Metaphysical Realism as Epistemological Disease
Diagnosis: One can interpret our demonstrable failure to make metaphysically real claims as an argument for epistemological skepticism (a la Rorty or our LJ friends who think we can only know “what works”), or we can interpret it as an argument for epistemological constructivism (a la Kant and Hegel). Rorty buys into the widespread, uncritical, metaphysical realist view that to know is to know the mind-independent real as it is, and this ( theocentric) view serves as the normative standard for all cognition. Failure to demonstrate such knowledge inevitably leads one into epistemological skepticism.
Etiology of the Disease: Metaphysical realism has long been a staple of analytic philosophy beginning with Russell and Moore who argued that we know the external world as it is. Yet, despite Moore’s claims to the contrary, idealists don’t believe the external world doesn’t exist. (Even if it were true, there’s no way to demonstrate such a claim.) But by setting the bar so high, Russell and Moore unwittingly invite the skepticism they wish to refute, clearing the way for Rorty and his ilk.
Cure: We must make a transcendental distinction between metaphysical realism and empirical realism. We must distinguish between objects as given in experience and objects as thought but not known (since not experienced). Kant agrees with skeptics who deny that we know the mind-independent real, because, he argues, we cannot know the world as it is apart from our particular forms of experience, and we cannot know that the mind-independent world affects us. But we do not, for that reason, know nothing. Then what do we know?
Kant and Hegel are realists in a different, more interesting sense. They claim we know what is real for us; we know what is empirically real. This is the kind of reality we exclude from consideration when we habitually appeal to binary opposites like “realism” and “idealism.” But this is the kind of reality that relates directly to human knowledge.
Etiology of the Disease: Metaphysical realism has long been a staple of analytic philosophy beginning with Russell and Moore who argued that we know the external world as it is. Yet, despite Moore’s claims to the contrary, idealists don’t believe the external world doesn’t exist. (Even if it were true, there’s no way to demonstrate such a claim.) But by setting the bar so high, Russell and Moore unwittingly invite the skepticism they wish to refute, clearing the way for Rorty and his ilk.
Cure: We must make a transcendental distinction between metaphysical realism and empirical realism. We must distinguish between objects as given in experience and objects as thought but not known (since not experienced). Kant agrees with skeptics who deny that we know the mind-independent real, because, he argues, we cannot know the world as it is apart from our particular forms of experience, and we cannot know that the mind-independent world affects us. But we do not, for that reason, know nothing. Then what do we know?
Kant and Hegel are realists in a different, more interesting sense. They claim we know what is real for us; we know what is empirically real. This is the kind of reality we exclude from consideration when we habitually appeal to binary opposites like “realism” and “idealism.” But this is the kind of reality that relates directly to human knowledge.