Realism and Antirealism

�Lepore and Smith chap38.tex V1 - March 28, 2006 1:03 P.M. Page 983

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REALISM ANDANTIREALISM

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alexander miller

WHAT is the relevance of issues in the philosophy of language to debates in metaphys-ics between realists and their antirealist opponents? Michael Dummett argues thatthe philosophy of language—in particular, the theory of meaning—is the founda-tion of all philosophy and that the debate in metaphysics between realism and anti-realism has to be prosecuted within the philosophy of language. Dummett prosecutesthe debate by developing and attacking a position we can call ‘‘semantic realism’’.This chapter questions whether, once the conception of metaphysics as groundedin the philosophy of language has been jettisoned, Dummett’s arguments againstsemantic realism can retain any relevance to the realist/antirealist debate. By focus-sing on realism about the external world as an example, we reach the conclusionthat even without Dummett’s conception of philosophy as grounded in the theoryof meaning, his arguments against semantic realism do retain a limited but never-theless genuine significance for the metaphysical debate. It emerges, though, thata certain key assumption, connecting the notions of linguistic understanding andknowledge, and necessary if Dummett’s arguments are to have even this limited sig-nificance, is both underexplained and underdefended. The chapter concludes withsome brief remarks on the cogency of the manifestation argument against semanticrealism.

For comments and discussion I’m grateful to Michael Devitt, Frank Hindriks, Andy McGonigal, andBarry. C. Smith. Some of the material in this chapter was presented at a seminar at the University of Leedsin November 2002. I’m grateful to the audience on that occasion and in particular to Andy McGonigalfor searching comments on the chapter in the pouring rain and long after the bell had rung for last orders.

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984 alexander miller

38.1 Semantic Realism• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Michael Dummett is famous (or better, infamous) for espousing a view of philo-sophy according to which:

[T]he theory of meaning is the fundamental part of philosophy which underlies all theothers. Because philosophy has, as its first if not its only task, the analysis of meanings,and because, the deeper such analysis goes, the more it is dependent upon a correct gen-eral account of meaning, a model for what the understanding of an expression consistsin, the theory of meaning, which is the search for such a model, is the foundation for allphilosophy, and not epistemology as Descartes misled us into believing. (1973: 669)

Dummett’s view of the relationship between the philosophy of language and thedebate in metaphysics between realism and antirealism follows directly from thispicture: according to Dummett the realism issue makes no literal sense, and is atbest a matter of metaphor, unless realism is couched in semantic terms. The followingquotes are representative of Dummett’s views:

[W]e have here two metaphors: the platonist compares the mathematician with the astro-nomer, the geographer or the explorer, the intuitionist compares him with the sculptor orthe imaginative writer; and neither comparison seems very apt. The disagreement evidentlyrelates to the amount of freedom that the mathematician has. Put this way, however, bothseem partly right and partly wrong: the mathematician has great freedom in devising theconcepts he introduces and in delineating the structure he chooses to study, but he cannotprove just whatever he decides it would be attractive to prove. How are we to make thedisagreement into a definite one, and how can we then resolve it? (1978: xxv)

[Any metaphysical view] is a picture which has in itself no substance otherwise than as arepresentation of the given conception of meaning. (1977: 383)

Dummett also says that in evaluating realism, the greatest difficulty is

[T]o comprehend the content of the metaphysical doctrine. What does it mean to say thatnatural numbers are mental constructions, or that they are independently existing immut-able and immaterial objects? What does it mean to ask whether or not past or future eventsare there? What does it mean to say, or deny, that material objects are logical constructionsout of sense-data? In each case, we are presented with alternative pictures. The need tochoose between these pictures seems very compelling; but the non-pictorial content of thepictures is unclear. (1991: 10)

What, then, is the thesis in the philosophy of language that cashes out the literal con-tent of the otherwise metaphorical dispute between realism and antirealism? Accord-ing to Dummett the literal content of the realist view in a given area consists inadherence to semantic realism about that area.

What is semantic realism? In order to answer this we need the notions of decidabil-ity and undecidability:

P is an effectively decidable statement] only when P is a statement of such a kind that wecould in a finite time bring ourselves into a position in which we were justified either inasserting or denying P. (1978: 16)

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realism and antirealism 985

An undecidable sentence is simply one whose sense is such that, though in certain effectivelyrecognizable situations we acknowledge it as true, in others we acknowledge it as false, andyet in others no decision is possible, we possess no effective means for bringing about asituation which is one or the other of the first two kinds. (1973: 468)

Thus, in the sense of ‘‘undecidable’’ used here, a sentence is undecidable if (a) wehave no evidence either of its truth or its falsity and (b) we do not know a pro-cedure which, if correctly implemented, is guaranteed after finitely many steps toput us in a position in which we have evidence that it is either true or false. Like-wise, a sentence is decidable if either (a) we do have evidence either of its truth orits falsity or (b) we do know a procedure which, if correctly implemented, is guar-anteed after finitely many steps to put us in a position in which we have evidencethat it is either true or false. These characterizations of decidability and undecidabil-ity no doubt stand in need in clarification and defence, but for our present purposesit is sufficient to note that e.g. Goldbach’s Conjecture—that every even number isthe sum of two primes—is undecidable in the relevant sense. In mathematics, thenotion of proof plays the role of evidence, and in this case we have no proof that theconjecture is true, no proof that there is a counterexample, and we do not know aprocedure the correct implementation of which will guarantee us either a proof or acounterexample. We can also have undecidable statements about the external world,for example: there is intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. This is undecidable. Wehave no evidence that there is intelligent life elsewhere, and no evidence that there isnot, nor do we know a procedure the correct implementation of which will guaranteeus evidence one way or the other.

We should note that the claim that e.g. Goldbach’s Conjecture is undecidable inthe sense used here entails only that we do not know a procedure which will guar-antee us either a proof or a counterexample. It does not entail that we know thatGoldbach’s Procedure cannot be proved or refuted: it is consistent with our defini-tion of undecidability that we at some point have the good fortune to turn up a proofor a counterexample. Likewise, that ‘‘There is intelligent life elsewhere in the uni-verse’’ is undecidable does not entail that we know that we will never have evidenceconcerning whether there is intelligent life elsewhere: it is consistent with our defini-tion of undecidability that we have the good fortune to stumble across some evidencewhich points one way or the other. (Note, too, that we are working with notions ofdecidability and undecidability that are not equivalent to the notions in mathem-atical logic that go by the same names. In terms of these more familiar notions, tosay that a universally quantified sentence is decidable is to say that there is either aproof or a counterexample. Dummett could not then say that Goldbach’s Conjectureis undecidable. Dummett’s antirealist holds that a statement is true just in case we arecapable of recognizing its truth, and false just in case we are capable of recognizing itsfalsity. Given the assumptions that if we can’t prove a statement we can’t recognize itto be true and that if we can’t refute a statement we can’t recognize it to be false, itwould follow from the undecidability of Goldbach’s Conjecture that it is not true andnot false (Shieh 1998: 326). This would be a clear violation of the principle of Ter-tium Non Datur, a principle to which Dummett is explicitly committed (Dummett

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1978: xviii, xxx).The class of sentences over which, according to Dummett, the realistand the antirealist disagree would then have be to characterized, not as the class ofundecidables, but as the class of statements not known to be decidable).1

We are now in a position to characterize semantic realism about a given area.Semantic realism consists of the following claim: our understanding of undecidablesentences about the area consists in our grasp of their truth-conditions. In such a case,the truth-conditions of the relevant sentences are potentially evidence-transcendent:we do not know a method, the correct application of which is guaranteed to yieldevidence for those truth-conditions’ obtaining or not, and we may never turn upevidence either way. So semantic realism about the external world, for example, isthe view that our understanding of at least some sentences about the external worldconsists in our grasp of their potentially evidence-transcendent truth-conditions.

Dummett’s fundamental claim concerning realism about a particular subject mat-ter is that insofar as it has any literal content, it consists in adherence to semanticrealism. This claim, and the conception of philosophy that goes along with it, havebeen widely rejected, by those sympathetic to Dummett as well as by those anti-pathetic to his philosophy.2 We will not further concern ourselves with this issuein this chapter. Rather, our main concern will be with the relevance of argumentsagainst semantic realism, in particular whether they retain any relevance once Dum-mett’s conception of the theory of meaning’s role within philosophy has been jet-tisoned. Dummett has two main arguments against semantic realism, the acquisitionargument and the manifestation argument. In short, if our understanding of unde-cidable sentences is constituted by grasp of potentially evidence-transcendent truth-conditions, how could we have acquired that understanding, given that our trainingin the use of sentences is a training to respond to situations which we are, necessar-ily, capable of recognizing to obtain when they obtain? And if our understanding ofundecidable sentences is constituted by grasp of potentially evidence-transcendenttruth-conditions, how could we manifest that understanding in our use of those sen-tences, given that the situations to which we respond in our uses of those sentencesare, necessarily, situations which we are capable of recognizing to obtain when theyobtain?3 In order to explore the relevance of these arguments, in the next section wewill develop an austerely metaphysical (i.e. non-semantic) characterization of realismabout the external world. In the section after that we will use this austerely metaphys-ical characterization to explore whether, once Dummett’s conception of philosophyas grounded in the philosophy of language has been rejected, his arguments againstsemantic realism have any bearing on the plausibility or otherwise of realism aboutthe external world.4

1 For a good discussion of the terminological choices, and for arguments in favour of using the lessfamiliar epistemic characterizations in giving an exposition of Dummett’s views, see Shieh, 1998.See alsoappendix 1 in Weiss, 2002.

2 See Devitt, 1991a; Blackburn, 1989, Wright Introduction to 1993; Hale, 1997; Miller, 2003a.3 For critical discussion of the acquisition argument and references to the relevant literature, see Miller,

2003b. For the manifestation argument, see Miller, 2002; and Gamble, 2003,4 What follows in Sections 38.2 and 38.3 is, I hope, an improvement on a cruder version of the same

basic line of thought developed in Miller, 2003a.

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38.2 Common-Sense Realism• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Michael Devitt suggests the following characterization:

Common-Sense Realism: Tokens of most current observable common-sense and scientificphysical types objectively exist independently of the mental. (1991a: 24)

There are thus two dimensions to realism about the external world: the existencedimension and the independence dimension. The realist asserts that tables, chairs,cats, the moons of Jupiter, and so on, exist; and that these entities exist objectivelyand independently of the mental. The table I am writing on exists and is not con-stituted by ‘‘our knowledge, by our epistemic values, by our capacity to refer to it,by the synthesizing power of the mind, by our imposition of concepts, theories, orlanguages’’(1991a: 15). Nor is it made up of sense-data or mental states, whether ascharacterized by Descartes or by modern materialism.

We can accept this characterization of realism about the external world, with oneminor qualification. As stated, common-sense realism is consistent with the follow-ing scenario: tables, chairs, cats, the moons of Jupiter and so on, objectively existindependently of the mental; but in every case, and for every possible property whichone of them might possess, their possessing (or failing to possess) that property isconstituted by ‘‘our knowledge, by our epistemic values, by our capacity to referto it, by the synthesising power of the mind, by our imposition of concepts, theor-ies, or languages’’. Thus, the table I am writing on objectively exists independently ofthe mental, but its colour, weight, shape, molecular constitution, etc. are all in somesense constituted by us. A position such as this is hardly worth describing as realismabout the external world. So we need to strengthen Devitt’s characterization in orderto preclude this type of scenario. One way to do this would be as follows:

Common-Sense Realism: Tokens of most current observable common-sense and sci-entific physical types objectively exist independently of the mental, and they possesssome of their properties objectively.

It is an interesting question how many of the properties we could allow to fail to bepossessed objectively before realism is compromised: for instance, is a view whichallows that the table’s being black, but not its being square, is constituted by factsabout how it strikes humans, worth describing as realism? We do not need to pursuethis question here. Clearly, the more properties that fail to be possessed objectively,the weaker the version of realism. So our new characterization of common-senserealism is the weakest position that anyone worth calling a realist about the externalworld is committed to.5 Call this the austere metaphysical characterization of realismabout the external world.

5 The point made here should not be confused with the one that Devitt considers when he says ‘‘Wehave said that the entities must be of common-sense and scientific types; but perhaps we ought to sayalso that they must have some of the properties which tokens of that type are believed to have’’(1991a:21). Devitt goes on to reject this addition to his characterization of realism, and we can grant him thisfor the sake of the argument. The point in the text is not that the realist has to say that the entities have

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It is an interesting question whether we can say anything more about what isinvolved in an item’s ‘‘possessing a property objectively’’. But rather than pursue thisinteresting question here, we can cash out the idea as follows:

Common-Sense Realism: Tokens of most current observable common-sense and sci-entific physical types objectively exist independently of the mental; they possess someproperties which may pass altogether unnoticed by human consciousness; and theirinnermost nomological secrets may remain forever hidden from us.6

Note that this formulation of common-sense realism is no less austerely metaphys-ical than the formulation which led to it. As such, it should be entirely acceptableto Devitt. Henceforth, when we refer to the austere metaphysical characterization ofrealism about the external world, it is this final formulation that is intended. We cannow ask the following questions. How exactly does the plausibility or implausibil-ity of semantic realism, as characterized by Dummett, impact upon the plausibilityor implausibility of realism about the external world, characterized as above in aus-terely metaphysical terms? If we had cogent arguments against semantic realism,what would this tell us about realism about the external world?

38.3 The Plausibility of a RealisticWorldview

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As we’ve seen, on the conception of philosophy advocated by Dummett, the theoryof meaning is the foundation of all philosophy. An alternative to this conception issuggested by the rejection of ‘‘first philosophy’’ in favour of philosophy naturalizedrecommended by e.g. Devitt and Sterelny. According to them

Philosophy’s most basic task is to reflect upon, and integrate, the results of investigationsin the particular sciences to form a coherent overall view of the universe and our place in it(1987: 225).

In order to get clear on the relationship between the theory of meaning and meta-physics in this alternative naturalized conception of philosophy, let’s introduce theidea of a worldview. What is a worldview? A worldview consists of at least a meta-physics (an account of what there is and its nature in general), an epistemology (an

some of the properties which they are believed to have, but rather that whatever properties they have,they have at least some of them objectively. Note also that the strengthening of Devitt’s characterizationsuggested does not require us to adopt or argue for any particular position on the ontology of properties.Some of the things Devitt says suggest that he would take our proposed strengthening to be includedtacitly in his characterization of realism. For example, he writes ‘‘an object has objective existence, insome sense, if it exists and has its nature whatever we believe, think, or can discover’’(1991a: 15, emphasisadded). If the reference to the object’s nature is just a reference to (some of ) its properties, then there isno disagreement between us.

6 This final formulation of common-sense realism has been deliberately adapted to include CrispinWright’s formulation of what he calls the ‘‘modest’’ ingredient in realism (Wright, 1993: 1).

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account of how we can possess knowledge of the objects and properties included inthe metaphysics), and a semantics (an account of how we can talk and think aboutthe objects and properties included in the metaphysics). A plausible worldview isa worldview in which each of the components is itself plausible, and in which thecomponents are at least mutually compatible. A plausible realistic worldview, for ourpurposes, is a plausible worldview which has common-sense realism, characterizedausterely as above, as its metaphysical component. An alternative to Dummett’s con-ception of the relationship between the theory of meaning and metaphysics couldbe spelt out as follows: it is the job of philosophy to find a worldview in which thevarious elements, metaphysical, epistemological, and so on, are individually plausibleand mutually integrated, and in carrying out this job no one of the various aspects,metaphysical, epistemological, semantic, and so on, has any a priori priority overthe others.

Plausibly, a realist metaphysics which cannot be integrated into a plausible real-istic worldview is to an extent rendered unattractive. An account of the nature of theworld which renders it difficult to see how we could think, talk, or acquire knowledgeabout that world is to that extent less than fully satisfactory, although in accordancewith the naturalized conception of philosophy the precise extent to which the realistmetaphysics is rendered unsatisfactory or unattractive will be an aposteriori matter,depending on which adjustment (rejecting the metaphysical, semantic, or some othercomponent of the worldview) renders it best placed to predict the future course ofexperience. There are thus two ways in which a realist metaphysics can be attacked:directly, via pointing out some inadequacy within the metaphysics itself, or indirectly,via an argument that it cannot be integrated into a plausible realistic worldview. Asuccessful argument that a realist metaphysics cannot be integrated into a plausiblerealistic worldview would thus establish that metaphysics was to an extent unsat-isfactory. One way of viewing Dummett’s arguments against semantic realism, a waythat detaches them from his conception of the theory of meaning playing a foundationalphilosophical role, is to see them as providing an indirect attack of the latter sort on acertain sort of realistic worldview.7

Take common-sense realism, as defined above, to constitute the metaphysicalcomponent of a realistic worldview. What about the semantic component? Whatconstitutes the fact that a certain sentence means what it does, or that a certainspeaker understands that sentence in the way that he does? One influential type ofanswer to these questions is given by the Truth-Conditional Conception of Meaningand Understanding (TCCMU). According to the TCCMU, a sentence’s having themeaning that it has consists in its having a certain truth-condition, and a speaker’sunderstanding that sentence in a particular way consists in his having grasped therelevant truth-condition.

7 We write here as though adopting a naturalised conception of philosophy (with respect to thesciences and other disciplines) were of a piece with accepting a naturalised conception of the role of thetheory of meaning within philosophy itself. Of course, this is strictly speaking incorrect as it would bepossible in principle to hold to one but not the other. But this would surely be an odd coupling: so theyare run together in the text. Nothing of any importance appears to hinge on this.

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One way of viewing Dummett’s arguments against semantic realism in line withthe naturalized conception of philosophy would be to view them as attempting toestablish, in the indirect manner just adumbrated, that common-sense realism can-not be conjoined with the TCCMU to form a plausible realistic worldview.

How so? Recall the characterization of realism about the external world fromabove:

Common-Sense Realism: Tokens of most current observable common-sense and sci-entific physical types objectively exist independently of the mental; and they possesssome properties which may pass altogether unnoticed by human consciousness; andtheir innermost nomological secrets may remain forever hidden from us.

Suppose that the universe is one of the tokens covered in the first part of the charac-terization, and suppose that the property of containing extra-terrestrial intelligent lifeis one of the properties the universe’s having or failing to have may pass altogetherunnoticed by human consciousness. According to the TCCMU, our grasp of the sen-tence ‘‘There is intelligent life elsewhere in the universe’’ consists in our grasp of itstruth-condition. But, as we have just seen, this truth-condition—there being intel-ligent life elsewhere in the universe—is one whose obtaining, or failing to obtain,may pass altogether unnoticed by human consciousness. Thus, it follows that ourunderstanding of the sentence ‘‘There is intelligent life elsewhere in the universe’’consists in grasp of a potentially evidence-transcendent truth-condition. In general,common-sense realism in combination with the TCCMU yields semantic realism.Thus, a cogent argument against semantic realism would establish that common-senserealism could not be combined with the TCCMU to form (part of) a realistic worldview.

What would follow if Dummett’s arguments against semantic realism turned outto be compelling? In order to have a plausible worldview, we would have to eithergive up common-sense realism, or give up the TCCMU. Thus, if Dummett’s argu-ments against semantic realism proved to be successful, the realist about the externalworld would face the challenge of embracing one of the following options:

(i) Keep common-sense realism by rejecting the TCCMU: understanding a sen-tence is not a matter of knowledge of truth-conditions or knowledge of anyother sort of condition (Devitt 1991a, b, c, Devitt and Sterelny 1987).

(ii) Keep common-sense realism and the TCCMU, but defuse Dummett’s argu-ments against semantic realism by rejecting his claim that we have to give anaccount of what the knowledge of truth-conditions adverted to in TCCMU con-sists in (Davidson 1983).8

(iii) Keep common-sense realism, the TCCMU, accept Dummett’s claim that wehave to give an account of what the knowledge adverted to in the TCCMU con-sists in, but argue that even so Dummett’s arguments against semantic realismcan still be defused (McDowell 1981, 1987).

8 On Davidson, see Smith, 1992, pp. 17–24.

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(iv) Keep common-sense realism by rejecting the TCCMU: understanding asentence is now to be construed as grasp of a certain sort of assertibility con-dition (Edgington 1981).Of course, Dummett himself is inclined towards the following, antirealist,option:

(v) Give up common-sense realism, but hold on to TCCMU subject to the condi-tion that the notion of truth which it takes as central is not potentially evidence-transcendent (see in particular the preface to Dummett, 1978; also Wright, 1993,passim).

This taxonomy of the options perhaps sounds strange: how could finding an altern-ative to the TCCMU be a task for the realist, given Dummett’s numerous claims inhis early work that opposition to realism takes the form of proposing an assertibility-conditional alternative to TCCMU?9 But there is actually nothing strange here. Thealternative taxonomy suggested by Dummett’s early work is tied up with the idea thatrealism is to be identified with the TCCMU, an idea which is, as we noted, widelyrejected and which we are putting on one side for the purposes of this chapter.And the taxonomy we have proposed sits better with Dummett’s considered opin-ion (and Wright’s current view) that it is the antirealist who has the best claim tothe TCCMU: according to Wright and the later Dummett there is nothing wrongwith the TCCMU as such, it is just that the realist misconceives the notion of truthwhich figures therein. Once the notion of truth is viewed as essentially epistemically-constrained, there is no problem about adherence to the TCCMU.

In accordance with the naturalized conception of philosophy and of the role of thephilosophy of language within philosophy, questions about the plausibility of thesesin the philosophy of language can potentially impact upon issues in metaphysics. AsDevitt puts it himself:

Knowledge is a seamless web, as Quine told us long ago. Everything in the web can make adifference to everything else (Devitt, 1991c: 75)

Be that as it may, it is an aposteriori question whether, even given the failure ofattempts to integrate the TCCMU within a realistic worldview, we should actuallycontemplate giving up common-sense realism. Devitt is surely on safe ground whenhe writes:

Realism is too strong a doctrine to be overthrown by current speculations about under-standing. (Devitt, 1991b: 286)

At least, he is on safe ground if he is suggesting that it is highly unlikely or improbablethat we will find that, as a matter of aposteriori fact, our best working theory of theworld involves rejecting common-sense realism and holding on to TCCMU ratherthan vice versa. This is all of a piece with the naturalized conceptions of philosophyand semantics. But Devitt may himself overstep the bounds of his own naturalizedconception of philosophy when he writes:

9 See e.g. the much-quoted remarks in the early paper ‘‘Truth’’(Dummett 1978: 19).

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If it proves very difficult to naturalise reference, then perhaps we should seek a nonreferentialtheory of mind and language. If we were completely desperate, perhaps we might contem-plate giving up naturalism. What we should never countenance for a moment is the ideathat ‘we cut the world into objects when we introduce one or another scheme of descrip-tion’. To accept that idea is not to rebuild the boat whilst staying afloat, it is to jumpoverboard. (1993a: 52, Devitt’s emphasis)

But the idea that we are constrained, a priori, never to end up with an idealist plank inthe philosophical boat, or an idealist strand in the philosophical web, is completely atodds with the Neurathian and Quinean images of which Devitt here avails himself.

It is thus perhaps worthwhile pausing to reflect on the genuine but limited signi-ficance of Dummett’s arguments against semantic realism. On our construal of thesituation, Dummett’s arguments against semantic realism, even if completely suc-cessful, would not establish the unacceptability of realism about the external world.They could do so only in conjunction with (1) a cogent argument to the effect thatthere could be no alternative to the TCCMU together with (2) the aposteriori result thatgiving up realism rather than the TCCMU would make for a theory better placedto predict accurately the future course of experience. Dummett nowhere attemptsto provide an argument for (1), although he does attempt to rebut objections to theTCCMU and to raise objections for alternative semantic views such as causal theoriesof reference (e.g. Dummett, 1973, appendix to chapter 5). And Dummett’s found-ationalist conception of the place of the theory of meaning within philosophy pre-vents him from even seeing the need for (2). So the most that Dummett’s argumentsagainst semantic realism can establish is that the common-sense realist requires analternative theory of meaning to the TCCMU in order to have a realistic worldviewimmune to the worry that it turn out as a matter of aposteriori fact that common-sense realism has to be jettisoned. Dummett’s arguments, even if successful, simplyleave the common-sense realist with the challenge of finding such an alternative.Again, in the absence of a general argument to the effect that such an alternative isimpossible, even if Dummett’s arguments against semantic realism are cogent there issimply no refutation of realism as such, merely the provision of a challenge which therealist is obliged to meet. And even if the realist cannot meet that challenge, it maywell turn out that aposteriori considerations about theoretical success dictate that it isthe TCCMU, and not common-sense realism, that has to be jettisoned.

This, then, is the proper conception of the relationship between realism aboutthe external world and semantic realism. Realism about the external world togetherwith the truth-conditional conception of understanding yields semantic realism, soif semantic realism is unacceptable, the realist about the external world faces thepossibility that he may have to find an alternative to the truth-conditional conceptionif he is to have a plausible realistic worldview. Dummett’s arguments againstsemantic realism thus have genuine, if limited significance, for the metaphysicaldebate between realism about the external world and its opponents. Importantly,this significance is independent of Dummett’s view that the theory of meaning is thefoundation of all philosophy. The rejection of that view thus does not endanger the

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limited but genuine importance of Dummett’s arguments against semantic realismfor the issue of realism about the external world.10

38.4 Semantics and Psychology• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

We have seen that if Dummett’s arguments against semantic realism are cogent, thecommon-sense realist may, as a matter of aposteriori fact, have to contemplate givingup his realism in order to hold on to the TCCMU. As noted, this seems unlikely,although not impossible. However, Devitt and Sterelny would claim that Dummett’sarguments do not even have the very limited sort of significance we outlined in theprevious section, since they presuppose two claims that are, as a matter of fact, false.They write:

Philosophers have had a lot to say about linguistic competence. Implicitly, at least, theyhave been concerned with competence in the full semantic sense, for they have attendedto truth and reference. Yet, interestingly enough, they have typically made two mistakesthat are parallel to the two major mistakes of the linguists. First, they conflate the theory ofcompetence with the theory of symbols. Second, they write as if that competence consistedin propositional knowledge of the language (Devitt and Sterelny 1987: 147).

We will examine the second of these assumptions in Section 38.6. In this sectionwe will see that, whatever independent interest attaches to the distinction betweena theory of symbols and a theory of linguistic competence, it has no bearing on thequestion of the significance of Dummett’s arguments against semantic realism, con-strued as in the section previous.

Of the conflation between a theory of symbols and a theory of competence, Devittand Sterelny write:

[This] mistake is certainly made by Michael Dummett. It is reflected in his slogan, ‘‘a the-ory of meaning is a theory of understanding’’ (Devitt and Sterelny 1987: 147).

The mistake lies in not distinguishing clearly between, on the one hand, the semanticproperties of linguistic symbols and, on the other, explaining the psychological prop-erties of competent speakers and hearers. The position of Devitt and Sterelny on thisissue could be summed up in the slogan ‘‘Semantics is not psychology’’.11 We shallnot enter here in into the issue of whether this is correct as a piece of Dummettexegesis. Rather, we shall simply assume that it is true but show that it does not

10 It is perhaps worth noting that Dummett himself, in his valedictory lecture ‘‘Realism andAntirealism’’(1993, essay 20), suggests that his ‘‘antirealist’’ arguments actually have more modestpretensions than he originally led us to believe.

11 Devitt and Sterelny thus ascribe to Dummett a view on the relationship between semantics andpsychology that is identical to Chomsky’s view on the relationship between linguistics and psychology.For an account of the slogan ‘‘a theory of meaning is a theory of understanding’’ on which Dummett’sview departs significantly from Chomsky’s, see Smith, 1992.

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affect in any significant way the account in Section 38.4 of the limited but genuinesignificance of Dummett’s arguments against semantic realism.

Recall that we characterized semantic realism as flowing from TCCMU togetherwith common-sense realism. TCCMU we characterized as the view that a compet-ent speaker’s understanding of a sentence consists in his knowledge of its truth-condition. Now, semantic realism will seem like a misnomer if the description ofTCCMU as a semantic theory, or as the semantic component of a worldview, is itself amisnomer. And this is what Devitt and Sterelny claim: the subject matter of semanticsis linguistic expressions and their relations to extra-linguistic reality, and it is wrongto import psychological considerations, such as considerations concerning speakers’competence, into a semantic theory.

Suppose that Devitt and Sterelny are right. What consequences follow from thisfor our interpretation of the significance of Dummett’s arguments against semanticrealism? Our claim was that if Dummett’s arguments against semantic realism arecogent, then we cannot rule out the possibility that aposteriori considerations lead tothe rejection of a certain type of realist worldview via the rejection of common-senserealism and the retention of TCCMU. The same point holds, in a slightly differ-ent form, if we accept Devitt and Sterelny’s extrusion of considerations concerningspeakers’ understanding from the subject matter of semantics.

Our realist worldview will now contain common-sense realism, as before, as ametaphysical component. It will contain a semantic component, this time to theeffect that the meaning of a sentence is determined by its truth-condition. There isno mention of understanding, so it might seem to be the case that Dummett’s argu-ments cannot have even the very limited significance outlined in the previous section.But this would be too hasty. A worldview is going to have to contain, in addition to ametaphysical component and a semantic component narrowly construed, a psycho-logical component dealing with the psychological properties of competent speakers.Devitt and Sterelny cannot claim that psychology is not psychology: so now the sig-nificance of Dummett’s arguments can be cashed out more or less as before. Call thepsychological thesis that a speakers understanding of a sentence consists in know-ledge of its meaning the epistemic conception of understanding. Then, common-sense realism plus the truth-conditional theory of meaning (narrowly construed)plus the epistemic conception of understanding together entail semantic realism. Soif Dummett’s arguments against semantic realism are cogent, then we cannot rule outthe possibility that aposteriori considerations lead to the rejection of a certain type ofrealist worldview only this time via the rejection of common-sense realism and theretention of the truth-conditional theory narrowly construed together with the epi-stemic conception of understanding. Even if Devitt and Sterelny are right to objectto the characterization of TCCMU broadly construed as ‘‘semantic’’, this leaves thepotential significance of Dummett’s arguments completely unchanged, so long as weaccept that a plausible worldview must contain a psychological component in addi-tion to a semantic component narrowly construed.

This shows that the issue concerning the relationship between the theory of sym-bols and the theory of competence as broached by Devitt and Sterelny is really a

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non-issue so far as the significance of Dummett’s arguments against semantic realismis concerned.12 As we’ll see in the next section, the real issue comes down to that ofthe epistemic conception of understanding. So we can now put the issue about therelationship between semantics and psychology to one side, and move to a considera-tion of the epistemic conception of understanding.

38.5 Knowledge and Understanding• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

If we put the idea that the meaning of a sentence is its truth-condition togetherwith the epistemic conception of understanding, we get the view that a speaker’sunderstanding of the sentences in his language consists in knowledge of their truth-conditions. This view is a key premise in the Dummettian arguments whose signi-ficance we have been considering. Without this view, the Dummettian argumentsagainst semantic realism cannot even get started: if understanding a sentence isn’ta matter of knowing its truth-condition, arguments to the effect that semantic real-ism cannot cope with the idea that competent speakers know the truth-conditionsof certain sentences of their language will be neither here nor there. Given this, onewould expect the antirealist literature to provide a battery of arguments in favour ofthe epistemic conception of understanding. Unfortunately, this is not the case: thereappears to be no sustained and properly worked-out argument for the epistemic con-ception in the antirealist literature.13 Instead, there are scattered remarks here andthere reacting to arguments against the epistemic conception. We will limit ourselvesin this section to a consideration of some of these remarks.

Firstly, consider Wright’s general remark about Devitt’s attack on the idea thatunderstanding a sentence is a matter of knowledge:

If the more radical antirealist claims about the dubiety of a conception of verification-transcendent truth are correct—we, the theorists—have no business involving that ‘notion’in any sort of theory, whether conceived as descriptive of the content of object-languagespeakers’ understanding or not. There has been some curious muddle about this simplepoint in recent realist commentary [e.g. Devitt 1991a]. So perhaps it is worth emphasisingthe obvious: whether or not the theory of meaning is conceived—as Dummett alwaysurges it must be—as a theory of speakers’ understanding, the project is, trivially, con-strained by the demand that the concepts which it uses must be in good order. Criticismof that particular ingredient in Dummett’s philosophy of language, or highlighting of thenon-sequitur involved in the transition from the claims 1) that the meaning of a sen-tence is what someone who understands it knows, and 2) that the meaning of a sentence

12 Of course, the claim is not that the semantics-psychology issue is a non-issue tout court. For aninteresting exchange on the issue see Laurence, 2003 and Devitt, 2003.

13 To be fair to the antirealist, though, a reason for this may be that the epistemic conception ofunderstanding is already adhered to by many realists (e.g. McDowell, Davidson, Edgington). But thepoint made in the text stands: in order for Dummett’s arguments to get started, the realist has toconstrue understanding a sentence as consisting in knowledge of its truth-conditions. And a rigorous andcompelling argument for this claim is still wanting.

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is determined by its truth-conditions, to 3) one who understands a sentence knows itstruth-conditions, is therefore entirely futile if what one is trying to do is to protect realistsemantics from antirealist attack. (Wright 1993: 238, emphasis added)

These remarks are puzzling, and appear to beg the question against Devitt. Theyignore the fact that Dummett’s arguments against the good-standing of the realist‘concept’ of potentially evidence-transcendent truth proceed via the assumption thatsomeone who understands a sentence knows its truth-conditions. This assumptionfigures as a premise in Dummett’s arguments.14 Those arguments, after all, claimthat if speakers were credited with knowledge of a potentially evidence-transcendentconcept of truth, it would be knowledge that they could not manifest and that theycould not plausibly have acquired in the course of ordinary training in the prac-tice of speaking a language. So how could undermining an argument for the ideathat understanding is a matter of knowledge of truth-conditions be an ‘entirely futile’exercise for the realist, given that, if successful, a key premise in the antirealist argu-ment against realist semantics would have been undermined?

Similar points apply to Wright’s remarks upon the potential import for the antire-alist arguments of causal theories of reference and essentialist theories of the exten-sions of natural-kind terms. One might think such views are inimical to the epistemicconception of understanding that the antirealist arguments rely on because if suchviews are correct then ‘‘certain real (usually causal) relations between our words andthe world may make an essential contribution to the content of utterances withoutin any way figuring in the knowledge of those who utter them’’(1993: 34). Wrightargues that in fact causal theories of reference have no bearing upon the question ofthe good standing of the realist conception if truth:

to suppose that the truth-conditions of statements involving e.g. singular terms or naturalkinds may be determined, in part, by factors of which someone who understands thosestatements need not thereby be aware is—if indeed true—quite different from supposingthat the truth-conditions so determined may be realised undetectably. So far as I can see,the first supposition provides no motive whatever for the second. (1993: 34)

Again, this appears to miss the point. The causal theorist of reference doesn’t attackDummett by arguing that the causal theory implies that statements involving the rel-evant terms may be true undetectably. Rather, he argues that it appears to underminethe premise in the antirealist argument to the effect that understanding a sentenceis a matter of knowledge of its truth-conditions. The point is presumably that sinceunderstanding a sentence involving a natural kind term, for example, is a matter ofthe obtaining of a causal relationship between one’s uses of the term and instances ofthe relevant kind, and since one need not be aware of the relevant causal relationship,it is difficult to see why this state of understanding should nevertheless be describedin terms of the possession of knowledge. The point is not intended to function as apremise in an argument to realism, as Wright seems to imply: rather, it is intended

14 In the passage just quoted Wright is interpreting the dictum that a theory of meaning is a theory ofunderstanding as the claim that the meaning of a sentence is known by someone who understands it.

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to undermine one of the key premises in the argument against realism. Wright has toargue that even granted the causal theory of reference, it is still appropriate to thinkof speakers who understand sentences containing the relevant term as knowing thetruth-conditions of those sentences.

Wright’s most sustained discussion of the idea of speakers’ knowledge appears ina paper dealing with the issue of speakers’ implicit knowledge of a systematic formalsemantic theory in the style of a Davidsonian theory of meaning for a natural lan-guage. If speakers could be credited with implicit knowledge of the axioms of sucha theory we would have the beginnings of an explanation of how they are able tounderstanding novel utterances: a speaker’s understanding of a previously unen-countered sentence would be equated with his implicit knowledge of the theoremthat gives its meaning, and so could be viewed as derived from his implicit know-ledge of its constituent expressions and their mode of syntactic combination in a waythat mirrors the derivational route in the theory from semantic axioms giving themeanings of words to theorems giving the meanings of sentences. Wright develops anargument of Gareth Evans’ to the effect that actual speakers cannot plausibly be cred-ited with knowledge of axioms, before asking how his discussion of this issue bears onthe realism/antirealism debate conceived along Dummettian lines:

The answer, it should now be clear, is: not at all. The antirealist claim is that nobody mayreasonably be credited with knowledge of the truth-conditions of any of a very substantialclass of statements . . . The conclusion is then drawn that truth may not play the centralrole in a comprehensive theory of (statement) meaning—at least not when understood ala mode realistique. The justification for this conclusion is that the theory is supposed torepresent the knowledge in which understanding of the sentences of a language consists,which it must be failing to do if it cannot do better than articulate that knowledge in termsof concepts which they cannot have. Now if the discussion of implicit knowledge . . . hadyielded the result that a theory of meaning simply cannot be concerned with the descrip-tion of speakers’ knowledge at all, then the antirealist critique of (realist) truth-conditionalsemantics could not take exactly this form. But . . . what emerged as problematic was theidea of speakers’ implicit knowledge of the content of the axioms of a theory of mean-ing—no reason emerged to doubt the propriety of crediting them with implicit knowledgeof the content of the meaning delivering theorems (1993: 237–8).

In short:

There is no cause to regard the antirealist’s basic negative case as making use of the idea ofimplicit knowledge in a way which seems to deserve mistrust. (1993: 35)

Wright’s remarks here are, strictly speaking, correct: the central worry aboutascribing implicit knowledge of meaning-theoretic axioms to speakers appears notto threaten the ascription to those speakers of implicit knowledge of the theoremsof a semantic theory.15 But arguably, although correct, Wright’s observation is not

15 The worry is in effect that states of ‘‘knowledge’’ of the content of semantic axioms (unlikeknowledge of semantic theorems) will be inferentially insulated in a way in which genuine states ofknowledge are not. See Evans, 1981 and Miller, 1997.

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enough to divorce entirely the question of knowledge of semantic axioms fromthe question of knowledge of semantic theorems. The residual worry concerns themotivation for the view that competent speakers know the theorems of a correctsemantic theory for their language. The worry is that the central motivation forviewing speakers as possessing knowledge of the theorematic output of a semantictheory is that if one does so, and if one can view speakers as implicitly knowing theaxioms of the theory, one will thereby be in a position to explain semantic creativity:the derivational route from axioms to theorems in the theory will shed light onhow understanding of an unfamiliar sentence can result from an understandingof its familiar constituents and their mode of combination. It follows that evenif the arguments against ascribing implicit knowledge of semantic axioms do notrule out the ascription of implicit knowledge of theorems, they undermine themain motivation for the latter sort of ascription: if speakers cannot be creditedwith implicit knowledge of semantic axioms, the explanation of semantic creativityadumbrated above will not be possible, so that that source of motivation for theidea that speakers have knowledge of the semantic theorems will simply lapse.So Wright’s claim that the issue of knowledge of theorems is independent of theissue of knowledge of axioms is not quite right: without the ascription of implicitknowledge of axioms, the ascription of knowledge of theorems begins to appeartheoretically idle.16

Dummett’s remarks on the issue are by and large unhelpful and equivocal.17 Forexample, he writes:

It is one of the merits of a theory of meaning which represents mastery of a language as theknowledge not of isolated, but of deductively interconnected propositions, that it makesdue acknowledgement of the undoubted fact that a process of derivation of some kind isinvolved in the understanding of a sentence. (1993: 13)

Passages like these suggest that Dummett harbours some substantial explanatoryaspirations for a theory of meaning. A competent speaker of the languageunder consideration hears a sentence he has never heard before. He derives hisunderstanding of the sentence from his understanding of its constituents and theirmode of combination. If we could view the speaker as knowing the propositionsexpressed by the axioms of a theory of meaning for his language, we could explainthis fact about comprehension: he derives his understanding of the novel utterancefrom his understanding of its constituents just as the theorem for the sentence in thetheory of meaning is derived from its axioms. But this explanation will only work if

16 Wright may reply that the ascription of knowledge of theorems may be motivated independentlyof ascribing implicit knowledge of axioms to speakers, via the imposition of what he calls the structuralconstraint (1993: 214). It is not clear that this can be placed at the service of the antirealist argumentsagainst semantic realism: the structural constraint concerns the semantic knowledge possessed by anideally rational speaker, while the antirealist arguments turn on claims about the knowledge possessedby ordinary, less than fully rational, speakers. In addition, see Miller 1997 for an argument to the effectthat the imposition of the structural constraint is itself not motivated independently of the ascription ofknowledge of semantic axioms to ordinary language speakers.

17 In the next few pages, I draw on Miller 2003b.

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the speaker really does know the propositions expressed by the theory’s axioms. AsWright puts it:

For Dummett, the explanatory ambitions of a theory of meaning would seem to be entirelydependent upon the permissibility of thinking of speakers of its object language as know-ing the propositions which its axioms codify and of their deriving their understanding of(novel) sentences in a manner mirrored by the derivation, in the theory, of the appropriatetheorems. (1993: 207)

Thus, implicit linguistic knowledge is conceived of as implicit propositional know-ledge actually possessed by competent speakers.

The problem is that this explanatory ambition for the notion of implicit knowledgeappears to be completely at odds with another strain in Dummett’s thinking on theissue. For example:

Our problem is, therefore: What is it that a speaker knows when he knows a language, andwhat, in particular, does he thereby know about any given sentence of the language? Ofcourse, what he has when he knows the language is practical knowledge, knowledge howto speak the language: but this is no objection to its representation as propositional know-ledge; mastery of a procedure, of a conventional practice, can always be so represented, and,whenever the practice is complex, such a representation often provides the only conveni-ent mode of analysis of it. Thus what we seek is a theoretical representation of a practicalability. (1993: 36)

Richard Kirkham gives the following explanation of the view of linguistic compet-ence in the background of quotations like these:

Language competence, according to Dummett, is a practical ability, so a theory of mean-ing must model (or represent, Dummett uses the two words interchangeably) this practicalability. The model is a set of propositions which represent what a competent speaker of thelanguage knows. This does not mean that a competent speaker of the language has pro-positional knowledge of these propositions. Knowing a language is a knowing-how not aknowing-that. It is ability knowledge, not propositional knowledge . . . . But ability know-ledge can be represented by propositions. (Kirkham 1989:212)

Kirkham gives a nice example to illustrate the idea that knowledge-how can be rep-resented by knowledge-that. Jones knows how to touch type: he can type accuratelywithout looking at the keyboard. But he does not have propositional knowledge ofthe layout of the keyboard: he does not know that the ‘‘R’’ is immediately to the leftof the ‘‘T’’ and so on. This is shown by the fact that Jones cannot draw a map of thekeyboard without looking at it (and we might add, would not be able to identify thecorrect such map if presented with it alongside a group of inaccurate maps). How-ever, even though he does not know e.g. that the ‘‘R’’ is immediately to the left of the‘‘T’’, this piece of propositional knowledge represents Jones’s ability insofar as he actsas if he had it: he acts as though he knew that the ‘‘R’’ is immediately to the left of the‘‘T’’. And the same goes for implicit knowledge of truth-conditions:

Dummett would label the sort of epistemic relationship I have with these propositions as‘‘implicit knowledge’’, meaning I do not really know them at all, but it is as though I did. So,

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too, according to Dummett, linguistic competence is implicit knowledge. But . . . he meansonly that one could represent a competent speakers linguistic behaviour with a list of this setof propositions. He does not mean that the speaker really knows these propositions (1989:212).18

The notion of implicit knowledge in the background in those passages where Dum-mett appears to harbour explanatory ambitions for grasp of a theory of meaning thusappears to be inconsistent with the notion of implicit knowledge figuring in passageswhere the theory of meaning is characterized as a theoretical representation of speak-ers’ practical abilities. Dummett’s more recent musings on these matters do little tohelp dispel the fog. In the preface to his 1993 collected papers, he argues that wecannot view linguistic understanding as a pure practical ability which can only berepresented by theoretical knowledge, because we need a more robust attribution ofknowledge to speakers if we are to pay sufficient heed to the fact that

[L]inguistic utterances are (usually) rational acts, concerning which we may ask after themotives and intentions underlying them (Dummett 1993: x).

In addition

[T]he classic examples of pure practical abilities, like the ability to swim, are those in whichit is possible, before acquiring the ability, to have a fully adequate conception of what it isan ability to do. By contrast, there is a clear sense in which it is only by learning a languagethat one can come by a knowledge of what it is to speak that language, just as it is only bylearning how to play chess that one can come by a knowledge of what it is to play chess.(Ibid.)

So linguistic understanding is not a example of a pure practical ability: it is not some-thing that can only be modelled on theoretical knowledge, it really does, at least inpart, consist in theoretical knowledge. Speaking of his earlier work on the question oflinguistic understanding and implicit knowledge he writes:

I now think that knowledge of a language has a substantial theoretical component; betterexpressed, that the classification of knowledge into theoretical and practical (knowledge-that and knowledge-how) is far too crude to allow knowledge of a language to be locatedwithin it. (Ibid.)

Unless more is said, it is hard not to see Dummett as susceptible to a worry thatDevitt and Sterelny express regarding the idea that speakers have knowledge of agrammatical theory (G) for their language:

We are left quite uncertain of the nature of the claim that the speaker has knowledge of G.It sometimes seems to be suggested [by Chomsky] that this knowledge is of a third sort,neither knowledge-that nor knowledge-how . . . If this were so, knowledge of G would besui generis and badly in need of an explanation that is never given. (1987: 139)

18 See Miller, 2003b for an argument to the effect that adherence to this latter conception of implicitknowledge can explain an asymmetry between the antirealist’s manifestation and acquisition argumentsregarding the import for those arguments of considerations concerning the compositionality of meaning.

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The idea that a competent speaker’s understanding of a declarative sentence consistsin his knowledge of its truth-condition, widespread as its is among both realists andantirealists, is thus sorely in need of further explanation and defence. Until thatexplanation and defence is provided, we cannot be sure that Dummett’s argumentsagainst realism have even the limited significance attributed to them in Section 38.4above.

38.6 The Argument against SemanticRealism

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In his most recent version of Dummett’s manifestation argument, Crispin Wrightrepresents the argument as pointing to a tension between three propositions:

(1) Understanding a declarative sentence is a matter of grasping its truth-conditions.(2) Truth is essentially epistemically unconstrained: the truth of a sentence is a

potentially evidence-transcendent matter.(3) Understanding a sentence is a complex of practical abilities to use that sentence.

Wright’s idea is that, given the uncontentious nature of (3), either (1) or (2) will haveto be jettisoned.

As before, if there is no compelling argument to the effect that the defender ofa realistic worldview has to accept (1), the argument will simply fail to get off theground. In fact, Wright considers an argument to the effect that (1) is simply a con-sequence of a number of platitudes:

[T]he identification of statement-understanding with knowledge of truth-conditions isactually no more than the immediate consequence of a series of platitudes. Understand-ing a statement is knowing what it states; what it states will be that a certain state of affairsobtains; so one who understands a statement will know this and, hence, know what kindof state of affairs that would be. Plainly the obtaining of such a state of affairs will be bothnecessary and sufficient for the truth of the statement—since that such a state of affairsobtains is, to repeat, precisely what it states. Hence who understands a statement therebyhas a concept of the state of affairs which is the truth-condition for it; and, presumably,conceives it as such (1993: 19).19

It is unclear whether this argument is actually strong enough to compel us to accept(1), which is in effect the TCCMU.20 But rather than pursue that question here, wewill grant Wright the ‘‘platitudes argument’’ for (1) and investigate what implicationsthis would have for the relevance of the antirealist argument and whether or not theversion of the manifestation argument that he runs is cogent.

19 See also Wright, 1993: 253. Wright attributes the argument to McDowell, 1981, 1987, and also findsthe argument in Blackburn 1989.

20 For one thing, the ‘‘platitudes’’ argument looks very similar to an argument of Dummett’s criticisedin detail by Devitt in his 1991a: 270–2. Wright doesn’t explicitly consider Devitt’s critique of thisargument, though he does hint (1993: 238) that the argument Devitt criticises is indeed a ‘‘non-sequitur’’.

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Suppose that this argument for (1) is cogent. What would follow for the limitedbut genuine significance we discerned earlier for Dummett’s arguments againstsemantic realism? Recall that if those arguments were cogent, we would be leftin the following situation: it may turn out, courtesy of aposteriori considerationsconcerning the capacity of a worldview to anticipate successfully the future courseof experience, that the metaphysical component of a realistic worldview (common-sense realism) has to be jettisoned. Now although this is unlikely—the aposterioriconsiderations more probably will sanction the rejection of the TCCMU rather thancommon-sense realism—it is still a genuine, if somewhat faint, possibility. But onthe ‘‘platitudinous’’ construal of (1) and the TCCMU the manifestation argumentno longer possesses even this limited significance for the plausibility of a realistworldview. The reason is that, as currently construed, the TCCMU, as a ‘‘platitude’’,simply has no genuine explanatory value. In jettisoning (1) and the TCCMU fromour worldview we would not be depriving ourselves of any explanatory capitalbut merely of a certain form of words.21 This cannot be said of common-senserealism: it may be platitudinous in the sense of being widely believed, but it is notplatitudinous in the sense in which (1) as now understood is platitudinous. So indepriving ourselves of common-sense realism we would be depriving ourselves ofgenuine explanatory capital and much more than a mere form of words. Thus, onthis construal of (1) and the TCCMU, arguments against semantic realism are boundnot to have even the limited significance we attributed to them earlier.

In addition, we can question whether, on this current construal of the manifest-ation argument and the TCCMU, the argument has any force independently of therejected conception of philosophy as grounded entirely in the theory of meaning.Consider a natural reply to the claim that (1) and (2) in the triad above are, whenconjoined, in some tension with (3). One could reply that we can perfectly wellhold on to (1) and (2) as well as (3), by noting that nothing in (1) and (2) rules outconstruing linguistic understanding of a type of statement as a complex of whatBlackburn calls the ‘‘neighbourhood abilities’’, which include, in Wright’s words ‘‘theability to appraise (inconclusive) evidence for or against such statements, or to recog-nize that one has so far no such evidence; the ability to recognize the validity ofinferences to and from such statements; and the ability to utilise such statementsin the ascriptions of propositional attitude’’(1993: 17). Wright replies to this naturalsuggestion as follows:

If it is indeed, for such reasons, a platitude that to understand a statement is to know itstruth conditions, what follows is not that the antirealist doubts are platitudinously wrong

21 The TCCMU, as now construed, could not even contribute to an explanation of speakers’ capacityto understand novel utterances. See Wright, 1993: 208. Andy McGonigal has raised an interestingworry about the argument here. ‘‘The platitudes serve to characterise, in part, notions like linguisticunderstanding, knowledge and meaning. They are just putatively a priori truths about such concepts.Rejecting such platitudes, it seems to me, just entails rejecting those concepts. But those concepts areinvolved in lots of genuine explanations about why and how people act as they do’’. However, this appearsto be an overreaction: rejecting the platitudes might call for some revision of the relevant concepts, but itis not that it would require their wholesale rejection.

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but that realism, as a substantial theory of statement content, exceeds the platitude. Andso, independently, it does. Someone, for instance, who understands ‘‘There is intelligentlife elsewhere in the universe’’ will be credited, by the platitudinous reasoning, with a con-ception of a specific kind of state of affairs—there being intelligent life elsewhere in theuniverse—whose obtaining he conceives as necessary and sufficient for the truth of thestatement. How do we proceed from there to foist on him a conception of how such a stateof affairs can obtain undetectably? The platitudes may be allowed to reinstate ‘‘knowledgeof truth-conditions’’ as a general description of the abilities which those who understanda statement thereby have; but they do nothing to justify the idea that the notion of truthwhich the reference therein to ‘‘truth conditions’’ invokes is the realist’s objective truth.(1993: 18–19)

The key point to be noted here is the constraint that Wright imposes on realistanswers that attempt to take us beyond the platitudes:

[H]ow, specifically, is the idea that statements of a certain kind can be unrecognisably trueor false on display in our ordinary, evidential, inferential, explanatory and other practiceswith them? . . . Let us have a description . . . of what specifically, in the exercise of an under-standing of such statements, manifests the fact that it consists in grasping a potentiallyevidence transcendent truth condition? (Wright, 1993: 253–4)

Hale’s reply, on behalf of the antirealist, involves imposing the same constraint:

Here it is crucial to remember that the truth-theorist to whose defence [the natural sug-gestion] is (or ought to be) contributing is a realist, who holds that grasp of the sense of asentence consists, in the case where the sentence is not effectively decidable, in knowledgeof its possibly evidence-transcendent truth-condition. The responses [the natural sugges-tion] mentions, however, are entirely consistent with the antirealist view that, in such cases,understanding the sentence consists in knowing the conditions for its warranted assertion.That is, such responses do not distinctively display grasp of realist truth-conditions for thesentence. (Hale, 1997: 281)23

The argument proffered here by Wright and Hale seems to be that since there isnothing in the full description of the neighbourhood abilities that would require (2) inaddition to (1), we have not yet been shown how to mesh (1) and (2) with (3). Butone has to wonder why they think that that is the sort of place where we are con-strained to look for a justification of (2). The most natural place to look for such ajustification of the idea that the truth of ‘‘There is intelligent life elsewhere in the uni-verse’’ is potentially evidence-transcendent would be in some story about the natureof the universe, its capacity to furnish us with evidential traces of intelligent life, andhow those evidential traces might dissipate before they ever reach the earth.24 Altern-atively, we might question why the realist, in justifying (2), is constrained not toappeal to anything other than facts about our ‘‘evidential, inferential, explanatoryand other practices’’ in attempting to go beyond the platitudinous version of the

22 The particular example used by Wright has been changed to suit our present purposes.23 Hale is in fact responding to Strawson, 1977: Strawson’s reply to the antirealist is quite clearly an

example of what we’ve called ‘‘the natural suggestion’’ in the text. In the quote from Hale the ‘‘responses’’mentioned are in effect exercises of neighbourhood abilities.

24 On this, see Loar, 1987.

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claim that to understand a sentence is to know its truth-conditions. Why limit usto descriptions of linguistic abilities or linguistic practices in our attempt to justify theidea that there may be intelligent life elsewhere in the universe even though we haveno guarantee of being able to find evidence either for or against its existence? Theanswer can only be that both Wright and Hale tacitly assume that realism is an essen-tially semantic doctrine. Only thus can the constraints they impose on the attempt tojustify (2) be explained. What this shows is that, advertisements to the contrary not-withstanding, the latest version of the manifestation argument proffered by defenders ofDummett like Wright and Hale, still depends for its force on the assumption that realismis an essentially semantic doctrine. And what could justify that claim except the idea thatthe theory of meaning is the foundation of all philosophy?25. Absent that assumption,the ‘‘natural reply’’ adumbrated above appears to disable completely this version ofthe manifestation argument.26

38.7 Conclusion• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

In conclusion we can note that given the TCCMU, Dummett’s arguments againstsemantic realism can be viewed as having limited but nevertheless genuinesignificance for the viability of a realist worldview even given the rejection ofDummett’s conception of philosophy as grounded in the theory of meaning(Sections 38.1–38.5); that the TCCMU as it stands is, however, in sore need ofexplanation and defence (Section 38.6); and that Dummett’s main argument againstsemantic realism, the manifestation argument, is, at least in the latest form ofthat argument developed by Wright and Hale, unconvincing in the absence ofthe assumption that the theory of meaning is the foundation of all philosophy(Section 38.7). Overall, then, we can conclude that although the realist should notignore Dummett’s arguments, it seems unlikely that those arguments will ever justifyjettisoning the metaphysical component of a realist worldview.

References

Blackburn, S. (1989). ‘‘Manifesting Realism’’, Midwest Studies in Philosophy.Davidson, D. (1983). Inquiries Into Truth and Interpretation (Oxford: Oxford University

Press).

25 This also shows that the argument is question-begging: the constraint seems to depend on construingreality as in some sense a construct of our linguistic practices. It thus presupposes antirealism to beginwith, and so cannot provide a non question-begging argument against realism.

26 For more on this issue, see Miller, 2002. It should be noted that the manifestation argument isonly one—albeit the central one—of a number of antirealist arguments against semantic realism. Otherarguments include the ‘‘acquisition argument’’ mentioned above in fn.3, as well as the ‘‘argument fromrule-following’’ and the ‘‘argument from normativity’’. For the latter two arguments see Wright 1993,23–9 and 257–61.

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Devitt, M. (1991a). Realism and Truth 2nd edn (Princeton: Princeton University Press).(1991b). ‘‘Aberrations of the Realism Debate’’, Philosophical Studies 61.(1993c). ‘‘Realism Without Representation: A Response to Appiah’’, Philosophical Stud-

ies, 61.(2003). ‘‘Linguistics is not Psychology’’, in A. Barber (ed.) Epistemology of Language

(Oxford: Oxford University Press).Devitt, M. and Sterelny, K. (1987). Language and Reality (Oxford: Blackwell).Dummett, M. (1973). Frege: Philosophy of Language (London: Duckworth).

(1977). Elements of Intuitionism (Oxford: Oxford University Press).(1978). Truth and Other Enigmas (London: Duckworth).(1991). The Logical Basis of Metaphysics (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press).(1993). The Seas of Language (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

Edgington, D. (1981). ‘‘Meaning, Bivalence, and Realism’’, Proceedings of the AristotelianSociety, 81.

Evans, G. (1981). ‘‘Reply: Semantic Theory and Tacit Knowledge’’, in S. Holtzmann andC. Leich Wittgenstein: To Follow a Rule (London: RKP).

Gamble, D. (2003). ‘‘Manifestability and Semantic Realism’’, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly.Hale, B. (1997). ‘‘Realism and its Oppositions’’, in B. Hale and C. Wright (eds.) A Companion

to the Philosophy of Language (Oxford: Blackwell).Kirkham, R. (1989). ‘‘What Dummett Says about Truth and Linguistic Competence’’, Mind,

98 (390).Laurence, S. (2003). ‘‘Is Linguistics a Branch of Psychology?’’, in A. Barber (ed.) Epistemology

of Language (Oxford: Oxford University Press).Loar, B. (1987). ‘‘Truth Beyond All Verification’’, in B. Taylor (ed.) Michael Dummett: Con-

tributions to Philosophy (Nijhoff: Dordrecht).McDowell, J. (1981). ‘‘Anti-Realism and the Epistemology of Understanding’’, reprinted in

his Meaning, Knowledge and Reality (Cambridge: Harvard University Press 1998).(1987). ‘‘In Defence of Modesty’’, reprinted in his Meaning, Knowledge and Reality.

Miller, A. (1997). ‘‘Tacit Knowledge’’, in B. Hale and C. Wright (eds.) A Companion to thePhilosophy of Language (Oxford: Blackwell).

(2002). ‘‘What is the Manifestation Argument?’’, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 83.(2003a). ‘‘The Significance of Semantic Realism’’, Synthese.(2003b). ‘‘What is the Acquisition Argument?’’, in A. Barber (ed.) Epistemology of Lan-

guage (Oxford: Oxford University Press).Shieh, S. (1998). ‘‘Undecidability in Antirealism’’, Philosophia Mathematica, 6.Smith, B. (1992). ‘‘Understanding Language’’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 92.Strawson, P. (1977). ‘‘Scruton and Wright on Anti-Realism’’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian

Society 78.Weiss, B. (2002). Michael Dummett (London: Acumen).Wright, C. (1993). Realism, Meaning and Truth 2nd edn (Oxford: Blackwell).

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Realism and Antirealism