Rescher and Objective Pragmatism

Cheryl Misak

Nicholas Rescher embraces a more objectivist, realist, analytic pragmatism than the pragmatism which has been in vogue in the last two decades. He rejects any pragmatism for which there is no truth, reality, or objectivity but only conversations or solidarity within this or that vocabulary. Rescher has argued that pragmatism, far from being anti-realist, provides the only good argument for realism and for our ability to operate the causal model of inquiry about the real world. I examine this kind of pragmatist argument, point out its pitfalls, and argue that Rescher avoids them.

1. Introduction

Nicholas Rescher is a mainstay of the pragmatist tradition. His pragmatism is not the kind which came into vogue with Richard Rorty and which finds its roots – albeit controversially – in William James and John Dewey. Rescher’s pragmatism is a more objectivist, realist, analytic position which arose, one imagines, from his early work on the founder of pragmatism, Charles Sanders Peirce. Indeed, Rescher’s Peirce’s Philosophy of Science (1978) was one of the first real attempts to bring Peirce into contemporary analytic debates. Rescher has spoken directly to what has happened to pragmatism since Rorty started arguing, in the pragmatist’s name, that there is no truth, reality, or objectivity – just conversations or solidarity within this or that vocabulary:

in recent years many philosophers who have laid claim to the label of ‘pragmatism’ have subjected the traditional doctrine to a drastic sea- change. Where the classical pragmatists sought ... a test of objective adequacy – an individual-transcending reality principle to offset the vagaries of personal reactions – the pseudo-pragmatists turn their backs on the pursuit of objectivity and impersonality. (1993, 737)

That’s pretty strong language. Rescher is not one to mince his words. He is clear that he thinks that pragmatism ought to return to its 26 CHERYL MISAK

roots in the type of pragmatism contemplated by C. S. Peirce in seeking to validate our metaphysical commitments through their serviceability for accomplishing the cognitive and practical tasks that characterize the circumstances of our existence as best rational inquiry reveals them to us. (2005b, ix)

I shall explore one part of Rescher’s attempt to return pragmatism to the task of validating our objectivist metaphysical commitments. This is his argument that pragmatism, far from being the scourge of realism, provides the only good argument for realism.

2. Rescher’s Pragmatist Argument for Realism

The core claim in the realist platform is that there is a “mind-independent physical reality to which our inquires address themselves.” (2005a, 11)1 One of the most persistent problems in philosophy revolves around the justification of this claim. How can we get from our necessarily subjective experience to the claim that an objective world exists independently of that experience? As Rescher puts it: “how can immediate experience that is personal and subjective manage to inform us about impersonal fact and objective reality?” (2005b, 31) We can’t pull off the trick by replacing the personal and the subjective with the interpersonal and the consensual. Agreement or consensus also doesn’t get us to objectivity, for ‘it appears to us that x’ is just as defective as ‘it appears to me that x’. Both ‘will inevitably fall short of stating an objective fact’. (2005b, 31) Rescher’s solution to this venerable problem is to argue that the realist’s core claim has the “epistemic status of a pre-suppositional postulate that is validated in the first instance by its functional utility and ultimately retro- validated by the satisfactory results of its implementation.” (2005a, 11) The argument for realism, that is, comes in two stages. The first stage is to argue that we have to presuppose the realist’s core claim if we are to do what we in fact do. We have to presuppose that subjective experience entitles us to claim that there a mind-independent reality. The second stage is to argue that ‘useful’ and ‘productive’ consequences arise if we make this assumption. (2005b, 35) Both stages of the argument are distinctly pragmatist. They are, if you like, practical arguments. The second stage very much hinges on the first and so I will focus in what follows on the idea that we need to presuppose the realist conception of reality in order to do what we in fact do – “in order to operate the causal model of inquiry about the real world.” (2005b, 36) “In abandoning our commitment to a mind-independent reality, we would lose our hold on the very concept of inquiry.” (2005b, 36) If we assume the core realist claim, we can sensibly go