On Some Formulations of Realism, or How Many Objects are There in the World?

Abstract

This paper has a very modest objective. The recent discussion of realism contains expressions and metaphors which I find difficult to understand, and I shall try to translate some of these expressions into a more comprehensible idiom. The arguments about realism — or about different ‘realisms’1 — often involve claims about the dependence (or independence) of the world on our theories and concepts. What is the nature of this dependence or independence? Some philosophers make a distinction between our conceptualizations of the world and “the way of the world really is” (italics mine), or at least attribute such a distinction to other philosophers.2 I assume that this distinction is not meant to be the same as the familiar distinction between a representation and its object.3 Do scientists not try to represent the world the way it really is? (The representation of the world as something other than what it really is would seem to be misrepresentation.) The metaphors of ‘carving’ and ‘cutting’ are common in this context: Hartry Field speaks about the “carving up of the noumenal dough” by means of various “cookie cutters”,4 whereas Hilary Putnam has argued that this metaphor is a misleading characterization of scientific representation, that is, a misleading summary of what he regards as the correct account, his “internal” or “pragmatic” realism.5