[MD] Realism and anti-realism

[Matt Kundert]

Hey Steve,

Steve said:
Would you say that my response to Ham (below) was consistent with 
Rorty's view on the pragmatist's take on the issue?

Matt:
Yeah.  Rorty appreciated the use of "anti-anti-" as a rhetorical 
technique, once using "anti-anti-ethnocentrism" to describe his moral 
epistemology (which he coined because he was writing in response 
to Clifford Geertz, and Geertz hadd recently written an essay he was 
in agreement with called "Anti Anti-Relativism").

Rorty would've particularly liked this: "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."

If one defines "metaphysics" as the offering of practice-transcending 
descriptions (and one needn't do so: Pirsig, P.F. Strawson, and 
Robert Brandom are good examples of those who don't), then both 
Realists and Anti-Realists fall into the trap in different ways (and 
different, too, then say Plato).  Realists, broadly conceived, would be 
those who are searching for a mechanism by which we can tell when 
a human description of a state of affairs or thing is pinned down by a 
non-human object (e.g., "the world" or "reality").  This would include, 
then, scientistic philosophers like Quine who think that scientific 
descriptions are so pinned down, and thus "limn the true and ultimate 
structure of reality."  The Anti-Realist, broadly conceived, would be 
those who deny there is a non-human object, and thus none of our 
human descriptions are ever so impinged.  

The trouble with both camps are purely philosophical--the Realist 
saddles himself with a Practice-Transcending Object, and thus begins 
a search for a method by which he knows when the Object is 
impinging and when not.  This founders for the same reason we have 
trouble with people who tell us they hear the Voice of God.  The 
Anti-Realist, on the other hand, offers a Practice-Transcending 
Description about the existence of the Realist's proposed Object.  It's 
the _one_ Practice-Transcending Description, unlike the Realist who 
would like to offer many.  However, what's the grip on thinking this 
to be the case?  The grip for the Realist was the Object Impinging, 
but the Anti-Realist has denied its existence--so where's the grip for 
thinking no Objects Impinge?  The Anti-Realist, then, founders for 
the exact same reason the Realist does: they both generate an 
unanswerable epistemological infinite regress: "how do you know 
this description you just offered transcends practice?"

The Anti-Anti-Realist says they're both wrong.  Descriptions don't 
ground out into Objects, they ground out into Practices.  This stops 
the infinite regress and it allows objects to impinge.  The trick is that 
objects impinge on practices, and some of those practices are 
linguistic, which are where descriptions come from.  The infinite 
regress is avoided by saying that a good response to a description 
can be a practical response.  (A): "I can kick rocks."  (B): "How do 
you know?"  [(A) kicks a rock.]  

(A) kicking a rock isn't the rock, or any other kind of object, impinging 
on (A) or (B) to solidify (A)'s first claim.  It is the practice of accepting 
visual demonstration as a successful response to a certain kind of 
claim that shuts (B) up.  For if after (A)'s kick (B) replied, "How do 
you know you kicked the rock?" we can guess that (A) would be 
puzzled.  Likewise for allowing objects to impinge, the rock impinged 
on (A)'s kicking foot, not on the claim directly.  It is only the practice 
of accepting visual demonstration that translates the perceived 
events into relevant impingements on claims.  (If one wonders if I 
take "object" to only refer to "physical stuff," I do not, but the 
construction of moral objects takes more stage-setting than kicking 
a rock, though it functions in the same way.)

Matt