• Michael
    15.4k
    He's talking about truth realism.frank

    Which, as Dummett would argue, is what metaphysical realism amounts to in the end.
  • frank
    15.7k
    Which, as Dummett would argue, is what metaphysical realism amounts to in the end.Michael

    I used to think that as well. Nagase explained why Davidson offers a way out. The cost, as I've tried to explain, is that realism becomes just another dogma.

    Although now that I sat that, i think I should add a grain of salt to it.

    @Nagase. Hi! If an advocate of Davidson is a realist, isn't that realism dogmatic?

    I feel like I'm praying to a philosophy professor.
  • Janus
    16.2k
    I didn’t mean like a universal purpose that you may come up with that seems to make sense within that experience, I meant the actual nature of such “profound” experiences being able to be had in the first place, do you think it says anything, or is it just a feature of consciousness in a way? (that’s what i meant by removed from the actual substance of the experience)Ignance

    I'm not sure what your question is. Are you asking whether our ability to have such experiences points to the existence of a spiritual realm or something like that? It's easy to imagine that they do, and probably humans have always imagined such things. Does that make those kinds of things we (necessarily vaguely) imagine anything more than things imagined? How could we ever know?
  • frank
    15.7k
    If you are keen on Davidson,Banno

    I'm not. He's just another American oddity.
  • Banno
    24.8k
    What is it that you think that quote from Davidson supports?

    From a bit further down the very same paragraph:
    The only legitimate reason I had for calling my position a form of realism was to reject positions like Dummett's antirealism
  • Michael
    15.4k
    What is it that you think that quote from Davidson supports?Banno

    @frank suggested that realists could use Davidson to support their position. I showed that Davidson rejected realism. He might also reject anti-realism, but that’s besides the point.
  • frank
    15.7k
    suggested that realists could use Davidson to support their position.Michael

    You were saying that truth realism is the same as physical realism (per Dummett). That's an intuitive position, but Davidson's ideas about translation allow us to think of meaning in the context of truth anti-realism in a way that is compatible with (not supports) realism.
  • Banno
    24.8k
    I showed that Davidson rejected realism.Michael

    That is too simple. What he rejects is the realism/antirealism distinction.
    He might also reject anti-realism, but that’s besides the point.Michael

    It is exactly the point. Davidson maintained that "Given a correct epistemology, we can be realists in all departments" (A coherence theory of truth and knowledge).

    Davidson's ideas about translation allow us to think of meaning in the context of truth anti-realism in a way that is compatible with (not supports) realism.frank

    It's not so much that he makes realism and antirealism compatible as that he renders them irrelevant.
  • Michael
    15.4k
    That is too simple. What he rejects is the realism/antirealism distinction.Banno

    He doesn’t deny the distinction, he offers an alternative.

    It is exactly the point. Davidson maintained that "Given a correct epistemology, we can be realists in all departments" (A coherence theory of truth and knowledge).Banno


    He wrote that in 1986. 4 years later in The Structure and Content of Truth he explained why he was too hasty in using the term “realist” as his position isn’t actually realist.

    But I was still under the influence of the idea that there is something important in the realist conception of truth; the idea that truth, and therefore reality, are (except for special cases) independent of what anyone believes or can know. Thus, I advertised my view as a brand of realism, realism with respect to the "external world," with respect to meaning, and with respect to truth.44
    The terms 'realism' and 'correspondence' were ill-chosen because they suggest the positive endorsement of a position, or an assump- tion that there is a clear positive thesis to be adopted, whereas all I was entitled to maintain, and all that my position actually entailed with respect to realism and truth, was the negative view that episte- mic views are false. The realist view of truth, if it has any content, must be based on the idea of correspondence, correspondence as applied to sentences or beliefs or utterances-entities that are pro- positional in character; and such correspondence cannot be made intelligible. I simply made the mistake of assuming realism and epi- stemic theories were the only possible positions. The only legitimate reason I had for calling my position a form of realism was to reject positions like Dummett's antirealism; I was concerned to reject the doctrine that either reality or truth depends directly on our episte- mic powers. There is a point in such a rejection. But it is futile either to reject or to accept the slogan that the real and the true are "independent of our beliefs." The only evident positive sense we can make of this phrase, the only use that consorts with the intentions of those who prize it, derives from the idea of correspondence, and this is an idea without content.45
  • frank
    15.7k

    Davidson allows us to separate truth realism from physical realism. His own stance on physical realism doesn't alter that.
  • Banno
    24.8k
    So are we agreed that Davidson is not offering support for either realism or antirealism?
  • hypericin
    1.6k
    Great OP.

    To "true" in "false" I would not add "unknown", but rather the entire spectrum of degrees of truth and falsity in between. Not one of the oppositions you cite sits exactly on one end of that spectrum or the other. Every domain posses independent reality of some sort or another, and every one is apprehended by a subjective being that necessarily perceives, and/or constructs, everything from its own perspective. Objectivity is a concept that cannot be instantiated in a mind.
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