It has occurred to me that ontological fictionalism has a unique position in the defense of an anti-Realist (or a-Realist as I prefer to think of myself) position. The anti-Realist makes a career of finding ways to discount the various ontological claims that Realists find themselves making. However, the Realist would be out of a job if he found that his arguments actually convinced the anti-Realist. Indeed, the Realist also makes a career of creating entities to combat the various reductions that anti-Realists always try to get away with. For the anti-Realist, ontological fictionalism represents the ultimate reduction. Let us see why.
These days , the Realist is always a realist about some particular entity because it plays some noun-like role in language. For example, one might be a realists about propositions because we use them as nouns (i.e. they 'refer'). The usual argument is that because the noun is an integral part of some particular discourse, and because the discourse is one we want to preserve philosophically, there must exist a reference for the noun.One such standard argument concludes that numbers and other mathematical entities exist. Now, I don't buy this argument, but that is an explanation we can save for another day. The point is that the Realist has taken it upon himself to declare that all things about which we speak exist. Thus, the only way that the anti-Realist can really gain leverage is to find some noun or class of nouns that we use which uncontroversially fails to refer to an entity. If such a noun or class of nouns could be found (call them "empty nouns"), then the trick is to reduce to an empty noun every other noun which one does not want to refer to any real object. Fictional entities and fictional worlds, then, are the single most promising prospect for assuming the role of the class of empty nouns. If it could be shown that fictional entities and worlds do not, exist at all, then one can hope to reduce other strange entities to fictional beings or worlds. Thus we have all different breeds of fictionalism: modal fictionalism, mathematical fictionalism, semantic fictionalism, etc.
Now what would happen if, in his pursuit of fictionalism, the anti-Realist were to fail to provide the Realist any significant evidence that indicates that fictional entities and worlds do not exist? Well let us first determine what the plight of today's anti-Realist really is. Today's anti-Realist hangs his hat on a Dummett-like or Putnam-like argument which shows that language lacks the ability to escape its own strictures. Perhaps the most convincing anti-Realist argument is the argument Kripke expounds in his interpretation of Wittgenstein. This argument boils down to a rather Quinean claim that all meaning relies on definition and all definitions rely on other definitions. The goal of this method is to show that meaning does not rely on reference because it does not rely on truth-conditions. If principle this can be shown to obtain (and some believe it can), then we can evade the Realist's reference-based ontology.
Unfortunately this anti-Realist tactic of undermining the troubling concept causes just about as many problems as it solves. For if meaning does not rely on reference, then it makes as little sense to say that nouns do not refer as it does to say that they do refer. In other words, the anti-Realist is making claims about a realm that he commands the Realist not to make claims about. He is a hypocrite. Now, some anti-Realists claim that it is enough to simply show that reference is nonsense, and from this fact it is obvious without argument that a noun cannot refer. This objection is not without warrant, but I do not think that many Realists find it convincing.
What the anti-Realist needs, in addition to this skeptical argument, is an empirical coup de gras. Should the anti-Realist find empirical support for his claim that there are no entities beyond thought and experience, then he is home-free, for he has the advantage over the Realist on both the a priori and the a posteriori fronts. So if the anti-Realist cannot find a suitable means of supporting his claim that fictional entities and worlds do not exist, then we will find ourselves in a stalemate: the Realist can now posit an abstract entity (or concrete entity, if we are Lewisians) to counter every anti-Realist reduction. Just so, the anti-Realist can perform a reduction for every abstact entity (or concrete entity) that the Realist cares to posit.
In short, the program of anti-Realism rides on the back of the project of ontological fictionalism. for it is on this project alone that it relies for an empirical advantage to buttress its theoretical stalemate.
-Priam's Pride
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2 comments:
I thoroughly enjoyed this piece. I am interested in realist-antirealist debate especially in philosophy of science domain.
“What the anti-Realist needs, in addition to this skeptical argument, is an empirical coup de gras.”
You resonate my sentiment, although I know how antirealists respond. The usual response I get is that neither realists nor antirealists can make empirical claim that favours either positions. What’s ironic about this is that antirealists themselves cannot commit to what they just claimed. They would end up bringing up silly things we believed in the past starting from belief in witches, ghosts, angels etc to stuff scientists believed as scientific theories like Phlogiston theory and Ptolemic astronomy. If you are discussing this with feminists or people in African American studies prime examples are sexual and racial injustice served by scientists to pursue their political and religious ideologies.
I think antirealists in the postmodernism, sociology camp are being too cynical about the scientific findings. I think antirealists should acknowledge at least the fact that improvements have been made in what we know over the time. Now what do the improvements reflect upon? The scientific realists would say that it reflect upon the external reality, while postmodernists and social constructivists would say that it reflects upon other internal beliefs we have about the world. But if these improvements only reflected upon other internal beliefs we have, I can’t see how this web of belief can ever expand and improve? If what we know comes only from our internal beliefs, how does the web of belief ever change? I would think that the web would be always consistent. So I think we can say that external world does shape our belief. It’s not just our personal bias and prejudice that shape our knowledge like postmodernists say.
So I think postmodernist and social constructivist wing of antirealist is fairly easy to discard for realists. Notion of objectivity can be defended on the grounds that external reality does shape our beliefs.
I think the real problem lies with corresponding our language to reality as you pointed out. I think you dealt with this problem in your writing briefly.
I think more sophisticated antirealists are right that we simply have to assume that our language refers to the reality. But I still don’t think this is a problem for realists. If we don’t have any problem referring to something with our language, I think it is correct to assume that our language reflects upon reality.
"But if these improvements only reflected upon other internal beliefs we have, I can’t see how this web of belief can ever expand and improve? If what we know comes only from our internal beliefs, how does the web of belief ever change?"
Well, this is not precisely true. What the anti-Realist cannot deny, for better or for worse, is that there is a foundation to our beliefs, even if only the empirical ones. For we do not determine the sense experience that we are always presented to us. That is, the anti-Realist must always keep in the back of her mind that the Given is not subjectively manipulable in any direct way. That is, while we determine the meaning of the world, we do not determine the raw input of the world.
Thus, improvements can be explained as an increase in the overall coherence of worldview. So scientific advance is an increase in the coherence of our theories about physical interaction. Whenever we can account for more of the phenomena in a unified and consistent way, we can decisively claim scientific advance.
The anti-Realist, in admitting the presence of the Given, need not think that she has thereby ceded ground to the Realist. For the Given is a purely subjective experience. The phenomena, as such, are private.
In short, the web of beliefs changes because it does not adhere to its own rules. We have enforced certain logical and pre-logical restrictions upon the possibility of belief (e.g. the principle of non-contradiction, Occam's razor, the standard of theoretical simplicity and unity, etc.). But these restrictions are extremely difficult to match up to the sense-data. This is evident in the experience of an anomaly. As Thomas Kuhn tells us, the theory must either (1) admit that it is insufficient in the face of the anomaly, or (2) change in order to accommodate the anomaly. Thus, the empirical stalemate, apparently, continues.
-Priam's Pride
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