Atheism and Theism JJ Haldane - Common Sense Atheism

Afterword 197
Of course the identification and re-identification of substances is conceptiondependent
but it does not follow from this that there is any general relationship
of ontological determination between our conceiving of things as being of such
and such a sort and their having that nature . . . The metaphysical realist of
Aristotelian-Thomistic persuasion is not concerned to deny that one can adopt
a variety of ontologies, or that there is a variety of categories of things. Equally
he or she should resist such phrases as that the world ‘forces us to think of it in
a single integrated way’. That is both literally false and liable on interpretation
to induce scientific reductionism. There are many ‘things’ and ‘ways of being’.
Nonetheless, among these some [those with objective principles of unity] are
more substantial than others. 7
So we end on an interesting combination of alliances and oppositions.
Smart and Haldane are in agreement in defending metaphysical realism against
the challenges of Putnam and other anti-realists. Yet Haldane and Putnam,
dispute what they see as the scientistic orientation of Smart’s metaphysical
world-view. Finally, however, Putnam and Smart may be as one in questioning
the combination which Haldane favours of realism and ontological (not
just conceptual) pluralism. It would be fascinating to pursue these issues
further but to do so would be to embark on another ‘great debate in philosophy’:
realism and anti-realism.
Notes
1 Though Smart wishes to put in a good word for Whitehead’s Lowell Lectures
published as Science and the Modern World (New York: Macmillan, 1925).
2 See J.J.C. Smart, ‘A Form of Metaphysical Realism’, The Philosophical Ouarterly,
45 (1995), and J.J.C. Smart, Our Place in the Universe (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989),
ch. 8.
3 See J.J. Haldane, ‘Humanism with a Realist Face’, Philosophical Books, 35 (1994),
and J.J. Haldane, ‘On Coming Home to (Metaphysical) Realism’, Philosophy, 71
(1996).
4 See, for example, the essays in Part I, ‘The Negative Programme’, of Crispin
Wright, Realism, Meaning & Truth (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987).
5 As Aquinas writes, ‘we must say that species [ideas] stand in relation to the
intellect as that by which it thinks or has understanding (id quo intelligit) and not
that which is thought of (id quod intelligitur)’, Summa Theologiae, Ia, q. 85, a. 2.
6 See Smart, ‘A Form of Metaphysical Realism’, pp. 305–6.
7 See Haldane, ‘On Coming Home to (Metaphysical) Realism’, pp. 287–96; also
J. Haldane, ‘Realism with a Metaphysical Skull’ (with response by Putnam) in
James Conant and Urszula Zeglen (eds.) Hilary Putnam: Pragmatism and Realism
(London: Routledge, 2002).