Are there any bona fide boundaries, i.e., boundaries that carve at the joints? Or is any boundary —hence any object—the result of a fiat articulation reflecting our cognitive biases and our so-cial practices and conventions? Does the choice between these two options amount to a choice between realism and wholesome relativism?

This article clarifies the motivations for and commitments of metaphysical realism and shows that it is compatible with various kinds of referential indeterminacy.

It is widely recognized that Goodman's grue example demonstrates that the rules for induction, unlike those for deduction, cannot be purely syntactic. Ways in which Goodman's proof generalizes, however, are not widely recognized. Gruesome considerations demonstrate that neither theories of simplicity nor theories of empirical confirmation can be purely syntactic. Moreover, the grue paradox can be seen as an instance of a much more general phenomenon. All empirical investigations require semantic constraints, since purely structural constraints are inadequate. Both Russell's theory (...) of empirical knowledge and Putnam's model-theoretic argument against metaphysical realism illustrate the inadequacy of purely structural constraints. (shrink)

The extensions of Goodman’s ‘grue’ predicate and Kripke’s ‘quus’ are constructed from the extensions of more familiar terms via a reinterpretation that permutes assignments of reference. Since this manoeuvre is at the heart of Putnam’s model-theoretic and permutation arguments against metaphysical realism (‘Putnam’s Paradox’), both Goodman’s New Riddle of Induction and the paradox about meaning that Kripke attributes to Wittgenstein are instances of Putnam’s. Evidence cannot selectively confirm the green-hypothesis and disconfirm the grue-hypothesis, because the theory of which the green-hypothesis (...) is a part has an unintended model in which the grue-hypothesis is equally confirmed; and there are no meaning-facts that determine reference, because the objects referred to by the referring terms of any language or set of intentional mental states are permutable in a way that is consistent with the truth-values of all other sentences in that language or beliefs in that set. The upshot is that the three paradoxes need to be solved in a unified way. (shrink)

In the debate over the reality of race, a three-way dispute has become entrenched: race is biologically real, socially real, or simply not real. These three theses have each enjoyed increasingly sophisticated defenses over roughly the past thirty years, but we argue here that this debate contains a lacuna: there is a fourth, mostly neglected, position that we call ‘basic racial realism.’ Basic racial realism says that though race is neither biologically real nor socially real, it is real all the (...) same. Our goal is to establish this theory's credentials and provide it with initial support. It appears to be in a strong dialectical position and to nicely capture what many want from a theory of race. (shrink)

En este ensayo intento mostrar el estrecho vínculo entre el asunto de la fijación de la extensión de los términos de clase natural y el problema de la proyectabilidad puesto de relieve por Goodman con su nuevo enigma de la inducción. Por un lado argumento que el nuevo enigma de la inducción pone de manifiesto la presencia de un elemento fregeano en la teoría de la referencia directa de Putnam y, por el otro, señalo la necesidad de que una respuesta (...) realista a dicho enigma se articule con una tesis epistemológica de cómo conocemos las presuntas propiedades intrínsecas de los objetos. (shrink)

My aim in this paper is to explain how universal statements, as they occur in scientific theories, are actually tested by observational evidence, and to draw certain conclusions, on that basis, about the way in which scientific theories are tested in general. 1 But I am pursuing that aim, ambitious enough in and of itself, in the service of even more ambitious projects, and in the first place: (a) to say what is distinctive about modern science, and especially modern physical (...) science, as a human intellectual activity; and (b) to show how this distinctiveness explains the unique status of modern science in human intellectual life. So I will begin by saying a few words about that larger project. One might doubt, first, whether that project is legitimate. Although everything is different from everything else, the question “What is distinctive about X?” is not necessarily well put, because X may not be anything—that is, anything distinct. And there are indeed many philosophers, otherwise of the most diverse intellectual backgrounds and tendencies, who would deny, in various ways, that modern science is a distinct thing, or that its status is unique. It seems to me that they deny something terrifyingly obvious— a fact which confronts us far more urgently than the fact that, say, ravens are black. I will put off further remarks about this until the end of the paper, however, because the discussion of my more limited present aim will focus precisely on the ways to tell when a question is well put, and whether there is such a (distinct) thing as X. That one’s methodological problems are also the subject of one’s investigation is a sign that that investigation is philosophical, although (or because) also a threat to its coherence. Second, some points about methodology. I am not a sociologist, or even a historian, nor (unlike some recent philosophers of science) will I pretend to be.. (shrink)

Traditional attempts to delineate the distinctive rationality of modern science have taken it for granted that the purpose of empirical research is to test judgments. The choice of concepts to use in those judgments is therefore seen either a matter of indifference (Popper) or as important choice which must be made, so to speak, in advance of all empirical research (Carnap). I argue that scientific method aims precisely at empirical testing of concepts, and that even the simplest scientific ex- periment (...) or observation results in conceptual change. (shrink)

The model-theoretic argument known as Putnam´s paradox threatens our notion of truth with triviality: Almost any world can satisfy almost any theory. Formal argument and intuition are at odds. David Lewis devised a solution according to which the very stucture of the world fixes how it is to be divided into elite classes which determine the reference of any true theory. Three claims are defended: Firstly, Lewis´ proposal must be completed by an account of successful referential intentions. Secondly, contrary to (...) Catherine Elgin´s criticism of Lewis, natural properties corresponding to elite classes may play a role in sound scientific inquiry. Thirdly, despite Bas van Fraassen´s objection that the sceptic cannot consistently maintain doubts about reference, there is a promising sceptical strategy of exploiting Putnam´s results which is answered by Lewis´ account. (shrink)

Many theories assimilate the idioms of modality to those of quantification; they hold that so-and-so is possible iff there is a "world" at which it is true that so-and-so. "Modal realism" identifies worlds with certain concrete particulars, and truth at a world with what is true of it. Rival "ersatz" theories identify worlds with certain abstract entities and identify what is true at them with what they represent. ;David Lewis argues that pre-theoretic modal intuitions are best explained by modal realism. (...) I try to make a case for ersatzism. ;First, I argue that modal realism is flawed on the grounds that it entails the impossibility of certain intuitively possible spatiotemporal structures; it fails to explain fully even those intuitions with which it is compatible; and it renders the origin of modal knowledge mysterious. ;Next, I argue that objections to ersatzism are not conclusive. ;Lewis objects that even a generic version of ersatzism requires an unnameable and maybe unintelligible primitive relation. I suggest that the problems with naming are perfectly general; they have nothing to do with metaphysical theories of modality in particular. And I suggest a solution taken from Lewis himself. I also argue that any purported unintelligibility is due to illegitimately assimilating the relation to spatiotemporal relations. ;Finally, I consider some difficulties with a version of ersatzism that aims to reduce modality to impure set-theory. One concerns the accommodation of intuitions about properties that are not, but might have been, instantiated. Another concerns accommodation of intuitions about relations of exclusion and entailment among properties. I suggest that these difficulties are due to faulty assumptions about the nature of properties rather than any fundamental flaws in this ersatz approach. So I propose an account of properties that when incorporated into ersatzism circumvents these difficulties and allows it to claim the advantages of modal realism without its drawbacks. Unlike traditional accounts, this takes the essence of a property to consist in its role in imposing a certain classificational structure on the particulars that instantiate it, rather than in any unique and irreducible "quiddity". (shrink)

In 1976, Hilary Putnam set forth his model-theoretic argument, claiming that it showed that the semantic realist’s program1 was ‘unintelligible’, since it implied, contra the realist view, that reference is radically indeterminate. Although I find the conclusion that reference is indeterminate unattractive, I argue that the descriptivist position needs to be supplemented with a premise about the sorts of kinds or structure that our world includes. The need for this premise gives a counterintuitive result: the descriptivist account of reference makes (...) the very possibility of determinate reference contingent upon the kinds that happen to make up the world. The need for this premise paves the way towards a new kind of skepticism about what we may and may not assume about the nature of the world. (shrink)

Quine’s desert is generally contrasted with Meinong’s jungle, as a sober ontological alternative to the exuberant luxuriance that comes with the latter. Here I focus instead on the desert as a sober metaphysical alternative to the Aristotelian garden, with its tidily organized varieties of flora and fauna neatly governed by fundamental laws that reflect the essence of things and the way they can be, or the way they must be. In the desert there are no “natural joints”; all the boundaries (...) we find are lines we have drawn, artificial fencings that merely reflect of our own demarcations, our classifications, our desperate need to ward off the flux and meet an excusable but ungrounded demand for order and stability. The desert returns a picture of reality that is radically anti-realist. And yet the picture does not amount to a form of irrealism. The desert is out there and is what it is regardless of how we feel. And it is not completely structureless. It’s just that the structure it has is very thin and does not correspond to the sort of structure that so-called metaphysical realists—and scientific realists alike—tend to attribute to it. (shrink)