In The Quest for Reality I investigate the prospects of achieving a certain kind of general philosophical understanding of ourselves and the world. The idea is to determine how much of our everyday conception of the world is due to the way the world actually is and how much is due only to us. The answer would tell us how things really are, or what is really so, independently of any special human ‘perspective’ we happen to have on the world, (...) and so independently of all perceivers’ and thinkers’ responses to the way things are. The traditional distinction between the ‘primary’ or real and the ‘secondary’ or dependent or only apparent properties of things is one outcome of this general metaphysical enterprise. (shrink)

Any brief comment on Barry Stroud’s fine book risks bringing some of its virtues into relief precisely by lacking them. The book’s epigraph is a passage from Wittgenstein advising philosophers to take their time. Stroud never papers over difficulties, and he allows himself to be sketchy only when it does not matter for the main line of his argument. Anyone without space constraints should take him as a model. Pleading space constraints, I shall sketch two reservations.