Realism With A Human Face

One of America's great philosophers says the time has come to reform philosophy. Putnam calls upon philosophers to attend to the gap between the present condition of their subject and the human aspirations that philosophy should and once did claim to represent. His goal is to embed philosophy in social life.

This exciting new book is the first comprehensive and critical study of the relationship between the Pragmatist tradition and political theory. Festenstein develops his argument through a detailed and original reading of four key thinkers: John Dewey, Richard Rorty, Jurgen Habermas and Hilary Putnam.

Groff defends 'realism about causality' through close discussions of Kant, Hilary Putnam, Brian Ellis and Charles Taylor, among others. In so doing she affirms critical realism, but with several important qualifications. In particular, she rejects the theory of truth advanced by Roy Bhaskar. She also attempts to both clarify and correct earlier critical realist attempts to apply realism about causality to the social sciences. By connecting issues in metaphysics and philosophy of science to the problem of relativism, Groff bridges the gap between the philosophical literature and broader debates surrounding socio-political theory and poststructuralist thought. This unique approach will make the book of interest to philosophers and socio-political theorists alike.

"The first two lectures place the alternative I defend -- a kind of pragmatic realism -- in a historical and metaphysical context. Part of that context is provided by Husserl's remark that the history of modern philosophy begins with Galileo -- that is, modern philosophy has been hypnotized by the idea that scientific facts are all the facts there are. Another part is provided by the analysis of a very simple example of what I call 'contextual relativity'. The position I defend holds that truth depends on conceptual scheme and it is nonetheless 'real truth'. "In my third lecture I turn to the Kantian antecedents of this view, explaining what I think should be retained of the Kantian idea of autonomy as the central theme of morality, and extracting from Kant's work a 'moral image of the world' that connects the ideals of equality and intellectual liberty. In this lecture I defend the idea that moral images are an indispensible part of our moral and cultural heritage. "In the final lecture I defend the idea of moral objectivity. I compare our epistemological positions in ethics, history, analysis of human character, and science, and I argue that in no area can we hope for a 'foundation' which is more ultimate than the beliefs that actually, at a given time, function as foundational in the area, the beliefs concerning which one has to say 'this is where my spade is turned'. In ethics such beliefs are represented in moral images of the world."

Relativism about knowledge or truth has always provoked the ire of philosophers. Ever since Protagoras declared in antiquity that "man is the measure of all things", relativism has been repeatedly attacked. Recently, however, Alasdair MacIntyre has observed that "relativism ... is one of those doctrines that have by now been refuted a number of times too often." Along with MacIntyre, Hilary Putnam and Richard Rorty have also argued that while relativism may be problematic, there are valuable insights in it that philosophers need to take notice of. This book sorts out exactly what those relativistic insights are, and where they are to be found within the works of these three leading late-twentieth-century American philosophers. Timothy Mosteller begins with a review of the major traditional definitions of relativism and the classical arguments against it. He then examines twentieth-century accounts and defenses of relativism and points out that each account faces problems similar to those of the traditional versions. The book continues with substantial treatments of the views of MacIntyre, Putnam and Rorty on relativism, with each thinker robustly engaging the opinions of the others. Mosteller concludes the book by developing an alternative approach to relativism about knowledge, which recognizes that while there may be no single 'global' criterion for all knowledge claims, there can be 'local' standards for settling particular disputes in such a way as to avoid the traditional hazards of relativism.

Throughout the past century, a debate has raged over the thesis of realism and its alternatives. Realism—the seemingly commonsensical view that all or most of what we encounter in the world exists and is what it is independently of human thought—has been vigorously denied by such prominent intellectuals as Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Richard Rorty, Thomas Kuhn, Hilary Putnam, and Nelson Goodman. The opponents of realism, among them historians and social scientists who support social constructionism, hold that all or most of reality depends on human conceptual schemes and beliefs. In this volume of original essays, a group of philosophers explores the ongoing controversy. The book opens with an introduction by William P. Alston, whose writing on the subject has been widely influential. Selected essays then compare and contrast aspects of the arguments put forward by the realists with those of the antirealists. Other chapters discuss the importance of the debate for philosophical topics such as epistemology and for domains ranging from religion, literature, and science to morality.

A new pragmatist philosophy of science that conceives truth and reality as operational ideals achievable in actual scientific practice.

Although many philosophers espouse anti-realism, the only sustained arguments for the position are due to Michael Dummett and Hilary Putnam. Gardiner's unpretentious style and lucid organization make sense of Dummett's and Putnam's discourse.