Hi Steve and DMB --
Steve said to Ham (full text):
[Anti-realism] isn't meant as a pejorative term for idealism so much
as a broader term for positions (including idealism) that deny the
existence of an objective reality. Pragmatists and MOQers don't
affirm the existence of objective reality. But the anti-realist's denials
sound like a _realistic_ denial to us. (Would anti-realists have us
think that it is objectively true that objectivity is an illusion?)
So pragmatists are neither realists in affirming the existence of
objective reality nor anti-realists in denying the existence of objective
reality. We are anti-anti-realists.
Behaving as though there is an objective reality has born much fruit for
scientists, and therefore it is good to believe that there is a world that
is not mind-dependent for certain purposes such as predicting and
controlling things, but we don't hold the existence of objective reality
as a metaphysical certainty that must be regarded as true for ALL
possible purposes. (That belief seems to have reached its limit even
for scientific purposes.) And we don't take objective reality as a
_basis_
for developing a system of thought or as an axiom to which all our ideas
must adhere.
Our descriptions of reality are always descriptions made for a purpose.
When the realist or anti-realist asks, do you affirm or deny the existence
of objective reality?, what is desired is not a description made in
relation
to particular purposes but a practice-transcending description. We have
no practice-transcending descriptions to offer. We aren't denying that
reality is objectively real. We just can't make any sense of the notion of
descriptions of reality that are objective in the sense of being true
without
regard to human practice when we take the meaning for words like "true"
and all others words as having meaning only in relation to practice.
Thanks for that explanation, Steve. With the exception of your first
paragraph, it's a clear presentation of an "anti-realist" position. I do
have some trouble making sense of the double-negative "anti-anti-realism" to
which you subscribe, however. For me it seems to be a way of avoiding the
metaphysical issue of whether objective reality exists or not. But that's
because I define "objective reality" as existence.
A couple of comments on the remaining paragraphs:
First, aren't you slighting objective reality by crediting only its
scientific benefits? Scientific pragmatism is not a true philosophy, but we
DO take objective reality as a basis for our systems of thoughts and
actions. Certainly we do things on purpose; in that sense we are all
pragmatists. If we couldn't exercise some measure of control in our world,
it would be impossible to plan or predict the actions required in any
endeavor. That would make knowledge (the "axioms we adhere to") useless for
human progress.
Secondly, when you say we "can't make any sense of the notion of
descriptions of reality that are objective in the sense of being true
without regard to human practice," aren't you comfirming the fact that
existence is relative? And if human understanding is based on our
experience of existence, the truths we derive from this experience must be
relative as well. (One of them is that we live in a relational world, which
neither proves nor disproves an ultimate, non-relational Reality.)
In the same vein, the concluding statements in David's Wiki quote on
Antirealism add nothing to what we already know without the "anti-realism"
label:
"According to intuitionists (anti-realists with respect to mathematical
objects),
the truth of a mathematical statement consists in our ability to prove it.
According to platonists (realists??), the truth of a statement consists in
its
correspondence to objective reality."
I submit that, whether you are an anti-realist or not, "mathematical
objects" are no more than "physical objects" expressed in a mathematical
context. It's unclear why the author characterized platonists as
"realists", inasmuch as Plato is regarded as the father of Idealism. In any
case, what appears at first reading to be a paradoxical statement is simply
common sense. Mathematics was developed to quantify objective reality. So
the "truth" of a numerical quantity is its correspondence to physical
objects, just as the "truth" of a mathematical equation relates to the
objective units that the equation represents. In other words, we learn
pragmatically, and Truth is what can be proven objectively. So what was the
author's point?
Thanks to you both for helping me understand the meaning of "anti-realism".
I hope it won't offend you to hear my opinion, that it is ingenuous to be
"anti-" anything unless you know what its reality is. And judging by the
posts on this topic, there is no more agreement on what Reality is today
than when I signed up for the MD nine years ago.
Essentially speaking,
Ham
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