Although scientific realism is the default position in the life sciences, philosophical accounts of realism are geared towards physics and run into trouble when applied to fields such as biology or neuroscience. In this paper, I formulate a new robustness-based version of entity realism, and show that it provides a plausible account of realism for the life sciences that is also continuous with scientific practice. It is based on the idea that if there are several independent (...) ways of measuring, detecting or deriving something, then we are justified in believing that it is real. I also consider several possible objections to robustness-based entity realism, discuss its relationship to ontic structural realism, and show how it has the potential to provide a novel response to the pessimistic induction argument. (shrink)

It doesn’t seem possible to be a realist about the traditional Christian God while claiming to be able to reduce God talk in naturalistically acceptable terms. Reduction, in this case, seems obviously eliminativist. Many philosophers seem to think that the same is true of the normative—that reductive “realists” about the normative are not really realists about the normative at all, or at least, only in some attenuated sense. This paper takes on the challenge of articulating what it is that makes (...) reductive theological realism look hopeless, with the aim of explaining why we should think that the normative is relevantly different. Although it follows from my diagnosis that reductivists have their work cut out for them, I find nothing which suggests that the prospects for a successful reductive realism about the normative are in any way diminished—particularly for reductive views about reasons. Even reductivists, I argue, can at least aspire to a realism that is robust. (shrink)

Robustness is often presented as a guideline for distinguishing the true or real from mere appearances or artifacts. Most of recent discussions of robustness have focused on the kind of derivational robustness analysis introduced by Levins, while the related but distinct idea of robustness as multiple accessibility, defended by Wimsatt, has received less attention. In this paper, I argue that the latter kind of robustness, when properly understood, can provide justification for ontological commitments. The idea is that we are justified (...) in believing that things studied by science are real insofar as we have robust evidence for them. I develop and analyze this idea in detail, and based on concrete examples show that it plays an important role in science. Finally, I demonstrate how robustness can be used to clarify the debate on scientific realism and to formulate new arguments. (shrink)

Taking Morality Seriously is David Enoch’s book-length defense of meta-ethical and meta-normative non-naturalist realism. After describing Enoch’s position and outlining the argumentative strategy of the book, we engage in a critical discussion of what we take to be particularly problematic central passages. We focus on Enoch’s two original positive arguments for non-naturalist realism, one argument building on first order moral implications of different meta-ethical positions, the other attending to the rational commitment to normative facts inherent in practical deliberation. (...) We also pay special attention to Enoch’s handling of two types of objections to non-naturalist realism, objections having to do with the possibility of moral knowledge and with moral disagreement. (shrink)

This chapter discusses epistemic objections to non-naturalist moral realism. The goal of the chapter is to determine which objections are pressing and which objections can safely be dismissed. The chapter examines five families of objections: (i) one involving necessary conditions on knowledge, (ii) one involving the idea that the causal history of our moral beliefs reflects the significant impact of irrelevant influences, (iii) one relying on the idea that moral truths do not play a role in explaining our moral (...) beliefs, (iv) one involving the claim that if moral realism is true then our moral beliefs are unlikely to be reliable, and (v) one involving the claim that moral realism is incompatible with there being a plausible explanation of our reliability about morality. The overall conclusion of the chapter is that the final objection is by far the most pressing. (shrink)

Robustly realistic metaphysical readings of Kant’s mature views have become popular in recent years, largely because of the apparent coherence of applying unschematized categories like that of causation to things in themselves. There is, however, an overlooked problem that arises even for robust realist readings that privilege unschematized categories. The problem is that Kant provides all the elements for what is now called a ‘debunking explanation’ of metaphysical representations of things in themselves. His account of the categories as arising (...) from mere forms of judgment, and being applied primarily for the unity of consciousness, is detached from the issue of whether there are causes among things in themselves. This detachment seems to imply that it would be a huge coincidence if unschematized categories corresponded to any such causes. After making this argument, using the category of causation as my central case, I consider three potential responses: that Kant’s account implicitly appeals to things in themselves’ causation, that Kant has a separate account of non-coincidental representation, and that Kant’s account is merely incomplete in a way that poses no debunking threat. None of these responses, I argue, are successful, so I conclude that either robustly realistic metaphysical readings are mistaken, or there is internal incoherence in Kant’s views. (shrink)

Recently, some philosophers have suggested that a form of robust realism about ethics, or normativity more generally, does not face a significant explanatory burden in metaphysics. I call this view metaphysically quietist normative realism . This paper argues that while this view can appear to constitute an attractive alternative to more traditional forms of normative realism, it cannot deliver on this promise. I examine Scanlon’s attempt to defend such a quietist realism, and argue that rather (...) than silencing metaphysical questions about normative reasons, his defense at best succeeds only in shifting the focus of metaphysical enquiry. I then set aside the details of Scanlon’s view, and argue on general grounds that that the quietist realist cannot finesse a crucial metanormative task: to explain the contrast between the correct normative system and alternative putatively normative standards. (shrink)

The paper presents a realist account of the epistemic objectivity of science. Epistemic objectivity is distinguished from ontological objectivity and the objectivity of truth. As background, T.S. Kuhn’s idea that scientific theory-choice is based on shared scientific values with a role for both objective and subjective factors is discussed. Kuhn’s values are epistemologically ungrounded, hence provide a minimal sense of objectivity. A robust account of epistemic objectivity on which methodological norms are reliable means of arriving at the truth is (...) presented. The problem remains that deliberative judgement is required to determine the relevance and relative significance of a range of methodological norms. A role is sketched for cognitive virtues which may be exercised in the course of the deliberative judgement. (shrink)

Naive realists hold that experience is to be understood in terms of an intimate perceptual relation between a subject and aspects of the world, relative to a certain standpoint. Those aspects of the world themselves shape the contours of consciousness. But blurriness is an aspect of some of our experiences that does not seem to come from the world. I argue that this constitutes a significant challenge to some forms of naive realism. But I also argue that there is (...) a robust form of naive realism which is unfazed by the blurriness of some of our experiences, even when that blurriness is understood as a subjective modification of consciousness. (shrink)

The contemporary debate between scientific realism and anti-realism is conditioned by a polarity between two opposing arguments: the realist’s success argument and the anti-realist’s pessimistic induction. This polarity has skewed the debate away from the problem that lies at the source of the debate. From a realist point of view, the historical approach to the philosophy of science which came to the fore in the 1960s gave rise to an unsatisfactory conception of scientific progress. One of the main (...) motivations for the scientific realist appeal to the success of science was the need to provide a substantive account of the progress of science as an increase of knowledge about the same entities as those referred to by earlier theories in the history of science. But the idea that a substantive conception of progress requires continuity of reference has faded from the contemporary debate. In this paper, I revisit the historical movement in the philosophy of science in an attempt to resuscitate the original agenda of the debate about scientific realism. I also briefly outline the way in which the realist should employ the theory of reference as the basis for a robust account of scientific progress which will satisfy realist requirements. (shrink)

Erik Wielenberg’s new book Robust Ethics: The Metaphysics and Epistemology of Godless Normative Realism aims at defending a non-theistic of ‘robust normative realism’: the metaethical view that normative properties exist, and have four features: (1) objectivity, (2) non-naturalness, (3) irreducibility, and (4) causal inertness. In my review I criticize that Wielenberg does not address semantic issues which are crucial both to defending robust normative realism, and to assessing the empirical claims he makes. Moreover, and (...) relatedly, I suggest that Wielenberg’s main psychological and evolutionary claims may be less well-founded than suggested. Despite these worries, however, Robust Ethics is a highly valuable contribution to metaethics. Wielenberg’s writing is extremely accessible, engaging, witty, and clear, he develops various fascinating novel arguments, and skilfully links analytic reflections with the consideration of empirical data. (shrink)

In this paper we make a simple theoretical point using a practical issue as an example. The simple theoretical point is that robustness is not 'all or nothing': in asking whether a system is robust one has to ask 'robust with respect to what property?' and 'robust over what set of changes in the system?' The practical issue used to illustrate the point is an examination of degrees of linkage between sub-networks and a pointed contrast in robustness (...) and fragility between the dynamics of (1) contact infection and (2) information transfer or belief change. Time to infection across linked sub-networks, it turns out, is fairly robust with regard to the degree of linkage between them. Time to infection is fragile and sensitive, however, with regard to the type of sub-network involved: total, ring, small world, random, or scale-free. Aspects of robustness and fragility are reversed where it is belief updating with reinforcement rather than infection that is at issue. In information dynamics, the pattern of time to consensus is robust across changes in network type but remarkably fragile with respect to degree of linkage between sub-networks. These results have important implications for public health interventions in realistic social networks, particularly with an eye to ethnic and socio-economic sub-communities, and in social networks with sub-communities changing in structure or linkage. (shrink)

This paper draws on the phenomenological-hermeneutical approaches to philosophy of science to develop realist perspectivism, an integration of experimental realism and perspectivism. Specifically, the paper employs the distinction between “manifestation” and “phenomenon” and it advances the view that the evidence of a real entity is “explorable” in order to argue that instrumentally-mediated robust evidence indicates real entities. Furthermore, it underpins the phenomenological notion of the horizonal nature of scientific observation with perspectivism, so accounting for scientific pluralism even in (...) the cases of inconsistent models. Overall, realist perspectivism is proposed as the way to go for (phenomenologically-hermeneutically minded) philosophers of science. (shrink)

It is common in metaethics today to draw a distinction between “naturalist” and “non-naturalist” versions of moral realism, where the former view maintains that moral properties are natural properties, while the latter view maintains that they are non-natural properties instead. The nature of the disagreement here can be understood in different ways, but the most common way is to understand it as a metaphysical disagreement. In particular, the disagreement here is about the reducibility of moral properties, where the “naturalists” (...) maintain that moral properties are in some way reducible to the lower-level natural properties on which they supervene, while the “non-naturalists” maintain that moral properties are sui generis and robustly irreducible. In this paper I present a novel version of realist ethical naturalism—a view that I call Emergentist Ethical Naturalism—that reveals this common way of understanding the distinction between naturalism and non-naturalism to be flawed by combining a commitment to ethical naturalism with a commitment to the sui generis and robustly irreducible nature of moral properties that typically defines non-naturalism. Then, after presenting the theory and addressing a few worries that one might have about it, I show how it offers some novel, emergence-based responses to the various supervenience challenges that plague moral realism and thereby gives the ethical naturalist a robustly non-reductive option for dealing with these challenges. (shrink)

Purpose of review: What is the relationship between rationality and mental health? By considering the psychological literature on depressive realism and unrealistic optimism it was hypothesized that, in the context of judgments about the self, accurate cognitions are psychologically maladaptive and inaccurate cognitions are psychologically adaptive. Recent studies recommend being cautious in drawing any general conclusion about style of thinking and mental health. Recent findings: Recent investigations suggest that people with depressive symptoms are more accurate than controls in tasks (...) involving time perception and estimates of personal circumstances, but not in other tasks. Unrealistic optimism remains a robust phenomenon across a variety of tasks and domains, and researchers are starting to explore its neural bases. However, the challenge is to determine to what extent and in what way unrealistic optimism is beneficial. Summary: We should revisit the hypothesis that optimistic cognitions are psychologically adaptive, whereas realistic thinking is not. Realistic beliefs and expectations can be conducive to wellbeing and good functioning, and wildly optimistic cognitions have considerable psychological costs. (shrink)

Robust Realists think that there are irreducible, non-natural, and mind-independent moral properties. Quasi-Realists and Relaxed Realists think the same, but interpret these commitments differently. Robust Realists interpret them as metaphysical commitments, to be defended by metaphysical argument. Quasi-Realists and Relaxed Realists say that they can only be interpreted as moral commitments. These theories thus pose a serious threat to Robust Realism, for they apparently undermine the very possibility of articulating the robust metaphysical commitments of this (...) theory. I clarify and respond to this threat, showing that there is in fact space to develop and defend a robust moral ontology. (shrink)

Ludwig Wittgenstein has often been called a quietist. His work has inspired a rich and varied array of theories in moral philosophy. Some prominent meta-ethicists have also been called quietists, or ‘relaxed’ as opposed to ‘robust’ realists, sometimes with explicit reference to Wittgenstein in attempts to clarify their views. In this chapter, I compare and contrast these groups of theories and draw out their importance for contemporary meta-ethical debate. They represent countercultures to contemporary meta-ethics. That is, they reject in (...) different ways one or more of the common assumptions that, whilst not universally shared, shape how to understand and engage in contemporary meta-ethical debate. Despite striking similarities, I argue that the ‘quietist’ label has obscured the views it is used to describe, the crucial differences between them, and the challenge that they offer to the predominant culture of meta-ethical enquiry. That challenge is this: there are plausible different ways of understanding and doing meta-ethics to those of the meta-ethical orthodoxy. We ignore such heterodoxy at our own peril. (shrink)

In this article, I have two aims. Firstly, I argue that Hilary Putnam's model theoretic indeterminacy argument against external realism and Saul Kripke's so-called Kripkensteinian argument against semantic realism have the same dialectical structure and the same conclusion---both force the opponent to face the same dilemma. Namely: either adopt meaning minimalism or postulate unobservable semantic facts. Secondly, I analyze more closely the first horn of the dilemma---meaning minimalism. This is the position according to which there are no truth (...) conditions for meaning-ascriptions. It has been suggested that this position is incoherent. However, I argue that there is a coherent option available for the meaning minimalist. As Crispin Wright has proposed, a coherent meaning minimalist has to adopt a structured truth-predicate with at least two levels: one is a minimal or a deflationary truth-predicate for a semantic discourse and the other, more substantial or objective truth-predicate for discourses like natural sciences. Subsequently, this leads to a position close to Huw Price's global expressivism. Thus, the ultimate dilemma that Putnam's and the Kripkensteinian argument establish is the following choice: either meaning minimalism with a structured two-level truth-predicate or robust realism regarding meaning. (shrink)

This paper concerns the recent revival of entity realism. Having been started with the work of Ian Hacking, Nancy Cartwright and Ronald Giere, the project of entity realism has recently been developed by Matthias Egg, Markus Eronen, and Bence Nanay. The paper opens a dialogue among these recent views on entity realism and integrates them into a more advanced view. The result is an epistemological criterion for reality: the property-tokens of a certain type may be taken as (...) real insofar as only they can be materially inferred from the evidence obtained in a variety of independent ways of detection. (shrink)

Robust metanormative realists think that there are irreducibly normative, metaphysically heavy normative facts. One might wonder how we could be epistemically justified in believing that such facts exist. In this paper, I offer an answer to this question: one’s belief in the existence of robustly real normative facts is epistemically justified because so believing is indispensable to being a successful inquirer for creatures like us. The argument builds on Enoch's (2007, 2011) deliberative indispensability argument for Robust Realism (...) but avoids relying on an overly pragmatic account of the sources of basic epistemic justification. Instead, I suggest that the sources of basic epistemic justification are those belief-forming methods which are indispensable for zetetically indispensable projects, that is, projects which are constitutive of being a successful inquirer for embodied, agential creatures like ourselves. (shrink)

The realist belief in robustly attitude-independent evaluative truths – more specifically, moral truths – is challenged by Sharon Street’s essay “A Darwinian Dilemma for Realist Theories of Value”. We know the content of human normative beliefs and attitudes has been profoundly influenced by a Darwinian natural selection process that favors adaptivity. But if simple adaptivity can explain the content of our evaluative beliefs, any connection they might have with abstract moral truth would seem to be purely coincidental. She continues the (...) skeptical attack in “Objectivity and Truth: You’d Better Rethink It”, concentrating on the intuitionist realism of Ronald Dworkin. The latter sees the issue fundamentally as a holistic choice between moral objectivity and the genocide-countenancing consequences of abandoning objective standards. Street counters that, because of realism’s skeptical difficulties, Dworkin’s Choice (as I call it) actually works in favor of her Euthyphronic antirealism. I will argue that she misrepresents the realist’s skeptical challenge, and that clarifying the character of that challenge renders the case for normative realism much more appealing. Indeed, I claim that Street fails to exclude the genuine possibility of a rational basis for moral truth. (shrink)

Representationalism (aka intentionalism) has been the most significant weapon in the late twentieth century defence of direct realism. However, although the representationalist objection to the Phenomenal Principle might provide an effective response to the arguments from illusion and hallucination, plausible representationalist theories of perception are, when fleshed-out, incompatible with metaphysical direct realism’s directness-claim. Indeed within cognitive science, direct perception is the avowedly-radical anti-representationalist heterodoxy. Drawing on both the philosophy and cognitive science, we develop a robust argument against (...) representationalist direct realism which does not rest on illusory cases or the notion of an object of immediate awareness. None of the representations so far posited, or in prospect, can supply the content required of a representation in a direct realist theory of veridical perception. (shrink)

Moral abolitionists recommend that we get rid of moral discourse and moral judgement. At first glance this seems repugnant, but abolitionists think that we have overestimated the practical value of our moral framework and that eliminating it would be in our interests. I argue that abolitionism has a surprising amount going for it. Traditionally, abolitionism has been treated as an option available to moral error theorists. Error theorists say that moral discourse and judgement are committed to the existence of moral (...) properties, and that no such properties exist. After error theory is established, abolitionism is one potential way to proceed. However, many error theorists suggest that we retain moral discourse as a sort of fiction. I evaluate some attractions of both fictionalism and abolitionism, arguing that abolitionism is a plausible position. No one doubts that error theorists can be abolitionists. However, what has gone largely undiscussed is that it is open to others to be abolitionists as well. I argue that moral realists of a metaphysically robust sort can and perhaps should be abolitionists. ‘Realist abolitionism’ makes for a surprisingly neat theoretical package, and I conclude that it represents an interesting new option in the theoretical landscape. (shrink)

At the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, frontline medical professionals at intensive care units around the world faced gruesome decisions about how to ration life-saving medical resources. These events provided a unique lens through which to understand how the public reasons about real-world dilemmas involving trade-offs between human lives. In three studies (total N = 2298), we examined people’s moral attitudes toward triage of acute coronavirus patients, and found elevated support for utilitarian triage policies. These utilitarian tendencies did not stem (...) from period change in moral attitudes relative to pre-pandemic levels--but rather, from the heightened realism of triage dilemmas. Participants favored utilitarian resolutions of critical care dilemmas when compared to structurally analogous, non-medical dilemmas—and such support was rooted in prosocial dispositions, including empathy and impartial beneficence. Finally, despite abundant evidence of political polarization surrounding Covid-19, moral views about critical care triage differed modestly, if at all, between liberals and conservatives. Taken together, our findings highlight people’s robust support for utilitarian measures in the face of a global public health threat, and illustrate how hypothetical scenarios in moral psychology (e.g. trolley cases) should strive for more experiential and psychological realism, otherwise their results might not generalize to real-world moral dilemmas. (shrink)

Non-skeptical robust realists about normativity, mathematics, or any other domain of non- causal truths are committed to a correlation between their beliefs and non- causal, mind-independent facts. Hartry Field and others have argued that if realists cannot explain this striking correlation, that is a strong reason to reject their theory. Some consider this argument, known as the Benacerraf–Field argument, as the strongest challenge to robust realism about mathematics, normativity, and even logic. In this article I offer two (...) closely related accounts for the type of explanation needed in order to address Field's challenge. I then argue that both accounts imply that the striking correlation to which robust realists are committed is explainable, thereby discharging Field's challenge. Finally, I respond to some objections and end with a few unresolved worries. (shrink)

Social emergence is one the most important problems in social science that the way it is answered affects the results of social studies and policies. The complexity of social emergence conception has caused a variety of definitions. This article seeks to define the robust social emergence conditions, using the philosophy of mind conception such as subvenience, wildly disjunctives, and multiple realization. Different approaches have different challenges in satisfying robust social emergence conditions. These challenges could be formulated in three (...) problems i.e. realism, top-down causality, and mechanism. This article aims to analytically criticize how critical realism approaches these problems. Critics believe that critical realism faces two sort of difficulties in satisfying robust social emergence: the first, the independence of structure from agencies that leads to reifying and the second, that ontological and causal emergence conflicts with subvenience. It seems the first problem could be resolved by employing the unrestricted mereological composition conception, and the second by the fact that subvenience do not necessitate ontological dependence. (shrink)

Several authors believe that metaethicists ought to leave their comfortable armchairs and engage with serious empirical research. This paper provides partial support for the opposing view, that metaethics is rightly conducted from the armchair. It does so by focusing on debunking arguments against robust moral realism. Specifically, the article discusses arguments based on the possibility that if robust realism is correct, then our beliefs are most likely insensitive to the relevant truths. These arguments seem at first (...) glance to be dependent on empirical research to learn what our moral beliefs are sensitive to. It is argued, however, that this is not so. The paper then examines two thought experiments that have been thought to demonstrate that debunking arguments might depend on empirical details and argues that the conclusion is not supported. (shrink)

I am going to argue for a robust realism about magnitudes, as irreducible elements in our ontology. This realistic attitude, I will argue, gives a better metaphysics than the alternatives. It suggests some new options in the philosophy of science. It also provides the materials for a better account of the mind’s relation to the world, in particular its perceptual relations.

Many moral debunking arguments are driven by the idea that the correlation between our moral beliefs and the moral truths is a big coincidence, given a robustly realist conception of morality.One influential response is that the correlation is not a coincidence because there is a common explainer of our moral beliefs and the moral truths. For example, the reason that I believe that I should feed my child is because feeding my child helps them to survive, and natural selection instills (...) in me beliefs and dispositions that help my children survive since that is conductive to my genes continuing through the generations. Similarly, the reason that it's morally good to feed my child is because it helps them to survive, and survival is morally valuable.But if we look at some cases from scientific practice, and from everyday life, we can see, I argue, why this response fails. A correlation can be coincidental even if there is a common explainer. I give an account of the nature of coincidence that draws upon recent literature on scientific explanation and argue that the correlation between moral belief and moral truth is a coincidence, even given such common explainers. And I use this to defend a certain form of debunking argument. (shrink)

It is often said that normative properties are “just too different” to reduce to other kinds of properties. This suggests that many philosophers find it difficult to believe reductive theses in ethics. I argue that the distinctiveness of the normative concepts we use in thinking about reductive theses offers a more promising explanation of this psychological phenomenon than the falsity of Reductive Realism. To identify the distinctiveness of normative concepts, I use resources from familiar Hybrid views of normative language (...) and thought to develop a Hybrid view of normative concepts. In addition to using this new Hybrid view to explain why reductive theses are difficult to believe, I show how to preserve several patterns of inference involving normative concepts that, intuitively, it is possible to make, and hence answer an important recent challenge to Hybrid views from Mark Schroeder. (shrink)

Much early modern metaphysics grew with an eye to the new science of its time, but few figures took it as seriously as Emilie du Châtelet. Happily, her oeuvre is now attracting close, renewed attention, and so the time is ripe for looking into her metaphysical foundation for empirical theory. Accordingly, I move here to do just that. I establish two conclusions. First, du Châtelet's basic metaphysics is a robust realism. Idealist strands, while they exist, are confined to (...) non-basic regimes. Second, her substance realism seems internally coherent, so her foundational project appears successful.I have two aims in this paper. Historically, I show that du Châtelet's main source of inspiration was Christian... (shrink)

In this paper I address a structurally similar tension between phenomenalism and realism about matter in Leibniz and Kant. In both philosophers, some texts suggest a starkly phenomenalist view of the ontological status of matter, while other texts suggest a more robust realism. In the first part of the paper I address a recent paper by Don Rutherford that argues that Leibniz is more of a realist than previous commentators have allowed. I argue that Rutherford fails to (...) show that Leibniz is any less an idealist than his main target, Robert Merrihew Adams, does. I distinguish various kinds of idealism about bodies that Leibniz might have held, and attempt to determine which package of views represents his considered view. In the second part of the paper I situate Kant’s idealism within the same coordinates. I argue that, abstracting from deep differences in their metaphysics and epistemology, Kant and Leibniz have structurally very similar views on the ontological status of matter and bodies. I conclude that the key to understanding the realist strand in their ontology of matter is understanding the way in which, for both thinkers, the forces in bodies are appearances of forces of more fundamental entities, either monads or things in themselves. (shrink)

While there has been much discussion about what makes some mathematical proofs more explanatory than others, and what are mathematical coincidences, in this article I explore the distinct phenomenon of mathematical facts that call for explanation. The existence of mathematical facts that call for explanation stands in tension with virtually all existing accounts of “calling for explanation”, which imply that necessary facts cannot call for explanation. In this paper I explore what theoretical revisions are needed in order to accommodate this (...) phenomenon. One of the important upshots is that, contrary to the current consensus, low prior probability is not a necessary condition for calling for explanation. In the final section I explain how the results of this inquiry help us make progress in assessing Hartry Field’s style of reliability argument against mathematical Platonism and against robust realism in other domains of necessary facts, such as ethics. (shrink)

Many prominent ethicists, including Shelly Kagan, John Rawls, and Thomas Scanlon, accept a kind of epistemic modesty thesis concerning our capacity to carry out the project of ethical theorizing. But it is a thesis that has received surprisingly little explicit and focused attention, despite its widespread acceptance. After explaining why the thesis is true, I argue that it has several implications in metaethics, including, especially, implications that should lead us to rethink our understanding of Reductive Realism. In particular, the (...) thesis of epistemic modesty in ethics implies a kind of epistemic modesty about the metaphysical nature of ethics, if Reductive Realism about the metaphysical nature of ethics is true, and it implies that normative concepts are indispensable to practical deliberation in a way that answers an influential objection to Reductive Realism from Jonathan Dancy, David Enoch, William FitzPatrick, and Derek Parfit. (shrink)

Necessity is a touchstone issue in the thought of Charles Peirce, not least because his pragmatist account of meaning relies upon modal terms. We here offer an overview of Peirce’s highly original and multi-faceted take on the matter. We begin by considering how a self-avowed pragmatist and fallibilist can even talk about necessary truth. We then outline the source of Peirce’s theory of representation in his three categories of Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness, (monadic, dyadic and triadic relations). These have modal (...) purport insofar as the first category corresponds to possibility, the second to mechanical necessity and the third to a kind of semantic or intentional necessity. We then turn to Peirce’s explicit modal epistemology and show how it began as information-relative, with different modalities (e.g. logical, physical, practical) distinguished in terms of respective ‘designated states of information’, and shifted later in his life towards a more robust realism founded in direct perception of ideas in their relations. We then turn to Peirce’s formal logic, focusing on his diagrammatic system of Existential Graphs where he did his most serious logical research. Finally we discuss Peirce’s modal metaphysics and its implications for determinism and realism about universals. (shrink)

Although certain recent developments in mendacious political manipulation of public discourse are horrifying to the academic mind, I argue that we should not panic. Charles Peirce’s pragmatist epistemology with its teleological arc, long horizon, and rare balance between robust realism and contrite fallibilism offers guidance to weather the storm, and perhaps even see it as inevitable in our intellectual development. This paper explores Peirce’s classic “four methods of fixing belief”, which takes us on an entertaining and still very (...) pertinent tour through tenacity, authority and a priori speculation to the method of science – the only method which is both public and self-correcting. Although in the West we (mostly) proudly self-conceive as living in a ‘scientific age’, I argue that this is premature. Precisely insofar as we treat the misbehavior of governments as a harbinger of doom, we remain trapped in authoritarian modes of thinking which Peirce identified with medievalism, although modernity is increasingly quickening around us in worldwide information-sharing practices that are shaped entirely by mutual help. With this framework in mind, many tactics of recent media are most helpfully seen as belonging not to a post-truth, but a pre-truth stage of human intellectual development. Advice on this is sought from Plato, who of course also faced a world that was ‘pre-academic’. (shrink)

This book defends a relational theory of the passage of time. The realist view of passage developed in this book differs from the robust, substantivalist position. According to relationism, passage is nothing over and above the succession of events, one thing coming after another. Causally related events are temporally arranged as they happen one after another along observers’ worldlines. There is no unique global passage but a multiplicity of local passages of time. After setting out this positive argument for (...) relationism, the author deals with five common objections to it: (a) triviality of deflationary passage, (b) a-directionality of passage, (c) the impossibility of experiencing passage, (d) fictionalism about passage, and (e) the incompatibility of passage with perduring objects. (shrink)

Robust technological enhancement of core cognitive capacities is now a realistic possibility. From the perspective of neutralism, the view that justifications for public policy should be neutral between reasonable conceptions of the good, only members of a subset of the ethical concerns serve as legitimate justifications for public policy regarding robust technological enhancement. This paper provides a framework for the legitimate use of ethical concerns in justifying public policy decisions regarding these enhancement technologies by evaluating the ethical concerns (...) that arise in the context of testing such technologies on nonhuman animals. Traditional issues in bioethics, as well as novel concerns such as the possibility of moral status enhancement, are evaluated from the perspective of neutralism. (shrink)

This dissertation is about human knowledge of reality. In particular, it argues that scientific knowledge is bounded by historically available instruments and theories; nevertheless, the use of several independent instruments and theories can provide access to the persistent potentialities of reality. The replicability of scientific observations and experiments allows us to obtain explorable evidence of robust entities and properties. The dissertation includes seven chapters. It also studies three cases – namely, Higgs bosons and hypothetical Ϝ-particles (section 2.4), the Ptolemaic (...) and Kepler model of the planets (section 6.7), and the special theory of relativity (chapter 7). -/- Chapter 1 is the introduction of the dissertation. Chapter 2 clarifies the notion of the real on the basis of two concepts: persistence and resistance. These concepts enable me to explain my ontological belief in the real potentialities of human-independent things and the implications of this view for the perceptual and epistemological levels of discussion. On the basis of the concept of “overlapping perspectives”, chapter 3 argues that entity realism and perspectivism are complementary. That is, an entity that manifests itself through several experimental/observational methods is something real, but our knowledge of its nature is perspectival. Critically studying the recent views of entity realism, chapter 4 extends the discussion of entity realism and provides a criterion for the reality of property tokens. Chapter 5, in contrast, develops the perspectival aspects of my view on the basis of the phenomenological-hermeneutical approaches to the philosophy of science. This chapter also elaborates my view of empirical evidence, as briefly expressed in sections 2.5 and 4.5. Chapter 6 concerns diachronic theoretical perspectives. It first explains my view of progress, according to which current perspectives are broader than past ones. Second, it argues that the successful explanations and predictions of abandoned theories can be accounted for from our currently acceptable perspectives. The case study of Ptolemaic astronomy supports the argument of this chapter. Chapter 7 serves as the conclusion of the dissertation by applying the central themes of the previous chapters to the case study of special relativity theory. I interpret frame-dependent properties, such as length and time duration, and the constancy of the speed of light according to realist perspectivism. (shrink)

A prominent argument for moral realism notes that we are inclined to accept realism in science because scientific inquiry supports a robust set of critical practices—error, improvement, explanation, and the like. It then argues that because morality displays a comparable set of critical practices, a claim to moral realism is just as warranted as a claim to scientific realism. But the argument is only as strong as its central analogy—and here there is trouble. If the (...) analogy between the critical practices of science and morality is loosely interpreted, the argument does not support moral realism—for paradigmatically constructivist discourses like fashion display the relevant critical practices just as well. So if the argument is to have force, the realist must say more about why the critical practices of morality are sufficiently like those of science to warrant realism. But this cannot be done—moral inquiry differs from scientific inquiry in too many important ways. So the analogy with the critical practices of science fails to vindicate moral realism. But there are further lessons: in looking closely at the critical practices of our moral discourse—and in comparing them to the critical practices of science and fashion—we gain insight into what is distinctive about morality objectivity and moral metaphysics. (shrink)

I develop a nontheistic (quasi-)Berkeleyan idealism. The basic strategy is to peel away the attributes of God that aren't essential for role he plays in idealist metaphysics. God's omnibenevolence, his desires, intentions, beliefs, his very status as an agent ... aren't relevant to the work he does. When we peel all these things away, we're left with a view on which reality is a vast unity of consciousness, weaving together sensory experiences of colors, shapes, sounds, sizes, etc. into the trees, (...) electrons, black holes, and central nervous systems that fill the world around us. This phenomenal unity is governed by laws analogous to those posited by materialists, governing the unfolding of reality. I argue that if reality is fundamentally phenomenal in this way, we can give a unique account of perception that robustly captures direct realist intuitions of reality forming the "constituents" of our experiences: In perception, our finite unities of consciousness come to literally overlap with the unity of consciousness that is reality. I assess the unique virtues and challenges such a view faces, paying particular attention to the question of whether idealism entails a profligacy of physical laws. (shrink)

There is a tension at the heart of Lucy Allaiss transcendental idealism. The problem arises from her use of two incompatible theories in contemporary philosophy - relationalism about perception, or naïve realism, and relationalism about colour, or more generally relationalism about any such perceptual property. The problem is that the former requires a more robust form of realism about the properties of the objects of perception than can be accommodated in the partially idealistic framework of the latter. (...) On Allais’ interpretation, Kant’s notorious attempt to balance realism and idealism remains unstable. (shrink)

Michael Huemer argues that cross-cultural convergence toward liberal moral values is evidence of objective moral progress, and by extension, evidence for moral realism. Nathan Cofnas claims to debunk Huemer’s argument by contending that convergence toward liberal moral values can be better explained by ‘two related non-truth-tracking processes’: self-interest and its long-term tendency to result in social conditions conducive to greater empathy. This article argues that although Cofnas successfully debunks Huemer’s convergence argument for one influential form of moral realism (...) – Robust Moral Realism, which holds that moral facts are non-natural, stance-independent normative facts – Cofnas’s debunking argument broadly supports a second type of moral realism: Enlightened Self-Interest Realism, the view that moral facts are reducible to stance-dependent requirements of instrumental (‘means-end’) rationality. Finally, this article argues that insofar as different Enlightened Self-Interest Realist theories make specific predictions about the intra- and inter-personal mechanisms behind moral convergence toward liberalism, empirical observations of cross-cultural convergence can provide independent support for Enlightened Self-Interest Realism. I conclude that this is an important mark in favor of Enlightened Self-Interest Realism over Robust Moral Realism. (shrink)

In their seeking of simplicity, scientists fall into the error of Whitehead's "fallacy of misplaced concreteness." They mistake their abstract concepts describing reality for reality itself--the map for the territory. This leads to dogmatic overstatements, paradoxes, and mysteries such as the deep incompatibility of our two most fundamental physical theories--quantum mechanics and general relativity. To avoid such errors, we should evoke Whitehead's conception of the universe as a universe-in-process, where physical relations perpetually beget new physical relations. Today, the most promising (...) interpretations of quantum mechanics exemplify this Whiteheadian idea, formalizing physical systems, and the universe itself, as ongoing histories of actualizations of potential states, where actual states and potential states exist in mutually implicative relation as two separate categories of reality—an idea first proposed by Aristotle and rehabilitated by Heisenberg. In these interpretations, the classical conception of a history as a derivative story about fundamental physical objects is reversed: the classical physical object becomes the derivative story about fundamental histories of quantum states. The consistent histories interpretation of Robert Griffiths and the decoherent histories interpretation of Roland Omnès are cardinal examples of this approach to quantum mechanics. Another example, the relational realist interpretation, begins with the decoherent histories approach and formalizes it explicitly as a Whiteheadian interpretation, taking his “algebraic method” and applying it to quantum mechanics via algebraic topology. This branch of mathematics can be thought of as a “de-concretized” geometry in that it focuses only on the logical relations among objects and regions (and relations of these relations) rather than the fixed magnitudes of lines, planes, and other such rigid intervals. It has all the robust logical structure of geometry yet allows for an elasticity of relations that makes topological mathematical structures inherently immune misplaced concretization. (shrink)

Much has been written about the free energy principle (FEP), and much misunderstood. The principle has traditionally been put forth as a theory of brain function or biological self-organisation. Critiques of the framework have focused on its lack of empirical support and a failure to generate concrete, falsifiable predictions. I take both positive and negative evaluations of the FEP thus far to have been largely in error, and appeal to a robust literature on scientific modelling to rectify the situation. (...) A prominent account of scientific modelling distinguishes between model structure and model construal. I propose that the FEP be reserved to designate a model structure, to which philosophers and scientists add various construals, leading to a plethora of models based on the formal structure of the FEP. An entailment of this position is that demands placed on the FEP that it be falsifiable or that it conform to some degree of biological realism rest on a category error. To this end, I deliver first an account of the phenomenon of model transfer and the breakdown between model structure and model construal. In the second section, I offer an overview of the formal elements of the framework, tracing their history of model transfer and illustrating how the formalism comes apart from any interpretation thereof. Next, I evaluate existing comprehensive critical assessments of the FEP, and hypothesise as to potential sources of existing confusions in the literature. In the final section, I distinguish between what I hold to be the FEP—taken to be a modelling language or modelling framework—and what I term “FEP models.”. (shrink)

The aim of this essay is to argue that, if a robust form of moral realism is true, then moral vagueness is ontic vagueness. The argument is by elimination: I show that neither semantic nor epistemic approaches to moral vagueness are satisfactory.

For corporate memory and enterprise ontology systems to be maximally useful, they must be freed from certain barriers placed around them by traditional knowledge management paradigms. This means, above all, that they must mirror more faithfully those portions of reality which are salient to the workings of the enterprise, including the changes that occur with the passage of time. The purpose of this chapter is to demonstrate how theories based on philosophical realism can contribute to this objective. We discuss (...) how realism-based ontologies (capturing what is generic) combined with referent tracking (capturing what is specific) can play a key role in building the robust and useful corporate memories of the future. (shrink)

In Tulving’s initial characterization, episodic memory was one of multiple memory systems. It was postulated, in pursuit of explanatory depth, as displaying proprietary operations, representations, and substrates such as to explain a range of cognitive, behavioural, and experiential phenomena. Yet the subsequent development of this research program has, paradoxically, introduced surprising doubts about the nature, and indeed existence, of episodic memory. On dominant versions of the ‘common system’ view, on which a single simulation system underlies both remembering and imagining, there (...) are no processes unique to memory to support robust generalizations with inductive potential. Eliminativism about episodic memory seems to follow from the claim that it has no dedicated neurocognitive system of its own. After identifying this under-noticed threat, we push back against modern eliminativists by surveying recent evidence that still indicates specialized mechanisms, computations, and representations that are distinctly mnemic in character. We argue that contemporary realists about episodic memory can retain lessons of the common system approach while resisting the further move to eliminativism. (shrink)

Episodic memory (memories of the personal past) and prospecting the future (anticipating events) are often described as mental time travel (MTT). While most use this description metaphorically, we argue that episodic memory may allow for MTT in at least some robust sense. While episodic memory experiences may not allow us to literally travel through time, they do afford genuine awareness of past-perceived events. This is in contrast to an alternative view on which episodic memory experiences present past-perceived events as (...) mere intentional contents. Hence, episodic memory is a way of coming into experiential contact with, or being again aware of, what happened in the past. We argue that episodic memory experiences depend on a causal-informational link with the past events being remembered, and that, assuming direct realism about episodic memory experiences, this link suffices for genuine awareness. Since there is no such link in future prospection, a similar argument cannot be used to show that it also affords genuine awareness of future events. Constructivist views of memory might challenge the idea of memory as genuine awareness of remembered events. We explain how our view is consistent with both constructivist and anti-causalist conceptions of memory. There is still room for an interpretation of episodic memory as enabling genuine awareness of past events, even if it involves reconstruction. (shrink)