From: amnell@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Marko Amnell)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.meta
Subject: Re: Excluded Middle (Long)
Date: 5 Nov 92 23:51:32 GMT
Organization: University of Helsinki

In article <TORKEL.92Nov5224750@lludd.sics.se> torkel@sics.se 
(Torkel Franzen) writes:

>In article <1992Nov5.203945.12450@klaava.Helsinki.FI> amnell@klaava.Helsinki.
>FI (Marko Amnell) writes:
>
>   >I think we already covered all this two months ago.  I don't see
>   >why realism about scientific theories (which is what I have in
>   >mind here) can't include a belief that science approaches some
>   >sort of ultimate truth about reality.
>
>  Realism about scientific theories "can include" all sorts of things,
>for example the belief that the universe is a banana being eaten by
>the Composite Principle of Aloofness. But why associate these ideas
>with realism?

Peirce's realism also includes this idea, the notion of the "ideal end
of inquiry".  If one considers realism to be the thesis that there
is an objective, mind-independent reality, then it seems natural to
me that this metaphysical goal is in some sense the totality of
all true propositions about the world.  Allow me to quote Peirce's
definition of reality in "The Fixation of Belief".

  Such is the method of science.  Its fundamental hypothesis, restated
  in more familiar language, is this:  There are Real things, whose
  characters are entirely independent of our opinions about them;
  those Reals affect our senses according to regular laws, and, though
  our sensations are as different as are our relations to the objects,
  yet, by taking advantage of the laws of perception, we can ascertain
  by reasoning how things really and truly are; and any man, if he have
  sufficient experience and he reason enough about it, will be led to
  the one True conclusion.  The new conception involved here is that
  of Reality.

Note that Peirce calls the end of inquiry "the one True conclusion".
This is what I have in mind when I speak of the totality of all truths
as a metaphysical entity and bring up Popperian notions of verisimilitude.
Peirce's definition of reality is inseparable from his conception of
scientific method.

The anti-realism of Putnam, eg. was developed in response to the ideas
that Dummett first expressed in the lectures that have now appeared
as _The Logical Basis of Metaphysics_.  Putnam notes in the Preface
to _Realism with a Human Face_ that his "inner realism" does not
include the Peircean idea of "the ideal end of inquiry".  This is
why he calls it "inner realism" and I call my realism "metaphysical
realism" following the introduction of this term into the realism
debate by Putnam.

I think I already mentioned K"orner.  His essay _Metaphysics_ seemed
to me to be a good example of an effort to do metaphysics in as
unprejudiced a way as possible.  The book is an essay in meta-metaphysics.
K"orner is aiming to examine the general features of all metaphysical
theories (this is also Dummett's aim).  K"orner emphasizes the Kantian
distinction between noumena and phenomena.  Peirce also read Kant from
a very early age.  He later repudiated much of his Kantianism, but
it seems to me there is still a lot of Kant in his definition of
reality.  The "one True conclusion" sounds a lot like the things-in-
themselves to me.  Science is directed to this end, but will it ever
reach it?

Also, Unger's radical skepticism seems to me to be very Kantian.  Like
K"orner, he speaks of our _concepts_ and how they order reality.  His
theses all arise from this Kantian conception of reality.  Much of my
own thinking about philosophy is a re-examination of the Kant's
Copernican Revolution.  Was it a mistake?  If not, how do we reconcile
the change in the intuition of time with Einstein's work?  How can we
reconcile Kant's constructivism with our belief in an objective reality?

If we begin with Peirce's definition of reality, then you see why I am
so interested in the problem of the existence of Truth.  If there is
no totality of all true propositions (if, say, Tarski's result about
formal logics with the usual configuration of quantifiers -- Hintikka
changes the way quantifiers work, and it is this that enables him to
avoid Tarski) then there is no Truth as the ideal end of inquiry,
and the whole Peircean metaphysics crumbles.  We are left with some
kind of radical constructivism (that reality is a purely social
construct) or with some kind of relativism (a variety of relatvism
that avoids most of the old knock-down arguments can be found in
Margolis' book _The Truth about Relativism_)

It is because all these metaphysical theories are living options to
me, and because I more or less follow Peirce's definition of reality
and his linkage of it to Truth, that I am interested in the problem
of whether a truth predicate can be defined internally in a formal
system that does the things we want it to do (like arithmatic).
Note that this problem is not the same problem as the metaphysical
problem of whether there is a totality of all truths or not (what
is usually called simply Truth).  But, there is a linkage here,
whose strength depends on how far we follow, eg. Hintikka or
Penrose that human thought can be modelled by a formal system.

-- 
Marko Amnell
amnell@klaava.helsinki.fi
Graduate Student in Philosophy