Atheism and Theism JJ Haldane - Common Sense Atheism

Afterword 195
consciousness on the cross before he died, even though we could never know
it one way or the other.
Putnam’s anti-realism has always been more moderate and further from
verificationism than that associated with Dummett and Wright. His concern
has been to oppose the view which he describes as ‘metaphysical realism’ and
which he takes to consist principally in the claim that there is a privileged
account of reality independent of observer’s interests, a true theory of it as it
is in itself apart from any representational scheme. Instead, Putnam insists
that the evident fact of conceptual relativity – that all thought is structured by
principles of classification – must be accommodated; but that this can be
achieved in a manner that allows us to hold on to the common sense idea that
there is (usually) a fact of the matter as to whether what we say of the world
is true or false. This combination of conceptual relativity and facticity yields
‘internal realism’ (or the more recently coined ‘realism with a human face’)
according to which within physics, natural history, etc., one may be a realist.
For example, one may meaningfully and truthfully assert the real existence of
electrons, or the occurrence of past events for which no evidence remains. Yet
it remains an error to suppose that physics or natural history are maps of the
pre-existing, mind-independent geography of reality. There is no such thing
as the way the world is, only the way it is relative to one or another system of
description, explanation and evaluation.
Independently of this present work we have both been intrigued by, and
have written about, Putnam’s evolving attitude to the question of metaphysical
realism. This is in part because we have thought he is mistaken, and in
part because like others we have found him to be one of the best proponents
of anti-realist thought and thus a helpful critic of realism. Yet while we seem
to agree in broad outline on the form of a general response to one important
element in Putnam’s anti-realist challenge, we differ significantly in how we
think realism itself should accommodate certain of his critical points. Since
this difference relates to our earlier disagreements about reductionism, which
in turn are related to the prospects of an ‘old style’ teleological argument, it
may be worth commenting on it briefly.
First our agreement. Realism is an ontological thesis and not, as
Putnam and others have often painted it, an epistemological one: it concerns
existence not knowledge or conceptualization. Consequently, no theory of
representation or justification by itself implies the denial of realism.
What may or may not be conceived or recognized is one thing, what exists
is another. Put simply, metaphysical realism maintains that the way(s)
things are is logically independent of our way(s) of thinking about them.
Unsurprisingly, realists usually aim to add an account of representation
or intentionality to the metaphysical thesis, but to do so is a matter of
addition and any inadequacies in such accounts do not imperil ontological
realism itself.