Replies to Essays

Abstract

Crispin Wright’ interesting essay examines, and throws useful light on, fundamental issues concerning realism. What first interested me in this subject was a perception of strong analogies between a variety of metaphysical disputes, each of which could be regarded as a dispute over the correctness of a realist view of a certain subject-matter. Often one may say, ‘of certain things’ (metal processes, material objects, mathematical entities); but disputes concerning the reality of the future or the past could harldly be so described, and it thus seemed better to say ‘of certain statements’. I never supposed that a precise analogy obtained between any two of these disputes, only that there was a sufficient analogy to make a comparative study of them fruitful. One of the points of analogy was the salient role that the principle of bivalence frequently played. The colourless term ‘anti-realism’ was deliberately chosen because, although there was a family resemblance between the arguments employed by the opponents of realism concerning different subject-matters - different classes of statments - the metaphysical character of their conclusions different markedly. The phenomenalist opponent of realism concerning the physical universe adopted a form of idealism; the behaviourist opponent of realism concerning mental states and processes gave comfort to materialism.