified' in such a way that the whole proposal would not boil
down to the fully-fledged realism.
5. Anti-realism and the Philosophy of Mathematics,
by G Olivieri
The essay characterizing the issue between realism and anti-realism as
follows (p.94): "For the realist, a statement S is true if and only if
there exists a state of affairs corresponding to the description given in
S, whereas, for the anti-realist, S is true if and only if we have an
effective criterion for showing that S holds." His diagnosis is that what
makes mathematics into something more than a game is its applicability, and
that applicability makes mathematics bound to be understood in the
realistic manner.
This is, of course, something that Dummett is not willing to accept -
his point is that mathematics can be seen as applicable without being
realistically seen as corresponding to an independent mathematical reality.
Constructive mathematics is not a mere game, although it cannot be
understood as treating of such a reality - what it brings out are proofs,
which are products of informal understanding. Dummett nevertheless admits
that constructive mathematics should pay much more attention to its
applications.
6. Dummett and Wittgenstein's Philosophy of Mathematics, by C Penco
The essay challenges Dummett's interpretation of Wittgenstein, especially
Dummett's conclusion that Wittgenstein should be taken as a mathematical
'anarchist'; rather than anarchy, Penco claims, Wittgenstein's philosophy
should be seen as bringing about 'heterarchy': "different language games,
systems of proof, are confronted without one being fundamental for all the
others, but being connected in a net (or in different possible nets) with
all the others." (p.135). However, this cannot be seen as demolishing
mathematical truth and mathematical necessity. "Rationality," Penco
maintains (133), "cannot be defined as performing some behaviour which
depends on some objective external reality; nor with performing some
behaviour which depends only on language; but with performing a behaviour
which builds up agreement with other beings, till a point at which they are
able to speak of right and wrong, of true and false."
Dummett admits that his views on Wittgenstein's philosophy of
mathematics have changed; but he stresses that also Wittgenstein's own
views can hardly be taken as wholly homogenous. He insists that
Wittgenstein's approach to mathematics should be viewed as bringing about
anarchy; and he rejects to accept the 'radical internalism', which he
ascribes to Wittgenstein and which he construes as claiming that "our
conception of reality is no more than projection of our linguistic
practice." (316) Dummett thinks that the notion of mathematical necessity
which we need has to be more firmly grounded.
7. Vestiges of Realism by M Sundholm.
The essay brings the confrontation of Dummett's work with the work of the
Swedish constructivist Per Martin-Löf. Sundholm claims that Dummett's
anti-realist philosophy, in contrast to that of Martin-Löf, is contaminate=
d
with what he calls vestiges of realism: he insists that Dummett's notion of
the proof-predicate, that of strict identity and that of state-of-affairs
are all essentially realistic; and that such is also his conviction that a
proof of a statement determinately either exists or does not exist.
Dummett does not deny vestiges of realism being present in his theory,
but he does not see this as a shortcoming. "I do not believe," he claims
(p.328), "that a constructive approach to propositions about
nonmathematical reality can dispense with the concept of truth; that is why
it must involve a vestige of realism." The reason why he does not approve
of an approach such as Martin-Löf's is that he see it as conflating the
concepts which must be kept properly apart: namely the concepts of
statement (being an object) and judgement (being an act).
8. The Philosophical Significance of Gödel's theorem, by C Wright.
In the essay some issues concentrates on Dummett's path-breaking paper
concerning Gödel's results. In the paper, Dummett concluded that what
Gödel's result in fact shows is not that we cannot capture real
mathematical truth, but rather that the mathematical truth-predicate is
irreducibly indefinitely extensible. In accordance with this conclusion,
Wright questions the claim, which he associates with the names of Lucas and
Penrose, namely that human mathematical thought cannot be captured
formally. Wright then challenges also Dummett's claim that the right way to
characterize the concept of mathematical truth is indefinitely extensible;
he maintains that what Dummett considers as indefinite extensibility of the
concept can be well encapsulated inside the concept itself.
Dummett essentially agrees with Wright's criticism of the Lucas/Penrose
conclusion, but he declines to accept that Wright has undermined any of his
basic contentions regarding the significance of Gödel's theorem, which he
summarizes as follows: "(1) the criterion for asserting something of all
objects falling under a concept is an essential feature of that concept,
but is not automatically given with the criterion for a given object's
falling under it, and (2) that, for the concept 'natural number', the
former criterion is indefinitely extensible." (338).
9. Dummett, Realism and Other Minds by Akel Bilgrami,
formerly of Balliol, Oxford.
The author criticizes Dummett's anti-realistic understanding of the
discourse about mental states and urges an approach which would be
realistic without being committed to postulating mental entities as
something "private" and ascertainable solely through the first person mode.
This stance, Bilgrami claims, should maintain that mental states despite
being ascertainable (only) via behaviour are nevertheless in a sense
independent of behaviour, so that behaviour is not their substance, but
rather only their manifestation. Dummett's reply is in this case not quite
conclusive - but he question's the idea that there might be a realism which
could escape the Wittgensteinian critique of the first person mode.
10. Truth, Time and Deity, by B Mcguiness
The essay discusses questions connected to possible roles God may be
assigned within our account of reality (e.g. which of the things, which we
are not capable of knowing, may be reasonably considered to be known by=
God).
11. J Schulte
Leaving the Past Where it Belongs'
The essay challenges Dummett's remarks that the past can be sometimes
reasonably considered as being brought about.
Surveying the whole volume, we have to conclude that the idea of
illuminating a philosopher's stance by letting him cope with appraisals and
criticisms of competent colleagues, which is now slowly becoming to be
quite widespread, is an extremely happy one. Of course, the success of such
an enterprise depends on the choice of the critics; for it makes no sense
to let someone's philosophy be commented either by people who are so alien
to his way of thinking that there is no common platform, or by his
disciples devoted to their Master to such an extent that they are not
willing to see any problems in his teachings. In the case of The Philosophy
of Michael Dummett the choice was quite lucky; and the result is a book
which should be missed by none who is interested in Dummett's philosophy or
in analytic philosophy in general.
(from http://dec59.ruk.cuni.cz/~peregrin/HTMLTxt/dummett.htm).
>Does anyone know of a good collection of essays on
>realism and antirealism that would be suitable for an
>upper-level undergraduate course on realism and truth?
>I've used amazon.com, the Philosopher's Index, library
>catalogs, and the webpages of some academic publishers
>and I've come up short. Any tips would be greatly
>appreciated.
>Thanks in advance,
>*************************************************
>* James R. Beebe *
>* 106 Coates Hall *
>* Dept. of Philosophy and Religious Studies *
>* Louisiana State University *
>* Baton Rouge, LA 70803-3901 225-LSU-7023 *
>*************************************************
==
J L Speranza, Esq
Country Town
St Michael's Hall Suite 5/8
Calle 58, No 611 Calle Arenales 2021
La Plata CP 1900 Recoleta CP 1124
Tel 541148241050 Tel 542214257817
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina
http://www.netverk.com.ar/~jls/
j...@netverk.com.ar
Messages to the list are archived at http://listserv.liv.ac.uk/archives/philos-l.html.
Robert Boyd Skipper
Realism and anti-realism in what area? Science, math, moral
reasoning, or do you need something that crosses all borders?
Skipper
>
> > List members,
> > Does anyone know of a good collection of essays on
> > realism and antirealism that would be suitable for
> an
> > upper-level undergraduate course on realism and
> truth?
> > I've used amazon.com, the Philosopher's Index,
> library
> > catalogs, and the webpages of some academic
> publishers
> > and I've come up short. Any tips would be greatly
> > appreciated.
> > Thanks in advance,
> > James Beebe
> >
> > =====
> > *************************************************
> > * James R. Beebe *
> > * 106 Coates Hall *
> > * Dept. of Philosophy and Religious Studies *
> > * Louisiana State University *
> > * Baton Rouge, LA 70803-3901 225-LSU-7023 *
> > *************************************************
> >
Robert Boyd Skipper, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Philosophy
St. Mary's University
One Camino Santa Maria
San Antonio, Texas 78228-8572
Peter Turland
From: "James Beebe" <beebe...@YAHOO.COM>
To: <PHIL...@liverpool.ac.uk>
Sent: 28 November 2001 22:49
Subject: Re: Realism anthology
> Geoff,
> Yes, I am qualified. One researcher who specializes
> in the topic of realism emailed me and said that he
> has searched for the same kind of anthology. He is as
> surprised as I am to find that there doesn't seem to
> be such a thing. The topic of realism is a central
> philosophical topic and one wonders why there doesn't
> seem to be an appropriate anthology. I thought I
> would see if any others have had any more luck than I
> have.
> I do not appreciate your arrogant, insulting comment.
>
> James Beebe
>
> --- Geoff Bowe <gb...@bilkent.edu.tr> wrote:
> > Hi - i don't mean to sound negative, but I am
> > amazed at how many people ask
> > for simple things about teaching their courses on
> > this list. I mean, are you
> > qualified for the jobs you have or not?
> >
> > sorry,
Hello,
Poking my head above the parapet, I would confess to having no
qualifications. Does that make me unreal? I would humbly suggest that if
academic philosophy does not address the internet, and how it threatens
tenure, dried dead tree encapsulations of thought and such like, it needs
its motives discussed. Is the purpose of philosophy tenure? Is the purpose
of philosophy a wage? Is the purpose of philosophy, a good standard of
living :-)
A career in philosophy, whoopee, who is kidding whoom?
Peter.
Stephen Voss
One person writes:
Poking my head above the parapet, I would confess to having no
qualifications. Does that make me unreal?
Well, the act of writing to this list displays a special kind of
reality: the willingness to risk serious injury from those whose weapons
are pointed just above the parapet. That courage matters more than the
injuries do. So I encourage James, Peter, and for that matter their
critics to keep writing.
Stephen