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Is Putnam's Internal Realism Solipsistic?

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Is Putnam's Internal Realism Solipsistic? Universitas Philosophica 64, año 32 enero-junio 2015, Bogotá, Colombia – ISSN 0120-5323 Is PUTNAM’S INTERNAL REALIsm SOLIPSIstIC? Javier Toro* doi:10.11144/Javeriana.uph32-64.pirs ABstRACT In this essay I claim that Hilary Putnam’s recent rejection of his former doctrine of internal realism as solipsistic is a misfired claim. Putnam’s re- jection of his early doctrine is illustrated by the criticism of his own verifi- cationist account of truth and justification, which is based on the counterfactual conditional: “S is true if and only if believing S is justified if epistemic conditions are good enough”. By accepting that whatever makes it rational to believe that S also makes it rational to believe that S would be justified were conditions good enough, Putnam concludes that the verifi- cationist unavoidably steers between solipsism and metaphysical realism. As opposed to this, I claim that Putnam’s later criticism of his own internal realism fails to acknowledge the pragmatic side of this philosophical ap- proach; namely, the idea that, regardless the close relation between truth and justification, not all sentences in a language game are to be understood in a verificationist fashion. Thus, the understanding of the counterfactual “S would be justified if epistemic conditions were good enough” doesn’t call for a verificationist reading, which, as Putnam claims, yields solipsism, but rather, for a pragmatic approach which emphasizes on the non-for- mality of language understanding. Key words: Putnam; realism; pragmatism; truth; correspondence * Universitat de València, Valencia, España. Correo electrónico: [email protected] Para citar este artículo: Toro, J. (2015). Is Putnam’s Internal Realism Solipsistic? Universitas Philosophica, 32(64), pp. 267-282, ISSN 0120-5323, ISSN en línea: 2346-2426, doi: 10.11144/ Javeriana.uph32-64.pirs Recibido: 11.09.14 Aceptado: 16.12.14 Disponible en línea: 30.04.15 Universitas Philosophica 64, año 32 enero-junio 2015, Bogotá, Colombia – ISSN 0120-5323 ¿Es SOLIPSIstA EL REALISMO INTERNO DE PUTNAM? Javier Toro RESUMEN En este ensayo sostengo que el reciente rechazo de Putnam de su primera doctrina del realismo interno como solipsista es un argumento fallido. Este rechazo viene ilustrado por la crítica de su propia explicación verifica- cionista de la verdad y la justificación, que se basa en el condicional con- trafáctico: “S es verdadero si y solo si creer que S se justifica si las condiciones epistémicas son suficientemente buenas”. Al aceptar que lo que hace racional creer que S también hace racional creer que S se justifica si las condiciones son suficientemente buenas, Putnam concluye que el verificacionista inevitablemente oscila entre el solipsismo y el realismo metafísico. En oposición a esto, sostengo que la última crítica de Putnam a su propio realismo interno falla en reconocer el lado pragmático de su pro- puesta filosófica; a saber, la idea de que, sin importar la relación tan estre- cha entre verdad y justificación, no todas las oraciones de un juego de lenguaje se deben entender de un modo verificacionista. En consecuencia, la comprensión del contrafáctico “S se justifica si las condiciones epistémi- cas son suficientemente buenas”, no exige una lectura verificacionista, la cual, como Putnam sostiene, conduce al solipsismo sino, más bien, da lugar a un acercamiento pragmático que enfatiza la no formalidad en la comprensión del lenguaje. Palabras clave: Putnam; realismo; pragmatismo; verdad; correspondencia IS Putnam’S Internal Realism Solipsistic? In a recently published review of Hilary Putnam’s latest book Philoso- phy in an Age of Science, Jerry Fodor writes: “it would take at least two workaday philosophers to keep up with Hilary Putnam” (Fodor 2013: 30). As extreme as that sounds, Fodor is not exaggerating when he also says that Putnam is one among the few philosophers who can say important things about “the philo- sophical interpretation of quantum mechanics, the philosophy of mind, the phi- losophy of language, the philosophy of mathematics, philosophical ethics (analytic and otherwise), and the debate between solipsists, phenomenologists and realists about the epistemological and metaphysical status of ‘external’ ob- jects” (Fodor 2013: 30). Without necessarily being one of Fodor’s “workaday philosophers” trying to keep up with Putnam’s work in each and every one of these areas, I will address in this essay one of the topics to which Putnam has shown a good deal of concern in his latest publications, namely, the relation be- tween solipsism and his former doctrine of internal realism. In his latest book, Philosophy in an Age of Science (2012), as well as in recent publications1, Putnam has repented from his doctrine of internal realism be- cause, as he came to see it, it amounted to a Cartesian epistemological picture that ultimately becomes solipsistic. In fact he admits that: On a verificationist account of understanding […] the only substantive no- tion of correctness available to a thinker is that of being verified. If that is the only notion of correctness that my ‘mind/brain’ is supposed to be able to use […] then my talk about other people is only intelligible to me as a device for making statements that are or will be verified by my experiences. (Putman 2012: 79) Since verificationism, as now Putnam sees it, renders internal realism solip- sistic, he has come to reject the coherence of this doctrine. Such rejection has led him into the adoption of natural realism (inspired by William James), namely, the pragmatist idea which insists that objects are perceived immediately and cor- rigibly (as opposed to inferentially through sense data)2. 1 See especially Putnam 1999, 2007, and the responses in Baghramian 2012. 2 See “James’s Theory of Perception”, in Putnam 1990. Universitas Philosophica, 32(64) ISSN 0120-5323 269 Javier Toro As opposed to Putnam himself, I will argue that his former doctrine of inter- nal realism is an anti-skeptical doctrine, which is more in accordance to the main tenets of pragmatism than his recent writings are. Thus, under this interpreta- tion, internal realism, by adopting a justificationist approach to beliefs and truth, not only becomes an alternative to the metaphysical realism opposed both by Putnam and the classical pragmatists, but also becomes a relevant account of belief construction. Of course, one cannot ignore the many criticisms that have fallen upon in- ternal realism (Devitt 1984 Putnam, 1990, 1999, 2012). In this essay I follow Putnam’s criticism of his former talk about qualia (Putnam 1999), which was supposed to afford the “ideal epistemic conditions” in internal realism. Though now he accepts the possibility of such talk (Putnam 2012), what he said about this topic in his Threefold Cord seems very relevant. Therefore, since the topic of Putnam’s drifting attitude towards mental qualia is so vast, in this essay I will simply take for granted that the criticisms of The Threefold Cord against the meaningfulness of the internal realist’s talk about qualia are much to the point. Thus, keeping in mind that internal realism is far from being a perfect doc- trine –which, by the way, more than a doctrine, like pragmatism, would be a philosophical attitude–, in this essay I will insist that Putnam’s rejection of his former doctrine and his charges of solipsism are misfired. 1. Putnam’s “internal realism” defends the idea that “elements of what we call ‘language’ or ‘mind’ penetrate so deeply into what we call ‘reality’ that the very project of representing ourselves as being ‘mappers’ of something ‘language- independent’ is fatally compromised from the very start.” (Putnam 1990: 28) This philosophical approach, which started with his 1978 article “Realism and Reason”, and finished around the publication of his collection of essays inReal - ism With a Human Face, in 1990, was meant to be a reaction against the “stran- gle hold which a number of dichotomies appear to have on the thinking of both philosophers and laymen. Chief among these is the dichotomy between objec- tive and subjective views of truth and reason.” (Putnam 1981: ix). The mainob - jective view of truth and reason that Putnam opposed with his internal realism 270 Universitas Philosophica, 32(64), ISSN 0120-5323 IS Putnam’S Internal Realism Solipsistic? was Metaphysical Realism, the doctrine which holds that “the world consists of some fixed totality of mind-independent objects. There is exactly one true and complete description of ‘the way the world is’. Truth involves some sort of cor- respondence relation between words or thought-signs and external things and sets of things.” (Putnam 1981: 49) As opposed to this, internal realism holds that the question “what objects does the world consist of? is a question that it only makes sense to ask within a theory or description.” (Ibid.) However, internal realism, for Putnam, was a short-lived approach to phi- losophy. Around 1990 (in the “Response to Simon Blackburn”, in Putnam 1994), he started to find flaws in this doctrine and began to move towards, what he calls, “natural realism”, inspired by William James’s radical empiricism. In different places3, Putnam has described internal realism as a position which commits itself to the metaphysical doctrines which was supposed to combat. For example, the heart of internal realism, as Putnam claims, was verificationist semantics, inspired by Michael Dummett; in Putnam’s version of that semantics “truth, was identi- fied with verifiability under epistemically ideal conditions.” (Putnam 2012: 25) Thus, according to the Dummettian view of verificationist semantics, which Put- nam accepted, “to grasp the meaning of a statement is to know what would justify asserting it or denying it.” (Dummett 2004: 114) The core of the problem is re- lated with the referential access to and justification of suchepistemically ideal con- ditions for, under the internalist picture, “the world was allowed to determine whether I am in a sufficiently good epistemic situation or only seem to myself to be in one.” (Putnam 2012: 25) For Putnam, such situation presupposes the Car- tesian dualism –which he has always rejected– between a passive observer and the World.
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