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Reply to Two RealistsAuthor(s): Hilary PutnamReviewed work(s):Source: The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 79, No. 10, Seventy-Ninth Annual Meeting of theAmerican Philosophical Association Eastern Division (Oct., 1982), pp. 575-577Published by: Journal of Philosophy, Inc.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2026319 .

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REASON, TRUTH AND HISTORY 575

thinggoes." In particular, iven any consistent iew,be it the dealresultof rational nquiryor not, therewill be a way to interpret he

language of the view so that the view comes out true, ncluding allstatements f constraints n interpretationontained n the view. Itake t Putnamwould not suppose this s a good argument ortheconclusion that truth s the same thing as consistency!But thenPutnam's argumentdoes not show that truth s an idealization ofrational acceptance, ither.

So, I do not see that Putnam here providesany serious objectionto a view that accepts moral relativismwhile rejecting ationalityrelativism, lthough I may not fullyunderstandhis argument.

GILBERT HARMAN

PrincetonUniversity

REPLY TO TWO REALISTS*

HartryField's criticisms eem to me, forthe most part, to be based

on confusions.For example, suppose metaphysical ealism s true.Then there s a definite et of ndividuals of which the worldcon-sists (in the world-picture f Field's Science without Numbers,these would be just the space-timepoints). And there s a definitesetP of all properties nd relationsofthese ndividuals. Considera"language" with a name foreach member f I and a predicateforeach member of P. Such a language is not a denumerable an-guage; true. But there s no reason for a metaphysicalrealisttothinkthat the true nd complete theory f the world should be ex-

pressible n a denumerable anguage. This language is unique (upto isomorphism), nd thetheory f the world-the setoftrue en-tences-is likewiseunique. So there s nothing wrongwith theas-sertion which Field spends pages in criticizing) hat,on a meta-physical realist view, there is "one true theory." Metaphysicalrealists have always thought n terms f an ideal language, not anatural one, with ts vagueness, ts finitevocabulary, tc.

The most substantive-but also the most amazing-idea in Field'spaper is thesuggestion hat realist an also be a disquotationalist.I shall argue that a disquotational theory an have no explanatory

* Abstract f a paper to be read in APA symposiumon Hilary Putnam's Reason,Truth nd History, ommenting n papersby Hartry ield and GilbertHarman; seethisJOURNAL, this ssue,553-567 and 568-575,respectively.

0022-362X/82/7910/0575$00.50 ? 1982 The JournalofPhilosophy, nc.

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576 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY

power unlesssomething s said about thenotion of assertion. Thisis so because disquotational theoriespresuppose thatour under-

standing of 'true'-and, indeed, of any word-comes aboutthrough the internalizationof assertibility onditions and notthrough he earningof truth onditions n the realist ense. f "as-serting"P is merelyutteringP, then the theory,n effect, eniesthat our thoughts and assertionsare thoughtsand assertions. f"assertion" s to be taken n a suitably thick" sense,however, henwe have to recognize that assertions re correct nd incorrect. utthen theproblemof truth eappearswhen we ask what it is for nassertionto be correct nd what it is for t to be incorrect.

That there re (electromagnetic) ields nd thatthese re individualthings not sets or functions), nd that these xistbetween articlesis one theory; hat there reparticles nd forces n particles wherethe particlesare) and no other individuals (except Goodmaniansums of these "basic" individuals) is an incompatible theory.have oftenused an example in which twosuch incompatibletheo-ries are equivalent in a very trong ense (not just in the senseof

predicting he same trajectories,utin thesense of being mutuallyinterpretable). ield modifiesmy example so thatthetwotheoriesare not incompatible,and then says I made an error. regret hathe failed todiscuss my actual example.

Let me try o state the main argumentof Reason, Truth and His-tory which Field and Harman avoid discussinglike the plague!)briefy:

I ask: whatfixes R (the truereferenceelation, n themetaphysi-cal realist ense,the God's-Eye-View-referenceelation)as therefer-ence relation?What singlesit out? What makes it thecase that thetruereference elation isn't some other admissible reference ela-tion, say,R17?

Well, it can't be anythingpsychological. For the nonstandardbut admissible reference elations can be chosen to agree on allpsychological predicates,while permutingthe extensionsof thenonpsychological predicates "cat," "touches,"etc.) n unimagina-

bly perverseways.Harman's response s that the world has a "single causal struc-ture." But this doesn't help. For if my linguisticcompetence scaused byE1, E2. E3 . . . , then t is also true that t is caused* byE *I, 2*, f, . . . (wherethe* denotesthecorrespondingntityn asuitable nonstandardmodel). So we can thenask,why s referencefixedby causation and not by causation*?The answer: "because

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FRENCH RESPONSES TO SARTRE 577

that's the natureof reference" s unabashed essentialism. n thecontextof a twentieth-centuryorld view,tosaythis s onlytosay

that one believes n a one-knows-not-what hich solves our prob-lem one-knows-not-how.

The central argumentof my book is that"reference" s no moreexplicable by a materialist han is epistemic ustification r moralgoodness.The replyof Harman and Field is that t's not inconsis-tent logically)to be a metaphysical ealist bout truthnd a subjec-tivist bout epistemicvalues (Field) or about moral values (Har-

man).This is no reply;unless Field and Harman can comeup with

something better o say about referencend truth han disquota-tional theories robservations bout "single causal structure,"heyhave no seriouscriticism t all to offer f the argument fReason,Truthand History.

HILARY PUTNAM

Harvard University

SARTRE, MERLEAU-PONTY, AND HUMAN FREEDOM*

Jean-Paul Sartre nd Maurice Merleau-Pontyre commonlyrecognizedto have sharedin definingtheprojectof an "exis-tentialphenomenology"which would seek to evoke and in-

terpretprimordial structures f human "being-in-the-world,"fthe way we "live" our relationshipto thenaturalworld,to otherpersons,to history nd culture, prior," in some sense,to theover-lay of reflectivehought nd prior n particularto theexplanatoryaccountsof the special sciences. nevitably, uch a projectrequiresa delicate balance betweena recovery f hidden and unknowingexperiences,on the one hand, and some guiding, interpretiveframework, hichdirects ttention o and provides themostgen-eral conceptsforunderstanding hoseexperiences n theother:theexperiencesshould validate the broad conceptual framework,ndthe conceptual frameworkhould disclose, and thus affordmorecomprehensive nsight nto, the fundamental xperiences.Justas

inevitably, herefore,ifferencesn the conceptual framework,sbetweendifferentnvestigators,hould be expectedto yieldcorre-

*To be presented n an APA symposiumon FrenchResponses to Sartre:Merleau-Pontyand Levinas, December30, 1982.Alphonso Lingis will be co-symposiast,ndPeterCaws will comment;see this JOURNAL, this issue, 588-596 and 596/7,respec-tively, ortheir ontributions.

0022-362X/82/7911/0577$01.00 ? 1982The Journalof Philosophy, nc.