two kinds of conceptual scheme realism philip clayton southern journal of philosophy

7/27/2019 Two Kinds of Conceptual Scheme Realism Philip Clayton Southern Journal of Philosophy

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The Southern Journal o f Philosophy (1991) Volume XXIX,No. 2

TWO KINDS OFCONCEPTUAL-SCHEME REALISMPhilip ClaytonWilliams College

It is almost a truism in contemporary philosophy that wehave no direct access to reality. Everything that we say,think or perceive is filtered through some conceptual scheme(CS). Along with debating the precise nature and role ofCSs-a debate that I will not pretend to summarize here-philosophers have wrestled with the implications of suchCSs for realist theories of language. Still unresolved is theclaim that CS-philosophers may at the same time be realist.I wish to analyze and defend that claim here.Positions of this type I shall call conceptual-schemerealisms. It is an extended family, with close to a dozenrelated members appearing in a recent census entitledRealism and Antirealism. The volumes absent presence isHilary Putnam, whose internal realism refuses to give upjudgments of rightness and talk of the same entities, whileinsisting at the same time that such judgments areinternal to scientific practice and involve the verdict onwhich inquiry would ultimately settle.2I propose starting with Putnams case for CS-realism asan instance of an attractive mediating p ~ s i t i on .~show howPutnam has correctly retained both CSs and the rightnessof realism, while arguing that his particular fusion of the twois unsuccessful. This critique will allow me to contrast hisversion of CS-realism with another version, which I shallcall regulative realism. My hope is to convince the readerof the superiority of the latter.

Philip Clayton is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Williams Collegeand currently Fulbright Professor at the University of Munich, Germany.He has published Explanation from Physics to Theology: An Essay inRationality and Religion (Yale U. P., 1989), and is currently working on abook manuscript, Toward a Pluralistic Metaphysics: Models of God in EarlyModem Philosophy.167


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I. Realism vs. ConventionalismIn the debate one has to deal with several differentrealisms and a variety of Putnams. Realisms run rampantthese days; I focus on four here: (a) the so-calledmetaphysical realist holds that there is a mind-independentreality (MIR) to which we can have some sort of access. Iwill refer to this position as MIR-realism. (b) Advocates ofMIR-realism may or may not hold that this reality is usefulas an epistemological tool, e.g., for justifying particularknowledge claims. When they hold that it is, we might callthem justif icatory (metaphysical) realists.4 (c) Putnam has

defended internal or pragmatic realism, th at is, t he positiontha t the re is good reason to construe our languagerealistically, even though we can only specify which objectsthe world consists of from within a particular theory. (d)Regulative realism makes its appearance in the final section(and proleptically throughout); it is the position that realistlanguage serves an indispensable role as a regulativeprinciple, that is, as a statement of the intended ideal limitof our referential language. Even i f one is skepticalregarding arguments for the convergence of language andreality, I argue, the postulation of some sort of convergencebetween our language and reality remains fundamental toour language use.Let the term non-realism stand for the position(s) opposedto realism. It should follow that there will be in principle avariety of non-realisms, depending on which realism aparticular critic takes to be unjustified or unintelligible. Inthe present discussion the non-realism that most often servesas sparring partner is conventionalism. More accurately, itis ontological conventionalism: the position that we createour realities, so that a realist construal of our language isnever justified.5There may be as many Putnams as realisms. I will followDevitt i n distinguishing three Putnams6 (taking worriesabout their correspondence to some imagined Real Putnamto be beside the point, at least for the latest Putnam). Thispaper analyzes three different (but related) authors: EarlyPutnam, defender of MIR-realism; Middle Putnam, troubledMIR-realist, already slipping; and Late Putnam (vintagePutnam?), internal or pragmatic realist.All the Putnams have opposed ontologicalconventionalism, which they take to be an untenableposition because self-refuting. The Refutation ofConventionalism (2:153ff), for instance, is a sustained168


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attack on the notion of ontological relativity: Goodman(idealism generally) is wrong in moving from the fact thatthere are (observationally) equivalent descriptions to theconclusion that there is no fact of the matter. Siding withGoodman would entail dispensing with the use ofcounterfactuals, as well as accepting some form ofverificationism. But the fact that we observe no difference(between say, asser t ions that do and do not supportcounterfactuals) is insufficient to prove that talk of adifference is nonsensical.The ontological conventionalism here left behind is onewell lost. It unnecessarily makes even semantic notions(reference, truth) theory-dependent. Further, it cannotaccount for the reference of different theories to the samething. With irony, Putnam has shown th at conventionalistsclaim to know too much. Thinkers like Feyerabend claim toknow that nothing could fix the extension of terms beyondthe sorts of (conventional) parameters tha t they list; but th ismakes them closet essentialists (2162ff). Early Putnamsultimate reason for rejecting positivist conventionalisms wasth at they are based on a n idealist or idealist-tending worldview, and . . . that view does not correspond to reality(2207). At bottom, conventionalism provides an inadequateaccount of how we actually employ terms like reference andtruth; it is a bad reconstruction of our language use.On the other hand, one cannot defend particularknowledge claims simply by asserting that our language usedirectly mirrors reality, for we never actually speak of realityin the absence of a n interpretative framework. It is not hardto show th at Early Putnams arguments agains t this sort ofjustificatory realist position (and later, his argumentsagainst metaphysical realism tout court) depend cruciallyupon the pervasiveness of conceptual schemes. For example,the famous model-theoretic argument against metaphysicalrealism (3:l-25; M M S 125ff) begins from the fact that forevery model some interpretation must be chosen. Similarly,the progress of any science depends on a wide array ofinterpretative decisions, which determine everything fromdecisions between theories to the reference of keyobservational terms ( RT H 32ff).Early Putnam believed he could still defend a causalrealism in the face of CS arguments. But the problem withthe Early Putnams realism, as the Late Putnam haseffectively argued, is that it paid insufficient attention to theubiquity of our dependence on CSs. The multitude of possibleinterpretive frameworks that contributed to Quines

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underdeterminism thesis requires a much more radicalresponse. For one, Early Putnams semantics remained rule-based (e.g., 2:126ff), which conflicted with the holism (thecentrality of systematic concerns) defended by Quine. WherePutnam went right was that, as he became more and moreaware of the impact of CSs, he still fought to hold onto therealism of his earlier theories of meaning and reference.Suppose it is the case that we cannot get outside of ourconceptual structure without implying that we possessjustified true beliefs about whatever world really is, andsuppose that such knowledge claims are untenable. Might itnot still be possible to preserve the realist intuitions thatunderlie metaphysical realism? What was right in the dyingdays of Putnams causal realism was h is attempt to do justtha t. Crucial in this transitory Putnam, then-the one th atactually had it right in the movement from the Scylla ofjustificatory realism to the Charybdis of internal realism-was the insistence that we hold onto both CS and world,without giving up either.

11.Against Internal RealismThe internal or pragmatic realism (IR) of LatePutnam, as is well known, is the position that the very ideaof metaphysical realism is incoherent. That is, questionssuch as what an object Really is, how to know the Truereference of a word or sentence, or how to interpret theObjective Facts of the matter are wrongheaded from thestart. Each locution presupposes a Gods Eye point ofview; yet the very notion of Objective Reality appears nolonger tenable as soon as we realize the interpretation-boundness of all our beliefs. All that Putnam now

countenances is the observation that, from within our CS,we still accept a referential orientation of our theories; ourCS still posits a world, albeit a world-under-an-interpretation. For Late Putnam, such theory-internalrealism is all the realism one needs.Many of the consequences of IR are ones familiar toreaders of non-realist philosophies. Truth becomes a varianton warranted assertability, idealized rational accept-ability. We can accept a statement if it fits well with otherstatements tha t we hold, an d truth is perfect goodness offit ( R T H ,chap. 3). Talk of essences and unknowable things-in-themselves is banned: to claim more objectivity than weactually possess is to reintroduce the idea of an AbsolutePerspective, a move ruled out (among other things) byEinsteins special relativity theory. Science can be said to170


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progress, though the progress claim is relative to theconceptual scheme that scientists have decided to employ.The problem is, IR gives up too much. Whatever theproblems with MIR-realism (and they are serious), they arenot conceptual. None of Putnams arguments force us toabandon the very i d e a of reference to some mind-independent reality (however much his rhetoric pushes us inthis direction). Imagine for instance a MIR-realist who, likePutnam, posits an ideal theory that meets all our operationalconstraints, but who is not a justificatory realist. Byhypothesis, she, too, would hold that we could never observeanything about reality that would be inconsistent with such

a theory. However, she is the more skeptical of the two: theideal theory might still be false for, in Devitts phrase,Being ideal is species-relative (p. 186). That is, there isnothing contradictory in the supposition tha t there just maybe aspects of reality that even the ideal human theory failsto grasp, or to grasp correctly.A similar point can be made i n defense of the intelligibilityof causal realism. The causal realist may not be able todefine cause in a way that picks out one and only onerelation between the causing reality and the caused term.But the non-internal realist does not need to hold thatsentences containing the word cause fix this relation; thecausal relation itself fixes the relation (makes it true orfalse), whether our sentences pick it out correctly orBoth of the last two examples suggest that IR is guilty ofinsufficiently distinguishing MIR-realism from justificatoryrealism. Putnams attack on metaphysical realismpresupposes that MIR-realist talk is bankrupt if its formerjustificatory role collapses (e.g., R TH 63-4). Of course it istrue that MIR-realism cannot still play a justificatory roleif justificatory realism is untenable. But, as we will see, itis thoroughly plausible that MIR-realism could play rolesother than epistemological.The internal realis t wants to eliminate ontologicalquestions which arise in contexts that are not decidable. Butthis move, best intentions notwithstanding, must give ourexisting CS de fac to control. Putnam will not delegatedecisions about allowable questions to a final realist telos,or even to a future CS; must this not mean that suchdecisions can be made only from the perspective of the now-ruling CS? Yet if all theoretical progress is CS-relative, andthe ideal of a reality on which various CSs converge dropsout, it becomes difficult to see how IR really differs from theconventionalism th at Putnam ha s so frequently attacked.

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Make no mistake: IR differs verbal ly from conventionalistpositions. Putnams truth is idealized rationalacceptability (RTH 49), or correct assertability (under theright conditions) (SR 198), or (with caveats) beingverified, or accepted, or accepted in the long run (3:22n).Still, in each incarnation of what I shall call the idealizationtheory of truth, two elements recur: (1)Putnam emphasizesthe conditions of acceptance fo r us. He makes (can make) noappeal to some possible correspondence with mind-independent states of affairs (thus the rhetorical flourish ofthe dreaded Gods Eye Point of View), but insteadadvances a concept of truth determined solely from withinour own rationality. (2) In each case Putnam includes someappeal to ideal epistemic conditions or a perfect state ofknowledge. This move reveals his wish that truth not bereduced to the coincidental parameters of one culturesnotion of rationality, to mere justification-here-and-now; fortruth is supposed to be a property of a statement thatcannot be lost, whereas justification can be lost (RTH 55).In this passage Putnam flirts with a convergence theory oftruth: We speak as if there were such things as epis-temically ideal conditions, and we call a statement true ifit would be justified under such conditions. But suchconditions, like the fiction of a frictionless plane, are neverachieved; they function as a goal that we can approximateto a very high degree of approximation. Is Putnamclaiming to know, then, that science is converging on theideal?If not, he holds something very much like regulativerealism (below). But if so, I am skeptical tha t a convergencetheory of scientific realism can provide the necessarygrounds for a n idealization theory of truth. The painful fateof Poppers analogous theory of verisimilitude revealed howdifficult it is to speak of an y sort of measurable convergenceon truth when we cannot say of any particular statementthat it is true. To the extent that Putnam has been unableto provide an account of idealized rational acceptability, ourcontemporary conditions of acceptability may make no claimto approximate (or even connect with) some such ideals. Infact, the whole notion of idealized conditions, to the extentthat they imply a final telos, sounds rather strange in themouth of an internal realist. Pearce and Rantala, forinstance, have shown that the statement Cow refers tocows, which Putnam labels analytic from within atheory, must come out for Putnam as meaningless or simplyfalse, insofar as its reference (to cows) on his own172


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assumptions is not absolute but only one of many possibleinterpretations of the meaning of the sentence.sIf Putnam cannot specify which statements are more thanacceptable for me, hi s criticisms of various relativismsg maycome back to haunt him. This becomes progressively cleareras one moves through R H T . To take just one example: wejudge (and, he claims, are justified in judging) that theAustralians worldview is crazy if they believe th at we allare brains in a vat because the guru of Sydney so teaches.Their belief is incoherent for us, which we ultimately judgeby seat of the pants feel (133).With this sort of bottomline, it seems impossible that any general standards for

idealized could ever be given. But if Putnams perfectgoodness of fit threatens to become goodness of fit (by ourown lights), can it really amount to anything more thananother way of worldmaking alongside the other samplesoutlined in Goodmans irrealist manifesto?The same point, it might be noted in passing, could bemade by comparing Putnam and Dummett. Putnam speaksof the inspiration that he has received from Dummettswork and uses it as a crucial transition into his own position(e.g., 3:xvi). Putnam has made the comparison simple for us(the same cannot be said of Dummett): for Dummett, truthis justif ication; for Putnam, truth is idealizedjustification. Clearly, the whole weight of the distinctionbetween them rests on the one word idealized. EitherPutnam can give it content, or he cant. If he cant, hisposition dissolves into the conventionalism that he hasresisted in Dummetts work. Yet there seems no way that a ninternal realist, working under the limitations imposed bythe Late Putnam, could ever provide a theory of idealizedconditions without ceasing to be internalist.

111.Conceptual-Scheme RealismThe groundwork for CS-realism has been nicely laid withPutnams help-even if his ground has a tendency tolandslide into ontological conventionalism. Let us now lookat CS-realism on its own, sta rt ing from the question of truth.The concept of truth can be called on to play either anontological or an epistemological role. Once upon a time itmarched under both banners: for most of the tradition after

Aristotle, truth represented what is; at the same time,knowledge was glossed as justified true belief. Today, I willargue, (1) the link o f justif ica tion and truth can no longerbe maintained. Skeptical considerations of the CS variety(familiar enough through Hume, Kant, Wittgenstein, Quine,173


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an d othe rs) ha ve now removed truths formerlyunpro blema tic l ink to epistemological discussions.Arguments against direct realism and correspondenceclaims, including those championed by Putnam, succeed inruling out the epistemic use of appeals to truth or truth-connectedness. Epistemology therefore becomes the scienceof warranted assertability. For instance, in natural sciencewe have (comparatively) high warran t or probability (by ourlights) for many of our assertions; we are successful withpredictions an d justified in the use of counterfactuals. But,given the failure of Putnam/Boyds convergence argument,such success is just as consistent with an idealist orpragmatist construal of science, in short, with the view thatthe world does not consist of the entities posited by currentscience.l l Thus we cannot be said to k n o w t h a t o u rwarranted assertions are true. As a result, no direct epistemicappropriation or use can be made of the term true.On the other hand, (2) truth need not be redefined in aninternulist fa sh ion .The CS insight does not compel one alsoto remove from the concept of truth its t radi t ionalassociation with mind-independent reality. In fact, there isevery reason not to do so. However much the CS perspectiveof (1) is stressed, it remains preferable to interpret thedenotation of our theories and terms realistically: they meanto be about the world. This is the intuition that every realistis scrambling to preserve. The contribution of Putnamscareer has been to show that some sort of realist construalof our language can be maintained without the untenableclaim that we can justify specific correspondence claimseither individually or as a whole. This insight-the idea ofjuxtapo sing theses (1) and (2)-is the hard core of conceptual-scheme realism.However, with this insight we also reach the point wherethe two kinds of CS-realism, internal and regulative, partcompany. I have maintained that there is nothing incoherentin the idea of traditional MIR-realism, that Putnam confusesan epistemic with a conceptual difficulty. The optimalsolution would involve bypassing these epistemic difficulties,approaching the question from another angle. And exactlythis is th e logic behind defending MIR-realism (or truth) asentailed by the human knowledge endeavor and, in thissense, as regulative for our epistemic practice.

IV. In Defense of Regulative RealismIn opening I defined a regulative principle as a statementof the intended ideal limit of our (referential) language which

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guides linguistic usage. Truth, I wish to claim, is bestunderstood as a regulative principle necessarily implied inany process of seeking knowledge. Except for a cruciallimitation, Putnam also has defended the merit of some suchprinciples. Recall that his IR amounts to the position thattruth is not equivalent to rational assertability now but isan idealization of rational aceptability. Hence hisassertion, we speak as if there were such things asepistemically ideal conditions, and we call a statementtrue if it would be justified under such conditions.12 Thisposition is not far removed from the postulation of a handfulof broadly regulating conditions for human inquiry.

Here is the limitation. Internalists deny that a regulativetheory can speak meaningfully of a true or objective idealtelos which is anything more than ideal verif icationaccording to our epistemic standards. A regulative principleof ideal correspondence to what is Really (noumenally) thecase would be unintelligible. Putnams sufficient reason:the ideal theory, by our lights could not turn out to befalse; to assert this possibility is to assert nothing whatever.But this will not wash: a false ideal theory is onlyunintelligible under the assumption of a verificationisttheory of meaning. Indeed, Pu tnam confesses that he is stilldrawn to verificationism as a semantics or theory ofunderstanding ( M M S 129). Though a long discussion isrequired (and can be found, inter alia, in the literature onDummett), I see nothing to compel us to construe meaningusing only verificationist methods. In what follows I shallattack such positions not head-on but by defending adifferent version of CS-realism on its own terms.Regulative realism involves a pragmatized Kantian theoryof truth, a wedding of Kantian and Peircean insights; forthis reason it slips between the metaphysical and internalisthorns t hat realists have consistently impaled themselves on.The position accepts the pervasive role of conceptualschemes: we speak from within perspectives or interpretedsystems, and the intended link between our words a nd theirreferents can no longer be taken as unproblematic. As aresult, we cannot use MIR-realist claims as direct units ofepistemic measurement for existing theories. Instead,realism (or truth) is taken as a regulative condition ofdiscourse oriented to knowledge or understanding. Realismreceives its warrant not by justifying portions of a theory oreven theories as a whole, but through the inevitable role itplays in our discourse about theories that are about theworld. The distinction goes back to Kant, who separated

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constitutive statements (e.g., statements within physicsabout the lawlike behavior of bodies) from regulative ones(statements about the nature and conditions of scientificinquiry in general). In a more recent appropriation, SimonBlackburn defends the distinction between accepting themaxim of inquiring into nature as though every event hasa cause, on the one hand, and believing it to be the case thatevery event has a cause, on the other.13From the perspective of this distinction, internal realistsappear as both too optimistic and too skeptical. Toooptimistic, because they try to specify ideal in terms oftheories and by means of an epistemic use of convergence:we can use idealized terms (a frictionless plane) as long asour practice approximates them to a very high degree ofapproximation. But it is not clear that there i s a nunproblematic while still helpful sense in which we canspeak of some theories as being truer than others. Yet suchthin kers are also too skeptical, because they believethemselves compelled to give up the ideal of MIR-realismcompletely. As we saw, this move is not required if we canreinstate MIR-realism as a semantic notion regulating ourlinguistic practice, without using it as a tool for justification.Regulative realism thus turns on a sort of pragmatictranscendental argument.14 In entering into the search forthe truth of some matter, we implicitly posit a f inalconclusion to our inquiry, at which (if it were reached) ourepistemic st an da rd s would converge, our var iou sdisagreements would be overcome, and justified belief wouldequal true belief.15 This view claims neither that such anultimate consensus will occur, nor that science can be provento be progressing toward (converging upon) this ideal. I takeagnosticism on this question to have been part of Peircesconvergence theory as well: Truth is that concordance ofan abstract statement with the ideal limit towards whichendless investigation would tend to bring scientific belief,which concordance the abstract statement may possess byvirtue of the confession of its inaccuracy and one-sidedness,and this confession is an essential ingredient of truth.lGGiven its unwillingness to presume convergence as a fact,the regulating concept of a final truth might then have tobe labeled a fiction: in our inquiry we act as i f we areconverging on a final truth.17 That regulative realism can becalled a fiction shows that it is not a thesis about the waythat the world is; it is not a hypothesis alongside theoriesabout electron properties or the constituents of DNA orphysical cosmology. Instead, it operates on a different level,176


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viz:, as an account of what is presupposed in the veryactivity of engaging in inquiry. To dismiss an analysis ofthe assumptions of scientific activity because they areempirically unverifiable would be patently absurd.But why introduce convergence at all; why not construetruth as merely a fiction or descriptive label for our presentunderstanding? Because truth has its normative side, itsaspect that points beyond the present contingent practicesof our linguistic community. This is the insight that spawnedPutnams strange breed of normative internalism, hisintroduction of idealized in front of rationalacceptability. That philosophers now have difficultyanalyzing the correspondence (word-world) relation does notnegate the normative component in the truth concept.Instead, it suggests to us that we cash out the normativityin a different fashion. In broad outline, the change hasinvolved a shift to theories based on coherence rather thancorrespondence.18 Assuming that the general shift tocoherence is justified, there are good reasons to look topragmatics, the analysis of how we discourse about theories.First, there is little sign of progress on the more formalquestions of what exactly coherence is and why it should betruth-indicative.19 Second, statements about linguisticpractice can be normative and yet can be made withoutneeding to place oneself outside language as in the case ofcorrespondence claims. Last, necessary or ideal conditions ofinquiry seem perfectly suited to convey our intuitions aboutthe normative component of inquiry, namely that in it weare trying to get the world right and can err in the process.The agreement on which investigators would finallyconverge therefore represents the ideal outcome of theprocess of inquiry (hence the content of truth), and thetechniques that foster reasoned convergence of opinionrepresent ideal means of inquiry (hence necessary criteria fortruth).If realism is a fiction, then, it is one tha t is both usefuland (in some sense) necessary. With Kant, we could say thatwithout truth as a n idea of reason, we would not havescience at all. For science as a corporate intellectual projectaims to achieve consensus of understanding based on thediscovery of an order of reality independent of the inquirycommunity. But regulative arguments need not be limited toscientific inquiry. Arguably, the same holds for all discourseaimed at understanding.20 Perhaps the argument can begrounded in the very structure of assertions themselves: toassert is to predicate something (a quality) of something (an

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object). Thus each individual judgment aims at a positedcorrespondence between what is asserted and what is heldto be the case. That the verification of this act is beyond ourken does not prove that we meant something less byassertions in the first place. Whether in predication, or inscience as the organized pursuit of knowledge, or in our morespecific methodological assumptions (such as the epistemicvalue of replicability), we make regulative use of concepts forwhich we have (can have) no substantive proof. Withoutthese assumptions, there might still be isolated judgmentsand empirical generalizations. But without them there wouldbe no organized inquiry as we know it.21

NOTES1 See Pater French, T. E. Uehling, Jr., and H. K. Wettstein, eds., Realismand Antirealism, Midwest Studies in Philosophy, vol. 12 (Minneapolis:Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1988).2 Putnam, Three Kinds of Scientific Realism (henceforth SR),Philosophical Quarterly 32 (1982), pp. 199-200. Other abbreviations used inthe text are: MMS for Meaning and the Moral Sciences (London: RKP,1978); RTH for Reason, Truth and History (Cambridge: CUP, 1981); andMFR for The Many Faces o f Realism (LaSalle: Open Court, 1987). Allreferences preceded by a volume number are to Putnams Philosophical

Papers , 3 vols.; cited are vol. 2, Mind, Language and Reali ty (CUP, 1978)and vol. 3, Realism and Reason (CUP, 1983).3 In addition to the philosophical importance of Putnams work, one alsogets ones moneys worth from him insofar as he has provided interestingarguments for a t least three different positions on realism over the years.Putnam holds the prize for having rejected more of his own positions thanmost philosophers formulate during their careers.4 Or, less kindly, hyper-metaphysical realists. Hartry Fields article,Realism and Relativism, The Journal o f Philosophy 79 (1982), pp. 553-567, remains one of the clearest defenses of the separability of metaphysicaland justificatory realisms.5 It is not difficult to show that ontological conventionalism bears

important similarities to various forms of idealism (the view th at objectsare mind-constructed); see J. J. C. Smart, Realism v. Idealism, Phi losophy61 (1986),pp. 295-312;and Joseph Margolis, Cognitive Issues in the Realist-Idealist Dispute, in Peter French et al., eds., Studies in Epistemology,Midwest Studies in Philosophy, vol. 5 (Minneapolis: Univ. of MinnesotaPress, 1980).But the term idealism is so ambiguous and h as such a diversehistory that it should either be examined at length or not used a t all.6 See Michael Devitt, The Renegade Putnam, Chap. 11 of Realism andTruth (Princeton,1984).The Devitt reference below is also to this work.7 See Clark Glymour, On Conceptual Scheming, or Confessions of aMetaphysical Realist, Synthese 51 (1982),p. 177.8 David Pearce and Veikko Ranta la, Realism and Reference, Synthese9 For example, in Putnam, Why Reason Cant Be Naturalized, 3:229ff.10 Nelson Goodman, Ways o f Wor ldm aking (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1978).11 For a review of the difficulties with the convergence argument see LarryLaudan, A Confutat ion of Convergent Realism, in Jar re tt Leplin, ed.,Scientific Realism (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1984). Margolis has

52 (1982),pp. 439-448.

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given an important defense of the idealist position; see note 5 above. Onpragmatism see, e.g., Michael Bradie, Pragmatism and Internal Realism,Analys i s 39 (1979),pp. 4-10.12 Putnam, RTH 55. Note also that he writes in SR as if a regulativeview were part an d parcel of his own internalist scientific realism.13 Simon Blackburn, Truth, Realism, and the Regulation of Theory,Studies in Epistemology (note 5 above), p. 363. Blackburn rej&Ets theconvergence condition, whereas I argue that a convergence of positionsmust be at least posited within a regulative view of inquiry.14 It is interesting to note that Putnam claims his own (slightly different)position also rests on a transcendental argument: arguing about the natureof rationality is an act ivi ty that p r e s u p p o s e s a notion of rationaljustification wider than the positivist notion, indeed wider thaninstitutionalized criteria1 rationality (3:191). I believe that the outcome ofthe lengthy discussion on the nature of transcendental arguments has

justified a sense of necessity weaker t ha n Kants but strong enough forformulating quasi-transcendental arguments, that is, lists of probableconditions presupposed by a given type of human practice or inquiry.15 Cf. Kant on the regulative employment of ideas: they can be used fordirecting the understanding towards a certain goal upon which the routesmarked out by all its rules converge, as upon their point of intersection,Critioue of Pure Reason, tr. N. K. Smith (New York: St. Martins, 1965).A644jB672.l6 C. S. Peirce. Collected PaDers. 5.565. emDh. mine. An effective defenseIof this reading has been given by Peter Skagestad, The Road of Inquiry:Charles Peirces Pragmatic Realism (New York: Columbia Univ. Press,1981),esp. pp. 75ff.17 Of course, fiction cannot imply that we know convergence claims tobe false: if the necessity of convergence cannot be proved, certainly itsimpossibility cannot either. So-called hypothetical realism bears someaffinities to my position here, as long as its convergence remains ahypothesis and not a disguised knowledge claim.18 Influential statements of this position include Nelson Goodman, W a y s

of Worldmaking, and Nicholas Rescher, The Coherence Theory of Truth(Oxford Clarendon, 1973).l9 But see Lorenz Puntels major work, Grundlagen einer Theorie derWahrheit (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1990), forthcoming in English from deGruyter.20 Jurgen Habermas ha s made the case for this claim in the first volume

of The Theory of Comm unicative Action, trans. Thomas McCarthy (Boston:Beacon, 1984),ch. 1.21 This paper has profited from criticisms from Simon Blackburn, PeterLipton, Lorenz Puntel, Edward Stein, and an anonymous reader for thisJournal.

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