Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Commonsense Realism and Triangulation

  • Published:
Philosophia Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Realism about the external world enjoys little philosophical support these days. I rectify this predicament by taking a relatively pragmatist line of thought to defend commonsense realism; I support commonsense realism through an interpretation and application of Donald Davidson’s notion of triangulation, the triangle composed of two communicators coordinating and correcting their responses with a shared causal stimulus. This argument is important because it has a crucial advantage over the often used abductive argument for realism. My argument avoids unwarranted conclusions, whereas the abductive argument is “inflationary” because it reaches beyond the limits of evidence for its realist conclusion. To illustrate the problems of the abductive argument and motivate my Davidsonian approach, I take a brief look at the abductive argument for realism in Frederick Will’s work.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. Putnam coins “Metaphysical Realism” in Putnam (1977).

  2. He endorses a post-Kantian “internal” realism in Putnam (1981), but due to the representationalism embedded within internal realism, he now settles on a Jamesian direct realism (Putnam 1995).

  3. I might have used Robert Brandom’s work in Brandom (1994) to frame my argument; indeed, Davidson and Brandom’s work are rather close on the issues of interpersonal (or I-Thou, as Brandom likes to say) interpretive relations and perceptual externalism, the issues that matter most to my argument. But where Davidson gives perceptual externalism a center place in his epistemology by making it integral to interpersonal communication, Brandom focuses on his inferential semantics and he includes perceptual externalism primarily as a means to fend off linguistic idealism. For Brandom, the external world acts only to constrain our inferences and commitments. Because I find that Davidson captures the significance of externalism within interpersonal communication better than Brandom, I use only Davidson’s work.

  4. I distinguish my argument for realism from “deflationary” realism in that I find some metaphysical conclusions warranted whereas deflationary realists do not. I say more about this later against Hubert Dreyfus and Charles Spinosa’s analysis that Davidson’s work yields only deflationary realism (Dreyfus and Spinosa 1999).

  5. I do not claim that my argument is the only plausible argument for commonsense realism, only that it does avoid inflation. Other plausible arguments for commonsense realism would have to do the same.

  6. See also Will (1997b, d).

  7. In the same vein, Nicholas Rescher recently remarks that the best argument for realism is our ignorance of the world rather than any knowledge we have of it. He writes, “What is perhaps the most effective impetus to realism lies in the limitations of human intellect, pivoting on the circumstances that we realize full well that our putative knowledge does not do full justice to the real truth of what reality is actually like” (Rescher 2005, 5).

  8. See also Putnam (1975–6) and McMullin (1984).

  9. Arguments against Davidson’s omniscient interpreter argument are many, and I agree that the argument is faulty. For a sample, see Vermazen (1983), Foley and Fumerton (1985), and Dalmiya (1990).

  10. Davidson shares this point with Tyler Burge’s perceptual externalism (Davidson 2001e, 200).

  11. Davidson’s notion of triangulation first appears explicitly in Davidson (2001f). Among other essays, triangulation plays central roles in Davidson (2001e, g, h, i).

References

  • Austin, J. (1990). Other minds. In R. Ammerman (Ed.), Classics of analytic philosophy (pp. 353–378). Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.

    Google Scholar 

  • Berkeley, G. (1969). The principles of human knowledge. New York, NY: Meridian Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Boyd, R. (1982). Scientific realism and naturalistic epistemology. In P. D. Asquith, & R. N. Giere (Eds.), PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1980, Volume 2 (pp. 613–662). East Lansing, MI: Philosophy of Science Association.

    Google Scholar 

  • Boyd, R. (1989). What realism implies and what it does not. Dialectica, 43(1–2), 5–29. doi:10.1111/j.1746-8361.1989.tb00928.x.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Brandom, R. (1994). Making it explicit. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bridges, J. (2006). Davidson’s transcendental externalism. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 73(2), 290–315. doi:10.1111/j.1933-1592.2006.tb00619.x.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Carnap, R. (1950). Empiricism, semantics, and ontology. Revue Internationale de Philosophie, 4, 20–40.

    Google Scholar 

  • Carpenter, A. (2002). Davidson’s transcendental argumentation. In J. Malpas (Ed.), From Husserl to Davidson: The idea of the transcendental in twentieth-century philosophy (pp. 219–237). New York, NY: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Child, W. (2001). Triangulation: Davidson, realism and natural kinds. Dialectica, 55(1), 29–49.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dalmiya, V. (1990). Coherence, truth and the ‘Omniscient Interpreter’. The Philosophical Quarterly, 40(158), 86–94. doi:10.2307/2219970.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Davidson, D. (1984). On the very idea of a conceptual scheme [1974]. In D. Davidson (Ed.), Inquires into truth and interpretation (pp. 183–198). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

  • Davidson, D. (1990). The structure and content of truth. The Journal of Philosophy, 87(6), 279–328. doi:10.2307/2026863.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Davidson, D. (2001a). Externalisms. In P. Kotatko, P. Pagin, & G. Segal (Eds.), Interpreting Davidson (pp. 1–16). Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.

    Google Scholar 

  • Davidson, D. (2001b). A coherence theory of truth and knowledge [1983]. In D. Davidson (Ed.), Subjective, intersubjective, objective (pp. 137–153). Oxford: Clarendon Press.

  • Davidson, D. (2001c). Afterthoughts [1987]. In D. Davidson (Ed.), Subjective, intersubjective, objective (pp. 154–158). Oxford: Clarendon Press.

  • Davidson, D. (2001d). Epistemology and truth [1988]. In D. Davidson (Ed.), Subjective, intersubjective, objective (pp. 177–192). Oxford: Clarendon Press.

  • Davidson, D. (2001e). Epistemology externalized [1990]. In D. Davidson (Ed.), Subjective, intersubjective, objective (pp. 193–204). Oxford: Clarendon Press.

  • Davidson, D. (2001f). Rational animals [1982]. In D. Davidson (Ed.), Subjective, intersubjective, objective (pp. 95–106). Oxford: Clarendon Press.

  • Davidson, D. (2001g). The emergence of thought [1997]. In D. Davidson (Ed.), Subjective, intersubjective, objective (pp. 123–134). Oxford: Clarendon Press.

  • Davidson, D. (2001h). The second person [1992]. In D. Davidson (Ed.), Subjective, intersubjective, objective (pp. 107–122). Oxford: Clarendon Press.

  • Davidson, D. (2001i). Three varieties of knowledge [1991]. In D. Davidson (Ed.), Subjective, intersubjective, objective (pp. 205–220). Oxford: Clarendon Press.

  • Davidson, D. (2005a). Meaning, truth, and evidence [1990]. In D. Davidson (Ed.), Truth, language, and history (pp. 47–62). Oxford: Clarendon Press.

  • Davidson, D. (2005b). The social aspect of language [1994]. In D. Davidson (Ed.), Truth, language, and history (pp. 109–126). Oxford: Clarendon Press.

  • Devitt, M. (1991). Realism and truth (2nd ed.). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dreyfus, H., & Spinosa, C. (1999). Coping with things-in-themselves: A practice-based phenomenological argument for realism. Inquiry, 42(1), 49–78. doi:10.1080/002017499321624.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fine, A. (1986). Unnatural attitudes: Realist and instrumentalist attachments to science. Mind, 95(378), 149–179 New Series. doi:10.1093/mind/XCV.378.149.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Foley, R., & Fumerton, R. (1985). Davidson’s theism? Philosophical Studies, 48, 83–90. doi:10.1007/BF00372409.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hempel, C. (1935). On the logical Positivist’s theory of truth. Analysis, 2, 49–59. doi:10.2307/3326781.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • James, W. (1991). Pragmatism. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lewis, C. I. (1946). An analysis of knowledge and valuation. La Salle, IL: Open Court.

    Google Scholar 

  • McMullin, E. (1984). A case for scientific realism. In J. Leplin (Ed.), Scientific realism (pp. 8–40). Berkeley: University of California Press.

  • Neurath, O. (1932–33). Protokollsätze. Erkenntnis, 3, 204–214. doi:10.1007/BF01886420.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Putnam, H. (1975–6). What is “realism”? Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 76, 177–194.

    Google Scholar 

  • Putnam, H. (1977). Realism and reason. Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association, 50(6), 483–498. doi:10.2307/3129784.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Putnam, H. (1980). Realism with a human face. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Putnam, H. (1981). Reason, truth and history. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Putnam, H. (1995). Pragmatism: An open question. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers Inc.

    Google Scholar 

  • Quine, W. V. O. (1951). Two dogmas of empiricism. The Philosophical Review, 60, 20–43. doi:10.2307/2181906.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Quine, W. V. O. (1960). Word and object. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Quine, W. V. O. (1969). Epistemology naturalized. In W. V. O. Quine (Ed.), Ontological relativity and other essays (pp. 69–90). New York, NY: Columbia University Press.

  • Quine, W. V. O. (1981). Things and their place in theories. In W. V. O. Quine (Ed.), Theories and things (pp. 1–23). Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

  • Rescher, N. (2005). Realism and pragmatic epistemology. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rorty, R. (1979). Philosophy and the mirror of nature. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rorty, R. (1999). Not all that strange: a response to dreyfus and spinosa. Inquiry, 42(1), 125–128. doi:10.1080/002017499321679.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rouse, J. (1996). Engaging science: How to understand its practices philosophically. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Van Fraassen, B. (1980). The scientific image. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Van Fraassen, B. (2001). Constructive empiricism now. Philosophical Studies, 106(1–2), 151–170. doi:10.1023/A:1013126824473.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Vermazen, B. (1983). The intelligibility of massive error. The Philosophical Quarterly, 33(130), 69–74. doi:10.2307/2219205.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Westphal, K. (1998). Transcendental reflections on pragmatic realism. In K. Westphal (Ed.), Pragmatism, reason, & norms: A realistic assessment (pp. 17–58). New York, NY: Fordham University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Will, F. (1997a). Reason, social practice, and scientific realism [1981]. In K. Westphal (Ed.), Pragmatism and realism (pp. 85–104). New York, NY: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.

    Google Scholar 

  • Will, F. (1997b). The concern about truth [1979]. In K. Westphal (Ed.), Pragmatism and realism (pp. 39–62). New York, NY: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.

    Google Scholar 

  • Will, F. (1997c). Thought and things [1968–69]. In K. Westphal (Ed.), Pragmatism and realism (pp. 1–20). New York, NY: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.

    Google Scholar 

  • Will, F. (1997d). Truth and correspondence [1977]. In K. Westphal (Ed.), Pragmatism and realism (pp. 21–38). New York, NY: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.

    Google Scholar 

  • Yalowitz, S. (1999). Davidson’s social externalism. Philosophia, 27(1–2), 99–136. doi:10.1007/BF02380998.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Philosophy Department, Hamilton College, Clinton, NY, USA

    Chris Calvert-Minor

Authors
  1. Chris Calvert-Minor
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Chris Calvert-Minor.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Calvert-Minor, C. Commonsense Realism and Triangulation. Philosophia 37, 67–86 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-008-9160-6

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Revised:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-008-9160-6

Keywords

Search

Navigation