Realism and relativism

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Volumn 36, Issue SUPPL., 2002, Pages 1-25

  Bilgrami, Akeel ^a  

^a Och Spine at New York Presbyterian Hospitals

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EID: 61449176221     PISSN: 00294624     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/1468-0068.36.s1-1.1     Document Type: Review

References (18)

1. René Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, translated by John Cottingham, (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1986).
2. In Donald Davidson, Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984).
3. It would seem that there is an element of analyticity presupposed in the argument, at the point where one assumes a certain sort of connection between the very notion of ghosts and the belief that people die. But some weaker connection than the despised analyticity may be just as good to work the trick (and in fact there had better be one since Davidson has himself denied any truck with analyticity. ) Perhaps it is enough that for the initial belief that there are ghosts to be properly attributed, it's not so much that any specific defining belief is also required to be attributed in each and every case where that belief is attributed to an agent in interpretation. Different agents may have different concepts of what a ghost is (of what the term 'ghost' means) and so there is no canonical belief or set of beliefs defining of ghosts. To stretch this point a little further, particular agents may have different concepts of what a ghost is at different times of speaking. Thus, the concept may differ from person to person, even from occasion to occasion, and so there is no analyticity, merely highly localized and idiolectical use of words and deployment of concepts. But still some background of true beliefs (by the interpreters' lights) is required to be attributed to identify any given agent's belief about any particular sort of thing (such as ghosts) at any given time, and that is enough to ward off the comprehensive scepticism.
4. This argument is given in a subsequent paper entitled "The Method of Truth and Metaphysics", Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation (Oxford University Press, 1984).
5. See Chapter VI in Thomas Nagel, The View from Nowhere, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986).
6. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, (Blackwell 1953). Because the point in Davidson emerges by semantic ascent, it seems to say something higher-order than what is usually found in Wittgenstein, but the philosophical significance is the same. In Wittgenstein the point is usually expressed by saying that a particular thought or the meaning of any particular term must be such that the criterion for its attribution or use is something we can tell has been applied correctly when it has been. Because of the semantic ascent involved in Davidson's reply to the idea of a super-knower, it's not any particular thought or meaning of which this philosophical point is made but about the application of the criteria for the term 'thought' (or 'meaning') itself.
7. See Donald Davidson, "Truth Rehabilitated" in Rorty and his Critics, edited by Robert Brandom, (Blackwell, 2000).
8. In "Truth Rehabilitated" (see last footnote), Davidson's characterization of pragmatism comes close to this caricature. The pragmatism being sketched in the present paper by contrast is ignoring a host of what I, in the text above, have called 'reckless' remarks made by pragmatists over decades which encourage this caricature. In doing so it is really going back to the pragmatism to be found in Peirce's classic paper "The Fixation of Belief". That extraordinarily profound paper has been an inspiration for the sort of pragmatism that has come over decades to be associated with Columbia's Philosophy Department (which was - lest it's forgotten - for years John Dewey's department) thanks to the determined advocacy of Isaac Levi who has himself shaped a highly original philosophy of belief revision out of it. I am happy to see this paper of mine and others I have been writing on the subject over the years as contributing in minor ways to the propagation of what might as well be called "Columbia Pragmatism" against a range of other less attractive epistemologies in the field. My debt to this paper by Peirce and to Levi should be apparent to those who have read them.
9. Rorty in his reply to my essay in the volume mentioned in footnote 7 suggests that I had tried to define truth in that essay. See below for more on this misreading.
10. A certain amount of holism may enter, of course, which would make one doubt a number of implied beliefs if evidence is encountered against any one. But this would still be different from the logical possibility of empirical beliefs being false, giving rise to doubts of a general and comprehensive kind regarding all such beliefs.
11. In his "Is Truth a Goal of Enquiry"? Davidson Vs Wright", Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 45, no. 180, July 1995. Rorty quite fails to see the attractions of the pragmatism being presented here, and like Davidson is happy to give up the idea (an idea that is preserved in the pragmatism being presented here) that truth is a goal of inquiry. See also his paper mentioned in footnote 9.
12. W. V. Quine, Word and Object (MIT Press, 1960), pp. 24-45.
13. See John McDowell's essay "Towards Rehabilitating Objectivity" in the volume mentioned in footnote 7.
14. See my contribution to the volume mentioned in footnote 7 and Rorty's reply to it.
15. There may be a temptation to drive a wedge between knowledge and truth here, allowing that Austin is right about knowledge but disallowing us our criticism of Davidson and Rorty on truth. This wedge would be based on some separation of the concept of knowledge from that of truth, a move that I think should be regarded with great suspicion, a suspicion which I will not articulate now.
16. Austin, "Other Minds," Philosophical Papers, (Oxford University Press, 1960) p. 98.
17. Crispin Wright, "Facts and Certainty," British Academy Lecture, 1985.
18. See the discussion of 'goldfinches' on p. 88-89 in the essay mentioned in footnote 16.