ESSAYS IN QUASI-REALISM This page intentionally left blank ESSAYS IN QUASI-REALISM Simon Blackburn New York Oxford OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 1993 Oxford University Press Oxford New York Toronto Delhi Bombay Calcutta Madras Karachi Kuala Lumpur Singapore Hong Kong Tokyo Nairobi Dares Salaam Cape Town Melbourne Auckland Madrid and associated companies in Berlin Ibadan Copyright © 1993 by Oxford University Press Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 200 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Blackburn, Simon. Essays in quasi-realism / Simon Blackburn. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN 0-19-508041-6; ISBN 0-19-508224-9 (pbk) 1. Realism. I. Title. B835..B35 1993 149'.2—dc20 92-37005 246897531 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper Preface and Acknowledgements The essays collected in this volume represent a large part of the work that I have done over the years on the issues surrounding realism. Since my own approach to this matter has been sufficiently different from that of others to cause some comment, and since the articles appeared in anthologies as well as orthodox journals, it seemed justifiable to collect them together. I have pref- aced them with an Introduction, hoping to do something to justify my ap- proach, and to locate it broadly among the very different philosophical atti- tudes to these contested areas. I am pleased to acknowledge the following places of first publication, and to thank the respective editors and publishers for permission to reprint the papers: 'Truth, Realism, and the Regulation of Theory' was first published in Midwest Studies in Philosophy, Vol V, 1980. 'Knowledge, Truth, and Reliabil- ity' was the Henrietta Hertz Lecture of the British Academy, 1984. 'Morals and Modals' appeared in Fact, Science and Value, Essays in Honour of A.J. Ayer's Language, Truth and Logic, edited by C. Wright and G. Macdonald (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987). 'Opinions and Chances' appeared in Prospects for Pragma- tism, ed. D.H. Mellor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980). 'Hume and Thick Connexions' appeared in Philosophy and Phenomenologi- cal Research (special half-centenary volume) 1990. 'Moral Realism' appeared in Morality and Moral Reasoning, ed. John Casey (London: Methuen, 1973). 'Supervenience Revisited' appeared in Exercises in Analysis, ed. Ian Hacking (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). 'Errors and the Phenomenol- ogy of Value' came out in Ethics and Objectivity, ed. T. Honderich (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985). 'How to be and Ethical Anti-Realist' ap- peared in Midwest Studies, Vol XII, 1988. 'Attitudes and Contents' appeared in Ethics, 1988. 'Just Causes' was originally given at an Oberlin Colloquium, and appeared in Philosophical Studies, 1990. 'The Individual Strikes Back' appeared in Synthese 1985. 'Losing Your Mind: Physics, Identity, and Folk Burglar Prevention' was part of a conference held at Greensboro, North Carolina, and appeared in The Future of Folk Psychology, ed. John Green- wood (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991). 'Filling in Space' was presented at the Analysis half-centenary conference in Cambridge, and ap- peared in the supplementary volume of the journal, April 1990. The articles are reprinted as they first appeared, with a few minor amend- vi Preface and Acknowledgements ments to style and grammar. They are organized not chronologically, but thematically, and are divided into three main areas of metaphysics, ethics, and mind and physics. The footnotes sometimes differ from those in the originals, partly because of added cross-references to other essays in this collection. I have resisted the temptation to add more footnotes to explain why I said what I did, even in cases where I would prefer to have said something different. But to some essays I have added an addendum, pushing things further in direc- tions that now seem to me important, often in the light of particular reactions from friends and critics. I would particularly like to acknowledge my debt to the editors of volumes and the organizers of talks and conferences whose invitations prompted me to the painful business of writing. Among the many auditors and readers who have made valuable comments I remember Paul Boghossian, Edward Craig, Elizabeth Fricker, Allan Gibbard, Bob Hale, Paul Horwich, John Kenyon, Robert Kraut, Saul Kripke, David Lewis, John McDowell, the late Ian McFetridge, Philip Pettit, Huw Price, Geoff Sayre-McCord, Marianne Talbot, Ralph Walker, Jonathan Westphal, and Crispin Wright. Chapel Hill, North Carolina S. B. December 1992 Contents Introduction, 3 I. Metaphysics 1. Truth, Realism, and the Regulation of Theory, 15 2. Knowledge, Truth, and Reliability, 35 3. Morals and Modals, 52 4. Opinions and Chances, 75 5. Hume and Thick Connexions, 94 II. Ethics 6. Moral Realism, 111 7. Supervenience Revisited, 130 8. Errors and the Phenomenology of Value, 149 9. How to Be an Ethical Anti-Realist, 166 10. Attitudes and Contents, 182 11. Just Causes, 198 III. Mind and Matter 12. The Individual Strikes Back, 213 13. Losing Your Mind: Physics, Identity, and Folk Burglar Prevention, 229 14. Filling in Space, 255 Index, 259 This page intentionally left blank ESSAYS IN QUASI-REALISM This page intentionally left blank Introduction In many of these essays the main protagonist is a figure I christened the 'quasi- realist'. Two routes led to this persona. One is familiar to every student of moral philosophy. There everyone learns of philosophers who take a 'non- descriptive' or non-representational view of our commitments, seeing them instead as serving some other function, such as expressing attitude, endorsing prescriptions, or, in general, putting pressure on choice and action. Such a view is thought of as 'anti-realist', and is easily contrasted with a realist, or descriptive or representational, story that says that such commitments do what they seem to do: describe what we take to be the ethical facts. But while everybody learns of this contrast, nobody, it seemed to me, really knew how to conduct the debate about such ideas (or about the inevitable second-order question: whether the alleged point of contrast is really well drawn this way, or is even intelligible). The images behind the opposing sides are powerful enough, and find cavalier expression in thoughts like this: the realist thinks there is truth and knowledge to be had, that ethical properties exist, that they explain things, that they are independent of us, that they are objective. The anti-realist, or here the expressivist, is presumed to deny these doctrines. This is why such a view seemed to many philosophers to imply an 'error theory' of everyday ethical thought, claiming that a substantial component of that thought is indefensible. The reasoning is that everyday ethical thought em- bodies a claim to truth, or to knowledge or objectivity, or to something which 'lies beyond' the opinions and sentiments that we endorse, and which those opinions might distort or represent badly. However, if this claim to objectivity is quite spurious, as it seems to be on the non-descriptive theory, then every- day ethical thought involves a kind of self-deception or fraud. But is the claim indeed spurious, on the non-descriptive story? Does the anti-realist indeed have to accept the baggage forced upon him when the debate is conducted this way? The issue is a large one, for not only in ethics but in many spheres—law, literary theory, history, even science—there exists the same kind of radical threat. The threat is that once we see the disappearance of some favoured conception of objectivity and truth, or once we see what these amount to, we can no longer exercise judgement as before. A proper consciousness of the activity of judgement would unmask and undermine the activity itself. But is it 3 4 Introduction true that an ordinary practice in good standing, like ethics or literary criticism or law or science, needs to depend upon some illusion about objectivity? The question would hinge, I considered, on whether an anti-realist story can make sense of several ideas: that truth is the aim of judgement; that our disciplines make us better able to appreciate it, that it is, however, independent of us, and that we are fallible in our grasp of it. My idea was to domesticate these high-sounding thoughts. Brought down to earth, the question is whether the anti-realist can make sense of thoughts like ' I would like to know whether bullfighting is wrong', or ' I believe that bullfighting is wrong, but I might be wrong about that', or 'Bullfighting would be wrong whatever I or anyone else thought about it'—claims asserting our concern to get things right, our fallibil- ity, and some independence of the ethical from what we actually feel. These concerns and claims look metaphysical, and indeed many theorists are content to define their meta-ethical theory in terms of them. But looked at another way they are merely part of good ethical thought: someone incapable of them would lack a becoming modesty, rather than a metaphysical insight. Can a non-descriptive story make sense of them? That depends on what it can do with so-called 'indirect contexts', or sentences in which an ethical sentence is itself embedded, but not actually asserted. I dramatized the question of whether a non-descriptive story can indeed understand the use we make of such contexts by inventing the figure of the quasi-realist, or someone who 'starting from an anti-realist position finds himself progressively able to mimic the thoughts and practices supposedly definitive of realism'.