ALSTON, W. - A Sensible Metaphysical Realism (2001)

A Sensible Metaphysical Realism


The Aquinas Lecture, 2001

A Sensible Metaphysical Realism Under the auspices of the Wisconsin-Alpha Chapter of Phi Sigma Tau

by

William P. Alston

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Alston, William P. A sensible metaphysical realism / by William P. Alston. p. cm. — (The Aquinas lecture ; 2001) “Under the auspices of the Wisconsin-Alpha Chapter of Phi Sigma Tau.” Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0-87462-168-2 (alk. paper) 1. Metaphysics. 2. Realism. I. Title. II. Series. BD111 .A47 2001 110—dc21 00-012240

All rights reserved.

© 2001 Marquette University Press Printed in the United States of America

Prefatory

The Wisconsin-Alpha Chapter of Phi Sigma Tau, the International Honor Society for Philosophy at Marquette University, each year invites a scholar to deliver a lecture in honor of St. Thomas Aquinas. The 2001 Aquinas Lecture, A Sensible Metaphysical Realism, was delivered on Sunday, February 18, 2001, by William P. Alston, Professor Emeritus of Syracuse University. William P. Alston received his Ph. D. in philosophy from the University of Chicago in 1951. He has been Professor of Philosophy at Syracuse University since 1980 and Professor Emeritus since 1992. He was Professor of Philosophy at the University of Illinous at Urbana-Champaign from 1976 to 1980 and served as chair from 1977 to 1979. He was previously Professor of Philosophy at Rutgers University from 1971 to 1976, serving as acting chair from 1972 to 1973. He taught at the University of Michigan from 1949 to 1971 where he become Professor of Philosophy in 1961. Professor Alston is a past President of the Western Division of the American Philosophical Association, of the Society for Philosophy and Psychology, and of the Society of Christian Philosophers. He was a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University in 1965-66 and Distinguished Visiting Professor of Philosophy at the Center for Advanced Study in Theoretical Psychology at the University of Alberta in 1975. He is a Fellow of the American Academy

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of Arts and Sciences, and he received the Syracuse University’s Chancellor’s Citation for Exceptional Academic Achievement. He conducted NEH summer seminars in 1978 and 1979, and directed an NEH Institute on Philosophy of Religion in 1986. He is founding editor of the journal, Faith and PhiOctober, 1987 he led a delegation of eight losophy . In October, American American philosopher philosopherss in epistemology epistemology and philosophilosophy of mind for a week of discussions with Soviet philosophers in Moscow and Leningrad. In September, 1991 he participated in a conference at Castel Gandolfo, Italy on theology and physical cosmology sponsored s ponsored by the Vatican Vatican Observatory Observator y. His publications include several anthologies, Phi (Prentice-Hall, 1964), more than losophy of Language (Prentice-Hall, one hundred journal articles, many of which have been reprinted in anthologies, eighteen articles in the Encyclopedia of Philosophy , edited by Paul Edwards (MacMillan, (MacMillan, 1967), and numerous reviews. Two collections of his essays have been published by Cornell University Press Press (1989): Epistemic Justi fication: Essays in Epistemology and Divine Nature and Human Language: Essays in Philosophical Philoso phical Theology. His most recent books are Perceiving God: A Study in the Epistemology of Religious Experience, (Cornell, 1991), The Reliability of Sense Perception (Cornell, 1993), A Real Re alis istt Conc Co ncep epti tion on of Tr ut uthh (Cornell, 1995), and Illocutionary Acts and Sentence Meaning (Cornell, 2000).

To Professor Alston’s distinguished list of publications, Phi Sigma Tau Tau is pleased plea sed to add: ad d: A Sensible

Metaphysical Realism.

A Sensible Sens ible Metaphysical Realism Rea lism

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A Sensible Metaphysical Realism 1

Before expounding and defending my “sensible” realism, and explaining what is sensible about it, I had better indicate which of the many varieties of (metaphysical) realism realis m that are found in the luxuriant jungle so called I will be seeking to develop a sensible version thereof. Historically the most promiprominent “realisms” “realisms” are the medieval commitment commi tment to the objective reality of universals, and the opposition to one or another metaphysical idealism, idealis m, the view that everything is mental, or an aspect of, or dependent on, the mental. Moreover, Moreover, there is a plethora plet hora of “departmental realisms”, in addition to the medieval realism about universals, each of which claims ob jective reality for the apparent objects of some field of inquiry inqui ry.. Thus we have realism about moral stans tandards, values, theoretical entities in science, “abstract” objects like propositions, meanings, and so on. These departmental realisms are in opposition

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both to flat denials that such entities exist and to “reductions” of entities of the type in question to something allegedly more fundamental or less problematic. Thus a realism about physical objects is opposed to a phenomenalist reduction of physical objects to patterns of sensory experience. Realism about propositions is opposed to their reduction to classes of synonymous sentences. Realism about values is opposed to the denial that values have any sort of objective status. And so on.1 The realism with which I shall be concerned differs from all of the above. It differs from departmental realisms in being more global in character. And it differs differs from the anti-idealist ant i-idealist kind ki nd of realism in the character of its principal opposition. Indeed, Indeed, an initial characterization of realism is most effectively couched in terms of what w hat it opposes. oppos es. To To quote a phrase of o f J. L. Austin’ Austin’s from the old male chauvinist days, it is antirealism that “wears the trousers”. The species of metaphysical metaphysical realism I will treat here is a denial of the view that whatever there is, is constituted, at least in part, by our cognitive relations thereto, by the ways we conceptualize or construe it, by the language we use to talk about it or the theoretical scheme we use to think of it. This kind of antirealism stems s tems from Kant’s Kant’s “Copernican revolution”, according to which anything of which we can have knowledge owes at least its basic structure to the categories in terms of which we think it, rather than to the way it is “in itself”. In a more contemporary vein, vei n, we may think of my metaphysical realism as defined by the denial of the semi-Kantian position held by Hilary Putnam. “…what objects does


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the world consist of? is a question that it only makes sense to ask within a theory or description…there is

more than one ‘true’ theory or description of the world.”2 In other words, whatever there is, exists and is what it is only within a certain way of “describing” or “conceptualizing” what there is. This is a relativized Kantianism in that it recognizes a number of equally viable ways of describing or conceptualizing or theoretically organizing reality, ways that would be incompatible if each of them were put forward as an account of reality as it is in itself. Since Putnam avoids recognizing Kantian noumena, things as they are in themselves, he can assert the conceptual relativity of what there is in a more unqualified way than Kant, not restricting it to what we can know. As the above quote from Putnam indicates, he uses a variety of terms to specify that by which he takes reality to be (partly) constituted on the cognition side—‘theory’, ‘description’, and (elsewhere) ‘conceptual scheme’ and ‘language’. My initial characterization of the contrast was similarly varied. I would like to boil down the profusion so as to make this antirealism, and by derivation my realism, more specific. Some of the reduction is simple. Since the language used to describe things and to report facts gets that function by virtue of expressing concepts, we may drop the linguistic formulation without loss.3 That leaves us with ‘conceptualization’ and ‘theory’. Since modes of conceptualization are generally embodied in extensive schemes of concepts, I will concentrate on the term ‘conceptual scheme’. That leaves us with the question of how different

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modes of theorizing, of theoretically organizing a domain, are related to different ways of conceptualizing. Many differences in theorizing go in tandem with differences in conceptual scheme. Major revolutions in scientific theory, like relativity physics, involve fundamental reconceptualizations. But it is not necessarily so. Less radical theoretical innovations can involve reorganizing familiar concepts. Hence I will need both conceptual scheme and theoretical system as factors on the cognition side of the cognition-reality relationship, choices between which can be partly constitutive of the reality side, according to antirealism. Since my metaphysical realism is a denial of a universal affirmative proposition ( everything depends, at least in part, on our conceptual-theoretical choices),4 it is not committed to the contrary of that proposition, viz., that nothing depends on such choices. At a minimum, it need only deny that all of reality is like that. Of course, the most minimum denial, that there is something that is not so dependent, is hardly significant enough to be worth the trouble. I will be thinking of metaphysical realism as holding that large stretches of reality do not depend on our conceptual and theoretical choices for existing and being what they are . Much of this essay will be

devoted to exploring the question of just what stretches do and do not exhibit this independence. The main respect in which my realism is distinctive in being sensible is that it recognizes that some stretches of reality do conform to the account antirealism gives of the whole of reality.


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Before turning to my main task—developing a characterization, in some detail, of a defensibly modest form of metaphysical realism—I must respond to a doubt about the genuineness of the contrast between my view and its antirealist opponent. This has to do with the notion of dependence involved. More than one reputable philosopher has opined that the claim that reality depends on our cognition is either absurd or unintelligible—not an attractive pair of prospects.5 If the dependence is construed as causal, the view is palpably absurd, as practically everyone, realist and antirealist alike, agrees. It flies in the face of overwhelming empirical evidence to suppose that the heavens and the earth only came into existence when human conceptualization6 came on the scene and came into a position to exercise causal influence. But if the dependence is not causal, what is it? No intelligible answer that is not equally absurd can be found, it is claimed, at least not without transforming the view into something that is far from what its proponents have intended. It may be thought that, if this is so, realism stands vindicated, since its chief opponent has turned out to be only a paper tiger. But if so, it would be a Pyrrhic victory. Since I have formulated realism in terms of independence of concepts and theories, it would seem that if dependence on those factors doesn’t make sense, independence goes down the tube with it. Fortunately for my position, we need not accept the above dilemma. I agree with everyone else in rejecting as absurd the view that the physical uni-

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verse causally depends on human conceptualization for existing and being what it is. But I do not accept that there is no form of dependence that renders the view intelligible without being absurd. No doubt, the kind of dependence required to make sense of the view is not obvious on the face of it, and it is incumbent on anyone who speaks in these terms to provide an explication of a form of dependence that is appropriate for this purpose. I will proceed to do so by first looking at a few plausible candidates for entities or facts that depend for their existence and/or for being what they are on a conceptual scheme or theoretical choice for which there are equally viable alternatives. I will then seek to extract from the examples a general characterization of the kind of dependence involved. We can think of the sort of antirealism in question as an unqualified generalization of this dependence relation. Later I will be arguing that the attempt at such an unqualified generalization results in fatal internal defects of the position, rendering it self-defeating. But this kind of internal incoherence must be distinguished from unintelligibility. As in other such cases, we have to understand the position before we are in a position to demonstrate the internal incoherence. Here are what I take to be some plausible candidates. 1. There are 50 peaks over 14,000 feet in Colorado. 2. Communism is a religion. Both of these cases depend for their acceptability on a certain conceptual choice for which there are, arguably, equally valid alternatives. When counting


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“peaks” in a mountain range we work with certain criteria for how much lower altitude there must be between higher elevations to count them as different peaks rather than parts of the same peak. And, obviously, these criteria could be set in different ways. No doubt, some are more natural than others, but it seems clear that there will be a variety of more or less equally natural and intuitive criteria that will yield somewhat different results as to the number of peaks in the state. As for 2., whether this is so depends on what we choose to regard as necessary for a certain social phenomenon’s being a religion. ‘Religion’ is typical of many terms for social entities and human products, such as ‘art’, ‘poem’, ‘democracy’, and ‘Christian’, in exhibiting what we might call “combination of conditions” indeterminacy.7 It is easy to list salient features of paradigm cases of religions, features that would readily spring to mind if one were asked for examples. These include: 1. Beliefs in supernatural beings. 2. A distinction between sacred and profane ob jects. 3. Ritual acts focused around sacred objects. 4. Characteristically religious feelings (awe, sense of mystery, adoration, etc.) 5. Prayer and other forms of communication with supernatural beings. 6. A world view. 7. An organization of one’s life based on the world view. 8. A social group bound together by the above.

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The list could be extended. When we consider a social organization that exhibits some of these features and not others, it might or might not count as a religion, depending on which of the items on the central list are considered most important or most crucial. Depending on such conceptual preferences, Communism or Confucianism or Humanism might or might not count as a religion. A natural reaction to these first cases is to say that they are not “genuine” objective matters of fact that partly are what they are by virtue of conceptual or theoretical choices, but rather more or less indeterminate concepts , the application of which to genuinely objective realities is correspondingly indeterminate and up for grabs. There is no “fact of the matter” that there is some exact number of peaks in Colorado, or that Communism is (not) a religion, that is partly constituted by our conceptual preferences. It is rather that the terms or concepts ‘peak’ and ‘religion’ are not fully determinate. Communism just is what it is. The only cognition-relative aspect of the situation concerns our conceptual applications or abstentions therefrom. Naturally that is dependent on our conceptual-theoretical choices, where the concept in question is not so fully formed as to have a uniquely correct application in every case. In short, the only thing concept-relative in these cases is concepts. There is nothing here that requires any qualification to a full-blown realism. 8 I am not disposed to quarrel with this diagnosis. Instead I pass on to some other sorts of examples, the antirealist qualifications of which cannot be so easily dismissed.


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3. All necessary statements express the same proposition. 4. Every human being has an infinite number of beliefs. 5. The cause of the fire was an overturned candle. 3. and 4. reflect different possible ways of conceptualizing and theoretically organizing a subject matter, in this case, propositional attitudes , treating speech acts as attitudes for this purpose. 3. holds on a currently prominent way of construing propositions as sets of possible worlds. On that reading statements that are true in the same set of possible worlds express the same proposition. This is counter-intuitive. Most of us balk at the idea that when I utter ‘2+2 = 4’ and ‘The angles of a Euclidean triangle add up to 180 degrees,’ I am “saying the same thing”, i.e., expressing the same proposition. Nevertheless, this way of identifying propositions is useful for certain logical purposes, including formal semantics. On a more natural way of viewing propositions, propositions with different conceptual content, like the two just cited, will count as different propositions. So in this case what a proposition is, as well as what counts as the same proposition, or the same propositional content of two psychological states or speech acts, depends on our choices as to how to structure our account of this subject matter. 4. represents a simpler example of the same thing. It reflects a construal of beliefs according to which when one believes that p, one thereby believes everything entailed by p, and, given the principle of disjunction according to which p entails p or q, for

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any q , this implies that for any belief one has, one has thereby an infinite set of other beliefs. 4. assumes, of course, that it is not a necessary condition for having a belief that one be capable of consciously entertaining it, or that one is disposed to act as if its content were true. These assumptions have reasonable and viable contraries. Hence if 4. is the case, it is the case only relative to conceptual-theoretical choices that have viable alternatives. 5. is a somewhat different kind of example. Here the variability stems not from ways of theoretically organizing a subject-matter, but from a context defined by what is taken for granted as a background against which to pick out one of the causally relevant factors for special attention. Clearly an overturned candle is not sufficient by itself for a fire in a house. There must be inflammable material sufficiently close by, enough oxygen in the atmosphere, etc. But all that was taken for granted in the context of utterance, and attention was focused on what in addition to that makes the difference between fire and no fire. Harkening back to the dismissal of 1. and 2. as genuine antirealist cases, I can easily imagine someone rejecting 5. as aid and comfort for the antirealist on somewhat similar grounds. Here it is not an indeterminacy of concept that is involved, but rather relativity to interest or to what has already been assumed. And it might well be argued that this is a feature of the discourse, not of what the discourse is about. The fire is just what it is, and the causal contributors to it are just what they are, whatever particular contributor we pick out as of special interest.


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But 3. and 4. are not so easily dismissed. Propositions and even beliefs are creatures of theory in a way that fires (and mountain ranges and religions) are not. We have a choice as to how we construe and individuate propositions and beliefs, and it seems that different ways of doing this have an approximately equal claim to be adequate ways of dealing with the subject matter. Of course, this last judgment may be contested. It may be urged that there is some unique objective truth about these matters, just as there is about whether there was a fire in the house, how it started, and how it spread. But, at least it is not so obvious that this is the case. And so I feel entitled to take 3. and 4. as prima facie plausible examples of how states of affairs can be dependent, at least in part, on conceptual-theoretical choices that have viable alternatives. Now for extracting a reading of ‘ dependence on conceptual and theoretical choices’ from examples 3. and 4. The basic idea has been hinted at already. The nature and individuation of propositions and beliefs do not confront us as something ready made, whatever our concepts and theories. On the contrary, these matters go one way rather than another depending on those choices. Hence if we think of propositions and beliefs as part of reality, part of what is involved in “the way things go in the world” (as we surely do, especially with beliefs, which we recognize as playing a large role in the motivation and guidance of behavior), then we must take them as examples of how the existence and nature of things in the world, including their individuation, is partly constituted by one or another way of conceptualiz-

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ing them and theorizing about them. This is not the causal dependence that we have seen to be absurd. Our theorizing clearly does not exercise that kind of influence. It is what we might call constitutive dependence . Propositions are what they are in these respects by virtue of our shaping our thought of them in one or another way. But we are still not at the end of the needed explication. Not enough has been said to make clear what this “constitution” amounts to, and how it is distinct from causal production. We can best approach this task by once more recurring to the alternative of handling the variation in essence and individuation of, e.g., propositions as having to do solely with the conceptual-theoretical side of the transaction, leaving the reality side untouched. Go back to the hard nosed realist who holds that any differences as to what propositions are and how they are individuated are only differences as to how we think and what we believe about them, not differences in propositions as denizens of reality. With respect to the latter, propositions are what they are, in some one unique self-consistent way, however different theorists might view them. If those views are incompatible, then all but one is mistaken, even if we are unable to say which is the one that alone has it straight, if, indeed, any of them do. I find this reaction to be the most powerful challenge to the idea that there is an unmistakably intelligible account of how, e.g., propositions can exhibit different natures by virtue of being embedded in different conceptual-theoretical structures and do so “themselves” as objects of thought and discourse.


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To meet it let’s move to a different way of thinking of the dependence involved. Let’s say that propositions enjoy a particular nature not absolutely , but relative to a certain theoretical-conceptual scheme. For any sort of reality that is subject to this constitutive dependence on our thought, there is no such thing as what it is absolutely, tout court , but only what it is relative to a certain scheme of thought. With respect to propositions, an absolutist statement is incomplete. To say ‘Propositions are sets of possible worlds’ and leave it at that is to make an incomplete statement. To render it capable of truth or falsity we must add an index , relativizing it to a conceptual scheme. The statement must be something like ‘In C, propositions are sets of possible worlds’, where ‘C’ denotes a theoretical-conceptual scheme. And don’t take ‘in’ too literally. It is not that propositions are themselves constituents of a conceptual scheme that represents them as sets of possible worlds. A more literal formulation would be ‘relative to’, rather than ‘in’. One may still feel the need for more explanation of the kind of relativity envisaged here. Before doing what I can to meet this need, I should point out a respect in which this is more difficult for me, as a realist, than it is for someone like Putnam or Goodman, who universally generalizes the relativity to conceptual schemes. It is more difficult for me because, recognizing as I do vast stretches of reality that are absolute, not relative to conceptual schemes, the problem of why I shouldn’t treat my alleged examples of relativity in the same way is a live one for me, as the previous discussion makes

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clear. Whereas those who take everything to be relative to alternative conceptual schemes have no contrasting, absolutist mode of reality that, so to say, threatens to swallow up all the putatively relative entities and banish all relativity to the thought side of the thought-reality relationship. In a bit I will argue that the attempt to universalize this relativity propels antirealists into fatal internal defects. But the fact remains that the job of explaining what such relativity amounts to is, in a way, easier for them. To continue with my burdensome job, I suggest that some familiar analogues may help us to grasp the idea. Consider the relativity of motion to framework. Is the train moving? Well, yes, it is moving relative to the station but not relative to another train moving at exactly the same speed on a parallel track. Can we say that the relativity attaches only to our ways of describing the situation, whereas absolutely the train either is moving or not? That is the position of one who takes space to be absolute. Either the train is changing its location in absolute space, or it is not. And as far as the train itself is concerned, in contrast to our ways of describing the proceedings, that is the end of the matter. But according to the now generally accepted relativity physics, there is no such absolute space and time. The only motion there is is motion relative to one or another framework taken as fixed. And there is a plurality, indeed an infinite plurality, of such possible frameworks, from which motion can be ascribed. We can think of propositions as relative, in something like the same way, to “conceptual frame-


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works”, to ways of construing the nature and individuation of propositions. Another interesting analogy is put forward in Sosa 1999. This involves indexical statements. Consider someone’s saying “Boston is nearby”, and consider the fact that makes this true. Obviously it is only relative to a certain spatial position that Boston is nearby rather than far away. If the speaker had been in Los Angeles rather than in a Boston suburb, it would not have been true that Boston is nearby and there would have been no such fact to make it true. We can think of this as a relativity of fact to a feature of discourse, in this case the spatial location of the speaker, somewhat as motion is relative to framework. This may help us to see how facts about propositions or beliefs can be relative to ways of conceptualizing them, and in that way “dependent” on those ways for the details of what they are and how they are individuated. And note that the “dependence” in these analogies is not causal. It’s not that the relevant framework, rather than the locomotive causes the train to move. And what causes Boston to be nearby is whatever caused the speaker and Boston to assume their relative positions, not the position of the speaker. I must confess that Sosa does not use the analogy in the way I just have. On the contrary, he takes the relativity to location to affect only the content of the statement (only the thought side of the thoughtworld relation), and not the world side. He supposes that the fact that makes it true, when it is true, that Boston is nearby, is absolute and in no way relative to the spatial location of speaker or any other

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feature of thought or discourse. I have discussed Sosa’s take on these and other matters having to do with realism in my “Sosa on Realism” (forthcoming). In any event, my present concern is not to use the indexical phenomenon to prove anything but only as a stepping stone to help the reader, and myself, form an intelligible conception of facts in the world being, in part, relative to features of thought or discourse. To be sure, as a realist I do consider things that exist absolutely and facts that obtain absolutely, not relative to some optional mode of conception or theorizing, to be more real , to have a higher mode of reality than what exists or obtains only relative to one of several equally viable theoretical-conceptual schemes. But that does not imply that what exists or obtains only relative to such schemes has no existence except for the existence of the schemes themselves. To get back to the analogies, it is like the way in which motion that occurs only relative to one out of many different frameworks is still something other than the frameworks themselves. Relative existence is still existence, even if it is not absolute existence. Thus my explanation of constitutive dependence of things and facts on conceptual-theoretical choices is in terms of their relativity to such choices, relativity of the sort exemplified by the analogies. Though in the sequel I will often speak in terms of ‘dependence’ and ‘independence’, that is to be understood in accordance with the foregoing. And the canonical explanation of the contrasting positions is in terms of relativity.


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Antirealism (AR)—Everything and every fact exists or obtains, and is what it is, at least in part, relative to certain conceptual-theoretical choices that have equally viable alternatives. Realism (R)—Vast stretches of reality are what they are absolutely, not in any way relative to certain conceptual-theoretical choices that have equally viable alternatives. 3

The next item on the agenda is drawing some boundaries around the kind of metaphysical realism I advocate here. I have just made explicit the positive core of the position. But it will be useful to make explicit certain things that are not involved in that core. And since this kind of realism frequently carries various other commitments in its train, it will not be amiss to point out that I do not conceive the position as including them. In doing so I do not thereby reject those views, many of which I hold. It is just that for present purposes I want to focus on the independence thesis, separating it from other commitments with which it is frequently associated so as to give it a full treatment in its own right.9 First, I want to bring out, with some examples, the fact that R is concerned only with independence of conceptual-theoretical choices, not with other ways in which things and facts are, or might be thought to be, dependent on cognition and on other aspects of the mental. Consider, for example, Berkeley’s “To be is to be perceived”. This is certainly a kind of dependence of everything (except minds themselves) on the mental. The reality of “physical objects” con-

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sists, in one way or another, in the reality of perceptions or “ideas”, whether in human minds or the mind of God. But Berkeley would reject as firmly as the staunchest realist Putnam’s kind of antirealism. He is completely innocent of any tendency to suppose that objects of perception take on different natures, depending on how we conceptualize them. There is no trace of ontological pluralism in his thought. The same goes for twentieth century phenomenalists’ attempt to reduce physical objects to the conditions under which a perceiver would have certain perceptual experiences. Here too there is no tendency to suppose that objects of perception are relative to various ways of conceptualizing or theorizing about them. Both Berkeley and the phenomenalist Russell are ontologically as absolutist as any realist. These cases illustrate the way in which the kind of metaphysical realism under discussion here is not opposed either to Berkelyan idealism or to phenomenalist or other reductions of the physical to something more mentalistic. Moreover, R is not opposed to, nor does it endorse, the view that values or moral statuses are a function of people’s attitudes or interests. That is not the kind of dependence on cognition that is at issue between R and AR. This point leads to one that needs more extensive discussion—the status of social statuses , such as being married or divorced, owning property, having a job, being a member of an organization, being guilty of a crime. These and many others are social statuses of people, but there are also social statuses of inanimate things—being a $10 bill, being a church building, being a football


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field, being a wedding ring. In all these cases the person or thing has this status by virtue of certain propositional attitudes taken toward it by members of the society in question—what they believe about it, what obligations, prohibitions, permissions, they take to apply to it, what behavior is appropriate with regard to it, and so on. To be a member of an organization or to have a certain job is to have certain rights, obligations, and responsibilities that one would would not otherwise have, and the possession of those rights, etc. is dependent on their recognition by members of the society generally. For a building to be a church building is for it to be generally recognized that certain activities are appropriate there and others inappropriate. For a piece of paper to be a $10 bill is for it to be generally acceptable as a medium of exchange. And so on. None of this is a matter of the adoption of a certain conceptual scheme or a certain theoretical orientation among other alternatives vis-a-vis these matters. The concepts involved (concepts of obligations, permissions, appropriateness, exchange of goods) are already in the usual human conceptual scheme, whether or not they are employed as they are in the recognitions, acceptances, and so on illustrated above. To oversimplify in order to make the point in a concise manner, these social statuses depend on how concepts are deployed in beliefs and attitudes that are generally held in the society, not on whether one rather than another conceptual scheme is used to organize a certain subject matter. Hence this kind of dependence on cognition falls outside the contrast between AR and R. Though I take the depen-

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dence of social statuses on generally shared beliefs and attitudes in the society to be a crucially important example of a dependence of objective facts on the mental, I will not be citing it as one of the concessions that, I will suggest, a sensible realism should make to AR. The example of social statuses brings out the fact that AR could be construed more generally to include any sort of constitutive dependence of things and facts on human cognition thereof, and R, as its denial, would be correspondingly altered. This would be a weaker AR, since its universal generalization would be over a wider range of constitutive dependencies. But for present purposes I will stick to the more restricted version of AR set out above. The phenomenon of social statuses illustrates another point that is importantly, though tangentially, related to this essay. The relativity of things and facts to conceptual-theoretical choices that AR universally generalizes and that I acknowledge at certain points is a malleability, a vulnerability to individual shifts in cognition. In the examples from section 2, it is up to each individual theorist whether he or she adopts one rather than another way of construing and individuating propositions and beliefs. This is a maximal relativity, in the sense that each individual is free to make his or her own choice. But the malleability of social statuses, though real, is not so extreme. I can’t just decide to “organize” marital relations, mediums of exchange, the rules of football, or who owns what property, as I like. Who is married to whom, who owns what houses, etc., confront me as objective facts that I must accept willy-


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nilly. I don’t have the power to reshape them on my own. They are subject to change only by a general shift in beliefs and attitudes in the society. They exist at the sufferance of propositional attitudes, but these are generally shared beliefs and attitudes, not isolated individual ones. Another feature of the AR-R contrast is that the AR side involves not only (1) a (partial) dependence of how things are on our conceptualization, but (2) a dependence that is (possibly) variable. There are possible, and sometimes actual, variations in the way a given domain is conceptually and/or theoretically organized. Moreover, what I regard as the main arguments Putnam and Goodman give for AR is based on this alleged variability. And it is this whole package that R, as I have been presenting it, denies to be universally applicable. But, of course, one could espouse (1) without (2). We find this in Kant and, in a different way and less clearly, in Hegel and absolute idealism generally. And I could, of course, construe R so that it is opposed to Kant as well as to Putnam. I find myself with a strong temptation to do just that. The realist conviction I am concerned to defend is also violated, though not as strongly, by a unique dependence of everything on certain ineluctable features of our conceptualization of it, just as it is by a dependence of everything on a plurality of equally acceptable conceptualizations. Of course, Kant and the absolute idealists need different kinds of arguments for their position than those deployed by Putnam and Goodman. But they all represent a generically similar opposition to common sense realism.10

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Moreover, the pluralist and absolutist forms are not as starkly opposed as they appear to be at first blush. For though Kant does not take seriously the idea that human beings might categorize the manifold of sensation in different and equally valid ways, it is still the case that the force of his “transcendental idealism” depends on a contrast with conceivable alternative categorizations. Apart from that, what does the “Copernican revolution” amount to? If we cannot even conceive the abstract possibility of alternative conceptualizations (perhaps for other cognitive subjects), if our way of doing it is the one and only possible way, then how does that differ from holding that (apart, of course, from mistakes in details) our way of representing reality is just the way it is in itself? Despite all this I will, for purposes of this essay, confine myself to the AR that takes there to be actual variations in conceptualization that are constitutive of differences in things and facts with which we are confronted in the world. And my partial concessions to AR will concern stretches of reality that are dependent on alternative conceptualizations in this way. Now I want to dissociate R from various commitments that are frequently connected to it. For one thing, my realism carries no epistemological commitments. Interestingly enough, some philosophers take realism to be committed to the inaccessibility of reality, and others take it to be committed to its accessibility. Though the independent reality of, e.g., the physical world would hardly be worth fighting for if we were fated to remain in complete


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ignorance of it, and though I am convinced that we do know a lot about it, I will set aside those epistemological issues in order to concentrate on the independence thesis. Second, realism is often associated, or even conflated, with a correspondence theory of truth, or with a minimalist version of that, which in Alston 1996 I call a “realist conception of truth”. But although I agree that it would be bizarre for a metaphysical realist to hold an epistemic conception of truth or any other conception that makes the truth of a statement to consist in something other than what the statement is about being as the statement says it is, I will abstract my “independent reality” realism from issues of truth in this discussion. Finally, in recent decades realism has been frequently associated with physicalism and with a causal theory of reference. I can set aside these entanglements with greater enthusiasm than the first two, since although I am enthusiastic about independence realism, I hold no brief for either physicalism or a causal theory of reference. But my present point is only that in order to hold that large stretches of reality are what they are independently of our modes of conceptualization, one need not take those stretches, much less all of reality, to be purely physical; and one need not accept a causal theory, or any other particular theory of reference. To be sure, reference is an important and fascinating problem in itself. And one must be able to refer to things in order to ascribe independent existence or anything else to them. But, fortunately, human beings can succeed in doing so without being in possession of an adequate theory of reference. Otherwise we would be in a pretty pickle.

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There is other baggage we need to discard. It should not be necessary to say this, but here goes anyway. R does not imply that every one of our concepts (terms) denotes something that exists. Everyone realizes in practice that this is a truism, but strange things happens when philosophers discuss realism. In addition to standard textbook examples like ‘unicorn’, there are more interesting, and correspondingly controversial, philosophical examples. In Alston 1993 I argue that it is a mistake to suppose that ‘justified’, when used in the epistemic evaluation of beliefs, picks out a unique objective epistemic status. Quine, notoriously, takes the same position for ‘meaning’ and ‘analytic’, as semantic terms. What may be less obvious is that the above fact—that not all intelligible concepts denote anything—implies that not every intelligible question has an objectively correct answer. Quine does not hesitate to draw this inference for ‘Are these terms synonymous?’ Although I cannot point to documentary evidence, I have the sense that it is not infrequently assumed that a serious metaphysical realism would imply that every meaningful question has a unique objectively correct answer. Hence the need to take up space to point out that this is not the case. This reflects a more general point about R. It is not a thesis about discourse or thought. It a thesis about (much of) what exists. The opposition between R and its antirealist opponents only arises when both parties have agreed that something exists (obtains) in some way or other, with some status or other. The question is as to which way or which status. This also implies that R is not, as such, opposed to views that


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something or other does not exist at all. Someone who denies that there are propositions, or unexemplified properties, or possible worlds, or unobservable objects, or God, or whatever, is not contradicting R, although various proponents of R may also disagree with these claims. For, as I say, the issue between R and its opponents only arises when there is agreement on something’s existence. Of course, an advocate of R may hold that X’s exist independently even though other thinkers deny that there are any X’s. It is just that there can be an R-AR dispute between them about X’s only after both admit that X’s exist in some way. 4

My next task is to explain what I think to be possible by way of defending realism. I fear my position on this will seem disappointing to many realists. I don’t see any prospect for a direct argument for realism. Some, like Devitt, suppose that it can be supported as the best explanation of our sense experience. But the presentation of this in Devitt 1984 (5,7, pp. 64-65) is much too sketchy to carry conviction. A straight enumerative induction would do no better. That would consist in listing all the items that enjoy independent existence and then generalizing from this. If we are properly cautious, that generalization will not be unqualifiedly universal, but will be content with the claim that much of reality exists independently of conceptualization. The deepest trouble with this suggestion is that if anyone is disinclined to accept such a modest gen-

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eralization, he will be equally disinclined to accept the status of independence for the individual items. Thus what seems to me the best way to view the matter is to take realism to be the default position. All of us, before we encounter clever antirealist arguments, unhesitatingly ascribe independent existence to what we take ourselves to encounter in the world. This is as deeply rooted as any conviction of common sense. It is to be given up only if there are strong reasons against it. Hence the only defense needed is a critique of attempts to give such reasons and/or an argument for the lack of viability of an unqualified antirealism. I will not undertake a criticism of arguments for AR in this essay. But I will indicate ways in which I take AR to be self-defeating and hence internally incoherent. If I am right about that, there is no need to examine arguments for the position, since it could not possibly be correct. Remember that the antirealism under consideration here is an unqualified generalization of the relativity to conceptual schemes I have already acknowledged to hold for certain matters, a list to which I will shortly make further additions. The internal incoherence is a direct result of that unqualified generalizations. Let’s say that we have identified a variety of equally viable conceptual schemes (total ones if you like) such that physical objects and facts have a certain character relative to one or another such scheme. Relative to one of the alternative schemes those objects and facts have one detailed constitution, whereas relative to another such scheme they have a somewhat different constitution.11 But now what about those con-


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ceptual schemes themselves? And if we are not thinking of such schemes as abstract objects but only as employed by concrete cognitive subjects, how about those subjects? Do all of these exist and have the nature they do relative to each of a number of different conceptual schemes? If not, the unrestricted generalization has been given up. But if so, what about these second level conceptual schemes. Obviously an infinite regress looms. The unrestricted generalization is purchased at the price of an infinite hierarchy of conceptual schemes. And if the conceptual schemes involved must actually be used by subjects, we get an infinite hierarchy of subjects, or at least an infinite hierarchy of employments of different conceptual schemes by subjects. I take all this to be obviously unacceptable. A second fatal internal difficulty stems from an essential element in the argument for this kind of antirealism. The different conceptual schemes must be construed as yielding incompatible construals of the entities dependent on them. Otherwise there is no objection to taking the entities to be what they are absolutely, not relative to one or another scheme. But they can be incompatible only if they are construals of the same entities. For if they are construals of different entities, they can all happily coexist in one unique reality. But this means that the view presupposes some common object of conceptualization. And just by being the shared object of the different conceptual schemes, it is itself immune from relativity to those different schemes. Thus the view is driven back to something like the Kantian noumenon, to which the plurality

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of schemes of categories is applied. And so the price of maintaining the basic argument for the position is an exception to the universal generalization of relativity. If we try to escape this consequence by taking what is differently conceptualized in different conceptual schemes to be itself relative to different conceptual schemes, and so split it up into different “versions” corresponding to those different second order schemes, we are off on another infinite regress. For what are to say of that which is conceptualized differently in those second order schemes?… Since an unqualified conceptual relativity is unacceptable, I feel justified in taking realism to be the default position for any putative entity or fact, taking any such item to be independent of our cognitive activity until it is shown to be otherwise. Hence the specification of those stretches of reality that are independent will proceed negatively—by whittling away at the mass of prima facie independent realities (i.e., all of them), and ascribing independence to what remains. Thus the process is much messier than we might hope. It involves a painstaking discussion of all the more promising candidates for dependence on our conceptualizations, so as to determine which of them passes the test. I will not be able to complete such an enormous task in this essay. And even if I had several volumes at my disposal, the fact would remain that some of those candidates will be highly controversial, and arguments about them could drag on interminably in the way typical of philosophical arguments. For the present I will have to restrict myself to, first, making some


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distinctions between different kinds of dependence on human cognition, and, second, making a case for a significant relativity to conceptual schemes of some of the most promising candidates. But before starting on that, let me say that I believe one result of any such investigation would leave most of the objects we have commerce with, cognitive and practical, and most of the facts concerning such objects with their prima facie realist credentials intact. 5

I will be spending most of my time in this remainder of this essay presenting and discussing candidates for the conceptual-scheme-dependent side of the R-AR opposition. But I will introduce this by a contrast that seems to me to put into sharp relief the difference between those entities and facts that are and those that are not, so to say, imposed on us by the nature of things willy-nilly. On the one hand, there are items with respect to the nature and existence of which we have no choice, which are what they are regardless of our interests or preferences, which are, in the strongest sense, “stubborn and unyielding facts”; and, on the other side, there are those with respect to which we do have a choice as to whether or not to “countenance” them. Here is an imaginative example from Sosa 1999. Artifacts and natural objects are normally composed of stuff or of parts in certain ways. Those that endure are normally composed of stuff or of parts at each instant of their enduring….Thus a snowball exists at a time t and location l only

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if there is a round quantity of snow at l and t sufficiently separate from other snow, and so forth; and it endures through an interval i only if, for every division of i into a sequence of subintervals i1, i2…, there is a corresponding sequence of quantities of snow Q 1, Q 2…, related in certain restricted ways. I mean thus to recall our criteria of existence and perdurance for snowballs. So much for snowballs. The like is true of chains and constituent links, boxes and constituent sides, and a great variety of artifacts or natural entities such as hills or trees; and the same goes for persons and their constituent bodies… Compare now…the concept of a “snowdiscall,” which we may define as an entity constituted by a piece of snow as matter and as form any shape between being round and being disc-shaped. At any given time, therefore, any piece of snow that constitutes a snowball constitutes a snowdiscall, but a piece of snow might at a time constitute a snowdiscall without then constituting a snowball….Whenever a piece of snow constitutes a snowball, therefore, it constitutes infinitely many entities all sharing its place with it. Under a broadly Aristotelian conception, therefore, the barest flutter of the smallest leaf creates and destroys infinitely many things, and ordinary reality suffers a sort of “explosion.” (pp. 132-33)


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To elaborate on the last two paragraphs of the above, since there is a continuum of shapes between roundness and disc-shape, we could draw a line anywhere along that continuum and define another kind as a piece of snow the shape of which falls somewhere between roundness and that line. So just the example of hunks of snow enables us to specify an infinite number of kinds. And since hunks of snow are only one of a potential infinity of masses of different kinds of stuff, if we recognize all the snowdiscall sorts of entities as individuals with their distinctive essential properties and conditions of identity, we are faced with a very high order of infinity of individuals, and indeed, as the snowdiscall example shows, an infinity of individuals all occupying the same space at the same time. I believe that it will seem intuitively plausible to most of us that this infinity of snowdiscall-like putative individuals are not thrust on us by the nature of things, regardless of our preferences, interests, or choices. If, for whatever reasons, we choose to accept the existence of all these individuals, we will not be flying in the face of any empirical data, though the consciences of those committed to Ockham’s razor will undoubtedly feel a decided twinge. I think this intuition can be strengthened by considering some contrasting cases in which it does seem that we encounter stubborn, unyielding facts that are there to be reckoned with, whatever we will. There are some kinds that are thrust upon us by the fact that the members of such kinds share numerous properties that are of importance for our attempts to understand the world. They prove fruit-

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ful for taxonomy, for prediction, and for the construction of powerful explanatory theories that often provide drastic unification of what heretofore seemed to be diverse phenomena. Salient examples include the species of organisms, chemical elements, chemical compounds, crystalline and other physical structures, fundamental physical particles, basic types of forces, and so on. This is so oft told a tale that it is unnecessary for me to belabor the point. The idea that the form definitive of snowdiscalls has an ontological claim to “be there” equal to that of hydrogen, a cold virus, water, the strong nuclear force, or protons, runs into the crushing objection that snowdiscalls share no theoretically or practically interesting properties that indicate they are pulling some independent weight in the economy of the universe. Thus snowdiscalls and the infinitely numerous other artificially marked out kinds can be distinguished by a clear criterion from natural kinds and their members, as being much less worthy of being recognized as existing independently of our interests and choices. On which side of this divide should we place artifacts? They can’t claim the theoretical importance of organic species, living cells, chemical elements or fundamental forces. And yet it does seem that desks and chairs are “out there” confronting us in a way that snowdiscalls are not. And I think that there is a significant basis for this intuition. Artifacts do have intrinsic, non-arbitrary principles of identity and persistence, though it comes not from nature but from art. I will bring this out by reference to a point Sosa makes near the end of Sosa 1999. He says that


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a hammer could also be used as a doorstop. The remark was designed to provide another illustration of the ontological explosion. Is there both a hammer and a doorstop confronting us? But the example leads me to reflect that the hammer has a kind of foothold on reality lacking to the doorstop that it constitutes. And that is due to the intentions of the maker(s). The object was manufactured in order to do such things as drive in nails. Like anything else, including organisms, it can be used for various other purposes. But the intention of the maker, the purpose for which it was constructed, takes a certain precedence. That provides the primary identity and persistence conditions by contrast with which the conditions stemming from other possible uses have only a secondary status, if that. If we may think of the essences of natural kinds as intended by a divine maker, we have a close analogy between natural kinds and human artifacts. There is still the difference that the standard way of discovering the natural kind to which natural substances belong does not normally go through an investigation of the intentions of the maker, whereas the opposite is true of artifacts. And yet in both cases there are objective facts of the matter that provide a basis for placing an item in one kind rather than others to which it nominally belongs, and giving that kind a special ontological status. Moreover Sosa’s example of the snowball reminds me that there are artifact-like things to be found among ways of dividing up stuff. It is much more plausible to take snowballs as existing in a contextfree way than to accord that status to snowdiscalls

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or any of the other indefinitely numerous putative individuals that we could dream up in the same way. Why is that? Presumably it is because there are standard procedures for shaping snow into balls for a well defined purpose—to throw them at people. Though it is much simpler to design and construct a snowball than a gun, it is not too much of a stretch to think of them as endowed with an essence by their creators in basically the same way, and hence as having the same kind of title to context-independent existence. The same cannot be said of snowdiscalls and the like. This opens up the field to an enormous variety of stuff shaped for a purpose— sugar cubes, medallions of veal, gold rings, etc. And there are even “pieces of stuff ” analogues to natural kinds—snow flakes and drops of water, for instance. This discussion has thus far been restricted to the question of whether certain putative kinds and the individuals of those kinds exist independently of our conceptual or theoretical choices. This is a somewhat different issue from the one that bulks largest in Putnam and Goodman, viz., whether different conceptual and theoretical choices engender equally valid ways of describing and theoretically organizing a given subject matter. To see a clear opposition here we can contrast the earlier examples of propositions and beliefs with natural kinds. For both sorts of cases there are, in principle, alternative ways of conceptualizing, of determining what the essential nature is and what the principles of identity and individuation are. We can define ‘fish’ as ‘animal organism that lives in water,’ or as ‘animal organism with fins and gills,’ just as we can define ‘proposi-


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tion’ as ‘a set of possible worlds’, or as ‘a complex conceptual structure capable of a truth value’. But it seems that we have a much greater degree of freedom in the latter than in the former case. We can achieve our cognitive goals at least approximately as well with one conceptualization of propositions as with another; whereas the same cannot be said for fish and other organic species. A specification of the essence of fishhood in terms of anatomical or physiological structure, or perhaps in terms of DNA constitution, is of much greater theoretical and practical significance than specifications in terms of more superficial features, like living in water. There it seems that a particular way of assigning an essence to fish and other organisms is thrust upon us regardless of our choices, in a way it is not with propositions, and even with beliefs. Having shown my hand as to what I take to have a status in reality independently of conceptual-theoretical choices to which there are acceptable alternatives, I can now proceed with further examples of what I take to be on the conceptually dependent side of the contrast. 6

I expect that my remaining examples of entities and facts dependent for their existence and/or their nature on conceptual-theoretical choices will be more controversial than the ones already mentioned. I will try to order them in accordance with degree of controversiality, beginning with what I believe to be the least controversial.

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One of Putnam’s favorite examples concerns mereological sums. Suppose I take someone into a room with a chair, a table on which there are a lamp and a notebook and a ballpoint pen, and nothing else, and I ask, “How many objects are there in this room?” My companion answers, let us suppose, “Five.” “What are they?” I ask. “A chair, a table, a lamp, a notebook, and a ballpoint pen.” “How about you and me? Aren’t we in the room?” My companion might chuckle. “I didn’t think you meant to count people as objects. Alright, then, seven.” “How about the pages of the notebook?” At this point my companion is likely to become much less cooperative, to feel I have “pulled a fast one.” But what is the answer to my question? A logician is likely to say that there is an ordinary (or perhaps a metaphysical) notion of an “object,” according to which, perhaps, the pages of the notebook are not “objects” as long as they are still attached, and according to which my nose is not an object, only a part of an object as long as it is still attached…and that there is a logical notion of an object or “entity” according to which anything we can take as a value of a variable of quantification…is a “object”; and that all the parts of a person or a notebook are “objects” in this logical sense. …What about the group consisting of my nose and the lamp? Is that an object at all? Is there no such object? (Putnam 1989, 110-111)


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Let’s focus on this last example, which involves “mereological sums”. According to mereology, for any entities, x, y, …, there is a entity of which they are parts. On this approach, the 14th page of my copy of The Possessed , a crumb beneath the breakfast table in my house, the spruce tree in my front yard, and the Taj Mahal make up a composite entity with these as its sole parts. Clearly, on this approach there is a high order of infinity of such entities. For not only does any collection of individuals constitute a complex entity. Any number of such complex entities constitute a higher order complex entity. Moreover, the components of these mereological sums need not be restricted to individuals, if, indeed, there are entities other than individuals— properties, sets, possible worlds, etc. So says the mereologist. Should we agree with him? Is there any unique fact of the matter as to whether we should? Is there an objective fact of the matter as to whether there are all these mereological sums, independently of what we choose to recognize? Or do we have a free choice in the matter? I can’t see that our choices are limited here by facts that obtain independently of those choices. Each of us is free to treat any group of entities as an entity, or refrain from doing so. Here, so far as I can see, is a prime candidate for facts that obtain only relative to a certain theoretical choice, to which there are equally viable alternatives. Another issue, which, so to say, goes in the opposite direction from the one about mereology, has to do with whether we should recognize the “hunk” of stuff(s) of which something is composed as a dis-

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tinct individual from the one it composes, taking up just the same space for as long as the individual is so composed. This problem can be broached for organisms and other individuals that are composed of a complex organization of “stuffs.” But in the interest of simplicity discussion is usually focused on more homogeneous stuffs (at least more homogeneous at a macroscopic level) like the marble or bronze that is fashioned into a statue. Should we count the marble of which Michaelangelo’s David is composed as an individual in its own right, distinct from the statue so composed, with its own essential properties, conditions of persistence, and so on? Or should we refrain from doing so, taking the statue as the one and only individual in that location, one that, so to say, “swallows” up the stuff of which it is composed as one of its constituent aspects or features? This too strikes me as a matter about which we have a conceptual-theoretical choice. I cannot see any facts that we are constrained to recognize, whatever our preferences, that dictate one or another answer to this question. If we wish to count the constituent marble as a distinct individual, we can tell a completely coherent story in those terms. And an equally coherent story will result from a decision to limit the occupants of that location to the statue, taking that to include its stuff as one part of its individual being. I suggest this too as a plausible case of something that fits the AR picture of an issue that can receive equally viable resolutions in different conceptual-theoretical schemes.


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These last two issues, like Sosa’s problem about the snowdiscalls, concerns what individuals or ob jects to recognize. Now let’s consider a plausible candidate for different ways of conceptually organizing a domain of reality, which are such that there is no unique choice between them that is determined by the way things are apart from our choices or preferences. Metaphysics is rife with prima facie examples of such. Here the degree of controversiality goes up a notch. Whatever ones I pick, I will expose myself to attack from legions of metaphysicians who are convinced that they have the independent objective truth about such matters. But nothing ventured, nothing gained. I will forge ahead and present what seems to me prima facie cases of metaphysical construals about which we have free choice. One currently prominent opposition in metaphysics concerns the question of whether we should think of enduring objects as having temporal parts as well as (for those that are physical) spatial parts. We ordinarily think of enduring physical things as being “all there,” completely present, at each moment of its existence. When I encounter my computer each morning it is the entire object I encounter, not some (temporal) part of it. If, on the other hand I wipe off its screen, I am wiping only one part of it, not the entire object. The sides, the back, the inner hardware is left untouched. If we were to think of a computer as having temporal parts, then I would have to think of my looking at a different part each time I look at it, rather than, as we ordinarily suppose, looking at the same entire computer each time.

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Is there a straightforward factual issue between those who assert and those who deny that physical objects have temporal parts? Are there objective facts that determine that one is correct and the other incorrect? Where would we find such facts? No doubt, we don’t ordinarily think of enduring objects as having temporal parts, but is there anything in independent reality that constrains us to think that way, or do we have a choice in the matter? Are we free to “countenance” temporal parts if we choose to do so? In the absence of some conclusive reason for thinking that there are or are not temporal parts of enduring objects, it seems very plausible (at least to me) to suppose that these are different ways of construing the same familiar facts. It would seem that everything the commonsense advocate wishes to recognize (apart from the alleged matter under dispute) can equally well be recognized by the temporal parts advocate. Where the latter will say that I am now using a 5:00-5:25 PM, 8/18/2000 part of my computer, the commonsense opponent will say that I am using my computer, period, at some time between 5:00 and 5:25 on that day. As far as anything that is obviously thrust upon us by things in themselves, they are in agreement. It is only that they wish to conceptually structure this in different ways. To take a more global, but allied, metaphysical issue, consider the opposition between a familiar common-sense substance metaphysics of the physical environment and a process metaphysics. According to the former the physical world consists of various kinds of relatively enduring substances that


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remain identical through change. When I look at my bedside table on awakening each morning It is just the same individual that I see each time. Now contrast this with a process metaphysics such as that propounded in Whitehead 1927. On this metaphysics the fundamental units of reality are “actual occasions”, momentary happenings each of which occupies some minimal duration, say 1/20th of a second, and some very small spatial extent. What in the more familiar substance metaphysics is construed as a persisting substance like a bedside table is thought by Whitehead to be a complex “society” of actual occasions. There is no single individual that remains the same through what we think of as the life span of the spruce tree. The “bedside table” has temporal parts just as a football game does, and it is such temporal parts that are the fundamental constituents of reality. From this standpoint it is an illusion to suppose that there is an individual that retains its self identity through the life span of what we call a beside table. What we have here is a succession of events (or rather a number of such successions) each of which exists but for a moment. I had best say something about the relation between this issue and the previous one about temporal parts. The previous issue was framed within a substance metaphysics. It was the question of whether enduring substances have temporal parts as well as spatial parts. To be sure, substance metaphysics has without exception, at least until recently, been formulated in a way that rules out temporal parts of substances. But if what it takes, minimally, for an individual to be a substance (in addition to

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being a bearer of properties and not itself a property) is that it can remain the same individual through change, then an individual can be a substance and also have temporal parts. Just my feet are on the same bed as my head, though on a different spatial part thereof, so I can see the same bedside table this morning as I did yesterday morning, but a different temporal part thereof, if it does have temporal parts. In that case one and the same bedside table can be there every day of its existence, though, on the temporal parts alternative, it is not wholly there every day, as it is ordinarily taken to be on the usual substance metaphysics. But a process metaphysics like Whitehead’s represents a more radical departure from the standard substance metaphysics on which substances lack temporal parts. For the basic individuals of the former not only have temporal parts, but there is no sense in which basic individuals retain their identity through change. This, of course, as Whitehead recognizes, requires a view of process as consisting of discrete temporal “drops”, each of which occupies a minimal duration without undergoing change during that duration. Each “actual occasion” happens all at once . Of course, Whitehead’s metaphysics is not the only alternative for a process metaphysics. Another would be a view of process as a continuous becoming which is not in any way composed of distinguishable individuals. But on either version there is nothing that counts as an individual retaining its identity through change. I make bold to suggest that here too we have an issue that is, prima facie, grist for the AR advocate’s


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mill. It would seem that reality can equally well (though not equally familiarly or comfortably or simply) be construed in either of these ways. Of course, both substance metaphysicians from Aristotle on, and process metaphysicians from Heraclitus on, present arguments that are designed to show that their chosen metaphysic is the unique truth about the physical world, and that their opponents are simply mistaken as to what reality is like. But these oppositions have persisted for at least 2500 years in Western philosophy, and there are no signs that a general consensus is on the horizon. Moreover, it is not that we are faced with only two contenders. Both camps are split into many competing factions. I need only mention the names of Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, and Kant, to remind us that Aristotle does not control all of the substance territory. And Whitehead’s metaphysics is only one of the options on the process side. For those of us who lack a firm commitment to one of these contending orientations, it seems not implausible to suppose that a choice between them is radically underdetermined by such considerations as can be brought forward. It seems that the physical reality we are dealing with is more or less equally susceptible of a number of different ways of conceptually and theoretically structuring it.12 If so, this is at least a prima facie case of facts that are what they are only relative to a certain mode of conceptualizing and theorizing to which there are equally viable alternatives. I certainly do not expect universal agreement on my judgment that a unique choice between metaphysical positions on this issue is not determined

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by the objective facts. Those who are strongly committed to a traditional metaphysical project will, no doubt, insist that there are unique facts of the matter as to which of the competing positions have it right (if, indeed, any of them do), whether we can definitively show this to be the case or not. To go properly into this issue I would have to undertake a thorough discussion of the epistemology and methodology of metaphysics. And there is no room for that in this essay. I only have space to make one comment. The usual defense of metaphysical positions like the above consists in showing that the relevant subject matter can be construed in the favored way, and that alternative positions face certain problems. But as for the first point, it turns out that the subject matter can also be construed in rival ways. And as to the second point, I don’t know of any metaphysical position that does not face serious problems. Before leaving this topic, I must address the following worry. Earlier I presented familiar macroscopic items—organisms, artifacts, hunks of stuff— as enjoying an objective reality independent of conceptual choices. But in doing so was I not employing a substance rather than a process ontology? If dogs and sofas, as ordinarily conceived, exist and are what they are regardless of our conceptual choices and preferences, doesn’t that imply that a substance ontology of the physical world has the same status? And how can that be squared with the above suggestion that a substance ontology holds only relative to the choice of one way of construing that sub ject matter, as against equally viable alternative ways?


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To solve this puzzle I must distinguish between different aspects of our ways of conceptualizing what we are talking about. The crucial distinction I will make is between the ontological aspect and what I will call the commonsense or detailed factual aspect. The basic claim will be that although we can’t avoid using concepts belonging to one of a set of competing metaphysical views in reporting facts, we can, if we choose, restrict what we are claiming to the latter aspect. That makes it possible for us to pick out a fact in a way that is neutral between opposed metaphysical construals and thus specify the subject matter about which they are proffering rival construals. Go back to my bedside table. In using that expression I am, no doubt, operating within a substance metaphysics construal, whether I realize it or not. That is inevitable just because our language is structured in terms of such a metaphysics. It is not as if we can take what I am calling the “detailed factual” aspect out by itself and speak in terms that are restricted to that, as I can, to a considerable extent, eschew figures of speech and speak plainly and literally. Even if I were able to avoid substance presuppositions by availing myself of a language constructed on process lines (bedside table stages, à la Quine), I would still be utilizing one of the rival metaphysics rather than others. What I can do is to disavow the metaphysical implications of my terminology, thereby leaving the other aspect as all I am claiming in my report. Hence I can say that there are both substantive and process ways of conceptualizing bedside tables without having prejudiced the

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issue in favor of the former by the way in which I stated the issue. If we consider the full content of a report like ‘My bedside table has a clock on it,’ that includes a commitment to a metaphysics that divides the world up into enduring substances like tables and clocks and works with a scheme of properties and activities exhibitable by such substances. If we wanted to endorse a process metaphysics like Whitehead, we would not consider this a felicitous way to talk about the subject matter. But, of course, even if this metaphysical commitment is part of the content, it is by no means the whole. It is by no means any part of a substance metaphysics that there is a table beside my bed or that my bedside table has a clock on it. It is not as if I could bring these things about by adopting a substance metaphysics rather than by making purchases at a furniture store! I assume that the above does something by way of explaining my talk of a metaphysical and a concrete aspect of a statement or fact. But since I admit that we cannot make any statement that exhibits one of the aspects without its being entangled with the other, one may feel that this talk of “aspects” is still too nebulous, to lacking in determinateness to provide a sufficient basis for my claim to be able to specify a subject matter in ontologically neutral terms. What else can I do here? I think that the most useful tack is to bring in patterns of contrast, a technique familiar from linguistics and other sources. The syntactical category of a word can be specified in terms of what other words are or are not substitutable for that word, salva grammaticality. Here too we cannot exhibit syntac-


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tic category by finding a word that only has that feature and no phonological constitution or meaning. But the substitutability test is effective in pinning down the syntactic category. In an analogous way we can get at the concrete, non-conceptualscheme-relative aspect of the fact that there is a clock on my bedside table by considering the way this fact contrasts with the (possible) facts that this table is black, that it has four legs, that it contains a drawer, and so on. That is, we stay within the same metaphysical aspect and display the different concrete, specific contents that facts concerning my bedside table (or concerning anything else for that matter) have within that metaphysics. The ways in which the original fact differs from other facts within the same metaphysical scheme constitutes the concrete, non-metaphysical aspect of its content. To exhibit the metaphysical aspect we display contrasts between the ways in which the same concrete state of affairs is construed in different metaphysical schemes. Imagine yourself in the original situation and using an event scheme or a scattered particular scheme to report what is reported in the substantival scheme by saying, “There is a clock on my bedside table.” This set of contrasts exhibits the metaphysical aspect of the original fact. Assuming that this does the job, I have put flesh on the suggestion that one can make assertions, using terminology that carries with it an involvement in one out of several rival metaphysical schemes, without thereby committing oneself to favoring that metaphysical scheme over its rivals. And if so, I have given reason to think that one can use substantival

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language to specify the facts that are construed differently in substance and process ontologies without begging the question in advance in favor of the substance alternative. 7

Lest the reader be too easily convinced that I have gone overboard in recognizing conceptual-scheme relative facts, let me present another sort of case that has been treated in this way, but which I prefer to handle differently. This is the familiar contrast between the “commonsense” and “scientific” pictures of the physical world. The former consists of relatively enduring objects scattered around in space, each of which has a certain integrity, properties that are essential for its self-identity, more or less definite boundaries, and so on. In the latter picture the familiar chairs, tables, rocks, mountains, even dogs and cats have disappeared as distinct individuals. Instead, in an older version we have elementary physical particles with a lot of empty space in between, or, in a more recent version, energy quanta or even weirder items. The differences between different “things” that bulk so large in the structuring of the physical world in the former picture are not stressed in the latter. From the “scientific” perspective it is just a matter of our practical interests that leads us to make a sharp distinction between, e.g., a hammer or a dog or a pebble and its immediate environment. The scientific picture is much more continuous than the commonsense construal. That is not to say that the former recognizes no distinctions between one portion of space and another. But they


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all have the same basic constituents, the differences lying in the ways these are organized and in the dynamics of their behavior. In the preceding paragraph I have deliberately been representing the contrast in such a way as to make it a plausible candidate for conceptually relative existence. The pictures are incompatible if each is taken as an account of independent reality. Hence we can accommodate both of them only if each is accepted as relative to one among a plurality of viable theoretical choices. But a closer look will reveal other possibilities for reconciliation. The first step would be to point out that differences in structuring between the perspectives is due to the fact that the one is dealing with complex totalities that are analyzed into their fine grained constituents in the other. After all, it is not a deep insight that complex things have parts, and that they can be viewed either as unanalyzed wholes or, if we have the capacity to delve sufficiently into their fine structure, as organized systems of ultimate constituents. The scientist need not deny the real (nonrelative) existence of the dog when he reveals the micro structure— anatomical, physiological, chemical, and physical— of this complexly organized beast. Though this is the central point, it does not dissipate all the worries. To take a frequently noted one, the objects that appear as solid in the commonsense perspective are revealed in the scientific perspective as mostly empty space with minute particles moving about in it. How can these judgments be reconciled as both giving us an absolute, nonrelative account of the matter. The surface of my desk certainly

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appears to ordinary observation to be solid matter all the way through. Chopping it up will uncover no hollow portions. Well, it depends on how the term ‘solid’ is construed whether the judgments can be reconciled on an absolute construal. If ‘x is (completely) solid’ entails ‘x contains no empty space’, then we can accept both pictures only at the cost of relativization. And, no doubt, before the development of modern physics, that was the way in which complete solidity was understood. But now that the rudiments of elementary particle physics is common knowledge, most of us are happy with a more modest understanding of ‘solid’. To say that the desk top is solid is to say that ordinary observation and manipulation reveals no empty portions. That is quite compatible with such portions being revealed by more minute observation and theoretical construction. After all, we are familiar with the fact that the use of even an ordinary microscope on organic tissue reveals a lot of things that are hidden from the naked eye. So only a minor adjustment in semantics is required to maintain the absolute, nonrelative, acceptance of both pictures as far as this problem is concerned. The point about solidity is a particular example of a general phenomenon, which we might term the “subjectivization” of what were regarded as physical properties under the impact of modern science. Another, more widely discussed example concerns color and other “secondary” properties. On a naive construal the colors that physical objects seem to present to visual perception are intrinsic properties


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of those objects, with all their qualitative distinctiveness. But no such properties appear in the physicist’s description of the world. Moreover, even without sophisticated developments of physics, it is easily shown that apparent colors of objects vary with differences in factors other than the putative bearer of those colors—the light, distance and angle of observation, background contrasts, condition of the observer, and so on. Therefore colors, as properties of physical objects, undergo a reconstrual analogous to that of solidity. They become relativized to conditions of observation. To say that the cloth is red (rather than ‘looks red to me now’) is to say something about how it would look to a normal observer under certain specifiable conditions of observation. Thus by a combination of reconstrual of property terms and a recognition of the difference between what appears to macroscopic and to microscopic observation, we can reconcile the commonsense and scientific pictures without taking each of them to be true only relative to one of a number of equally acceptable conceptual-theoretical schemes. 8

To sum up, I take it that I have given reason to hold both that there are indefinitely many objects that exist and facts that obtain absolutely, not relative to some conceptual-theoretical scheme to which there are equally viable alternatives, and that there are also indefinitely many objects that exist and facts that obtain only relative to a conceptual-theoretical scheme to which there are equally viable alternatives. I would add that the absolute existents and

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facts are, if not more numerous, at least of a much greater variety and of much greater importance than those that enjoy that status only relative to a dispensable scheme. Thus I have given reason to adopt a sensible realism, one that recognizes most of the entities and facts with which we have cognitive and practical dealings and which are of interest and importance to us to exist independently of any particular conceptual-theoretical scheme, while at the same time recognizing that this relative status does attach to some of the objects and facts we, if we so choose, recognize as existing or holding. This via media gives something to both the realist and the antirealist, though, it must be confessed, much more than half the loaf to the former. William P. Alston Syracuse University


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Notes 1. This is far from an exhaustive catalogue of the views labeled ‘realism’. For example there are various realisms in the philosophy of perception: “direct realism”, “critical realism”, etc. 2. Putnam 1981, p. 49. 3. This does not imply that all human conceptualization can be achieved without the use of language. 4. Note the restriction to our choices. A view according to which reality depends on the conceptual or theoretical choices of some other cognitive subject(s), such as God, would be a wholly different matter. See Plantinga 1982. 5. See, e.g., Plantinga 1982, Olson 1997, pp. 159-162, Cortens 2000, Ch. 3. 6. For the sake of concision, I will sometimes refer only to conceptualization where the conjunction of this with theorizing is tacitly understood. 7. For a treatment of ‘religion’ in these terms see Alston 1967. 8. To be sure, this view of the matter presupposes a particular position on a controversial issue, viz., whether reality itself is perfectly precise, any vagueness or other indeterminacy attaching solely to our attempts to conceptualize and describe it. I cannot enter into this here except to say that the side of the conflict just expressed seems to me to be incomparably the superior position. 9. For a more extended treatment of what this kind of realism need not be committed to, see Alston “What Metaphysical Realism Is Not” (unpublished). 10. This is reflected in the Kantian and Hegelian utterances of Putnam. For example. “If one must use metaphorical language, then let the metaphor be this:

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the mind and the world jointly make up the mind and the world (Or, to make the metaphor even more Hegelian, the Universe makes up the Universe—with minds—collectively—playing a special role in the making up)”. Putnam 1981, xi. 11. It is not necessary for this argument to take antirealism to be so extreme as to hold that the entities and facts in question are totally different relative to different schemes. Some significant differences will give the view a distinctively antirealist character. 12. No doubt, each of the rival metaphysical positions is faced with difficult problems in working out its scheme in a wholly satisfactory way. But it is not as if one unique position is markedly superior to all the others in this respect.


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Bibliography Alston, William P. 1967. “Religion”, in Encyclopedia of Philosophy , ed., Paul Edwards. New York: Macmillan and Free Press. Alston, William P. 1993. “Epistemic Desiderata”, Philos. Phen. Res., 53, no. 3, pp. 527-551. Alston, William P. 1996. A Realist Conception of Truth . Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Alston, William P. Forthcoming. “Sosa on Realism”, in a volume on Sosa’s work in Blackwell’s series, Philoso phers and Their Critics , to be edited by John Greco. Alston, William P. Unpublished. “What Metaphysical Realism Is Not”. Cortens, Andrew J. 2000. Global Anti-Realism. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press. Devitt, Michael 1984. Realism and Truth. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Olson, Eric T. 1997. The Human Animal . New York: Oxford University Press. Plantinga, Alvin 1982. “How to Be an Anti-Realist”. Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association . Putnam, Hilary 1981. Reason, Truth, and History . Cam-

bridge: Cambridge University Press. Putnam, Hilary 1989. Representation and Reality . Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Sosa, Ernest 1999. “Existential Relativity”. Midwest Studies in Philosophy , 23, pp. 132-143. Whitehead, Alfred North. 1929. Process and Reality . New York: Macmillan.

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The Aquinas Lectures

Published by the Marquette University Press Milwaukee WI 53201-1881 USA All volumes available as ebooks. See web page:

http://www.mu.edu/mupress/ 1. St. Thomas and the Life of Learning. John F. McCormick, S.J. (1937) ISBN 0-87462-101-1 2. St. Thomas and the Gentiles. Mortimer J. Adler (1938) ISBN 0-87462-102-X 3. St. Thomas and the Greeks. Anton C. Pegis (1939) ISBN 0-87462-103-8 4. The Nature and Functions of Authority. Yves Simon (1940) ISBN 0-87462-104-6 5. St. Thomas and Analogy. Gerald B. Phelan (1941) ISBN 0-87462-105-4 6. St. Thomas and the Problem of Evil. Jacques Maritain (1942) ISBN 0-87462-106-2 7. Humanism and Theology. Werner Jaeger (1943) ISBN 0-87462-107-0 8. The Nature and Origins of Scientism. John Wellmuth (1944) ISBN 0-87462-108-9 9. Cicero in the Courtroom of St. Thomas Aquinas. E.K. Rand (1945) ISBN 0-87462-109-7 10. St. Thomas and Epistemology. Louis-Marie Regis, O.P. (1946) ISBN 0-87462-110-0 11. St. Thomas and the Greek Moralists. Vernon J.Bourke (1947) ISBN 0-87462-111-9 12. History of Philosophy and Philosophical Education. Étienne Gilson (1947) ISBN 0-87462-112-7 13. The Natural Desire for God. William R.O’Connor (1948) ISBN 0-87462-113-5 14. St. Thomas and the World State. Robert M. Hutchins (1949) ISBN 0-87462-114-3 15. Method in Metaphysics. Robert J. Henle, S.J. (1950) ISBN 0-87462-115-1 16. Wisdom and Love in St. Thomas Aquinas. Étienne Gilson (1951) ISBN 0-87462-116-X


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17. The Good in Existential Metaphysics. Elizabeth G. Salmon (1952) ISBN 0-87462-117-8 18. St. Thomas and the Object of Geometry. Vincent E. Smith (1953) ISBN 0-87462-118-6 19. Realism And Nominalism Revisted. Henry Veatch (1954) ISBN 0-87462-119-4 20. Imprudence in St. Thomas Aquinas. Charles J. O’Neil (1955) ISBN 0-87462-120-8 21. The Truth That Frees. Gerard Smith, S.J. (1956) ISBN 0-87462-121-6 22. St. Thomas and the Future of Metaphysics. Joseph Owens, C.Ss.R. (1957) ISBN 0-87462-122-4 23. Thomas and the Physics of 1958: A Confrontation. Henry Margenau (1958) ISBN 0-87462-123-2 24. Metaphysics and Ideology. Wm. Oliver Martin (1959) ISBN 0-87462-124-0 25. Language, Truth and Poetry. Victor M. Hamm (1960) ISBN 0-87462-125-9 26. Metaphysics and Historicity. Emil L. Fackenheim (1961) ISBN 0-87462-126-7 27. The Lure of Wisdom. James D. Collins (1962) ISBN 0-87462-127-5 28. Religion and Art. Paul Weiss (1963) ISBN 0-87462-128-3 29. St. Thomas and Philosophy. Anton C. Pegis (1964) ISBN 0-87462-129-1 30. The University in Process. John O. Riedl (1965) ISBN 0-87462-130-5 31. The Pragmatic Meaning of God. Robert O. Johann (1966) ISBN 0-87462-131-3 32. Religion and Empiricism. John E. Smith (1967) ISBN 0-87462-132-1 33. The Subject. Bernard Lonergan, S.J. (1968) ISBN 0-87462-133-X 34. Beyond Trinity. Bernard J. Cooke (1969) ISBN 0-87462-134-8 35. Ideas and Concepts. Julius R. Weinberg (1970) ISBN 0-87462-135-6 36. Reason and Faith Revisited. Francis H. Parker (1971) ISBN 0-87462-136-4

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37. Psyche and Cerebrum. John N. Findlay (1972) ISBN 0-87462-137-2 38. The Problem of the Criterion. Roderick M. Chisholm (1973) ISBN 0-87462-138-0 39. Man as Infinite Spirit. James H. Robb (1974) ISBN 0-87462-139-9 40. Aquinas to Whitehead: Seven Centuries of Metaphysics of Religion. Charles Hartshorne (1976) ISBN 0-87462-141-0 41. The Problem of Evil. Errol E. Harris (1977) ISBN 0-87462-142-9 42. The Catholic University and the Faith. Francis C. Wade, S.J. (1978) ISBN 0-87462-143-7 43. St. Thomas and Historicity. Armand J. Maurer, C.S.B. (1979) ISBN 0-87462-144-5 44. Does God Have a Nature? Alvin Plantinga (1980) ISBN 0-87462-145-3 45. Rhyme and Reason: St. Thomas and Modes of Discourse. Ralph Mcinerny (1981) ISBN 0-87462-148-8 46. The Gift: Creation. Kenneth L. Schmitz (1982) ISBN 0-87462-149-6 47. How Philosophy Begins. Beatrice H. Zedler (1983) ISBN 0-87462-151-8 48. The Reality of the Historical Past. Paul Ricoeur (1984) ISBN 0-87462-152-6 49. Human Ends and Human Actions: An Exploration in St. Thomas’ Treatment. Alan Donagan (1985) ISBN 0-87462153-4 50. Imagination and Metaphysics in St. Augustine. Robert O’Connell, S.J. (1986) ISBN 0-87462-227-1 51. Expectations of Immortality in Late Antiquity. Hilary A Armstrong (1987) ISBN 0-87462-154-2 52. The Self. Anthony Kenny (1988) ISBN 0-87462-155-0 53. The Nature of Philosophical Inquiry .Quentin Lauer, S.J. (1989) ISBN 0-87562-156-9 54. First Principles, Final Ends and Contemporary Philosophical Issues. Alasdair MacIntyre (1990) ISBN 0-87462-157-7 55. Descartes among the Scholastics. Marjorie Greene (1991) ISBN 0-87462-158-5 56. The Inference That Makes Science.Ernan McMullin (1992) ISBN 0-87462-159-3


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57. Person and Being. W. Norris Clarke, S.J. (1993) ISBN 0-87462-160-7 58. Metaphysics and Culture. Louis Dupré (1994) ISBN 087462-161-5 59. Mediæval Reactions to the Encounters between Faith and Reason. John F. Wippel (1995) ISBN 0-87462-162-3 60. Paradoxes of Time in Saint Augustine. Roland J. Teske, S.J. (1996) ISBN 0-87462-163-1 61. Simplicity As Evidence of Truth. Richard Swinburne (1997) ISBN 0-87462-164-X 62. Science, Religion and Authority: Lessons from the Galileo Affair. Richard J. Blackwell. (1998) ISBN 0-87462-165-8 63. What Sort of Human Nature? Medieval Philosophy and the Systematics of Christology. Marilyn McCord Adams. (1999) ISBN 0-87462-166-6 64. On Inoculating Moral Philosophy against God. John M. Rist. (2000) ISBN 0-87462-167-X. 65. A Sensible Metaphysical Realism. William P. Alston (2001) ISBN 0-87462-168-2.

ALSTON, W. - A Sensible Metaphysical Realism (2001)

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