Subject: BHA: reply to Howard -- but not really
Date: Sat, 29 Nov 2003 21:20:10 -0600


Hi Howard,

Sure.  But not tonight.  I'm buried under a pile of work.

It's not much though -- it's just that whoever it was who started off this thread (I don't have the first post in front of me now) put forward (perhaps without fully realizing it) the mainstream formulation in contemporary anglo-analytic philosophy, which is that ontological realism and the correspondence theory of truth and the idea that certain knowledge is possible are all different iterations of the same position.  Putnam, for example, writes exactly this way in *Reason, Truth and History*.  But the ontological realism = the correspondence theory of truth equation, especially, is all over the place, so far as I can tell, in mainstream epistemology.  I just think that it is a category error, plain and simple.  

Does that help at all?

r.


-----Original Message-----
From:	owner-bhaskar-AT-lists.village.Virginia.EDU on behalf of Howard Engelskirchen
Sent:	Sat 11/29/2003 1:49 PM
To:	bhaskar-AT-lists.village.Virginia.EDU
Cc:	
Subject:	Re: BHA: scientific realism,
Hi Ruth,

You've got to explain and elaborate on this:

"I wanted to say that the mainstream move of defining ontological realism in
terms of a theory about what is meant by the concept of truth and/or in
terms of an attendant claim about the truth-value of scientific theory, is a
really unhelpful category error."

Thanks,

Howard





----- Original Message ----- 






From: "Groff, Ruth" <ruth.groff-AT-marquette.edu>
To: <bhaskar-AT-lists.village.Virginia.EDU>
Sent: Saturday, November 29, 2003 12:15 PM
Subject: RE: BHA: scientific realism,


Hey guys,

Thanks to people who responded to my test message.  It seems that I am able
to post again.

I am way behind in everything, and so can't respond to the current thread in
the way that I'd like to at all.  But I wanted to say that the mainstream
move of defining ontological realism in terms of a theory about what is
meant by the concept of truth and/or in terms of an attendant claim about
the truth-value of scientific theory, is a really unhelpful category error.

I like to keep the following issues separate (and for what it's worth it is
consistent with a realist position to do so):

1. Ontological realism.  A claim about the independent existence of
specified objects ("scientific realism" being a claim about the independent
existence of the objects of scientific theories specifically).

2. The correspondence theory of truth.  One account of what the concept of
truth does or must mean.

3. Justification criteria.   Epistemic criteria according to which we judge
a theory to be true (*however* we happen to define the term "true").

4. The epistemic status of scientific theory.  The ascribed truth-value
(however we define the concept of "truth" and whatever we point to as
justification criteria) of scientific claims.

r.


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