General subject matter of the seminar

In very general terms, the realism/antirealism debate concerns the status of the following thought:

(A) How things stand in the world is, in many respects, independent of us, and yet

(B) we can gain cognitive access to how things stand in the world; that is,

(B1) we can represent things in thought and language as being a certain way, which may or

may not coincide with how things are

and

(B2) some of these representations can achieve the status of knowledge—we can know that things are as we represent them as being.

The debate arises from a perceived tension between A and B—from arguments to the effect that representation or knowledge are only possible if the independence of the world is abandoned or qualified. Antirealists invoke these arguments to support positions on which reality is somehow dependent on us. Realists maintain that these arguments fail to undermine the independence of the world.

These debates have adopted a wide variety of shapes. The general goal of this seminar is to study specific manifestations of the issue.

The 2021-22 Edition. The Primacy of Practice

This year the seminar will be based on a book draft I’m working on, provisionally entitled the Primacy of Practice. We will discuss chapters of the draft as well as related readings by other authors.

SOME BACKGROUND READING

Blackburn, Simon. 1980. "Truth, Realism, and the Regulation of Theory". In Midwest Studies in Philosophy, Vol. V, Studies in Epistemology, edited by P. French, T. Uehling, Jr. and H. K. Wettstein. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Dennett, Daniel C. 1987. "True Believers". In The Intentional Stance. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.

Dreier, James. 2004. "Meta-Ethics and the Problem of Creeping Minimalism". Philosophical Perspectives 18:23-44.

Jackson, Frank. 1998. From Metaphysics to Ethics: A Defense of Conceptual Analysis. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Lewis, David. 2009. "Ramseyan humility". In Conceptual Analysis and Philosophical Naturalism, edited by D. Braddon-Mitchell and R. Nola. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.

Macarthur, David, and Huw Price. 2007. "Pragmatism, Quasi-realism, and the Global Challenge". In New Pragmatists, edited by C. Misak. Oxford: Clarendon.

Price, Huw. 2011. "Naturalism and the Fate of the M-Worlds". In Naturalism Without Mirrors. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Quine, Willard Van Orman. 1960. Word and Object. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, Chapter 2.

Philosophy Area A