PHILOSOPHICAL TOPICSVOL. 20 NO. 1, SPRING 1992

Realism and Rational Inquiryl

GaryEbbsUniversity 0/Pennsylvania

Hilary Putnam's wide-ranging contributions to philosophy over the pastthirty-five years apparently reflect many different points ofview. Even care­ful readings of his work can leave one with the impression that there is nosingle set of underlying principles from which his many arguments flow.Some would say that he is like Isaiah Berlin's fox-volatile and brilliant, asopposed to steady and systematic; focused on particular issues, not unifyingprinciples; light-footed in his approach, and quick to pursue a new interest.2

This perception of Putnam is partly sustained by the standard view that hiswork falls into two main periods, roughly delimited by "Realism andReason," his 1976 Presidential Address to the Eastern Division of theAmerican Philosophical Association.3 In the first period, it is generally sup­posed, Putnam was a paradigm metaphysical realist, who held that truth is"radically non-epistemic" and argued vigorously against all views which tiethe contents of our statements to our methods of verifying or falsifyingthem. In the second period, Putnam is supposed to have abandoned meta­physical realism to embrace internal realism, a view which implies that thecontents of our statements are tied to our methods of verifying or falsifyingthem. Thus it is commonly believed that Putnam turned his back on a non­epistemic conception of truth and adopted a kind of verificationism. His turntowards internal realism is classified as just one, albeit the most dramatic, ofmany changes in his philosophical beliefs.

In addition, there is a temptation to see the supposed metaphysical real­ism of Putnam' s first period as a kind of scientific naturalism, according towhich only the sciences can provide us with true descriptions of the world.Putnam' s causal "theory" of reference must'then be viewed as a preliminarysketch of a rigorous scientific theory of reference. When viewed this way, thecausal "theory" is of no value to us if it cannot be made scientifically precise.Putnam' s later rejection of naturalistic theories of reference and rationality4then amounts to an abandonment of his causal "theory" of reference, andmust be seen as another fundamental change in view.

These interpretations of Putnam's work have some support in his writ­ings, and he seems at times to accept them hirnself. But I see more continu­ity in Putnam's thinking than these standard views acknowledge. I willargue that his work is motivated by one underlying philosophical project,which is at odds with both metaphysical realism and scientific naturalism.The starting point for this project is that our participation in everyday and sci­entific linguistic practices subjectsour statements to norms that determinewhat we are talking about, when we agree, and when we disagree. Putnam'sproject is to clarify our implicit, practice-based understanding of thesenorms. He introduces his causal picture of reference in order to deepen ourunderstanding of the norms underlying our linguistic practices, not to pro­vide a metaphysical or scientific foundation for them.

Putnam' s project leads to the rejection of metaphysical realism.According to his causal picture of reference, there is an essential interde­pendence between referenceand belief. This shows that our conception ofthe entities we refer to is not independent of the substantive beliefs we relyon in our inquiries. And it implies that we can make no sense of metaphys­ical realism. The interdependence of our ontological notions and our sub­stantive beliefs is implicit in Putnam' s early arguments against logicalpositivism, and it lies at the heart of internal realism. This interdependencegoes hand in hand with the interdependence of our concepts of truth andrational acceptability. But this does not mean that internal realism is averificationist view according to which truth is defined in terms of justi­fication or rational acceptability.

Putnam' s project is also at odds with scientific naturalism. AlthoughPutnam at times shows an interest in developing a scientific theory of refer­ence, he does not believe that his causal picture of reference is valuable onlyif it can be made scientifically precise. His interest in developing a causal the­ory of reference sterns from his desire to clarify the norms underlying our lin­guistic practices, and does not reflect a commitment to scientific naturalism.So Putnam' s rejection of scientific theories of reference and rationality doesnot mark a fundamental change in his philosophical views.

The view I present here has never been fully articulated by Putnam him­self, and it is perhaps incompatible with some of what he has written. My

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goal is to understand why I find some of Putnam'sarguments convincing, notto provide a definitive interpretation of his work. I think of the following asa creative reconstruction of Putnam' s views, which merits considerationwhether or not it is conlpatible with all of his writings.

1. CARNAP' S VIEW OF RATIONAL INQUIRY

Putnam's early views developed in reaction to logical positivism. In partic­ular, his criticism of the analytic-synthetic distinction5 can be fully appreci­ated only against the background of Carnap' s conception of rational inquiry.Carnap was centrally interested in clarifying the epistemology of the naturalsciences and of rational inquiry in general.6 The starting point for Carnap' sunderstanding of rational inquiry is displayed in his attitude towards theapparent disputes and controversies found in traditional metaphysics. In his"Intellectual Autobiography," Carnap writes:

Even in the pre-Vienna period, most of the controversies in tra­ditional metaphysics appeared to me sterile and useless. When Icompared this kind of argumentation with investigations anddiscussions in empirical science or in the logical analysis of lan­guage, I was often struck by the vagueness of the concepts usedand by the inconclusive nature of the arguments. I was depressedby disputations in which the opponents talked at cross purposes;there seemed hardly any chance of mutual understanding, letalone of agreement, because there was not even a common cri­terion for deciding the controversy.... I came to hold the viewthat many theses of traditional metaphysics are not only useless,but even devoid of cognitive content.7

This attitude towards apparent disputes in traditional metaphysics reftectsa conception of rationality central to Carnap' s philosophical project.According to this conception, agreement or disagreement between investi­gators is possible only if they share criteria for determining whether theirjudgments are correct or incorrect. If they do not share such criteria, thenthey cannot be genuinely agreeing or disagreeing, even if they appear to be.On Carnap' s view the controversies and questions in traditional metaphysicsfail to be genuine because there are no criteria for deciding them.

Carnap also held that investigators will fail to agree or disagree if theyeach have different criteria for assessing their judgments. In this case,although the investigators may succeed in raising questions and makingmeaningful claims, they cannot agree or disagree with each other. Insofar asthey do not share a criterion for rational inquiry, they are not really commu­nicating at all. This kind of failure to agree or disagree presupposes that thereis more than one criterion of rational inquiry. Unlike Frege and Russell,

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Carnap from the start accepted that there are many different criteria forrationally assessing judgments. He came to believe that the sharing of thesecriteria must be understood as the sharing of linguistic frameworks. Througha clarification and analysis of the mIes for the correct use of linguisticexpressions, he believed, we can make precise, for each genuine case ofrational agreement or disagreement, the particular linguistic frameworkwhich underlies it.

Motivated by this framework-relative conception of rational inquiry,Carnap' s philosophical project was to clarify our understanding of the cri­teria relative to which inquiry is possible by offering rigorous descriptionsof the mIes goveming the correct use of linguistic expressions. For Carnap,an explicit specification of one complete set of such rules constitutes aclarification of a particular linguistic framework. He believed that our under­standing of the stmcture of rational inquiry is deepened as we generalizeabout the relationships between the mIes of linguistic frameworks, and thecriteria for determining the correctness or incorrectness of statements madewithin particular frameworks. The two most important of these relation­ships are captured by Carnap' s distinction between analytic and syntheticstatements. On Carnap's view, a statement is analytic if its correctness orincorrectness is determined solely by the mIes of the linguistic frameworkwithin which it is made; it is synthetic if its correctness or incorrectness isdetermined by those mIes only in conjunction with empirical investigations.This classification was meant to be exhaustive: every statement in every lin­guistic framework is either analytic or synthetic. This distinction betweentwo different ways in which a statement can be correct lies at the very heartof Carnap' s analysis of the stmcture of rational inquiry.

Carnap sharply distinguishes between changes of belief made withinparticular linguistic frameworks and changes in linguistic framework. Theformer may involve an element of free choice, but do not involve changesin the mIes for determining the correctness or incorrectness of statements,whereas the latter do involve changes in those mIes. Because changes in lin­guistic framework do not take place within any particular linguistic frame­work, they cannot be rational or irrational. Camap therefore endorsed aPrinciple of Tolerance, according to which investigators are free to adopt anylinguistic framework which suits their purposes.8 Investigators may changethe frameworks they use as much as it suits them. But they will not succeedin agreeing or disagreeing with each other unless they are working within thesame linguistic framework. Only then will they share criteria for deciding thecorrectness or incorrectness of their statements.

Since on Carnap's view rational inquiry is not possible outside of a par­ticular linguistic framework, we have no framework-independent conceptionof facts or objects. No absolute sense can be made of statements that factsor objects exist. Insofar as they have genuine content, such statements always

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presuppose a precise criterion of correctness or incorrectness. We cannoteven individuate a statement without specifying a linguistic framework. ForCarnap there simply are no intelligible statements, whatever their subjectmatter, which are not made fronl within particular linguistic frameworks.

2. PUTNAM' S CRITIQUE OF THEANALYTIC-SYNTHETIC DISTINCTION

In "The Analytic and the Synthetic" Putnam rejects Carnap's model ofmeaning on the grounds that it misrepresents the norms underlying our ratio­nal inquiries. For Putnam, our only grasp of these norms is based in our par­ticipation in ongoing commonsense and scientific linguistic practices. Hisstrategy is to use our implicit grasp of the norms underlying these practicesto criticize the analytic-synthetic distinction. Despite our incomplete under­standing of our linguistic practices, we often have confidence in our pre­theoretical judgments about when two investigators are talking about thesame thing, when they agree, and when they make claims which cannot bothbe true. Such judgments are not infallible, but on Putnam's view they aregood guides to the norms underlying our linguistic practices. Using carefullychosen examples, Putnam argues that the analytic-synthetic distinction isincompatible with some of our most confident pre-theoretical judgementsabout when investigators make incompatible claims about the same subject.Along the way he begins to develop a picture of meaning which more accu­rately describes the norms underlying our everyday and scientific inquiries.

Let us look at Putnam' s argument against the analytic-synthetic dis­tinction in detail, focusing on just one of his examples. He observes thatbefore Einstein, scientists thought that kinetic energy was correctly describedby a particular equation. After Einstein's development of the theory of rel­ativity, kinetic energy must be described by a different equation. The adop­tion of the theory of relativity is taken by Carnap, and the logical positivistsin general, to be a paradigm of change in linguistic framework. Since the twokinetic energy equations are stated in different linguistic frameworks, theycannot make conflicting claims about the same form of energy. Thus onCarnap's view, the adoption of the new kinetic energy equation must beviewed as a change in the meaning ofthe term "kinetic energy," not a changein the scientists' beliefs about a single form of energy.

The trouble with this view of the kinetic energy equations, according toPutnam, is that it does not accurately describe our pre-theoretical judgmentsabout the case. Scientists confidently judge that the two equations describethe same form of energy, and that those who accept the relativistic equationfor kinetic energy disagree with those who held the pre-relativistic equation

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for kinetic energy. But if we assume with Carnap that the equations aremade within different linguistic frameworks, we will conclude that they donot describe the same form of energy, and that the scientists who accept thesecond equation do not disagree with the scientists who accepted the first one.So if we take our pre-theoretical judgments to be good guides to the normsunderlying rational inquiry, we must conclude that Carnap's view is wrong.9

Putnam observes that the obvious way to make sense of the judgmentthat the later scientists disagree with the earlier ones is to see the term"energy" as referring to the same quantity in both equations. Indeed, thejudgment that "energy" has the same reference in both equations seems togo hand in hand with the judgment that those who accept the relativisticequation disagree with those who held the pre-relativistic equation. As a steptowards making sense of judgments like these, Putnam begins to develop anew picture of the semantic role of terms like "energy". These are what hecalls "law-cluster terms". They occur in statements of many scientific laws,none of which is essential to our identification of the concepts they express.One or more of the laws in which a law-cluster term occurs may be given upwithout changing the concept expressed by that term. Once we view"energy" as a law-cluster term, we can accept that the reference of the term"energy" did not change when the old equation was given up, and that theearlier equation attributed a property to the quantity energy which we do notnow attribute to that quantity. So this picture of the role of terms like"energy" clarifies and further supports our pre-theoretical judgments that thetwo equations describe the same form of energy, and that the scientists whoaccept the later equation disagree with those who accepted the earlier one.IO

3. PUTNAM'S VIEW OF RATIONAL INQUIRY

The kinetic energy example provides just one simple illustration of Putnam' sapproach, and the notion of a law-cluster term offers only the barest outlinesof a model of meaning that helps to clarify some of our pre-theoretical judg­ments about when investigators are talking about the same things, when theyare agreeing, and when their claims are incompatible. But we are already in aposition to make a few observations about the general shape of Putnam's view.

Like Carnap, Putnam' s project is to deepen our understanding of ratio­nal inquiry. But unlike Carnap, Putnam takes seriously the judgments wemake as participants in ongoing everyday and scientific inquiries; in partic­ular, our judgments about when two investigators are talking about the samething, and when their claims are inconlpatible. Carnap' s model of meaning,if we were to accept it, would misrepresent the norms of our actual practicesand would undermine our confidence in these basic judgments. So Putnam

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urges that we reject Carnap's model, and replace it with one which moreaccurately characterizes our actuallinguistic practices. 11

Putnam' s notion of law-cluster terms reflects his view that the norms ofrational inquiry are open-ended. He does not begin with a fixed idea ofwhatkinds of criteria two investigators must share in order to agree or disagree.Instead he starts with our pre-theoretical judgments, and develops a modelof meaning which helps us to make sense of and clarify those judgments. Itturns out that if we want to make sense of our actuallinguistic practices, wemust acknowledge that the norms underlying these pre-theoretical judg­ments are more flexible than the logical positivists thought. We often judgethat two investigators are making incompatible claims about the same thingeven when they do not agree about what procedures to follow in order todetermine whose claim is correct. The scientist who accept the relativistickinetic energy equation have very different grounds for their belief thanthose who accepted the earlier equation. By Camap's standards, they do notshare a criterion for determining which of these equations is correct. Butonce we start with the pre-theoretical judgment that the scientists who acceptthe later equation disagree with those who accept the earlier one, we see thatCamap' s conception of agreement and disagreement is too strict. In its placewe do not try to state a new set of necessary and sufficient conditions foragreement or disagreement. Instead, we require that our description of thenorms underlying our practices fit with and help us make sense of our pre­theoretical judgments about when two investigators are talking about thesame thing, when they agree or disagree. A philosophical account of thenorms underlying rational inquiry which meets this requirement will beas open-ended as the ordinary and scientific inquiries in which our pre­theoretical judgments about reference, agreement, and disagreement aremade.

I mentioned earlier that according to Carnap we have no framework­independent conception of facts or things. From Camap' s perspective, then,one might object that Putnam's notion of a law-cluster term is obscure.Putnam supposes that in many of the statements in which the term "energy"occurs, it refers to the same quantity, even ifthe criteria for assessing the cor­rectness or incorrectness of those statements are quite different. But thisaccount of the semantic role of the term "energy" presupposes that we havea framework-independent conception of energy. Since according to Carnapwe have no such conception, we can't make sense of Putnam's notion of alaw-cluster term. 12

This objection masks an important similarity between their views. Eventhough Putnam and Carnap have very different views about how to charac­terize the norms ofrational inquiry, they both believe that we have no under­standing of statements, facts, or things independent of those norms. As weshall see, on Putnam's view our conceptions of the entities to which our

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terms refer are not available prior to or independently oft3 the nornlS whichunderlie our judgments about when investigators are talking about the samething, when they agree, and when they make incompatible claims. Putnam'sintroduction of the notion of a law-cluster concept is intended to help clar­ify our implicit understanding of those norms, not to provide a metaphysicalfoundation for them. So although Putnam has a more flexible, practice­based conception of the norms of rational inquiry, he also is implicitly com­mitted to the Carnapian idea that our understanding of statements, facts, andthings is based in the norms underlying rational inquiry, and cannot be fullydetached from them. This aspect of Putnam's view has far-reaching conse­quences, as we shall see later.

4. PUTNAM' S CRITICISM OF THE ANALYTIC-SYNTHETICDISTINCTION CONTRASTED WITH QUINE' S

I have been emphasizing that for Putnam our participation in ongoinginquiries subjects our statements to norms which it is the task of philosophyto describe and clarify. So Putnanl' s criticism of the analytic-synthetic dis­tinction ultimately rests on our perspective as participants in everyday andscientific inquiries. This aspect of Putnam' s project is best appreciated whencontrasted with the view of language which underlies Quine's criticism ofCarnap' s analytic-synthetic distinction.

For Carnap, as we have seen, genuine agreement or disagreementbetween investigators is possible only if they share criteria for assessing thecorrectness or incorrectness of their statements. Carnap believed that thesharing of these criteria must be understood as the sharing of linguisticframeworks, which consist in precise and determinate mIes for the correctuse oflinguistic expressions. On Carnap's view, a statement is analytic if itscorrectness or incorrectness is determined solely by the roles of the linguis­tic framework within which it is made; it is synthetic if its correctness orincorrectness is determined by those roles only in conjunction with particu­lar empirical investigations.

Quine' s criticism of this conception of rational inquiry begins with hisrequirement that there be an objective scientific basis for the attribution of aparticular linguistic framework to an investigator.14 On Carnap' s view, oneinvestigator can legitimately correct or criticize the statements made byanother investigator only if they are both working within the sanle linguis­tic framework. If they are not working within the same linguistic framework,they do not share criteria for assessing their statements, and so neither inves­tigator is in a position to evaluate the statements of the other. So, Quine rea­sons, on Camap' s view intersubjective rational criticism is not possible

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unless there is an objective basis for the attribution of a particular linguisticframework to an investigator. If there is no way to determine objectivelywhich linguistic framework an investigator is using, there is no way to deter­mine objectively whether or not his claims are correct.

Quine is a scientific naturalist. He applies his naturalism to the questionof whether there is an objective basis for attribution of linguistic frameworksto investigators. Quine's naturalism is implicit in "Two Dogmas ofEmpir­icism,"15 his celebrated attack on the analytic-synthetic distinction. In thispaper Quine rejects Camap' sattempts to clarify the distinction betweenanalytic and synthetic statements on the grounds that they all make use ofterms, like "synonymy" and "semantical rule", which are just as obscure asthe analytic-synthetic distinction itself. Quine' s criticisms in "Two Dogmasof Empiricism" are often misunderstood, because he does not say what kindof clarification would satisfy hirn. In retrospect we can see that for Quine,Camap's use of semantical terms is legitimate only if there is an objectivenaturalistic basis for using those terms to characterize an investigator' s lin­guistic behavior. Quine' s central criticism is that there is no such basis forusing semantical terms in this way. From his naturalistic point of view,these terms are literally without any determinate application.

This is exactly how he puts the point in chapter two of Word and Object,where he presents his thesis that translation is indeterminate. 16 Here Quine' snaturalism is fully explicit. His aim is to show that such notions as meaning,semantical rule, synonymy, and analyticity cannot be understood in terms ofthe natural facts about language use. Quine assurnes that the natural factsabout language and meaning are exhausted by speakers' dispositions torespond to queries under various prompting stimulations, described in neuro­physiological terms. From within this naturalistic picture, a claim aboutwhich linguistic framework a speaker is using is objective only if it can beunderstood as determined by the physical behaviors which underlie thespeaker's use ofhis words. Thus, Quine writes,

. . . there are no meanings, nor likenesses nor distinctions ofmeaning, beyond what are implicit in people' s dispositions toovert behavior. For naturalism the question whether two expres­sions are alike or unlike in meaning has no determinate answer,known or unknown, except in so far as the answer is settled inprinciple by people' s speech dispositions, known or unknown. Ifby these standards there are indeterminate cases, so much theworse for the terminology of meaning and likeness of meaning. 17

In chapter 2 of Word and Object, Quine argues that what a speaker "means"by her words is not fully determined by the facts about how she uses them.Compatibly with all the facts about her linguistic behavior, a speaker' s utter­ances can be translated in a number of "inequivalent" ways. So, Quine argues,Camap's distinction between utterances whose meanings are analytic, and

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those whose meanings are synthetic, cannot be understood in naturalisticterms. Quine concludes that this distinction, and the related notion of a lin­guistic framework, must be abandoned. On Quine's view Carnap's concep­tion of rational inquiry is all make-believe, based on distinctions which haveno objective basis.

From this brief sketch we can see that Quine' s criticism of the analytic­synthetic distinction is fundamentally different from Putnam's. The mostbasic difference is that Quine does not take our participation in ongoing ratio­nal inquiries at face value. Instead, he treats an investigator' s use of a lan­guage as an object of scientific investigation. His requirement that there bean objective basis for the attribution of a linguistic framework to an investi­gator reflects this perspective; his naturalistic description of language usedeepens and clarifies it. In contrast, on Putnam' s view we do not require ascientific foundation for our linguistic practices of agreeing or disagreeingwith one another. Our participation in these practices is all the foundation weneed. Philosophy can help us to clarify the norms which we must acknowl­edge as participants in rational inquiries, but it should not try to provide uswith a foundation for our judgments as to when we are talking about thesame things, and when we agree or disagree. If we begin with the proper per­spective on language use, by taking our participation in rational inquiries atface value, we will not be tempted to ask Quine' s questions, or to accept hisanswers to them. 18 This difference between Putnam and Quine has conse-quences which I will explore further below. .

5. THE INTERDEPENDENCE OF REFERENCE AND BELIEF

I noted earlier that despite fundamental differences, there are important sim­ilarities between Carnap's and Putnam's views of rational inquiry. In par­ticular, Putnam is implicitly committed to the Camapian idea that ourunderstanding of statements, facts, and things is grounded in the normsunderlying rational·inquiry. This aspect of Putnam's approach has beenwidely misunderstood. One reason for this misunderstanding is that inter­preters have focused on Putnam' s causal picture of the references of natural­kind words. When Putnam's discussions ofnatural-kind words are read outof context, it can seem as though on Putnam' s view there is a conception ofnatural kinds which is available independently of the norms which underlieour iriquiries. It is then natural to think that he is trying to answer the ques­tion of how we succeed in referring to natural kinds, conceived in that inde­pendent way. It is generally supposed that Putnam's answer to this questionis the causal "theory" of reference: our natural-kind words refer to naturalkinds, conceived independently of our scientific inquiries, in virtue of causal

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relations we bear to those kinds. Hut this interpretation, though initiallytempting, is incorrect. For on Putnam' s view we have no conception of factsor things which is prior to, or available independently of, the norms under­lying our actual commonsense and scientific inquiries. This is reflected bythe fact that on his view there is an essential interdependence of our conceptsof reference and belief.

Putnam' s causal picture of reference is a development of his notion oflaw-cluster terms. He takes another step towards the causal picture in"Dreaming and Depth Grammar," where he criticizes Norman Malcolm'scriterial view of meaning. Here is one of Putnam' s most compelling coun­terexamples to the criterial view:

Consider the following case: there is a disease, multiple sclero­sis, which is extremely difficult to diagnose. The symptomsresemble those of other neurological diseases; and not all of thesymptoms are usually present. Some neurologists believe thatmultiple sclerosis is caused by a virus, although they cannotpresently specify what vilus. Suppose a patient, X, has a 'para­digmatic' case of multiple sclerosis. Then Malcolm's view isthat, no matter what we find out later, X has multiple sclerosisbecause that is what we presently mean. In particular, if we lateridentify a virus as the cause of multiple sclerosis, and thispatient' s condition was not caused by that virus, he still hadmultiple sclerosis. 19

Malcolm's view does not leave room for scientific investigation and dis­covery, for what "we could find out later." So it does not accurately describethe norms which underlie the neurologists' use of statements in which theterm 'multiple sclerosis' occurs. If we are to describe these norms accurately,

... we should have to say that we reject the view that scientistswho accept our hypothetical (future) virological criterion aretalking about a different disease when they use the term 'mul­tiple sclerosis' .20

An accurate picture of the meaning of 'multiple sclerosis' would enable usto see how the discovery of the virus that causes multiple sclerosis leads toa change in our beUets about multiple sclerosis, not a change in the referenceof the term 'multiple sclerosis', or in the concept it expresses. As a steptowards developing such an account, Putnam suggests that we think of thereference of 'multiple sclerosis' in the following way:

... there is (we presume) in the world something-say, a virus­which normally causes such-and-such symptoms. Perhaps otherdiseases occasionally (rarely) produce these same symptoms ina few patients. When a patient has these symptoms, we say hehas 'multiple sclerosis'-but, of course, we are prepared to saythat we were mistaken if the etiology turns out to have beenabnormal.21

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Putnam's suggestion is that the reference of 'multiple sclerosis' is the diseasewhich is causally responsible for certain symptoms. Since the cause of thesymptoms remains constant, the reference of 'multiple sclerosis' does notchange when the neurologists discover that multiple sclerosis is caused bya virus. This helps to clarify our practice-based judgment that the neurolo­gists' discovery leads to a change in belief, and not a change in the meaningof 'multiple sclerosis' .

Putnam's proposal that the reference of 'multiple sclerosis' is the dis­ease which is causally responsible for certain symptoms, together with theview of "law-cluster concepts" he introduced in "The Analytic and theSynthetic," points towards a new way ofthinking about reference. This newpicture of reference clarifies our implicit understanding of the norms foragreement or disagreement in our linguistic practices. In the context ofPutnam's philosophical project, further clarifications of these norms canonly result from detailed investigations of our practice-based judgments.about reference, elicited by descriptions of various actual and possible lin­guistic situations.

The most dramatic development in Putnam' s picture of reference comesin "The Meaning of 'Meaning' ," where he presents thought experimentswhich suggest that the references of our terms depend on the nature of ourphysical environments.22 The best-known of these thought experimentsinvolves the natural kind water. Putnam imagines that there exists a planetcalled Twin Earth, the same as Earth in all ordinarily discemible ways, butdifferent from Earth in one crucial respect: where there is water on Earth,there is another substance, twinwater, on Twin Earth. Twinwater is in allordinary contexts indistinguishable from water, but it has a fundamentallydifferent molecular structure, XYZ. My twin, a molecule-for-molecule dupli­cate of me, lives on Twin Earth. He has had the same kind of linguistic con­ditioning, and bis neuro-physiological dispositions are just like mine. Putnamobserves that even if neither of us knows the molecular structure of the stuffwe respectively call 'water', our words refer to different natural kinds. Whenmy twin uses the word 'water', he is speaking about twinwater, not water.He refers to thatkind of stuff to which he typically applies his word 'water'.It does not matter that he is unaware that the molecular structure of twinwateris XYZ. His term still refers to twinwater, not water. Similarly, my word'water' refers to water, not twinwater, even if I am ignorant of its molecularstructure. The reference of my word 'water' is different from the referenceof my twin's word 'water' because he and I typically apply the expression'water' to different liquids.

On the basis of examples and thought experiments like these, it is tempt­ing to think that on Putnam' s view we have a conception of natural kinds likewater which is prior to, and availab.1e independently of, the norms underly­ing our commonsense and scientific inquiries. This is reflected in our natural

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temptation to try to adopt a detached perspective on linguistic behavior,viewing it from outside any particular linguistic practice. From this detachedperspective, it can seem that we have a conception of natural kinds which isavailable independently of any linguistic practice. We do not consider thesource of our own conception of those natural kinds. We just focus on thequestion of the relationship between the speaker' s linguistic behavior and thenatural kinds in the world "as it really is," and we simply assume that we areable to form a conception of those natural kinds independently of any par­ticular linguistic practice.

There are passages in which Putnam seems to take the same view of hisexamples. For instance, in "The Meaning of 'Meaning'" he writes:

It is beyond question that scientists use terms as if the associatedcriteria were not necessary and sufficient conditions, but ratherapproximately correct characterizations of some world of theory­independent entities, and that they talk as if later theories in amature science were, in general, better descriptions of the sameentities that earlier theories referred tO.23

Putnam's use of the phrase "theory-independent entities" in this passageapparently suggests that he thinks that some of our ontological notions areavailable prior to, and independently of, the norms underlying our inquiries.This seems to support the idea that we can stand back from linguistic prac­tice and imagine a relationship between linguistic behavior and entitieswhich are conceived independently of any of the beliefs we hold as partici­pants in ongoing linguistic inquiries. But this does not make sense fromPutnam's point of view. Even in this passage, Putnam gives content to thephrase "theory-independent entities" by noting that scientists "talk as if latertheories in a mature science were, in general, better descriptions of the sameentities that earlier theories referred to," thus linking our notion of theory­independent entities with the normal evolution of scientific theories. Despitefirst appearances, Putnam' s conception of "theory-independent entities" isessentially based in the norms underlying our practices. He does not endorsethe tempting thought that we can step outside our linguistic practices andimagine a relationship between our language use and entities conceivedindependently of norms underlying any particular linguistic practice. Onhis view, we are always workingfrom within a given linguistic practice, try­ing to clarify our understanding of that practice, or another one. Our onto­logical conceptions are not available independently of the norms underlyingthe linguistic practices in which we participate.

One way to appreciate this is to see that on Putnam's view there is anessential interdependence between our concepts of reference and belief. Ourbeliefs are individuated in part by the causal relations we bear to ourenvironment, and the individuation of the entities to which our terms referis dependent upon the beliefs expressed with the help of those terms.

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Putnam' s picture of reference and belief is based in our pre-theoreticalunderstanding of normswhich determine what people are talking about,and when they agree or disagree. On this picture there is no way to separatesharply the norms which determine what people are referring to fronl thosewhich determine what they believe. And so there can be no clarification ofreference which is not also a clarification of belief.

There ar~ several places in "the Meaning of 'Meaning'" where Putnamemphasizes features of our linguistic practices which i1lustrate the interde­pendence of our beliefs about when a term is correctly applied and the ref­erence of the term. For example, he wams the reader not to interpret hiscausal picture of reference as implying that every natural-kind term mustpick out a single natural kind, with one underlying microstructure. Thiswould be to read a kind of linguistic atomism into bis picture, one wbich doesnot acknowledge the interdependence between our use of a term and its ref­erence. He writes that

[al ... misunderstanding which should be avoided is the fol­lowing: to take the account we have developed as implying thatthe members of the extension of a natural-kind word necessar­ily have a common hidden structure. It could have tumed out thatthe bits of liquid we call 'water' had no important commonphysical characteristics except the superficial ones. In that casethe necessary and sufficient condition for being 'water' wouldhave been possession of sufficiently many of the superficialcharacteristics.24

Putnam i1lustrates this possibility with the example of jade:

An interesting case is the case of jade. Although the Chinese donot recognize a difference, the term 'jade' applies to two miner­als: jadeite and nephrite. Chemically, there is a marked differ­ence. Jadeite is a combination of sodium and aluminum.Nephrite is made of calcium, magnesium, and iron. These twoquite different microstructures produced the same unique tex­tural qualities !25

Here Putnam is suggesting that the necessary and sufficient condition for thecorrect application of the term 'jade' to some mineral stuff is that it possesssufficiently many of the appropriate textural qualities. The same reasoningapplies, in certain counterfactual cases, to a natural-kind term like 'water':

... if H20 and XYZ had both been plentiful on Earth, then wewould have had a case similar to the jadeite/nephrite case: itwould have been correct to say that there were two kinds 0/'water'. And instead of saying that 'the stuff on Twin Earthtumed out not to really be water', we would have to say 'ittumed out to be the XYZ kind o/water' .26

What these examples i1lustrate is that the references of some of what we taketo be natural-kind words need not be a natural kind. In determining the

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references of our terms, we must investigate the things to which they aretypically applied. The pattern of our applications of a word is at least asimportant in determining what it refers to as the microstructures of thethings to which we apply it. The pattern of our applications of a wordreflects our practice-based judgments about when it is correcdy applied. Sothese examples show that in determining the content and application of ourwords, there is no principled way to distinguish between the contribution ofour practice-based judgments about when our words are correcdy applied,and the contribution of the references of our words. And this means that ourconception of the references of our words is inextricably tied to the normsunderlying our rational inquiries.27

The interdependence of belief and reference is further illustrated byPutnam's application of his new picture of reference to artifact words like'pencil', 'chair', 'bottle', etc. He argues against the "traditional view" thatthese words are defined by clusters of properties. On this view, statementslike pencils are artifacts would be analytically true, true in virtue of the clus­ter definition of 'pencil'. Against this, Putnam teIls the following story:

Imagine that we someday discover"that pencils are organisms.We cut them open and examine them under the electron micro­scope, and we see the almost invisible tracery of nerves" andother organs. We spy on them, and we see them spawn, and wesee the offspring grow into full-grown pencils. We discover thatthese organisms are not imitating other (artificial) pencils-thereare not and never were any pencils except these organisms.28

Putnam argues that if this is conceivable, then it is not analytically true thatpencils are artifacts. It could turn out that what we call 'pencils' are in factorganisms. This is like his thought experiment in "It Ain't Necessarily SO,"29where he imagines that we discover that cats are robots controlled fromMars. In each case, he suggests, we would not say that the subject haschanged. We would say that we discovered that pencils are not artifacts, andthat cats are not aninlals: our beliefs would change, but not the references ofour terms 'pencil' and 'cat'.30 .

On Putnam's view there is no simple way in which the references of ourwords are determined. We can meaningfully refer to pencils even thoughthey are in fact artifacts, not natural kinds. But that is not to say that a clus­ter of descriptions determines the meaning of our word 'pencil'. The refer­ence of the word 'pencil' is determined in part by the norms governing ouruse of that word. If, as it happens, those norms pick out a natural kind, thenthat is the reference of 'pencil' . But if they do not, the word 'pencil' still hasa reference, based in the norms for its correct application in the linguisticcommunity. Even if 'pencil' is an artifact term, it is not synonymous with anycluster of descriptions. Because of this there is no way to determine thereference of 'pencil' without also determining many of our beliefs about

15

pencils. Hence our conception of the entities we call "pencils" is not avail­able independently of our beliefs about pencils.

These examples illustrate the deep interdependence of our concepts ofreference and belief in our commonsense and scientific practices. They showthat the norms underlying our linguistic practices involve sinlultaneous andinterconnected judgments about what investigators believe, and what theyare referring to. Putnam' s philosophical project of clarifying our under­standing of these practices requires that he acknowledge this interdepen­dence. The comnlunity-shared norms, together with the environment we arein, detemline the references of our words. There is no useful way to distin­guish between those parts ofthe community-shared norms which depend onour beliefs, and those which solely concern the references of our words. Andso our conception of the entities to which our words refer is essentially tiedto our beliefs about those entities. The interdependence of reference andbelief shows that our ontological notions are not independent of the normsunderlying our rational inquiries. We can't step outside our linguistic prac­tices and imagine a relationship between our language use and entities con­ceived independently of norms underlying any particular linguistic practice.31

6. THE DISSOLUTION OF METAPHYSICAL REALISM

We are now in a position to see that implicit in Putnam's early papers onmeaning is a rejection of metaphysical realism, according to which there isa conception of the way things stand in the world, completely independentof any of our beliefs. From Putnam's point of view, the trouble with meta­physical realism is that we can' t make sense of it. The metaphysical realistpresupposes that we are able to conceive of the world-the entities it con­tains and the relationships which obtain between them-independently of thenorms underlying our commonsense and scientific inquires. But we haveseen that on Putnam' s view our ontological notions are not available inde­pendently of the norms underlying our rational inquiries. And if our onto­logical notions are not available independently of these norms, we can'tmake sense of the notion of representation on which the metaphysical real­ist' s alleged conception of the world depends.

I assume that metaphysical realism amounts to what Bernard Williamsand Thomas Nagel have called the absolute conception of the world, a con­ception of how things stand in the world, completely independent of any ofour beliefs about it.32 Williams and Nagel believe that we understand theabsolute conception of the world as the limit of a dialectic which progressesthrough ever-expanding circles of representations. This dialectic begins withthe assumption that our beliefs result from interactions with an independentlyexisting world. Prom time to time we discover that some of our beliefs are

16

limited or distorted. The discovery of limits or distortions in our beliefsrequires that we have a more encompassing representation of the world, onewhich includes an explanation of the cognitive processes which limited ordistorted our beliefs. When this happens locally, within our commonsense orscientific representation of the world, it does not necessarily lead to a con­ception ofhow things are completely independent of any of our beliefs. ButWilliams and Nagel maintain that we can extend our understanding of thedialectical process of overcoming the limitations in our beliefs far beyondany of our substantive beliefs about the world. At the limit, it seenlS that thisdialectic leads to the idea of an absolutely objective representation of theworld, without any subjective elements, from which all other representationscan be understood. This is the absolute conception of the world.

From Putnam's point of view, the initial impression that the absoluteconception makes sense dissolves under scrutiny. The reason is that itdepends on the assumption that we can conceive of a complete representa­tion of the world which is radically detached from all of our beliefs. In orderto conceive of such a representation, our conception of the entities to whichour words refer would have to be available independently of all of our beliefsabout those entities. But we have seen that our conception of the entities towhich our words refer is not available independently of all of our beliefsabout them. In order to make sense of the norms goveming agreement anddisagreement in our commonsense and scientific practices, we must think ofreference as involving causal relations with things in our environment. Ourunderstanding of the contents of beliefs is inextricably bound up with ourbeliefs about the causal relations we bear to things in our environment. Toaccept Putnam's picture is to see the contents of beliefs as individuated inpart by the references of the terms which express them. Hence there is noway to conceive of a belief, or the content of a possible belief, unless we havesome idea of the social and physical environment on which its individuationdepends. Wehave no understanding of the notion of representation apartfrom our understanding of the notion of the content of a (possible) belief. Sowe are unable to give any genuine content to the metaphysical realist' sabsolute conception of the world.

7. QUINE' S SCIENTIFIC NATURALISM

The conclusion we have just reached is the result of thinking of ontologicalnotions as essentially tied to the norms we are subject to as participants inour commonsense and scientific inquiries. Putnam's pal1icipant perspectiveon these inquiries has other important consequences as weIl. I noted earlierthat it contrasts starkly with Quine' s naturalistic perspective on language. I

17

want now to explain in more detail what is wrong with Quine' s scientific nat­uralism from Putnam' s point of view.

As I mentioned above, Quine' s criticism of intentional notions likemeaning, reference, and belief starts with his requirement that there be anobjective scientific basis for using such notions to describe an investigator' slinguistic behavior. His challenge to the assumption that these notions haveobjective application is set out in chapter two of Word and Object. The cen­tral aim of this chapter is "to consider how much of language can be madesense of in terms of its stimulus conditions," where these are primarilyexhausted by the stimulus meanings of sentences of the language.33 Thestimulus meaning of a sentence S for a given speaker A (at time t) is definedas the ordered pair consisting of the class of all irradiation patterns of the eye(and other sense modalities) which would prompt A's assent to S, and theclass of all irradiation patterns which would prompt A's dissent from S.Assent and dissent are assumed to have a completely behavioral character­ization.34 The question of the determinacy of meaning and reference is raisedas a question about the determinacy of translation from one language intoanother. Quine reasons that if the translation of sentences and words of onelanguage into those of another is not determined by stimulus meaning, thentranslation is objectively indeterminate.

Quine argues that the only sentences whose translations are (fairly well)determined by speech behaviors are observation sentences, and truth func­tions of these.35 The references of the predicates (what he calls "terms") ofthe language, however, are not uniquely determined by speech behaviors.Quine's well-known example involves a native expression, 'Gavagai' , whichhe assumes to have the same stimulus meaning as our one-word sentence,,'Rabbit' . Since stimulus meaning is defined only for sentences as wholes, thebehavioral facts about the use of 'Gavagai' do not determine whether thissentence contains a predicate true of rabbits, rabbit stages, or undetached rab­bit parts, to mention just three possibilities. The argument for this has twoparts. First Quine points out thatthe stimulus meaning of 'Gavagai' , takenin isolation from the stimulus meanings of other sentences of the language,does not uniquely fix what a speaker is referring to:

... a whole rabbit is present when and only when an undetachedpart of a rabbit is present; also when, and only when a temporalstage of a rabbit is present. If we are wondering whether to trans­late a native expression "gavagai" as "rabbit" or as "undetachedrabbit part" or as "rabbit stage," we can never settle the mattersimply by ostension-that is, simply by repeatedly querying theexpression "gavagai" for the native's assent or dissent in thepresence of assorted stimulations.36

Second, Quine argues that translation of the particles and constructionswhich make up the speaker' s "apparatus of individuation"37-plural endings,

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pronouns, numerals, the "is" of identity, the words "same" and "other"­does not uniquely determine the reference of terms either. Translation of theparticles and constructions of individuation involves "analytical hypotheses"which are not uniquely determined by speech dispositions. Thus even if wecould decide that the native is referring to rabbits, once we worked out atranslation of his apparatus of individuation, this would not show that refer­ence is uniquely determined by speech behaviors. For there may be otheracceptable translations, according to which the native is referring to unde­tached rabbit parts or rabbit stages:

... if one workable overall system of analytical hypotheses pro­vides for translating a given native expression into "is the sameas," perhaps another equaIly workable but systematically dif­ferent system would translate that native expression rather intosomething like "belongs with." Then when in the native lan­guage we try to ask "Is this gavagai the same as that?" we couldas weIl be asking "Does this gavagai belong with that?" Insofar,the native' s assent is no objective evidence for translating "gav­agai" as "rabbit" rather than "undetached rabbit part" or "rabbitstage."38

When appropriately generalized, this reasoning implies that the references ofa speaker' s words are not uniquely determined by her speech dispositions.Since according to Quine speech dispositions are the only facts relevant totranslation, his conclusion is that the reference of a speaker' s words is notuniquely determined by any facts, known or unknown. In short, reference is

. inscrutable.According to Quine, the inscrutability of reference holds for our own

language, as well as any foreign language which we try to translate. Thismeans that the translation of our own words is not uniquely determined byspeech dispositions. I can say "I am talking about rabbits, not rabbit stages,"hut there is more than one acceptahle translation of that sentence. My entirelanguage could be translated into itself in such a way that all my speech dis­positions are preserved, but "rabbit" is translated as "rabbit stage". Thus onQuine's view there is simply no fact ofthe matter about what I am referringto with my word "rabbit". Of course, I don't have to translate my words, Ican simply use them. I can assert, for example, that rabbits are not rabbitstages, nor are they undetached rabbit parts. This involves what Quinecalls "acquiescing in our mother tongue and taking its words at face value."39According to Quine, we can take our words at "face value" in this way, whileat the same time believing that there is no objective translation of them, eveninto our own language.

This part of Quine's view is very difficult to understand. From Putnam'spoint of view, it is easy to see why. Given the interdependence of belief andreference, the inscrutability of reference implies that our beliefs can't havedeterminate truth conditions. And if our beliefs don't have determinate truth

19

conditions, then agreement or disagreement among investigators is not pos­sible. So if we treat an investigator' s language as an object of scientificinquiry, and judge the determinacy of reference and belief by Quine's sci­entific standards, we must conclude that rational inquiry is not possible: ourparticipation in commonsense and scientific practices does not subject ourstatements to norms which determine when we agree and disagree.40 This isto reject Putnam's starting point that our participation in these practicesdoes subject our statements to norms which determine when we agree anddisagree.

Putnam's criticism of Quine's view of language begins with the obser­vation that on Quine's view

. . . a complete account of our understanding of our languagewould simply be adescription of the noises we utter togetherwith a description of the actual processes by which we producethose noises (or subvocalizations).41

As participants in commonsense and scientific inquiries, we see ourselves assubject to norms which determine when we agree, and when we disagree.Putnam's criticism is that Quine's behavioral description of our language useundermines the very possibility of agreement and disagreement:

On such an account, we cannot genuinely disagree with oneanother: if I produce a noise and you produce the noise "No,that's wrong," then we have no more disagreed with each otherthan if I produced a noise and you produced a groan or a gront.Nor can we agree with each other any more than we can disagreewith each other: if I produce a noise and you produce the samenoise, then this is no more agreement than if a bough creaks andthen another creaks in the same way.42

So from our perspective as participants in ongoing inquiries, Quine's behav­ioral description of language use cannot be a complete account of our lin­guistic practices. To accept Quine's scientific naturalism about language, andhis conclusion that reference is inscrutable, would be to abandon our per­spective as participants in ongoing linguistic practices. From Putnam' s pointof view, to abandon this perspective is to abandon rational inquiry itself.

8. THEORIES VERSUS PICTURES OF REFERENCE

This conclusion about Quine's view oflanguage is apt to strike many as outof character with Putnam' s early work. Putnam at times seems to believe thatbis sketches of reference and belief are valuable only if they can be developedinto a rigorous scientific theory. This appearance is reinforced by the work of

20

two of his students, Hartry Field and Michael Devitt. Both Field and Devittmaintain that if it turns out that according to our best scientific account of lan­guage, the references of our words and the contents of our beliefs are notuniquely determined, then we must conclude that there is no fact of the nlat­ter about what our words refer to, and what we believe.43 I have argued thatfor Putnam the determinacy of reference and belief in our commonsense andscientific practices is immune from any general challenge of this kind. Buthow is this compatible with his interest in a scientific theory of reference?44

In order to address this question, we must distinguish between a theoryof reference and a picture of reference. Following Kripke, I assume that atheory of reference is a non-circular statement of necessary and sufficientconditions for a word to have a particular reference.45 A theory of referencemight be given in purely scientific terms, or it might be stated using non­scientific notions taken from our ordinary practices. The important point isthat a theory of reference will give necessary and sufficient conditions, with­out employing the notion of reference, or any notion which implicitly pre­supposes the notion of reference.46 A picture of reference, on the other hand,does not state necessary and sufficient conditions for a term to have a par­ticular reference. Instead, it relates our concept of reference to other con­cepts, like truth, belief, agreement, and disagreement. A particular picture ofreference is valuable to us to the extent that it to clarifies our implicit under­standing of reference. Since many aspects of our implicit understanding ofreference are quite sketchy, a picture of reference need not be precise in orderto be valuable.

Some philosophers believe that reference is not an objective relationunless there is a true scientific theory of reference. They believe that the cri­terion for the determinacy of reference is scientific. This is what I call sci­entific naturalism about reference. Both Quine and Field are scientificnaturalists in this sense. They disagree about whether there is a true scientifictheory of reference, but they each accept a scientific criterion for the deter­minacy of reference.

A belief in scientific naturalism is one motivation for trying to developa scientific theory of reference. But one need not be a scientific naturalistabout reference in order to be interested in developing a scientific theory ofreference. In particular, Putnam'sinterest in developing a scientific theory ofreference is not due to an underlying belief in scientific naturalism. He neverbelieved that the criterion for the determinacy of reference and belief is sci­entific. Instead, his interest in developing a scientific theory of reference is anatural result of his desire to clarify our understanding of the norms implicitin our linguistic practices. Dur understanding of these norms will be greatlyclarified if someday we develop a scientific theory of reference. So given hisunderlying project, it is not surprising that Putnam sometimes shows aninterest in developing such a theory. Moreover, the same underlying project

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motivates an interest in developing a clarifying picture of reference.Putnam's causal picture of reference contributes to his underlying projecteven if that picture cannot be developed into a scientific theory.

This is why Putnam does not show any genuine concern about whetherhis picture of reference can be developed into a scientific theory of reference.For example, in "Language and Reality," a paper which falls in what isstandardly regarded as his first period, Putnam comes close to saying that thenotion of reference must be made scientifically precise, or it is unusable.After noting the importance of the reference relation in his view of language,Putnam writes:

... unless we can say something infonnative about this relation,our entire philosophy of language rests comfortably in cloud­cuckoo-Iand.... if we don't know what referring to is, we mayassert that Bohr was referring to electrons when he used theword 'electron' or deny that he was; since it is unclear just whatrelation between Bohr's word 'electron' and the particles inquestion is being affinned or denied, a methodology for suchaffinnation and denials is a methodology for a science which,however valuable and important its results, still rests uponunclear notions.47

If Putnam was a scientific naturalist about reference when he w~ote thispassage, one would expect hirn to show genuine concern about whetherthere is a true scientific theory of reference. But he seems completely uncon­cerned about this. Instead of trying to sketch a scientific' theory of reference,he describes a thought experiment which shows how we might come toview a group of speakers as referring to things in their environment. Thethought experiment begins with what Putnam ca1ls "primitive reference". I-lisaccount of how we come to see the speakers as primitively referring to var­ious objects in their environment is not a statement of necessary andsufficient conditions for reference. He explicitly disavows any intention toprovide such astatement:

Let me emphasize that I am not, repeat not, trying to give nec­essary and sufficient conditions for reference, even primitivereference. I am trying to describe a fairly understandable situa­tion in which we can employ a primitive notion of reference.48

This passage makes good sense on my interpretation of his project, but itwould be hard to understand if we assurne that Putnam endorsed scientificnaturalism when he wrote it. Moreover, in all of his early papers, as far asI know, Putnam displays a similar lack of concern about whether hiscausal picture of reference can be developed into a scientific theory. I con­clude that Putnam never accepted a scientific criterion for the determinacyof reference.49 His interest in developing a scientific theory of reference wasmotivated instead by his project of clarifying our understanding of the nonnsunderlying our commonsense and scientific practices.

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9. INTERNAL REALISM, TRUTH, ANDRATIONAL ACCEPTABILITY

Despite his implicit rejections of metaphysical realism and scientific natu­ralism, Putnam was a realist in his early period, and he still iso In order to helpclarify our understanding of the norms underlying our linguistic practices,Putnam observes that we refer to entities which exist independently of ourbeliefs about them.50 In this sense, Putnam is arealist. However, the standardview that Putnam was a metaphysical realist in his early period is based ona common but egregious slide from the claim that the entities to which werefer exist independently of our beliefs about them, to the conclusion that ourconception of those entities is independent of all of our substantive beliefsabout them. I argued above that on Putnam's view we cannot make sense ofmetaphysical realism because our understanding of representation is inextri­cably bound up with our beliefs about the causal relations we bear to thingsin our environment. Another side of the same basic point is that our onto­logical notions are not independent of the norms underlying our rationalinquiries. Since there is no way to characterize these norms without appeal­ing to our substantive empirical beliefs, we have no conception of the refer­ences of our words which is completely independent of all of those beliefs.So, contrary to the standard view of Putnam' s early work, Putnam' s argumentfor realism was at the same time a rejection of metaphysical realism.

Internal realism is not fundamentally different from the realism Putnamdefended in his early papers. What Putnam characterizes as his shift to inter­nal realism is better understood as a change in focus. In earlier papersPutnam was primarily concerned to overthrow certain entrenched philo­sophical conceptions of reference and belief. His turn towards internal real­ism reflects his growing appreciation of the subtlety required in order tomake sense ofthe realism implicit in his earlier view. Putnam's own confu­sion on this point has led to some unfortunate claims about what internal real­ism amounts to. My interpretation of his underlying project simultaneouslyhelps us to see what is attractive about internal realism, and enables us to crit­icize some of Putnam' s less careful characterizations of it.

Putnam has characterized internal realism in a number of apparentlyinequivalent ways. The central point underlying these various characteriza­tions is that our notions offact and truth are not available independently öfthe norms underlying our linguistic practices. Putnam has emphasized thatwe need to develop a more refined understanding of truth, and his renlarksabout truth are often accompanied by comments about facts. For example,in the preface to Reason, Truth and History, he writes that

The view which I defend holds, to put it very roughly, that thereis an extremely close connection between the notions of truth

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and rationality; that, to put it even more crudely, the only crite­non for what is a fact is what it is rational to accept.51

Here a criterion for "what is a fact" follows one about truth. Our under­standing of facts is intimately connected with our understanding of truth,according to Putnam. Putnam suggests that the connecting link is the notionof rational acceptability implicit in our everyday and scientific inquiries. Forexample, later in Reason, Truth and History he claims that "... truth itselfgets its life from our criteria of rational acceptability."52 He would say thesame about our concept of fact.

Partlyon the basis of claims like this, internal realism is standardlythought to be a kind of verificationism. In some passages Putnam seems tohold that truth can be defined in terms of rational acceptability or just­ification. In the preface to Realism with a Human Face, for example, hewrites that

According to my conception, to claim of any statement that it istrue, that is, that it is true in its place, in its context, in its con­ceptual scheme, is, roughly,. to claim that it could be justifiedwere epistemic conditions good enough.53

An epistemic condition is "good enough" in Putnam' s sense if it i~ "ideal".In a later passage, he offers an example of what he means by an "ideal" epis­temic situation for the rational assessment of the sentence "There is achairin my study":

If I say "There is achair in my study," an ideal epistemic situa­tion would be to be in my study with the lights on or with day­light streaming through the window, with nothing wrong withmy eyesight, with an unconfused mind, without having takendrugs or been subjected to hypnosis, and so forth, and to lookand see if there is achair there.54

In these two passages Putnam is apparently claiming that truth is to bedefined in terms of rational acceptability. The suggestion is that "There is achair in my study" is true just in case I would affirm it under the "ideal" con­ditions he describes. Putnam seems to be endorsing the following general­ization about the relationship between truth and justification:

(C) For every statement S, to say that S is true is to say that ifepistemic conditions were ideal, we would be justified inaffirming S.

But before we accept this interpretation, let us consider how (C) fits withPutnam's project of clarifying the norms underlying our commonsense andscientific practices. If (C) does not accurately reflect those norms, then it doesnot accurately reflect (what ought to be) Putnam's view of the relationshipbetween truth and rational acceptability.

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Surely some situations are better than others for determining whether ornot there is achair in my study. In the best of these situations, like the onedescribed above by Putnam, the truth of my utterance of the sentence "Thereis achair in my study" can be readily determined on the basis of the avail­able evidence. But this observation does not by itself support (C). It may bethat for some statements truth and rational acceptability are not so closelyconnected.

More specifically, (C) is false if there is at least one statement S suchthat any situation in which S is true is a situation in which we would not bejustified in affirming S. Consider the statement

(*) Last night my brain was transferred into a vat of nutrients,and my neural receptors are now stimulated in just the waythey would have been stimulated had my brain not beenremoved.

Any situation in which (*) is true is one in which I would not be justified inbelieving it.55 This example shows that a speaker can entertain a thoughtabout himself even if there is no situation in which he would be justified inbelieving it. A speaker' s understanding of the truth of a statement is not inevery case direct1y tied to his understanding of situations in which he wouldbe able to justify it. Thus it seems that (C) is false.56

Putnam may not have intended to claim that the truth of a statement Smade by a person P must be defined in terms of situations in which P wouldbe justified in accepting S. Perhaps Putnam meant to make the weaker claimthat the truth of a statement S made by a person P is to be defined in termsof situations in which S could be verified by someone or other, not neces­sarily P. And this condition seems to be met by (*), if we take a liberal viewof what (*) actual states. Suppose we say that the content of (*) does notdepend essentially on the indexicals it contains, but is equivalent to:

(**) Last night Gary Ebbs's brain was transferred into a vat ofnutrients, and his neural receptors are now stimulated in justthe way they would have been stimulated had his brain not

been removed.

Then if (*) were true, it might be that someone else - the doctor who per­formed the brain transfer, for example - would have justification for believ­ing it. So perhaps we can interpret (C) in such a way that (*) does notprovide a counter example to it.

In any case, (*) shows that there is no simple relationship between thetruth of a statement S made by a person P and the situations in which P wouldbe justified in accepting S. So we should not assume that internal realisminvolves the view that the truth of a statement S made by P can be definedin terms of the conditions under which it would be rational for P to affirm S.

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The most we can say is that our understanding of what it means to say thata statement S is true is essentially tied to our conception of situations inwhich S would be correctly affirmed by someone or other. But this tells usvery little about the precise relationship between the truth of particular state­ments and the situations in which such statements would be correctlyaffirmed. For most statements, our present conceptions of when they would·be correctly affirmed are either subject to fundamental revision, or extremelyvague, or both. Thus we are virtually never in a position to equate the truthof a particular statement with its verifiability in situations which we can pre­cisely describe. All we can say with confidence is that there is an interde­pendence between the notions of truth and rational acceptibility, becausethey are both rooted in the norms underlying our everyday and scientificinquires. Putnam has explicitly endorsed this open-ended view of the rela­tionship between truth and rational acceptability:

In Reason, Truth and History, I explained the idea thus: "truth isidealized rational acceptability." This fOfß1ulation was taken bymany as meaning that "rational acceptability" ... is supposed(by me) to be more basic than "truth"; that I was offering areduction of truth to epistemic notions. Nothing was farther frommy intention. The suggestion is simply that truth and rationalacceptability are interdependent notions.57

On this more sophisticated view, only careful, context-sensitive investiga­tions of the norms underlying our rational inquires can shed light on the com­plex relationship between our concepts of truth and rational acceptability.There is no reason to think that there are any informative generalizationsabout the relationship between these concepts. Hence the standard view thatinternal realism involves the definition of truth in terms of rational accept­ability is incorrect.

Philosophers who feel that they understand metaphysical realism willnot doubt find that even on this more sophisticated interpretation of internalrealism, truth is too closely tied to rational acceptability. This reaction isencouraged by Putnam's unfortunate use of the word "internai" to charac­terize his realism. For this word suggests that there is an "external" alterna­tive to internal realism, a legitimate perspective from which internal realismlooks like an optional view of the relationship between our concepts of truthand rational acceptability. But this reaction rests on a failure (or refusal) tounderstand Putnam's realism. As we have seen, from Putnam's point ofview, metaphysical realism is a thesis which has no genuine content. Thereis no legitimate perspective from which internal realism looks like anoptional view of the relationship between our concepts of truth and rationalacceptability. So the metaphysical realist' s charge that internal realism tiestruth too closely to rational acceptability is empty.

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NOTES

1. For helpful comments on earlier drafts, I am grateful to Peter Dillard, Sally Haslanger,Mark Kaplan, Scott Kimbrough, Tom Ricketts, Jay Wallace, and Joan Weiner.

2. Berlin contrasts the fox with the hedgehog in the first paragraph of his essay titled "TheHedgehog and the Fox: an Essay on Tolstoy's View ofHistory" (London: Weidenfeld andNicolson, Ltd., 1953). Here is the most relevant part of that paragraph:

... there exists a great chasm between those, on one side, who relate every­thing to a single central vision, one system less or more coherent or artic­ulate, in terms of which they understand, think and feel-a single,universal, organizing principle in terms of wbich alone all that they are andsay has significance-and, on the other side, those who pursue many ends,often unrelated and even contradictory, connected, if at all, only in somede facto way, for some psychological or physiological cause, related by nomoral or aesthetic principle; these last lead lives, perform acts, and enter­tain ideas that are centrifugal rather than centripetal, their thought is scat­tered or diffused, moving on many levels seizing upon the essence of a vastvariety of experiences and objects for what they are in themselves, with­out, consciously or unconsciously, seeking to fit them into, or exclude themfrom, any one unchanging, all embracing, sometimes self-contradictoryand incomplete, at times fanatical, unitary inner vision. The first kind ofintellectual and artistic personality belongs to the hedgehogs, the secondto the foxes.... (2)

3. Reprinted in Meaning and the Moral Sciences (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul,1978), 123-40.

4. For example, in such papers as "Why there Isn't a Ready-made World," and "WhyReason Can't Be Naturalized," both in Putnam's third volume of collected papers, titledRealism and Reason (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981).

5. In "The Analytic and the Synthetic," reprinted in Mind, Language and Reality(Calubridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975).

6. The essentials of the following interpretation of Carnap are due to Thomas Ricketts. Seebis paper "Rationality, Translation, and Epistemology Naturalized," Journal ofPhilosophy79: 117-36.

7. Rudolph Carnap, "Intellectual Autobiography," in Paul A. Schilpp, ed. The Philosophy ofRudolph Camap (La Salle: Open Court, 1963),44-45.

8. This might suggest that Carnap' s conclusion that the traditional metaphysical disputes arenot genuine was a violation of his own Principle of Tolerance. But as Carnap saw it, theproblem with those disputes is not that they result from the acceptance of different lin­guistic frameworks, or that they arise only within linguistic frameworks Carnap does notaccept. The problem is more fundamental: according to Carnap, we are unable to specifya linguistic framework within which these disputes can be assessed.

9. The reader may wish to dispute Putnam's claim that scientists who accept the later equa­tion disagree with those who accepted the former one. Whether or not Putnam is rightabout this particular case, there will be others which do make his point. I am primarilyinterested here in his philosophical methodology, and not in the question of whether his·particular examples must be understood in precisely the way he presents them.

10. Putnam contrasts law-cluster terms with what he calls one-criterion words, like "bache-lor". He observes that

In the case of a law-cluster term such as 'energy', any one law, even a lawthat was feIt to be definitional or stipulative in character, can be abandoned,and we feel that the identity of the concept has, in a certain respect,remained.... But 'All bachelors are unmarried' cannot be rejected unlesswe change the meaning of the word 'bachelor' and not even then unless we

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change it so radically as to change the extension of the tenn 'bachelor'.("The Analytic and the Synthetic," 53.)

According to Putnam, we can understand our different judgments about these two casesby noting that there is only one criterion for being a bachelor. Consequently, if we giveup this criterion, we essentially change the meaning of "bachelor". But there is an open­ended set of laws containing the tenn "energy", and our own practice shows us that wemayabandon any of these laws without necessarily changing the reference of the tenn"energy". On the logical positivists' model of language, all tenns are in effect treated asone-criterion tenns. This model of language does not fit with many of our confidentjudgments about when investigators are making incompatible statements about the samesubject.

11. There is some similarity between Putnam's reasons for rejecting Carnap's model ofmeaning and J. L. Austin's rejection of the analytic-synthetic model of meaning. This isclear in the following passage from Austin's paper "The Meaning of a Word" in J. O.Unnson and G. J. Warnock, eds., J. L. Austin: Philosophical Papers (Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 1961), 54-75:

... ij'explaining the meaning' is really the complicated sort of affair thatwe have seen it to be, and if there is really nothing to call 'the meaning ofa word'-then phrases like 'part of the meaning of the word x' are com­pletely undefined.... We are using a working-model of meaning whichfails to fit the fact that we really wish to talk about. ... it is when we arerequired to give a general definition ofwhat we mean by 'analytic' or 'syn­thetic', and when we are required to justify our dogma that every judge­ment is either analytic or synthetic, that we find we have, in fact, nothingto fall back upon except our working model. (62--63)

12. Thanks to Peter Dillard for suggesting that laddress this objection.

13. The phrase "available prior to or independently of' is adapted from similar phrases, usedto make a related point about Frege, in Thomas Ricketts' s paper "Objectivity andObjecthood: Frege's Metaphysics of Judgement" in L. Haaparanta and J. Hintikka, eds.Frege Synthesized (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1986).

14. The following interpretation of Quine's critique of Carnap is essentially due to ThomasRicketts. See his paper "Rationality, Translation, and Epistemology Naturalized."

15. W. V. Quine, "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" in From a Logical Point ofView (New York:Harper and Row, 1963),20-46.

16. W. V. Quine, Word and Object (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1960).17. "Ontological Relativity" in Ontological Relativity and Other Essays (New York:

Columbia University Press, 1969),29.18. This way of viewing the difference between Putnam's project and Quine's is inspired by

Sir Peter Strawson's article "Freedom and Resentment," Proceedings of the BritishAcademy, vol. xlviii: 1-25. Strawson contrasts detached and non-detached attitudestoward others. His discussion of agency and responsibility depends on our taking seriouslythe non-detached "participant" attitudes towards others:

What I want to insist on is the very great importance that we attach to theattitudes and intentions towards us of other human beings, and the greatextent to which our personal feelings and reactions depend upon, orinvolve, our beliefs about these attitudes and intentions. (64)

These attitudes invite us to view others as agents who are responsible for their actions. Oneof Strawson's central points is that our concepts of free agency and responsibility get theirsignificance from, and are essentially bound up with, our non-detached reactive attitudestowards others. He contrasts these attitudes with the detached attitudes that we typicallyassociate with a more "objective" point of view on others:

What I want to contrast is the attitude (or range of attitudes) of involvementor participation in a human relationship, on the one hand, and what mightbe called the objective attitude (or range of attitudes) to another human

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being, on the other.... To adopt the objective attitude to another humanbeing is to see hirn, perhaps, as an object of soeial policy; as a subject forwhat, in a wide range of sense, might be called treatment. ... If your atti­tude towards someone is wholly objective, then though you may fighthirn, you cannot quarrel with hirn, and . . . you cannot reason with hinl.(66)

I do not like Strawson' s use of the word "objective" here, since it implies that the partic­ipant attitudes, and the concepts of agency and responsibility which go with them, are notreally objective. But I find the contrast in points of view illuminating. I believe that inten­tional notions like agreement and disagreement are like the concepts of agency andresponsibility: they get their significance, and are essentially bound up with, our non­detached partieipation in commonsense and scientific linguistic practices. When one triesto take up a scientific, "objective" attitude towards the linguistic behavior of others, andoneself, one is abandoning the intentional notions of agreement and disagreement alto­gether. This is what Quine does, and it leads inevitably to his indeterminacy thesis. I urgethat we follow Putnam, not Quine, and take our participation in commonsense and sci­entific linguistic practices seriously at the start of our philosophizing about meaning.

There are important connections between these differences between Putnam andQuine, and Wittgenstein's discussions of following a rule, especially as they are inter­preted by Kripke in Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language (Cambridge, Mass.:Harvard University Press, 1982). It seems to me that what Kripke calls the skepticalparadox about meaning is the inevitable result of treating a speaker' s linguistic behavioras an object of investigation, and asking for an "objective" basis for regarding that behav­ior as rule-governed. To avoid the paradox, we must come to see that the "objectifying"perspective on language is optional, and does not undemline our ordinary practice-basedconfidence that we are rule-followers.

19. "Dreaming and 'Depth Grammar' ," Mind, Language and Reality, op. eit., 310.

20. Ibid., 311.

21. Ibid.

22. Putnam also shows that the references of our terms depend on the nature of our soeial envi­ronments. This aspect of his view is not central to my present concern, which is to showthat the standard metaphysical interpretation of Putnam' s causal picture of reference is notcorrect. On the other hand, the dependence of our references on social factors is part ofthe interdependence of reference and belief.

23. "The Meaning of 'Meaning' ," 237.

24. "The Meaning of 'Meaning' ," 240-41. Of course Putnam does not mean that water couldhave turned out to have no hidden structure. He is more preeise in the following passage:

When we say that it could have turned out that water had no hidden struc­ture what we mean is that a liquid with no hidden structure (i.e. many bitsof different liquids, with nothing in common except superficial character­istics) could have looked like water, tasted like water, and have filled thelakes, etc., that are actually full of water. (241)

25. Ibid., 241.

26. Ibid.

27. What I am calling "practice-based" judgments about when a term is correctly applied aredifferent from theoretical beliefs about how the term is to be correctly applied. Putnam'sexamples show that almost all of a person's or a community's theoretical beliefs abouthow to apply a term may be false. This is possible because the actual pattern of applica­tion of a word within a given linguistic conununity may be misunderstood by many, orall, of the members of that community. Their theoretical understanding can in some casesbe improved by an investigation into the nature of the things to which they actually applythe word. But my point here is that at the most basic level of our use of language, we can­not usefully separate our understanding of the reference of a word from our underlyingpractice-based convictions about when we have correctly applied it, even though we

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acknowledge that those convictions can in some cases be undenninded by further inquiry.(I am grateful to Scott Kimbrough for helping me to see the need for further claIificationof this point.)

These issues require further clarification and investigation. At present I aim only tosketch an alternative reading of Putnam, one which does not presuppose that we have aconception of the entities in the world completely independent of our participation inongoing linguistic practices. I am focusing on the question of how we are to understandthe relationship between our applications of a word-including those that Tyler Burgewould call "archetypical"-and what Burge calls the "cognitive values" of our words. Foran interesting discussion of some aspects of the relationship between archetypical appli­cations and cognitive value, see Burge's paper "Intellectual Norms and the Foundationsof Mind," Journal 0/Philosophy: 697-720.

28. Ibid., 242.

29. Chapter 15 of Mathematics, Matter and Method (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1975).

30. One might wonder how this part of Putnam's view fits with his earlier claim that a nec­essary and sufficient condition for some stuff s being 'Jade' is that it possess enough ofthe appropriate textual qualities. This sounds like the claim that 'Jade' is synonymous witha description. Despite first appearances, Putnam' s claims about jade and his thoughtexperiment involving pencils are compatible. The reason is that in the jade case, Putnamis assuming that there is in fact more than one kind of stuff which we correctly call'jade'. In the pencil case, he is suggesting that we are wrong to assume that 'pencil' is anartifact term. Thus in the 'jade' case, Putnam is focusing on the conditions for applyinga particular word, given that we assume we are right about the underlying structure of thethings to which it applies. In the pencil case, he is warning us not to be complacent aboutour classification of words as artifact terms or as natural kinds. The pencil example looksmore like the jade example if we assume .that we are right that pencils are artifact terms.

31. The interdependence of meaning and belief was first stressed by Quine in chapter two ofWord and Object. Quine has a very different view of meaning from Putnam, and so thereis not much in common between Quine's view ofthe interdependence and Putnam's viewof it. For one thing, as we shall see later, unlike Putnam, Quine holds that reference is inde­tenninate. Davidson developed Quine' s idea in his own way in aseries of papers aboutmeaning and truth. See his Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation (Oxford: ClarendonPress, 1984). Since Davidson also accepts that reference is inscrutable, his view is quitedifferent from Putnam's too.

In "The Analytic and the Synthetic," Putnam briefly notes, but does not explain, thaton his view belief and reference are interdependent notions:

... I should like to stress the extent to which the meaning of an individualword is a function of its place in the network, and the impossibility of sep­arating, in the actual use of the word, that part of the use which reflects the'meaning' of the word and that part of the use which reflects deeplyembedded collateral information. ("The Analytic and the Synthetic,"40-41)

As we have seen, Putnam's later developments of the picture sketched in "The Analyticand the Synthetic" reinforce and validate this enigmatic observation.

32. There may be other kinds of metaphysical realism, but I think this is the one whichPutnarrl has in mind when he rejects metaphysical realism as part of his turn towards inter­nal realism. For a slightly more detailed account of the absolute conception than I presenthere, see Bernard Williams, Descartes: the Project 0/ Pure Inquiry (Hannondsworth:Penguin, 1978),64-65, and Thomas Nagel, The View From Nowhere (Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 1986), chapters 11 and V.

33. On page 386 ofhis paper "The Significance of Quine's Indeterminacy Thesis," reprintedin Truth and Other Enigmas (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1978),Michael Dummett observes that Quine appeals to conditional dispositions-Le., disposi­tions to assent or dissent from a sentence, given that one has already assented or dissented

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to another-to characterize the meaning of truth-functional connectives in objectivebehavioral terms. Thus the behavioral meaning of the truth functions is not exhausted bythe stimulus meaning of sentences in which they occur.

34. There is some question of whether Quine believes that assent and dissent can be givenpurely objective behavioral characterization. For example, in "Reply to Hintikka" inWords and Objections ed. D. Davidson and 1. Hintlika (Durdrecht: D. Reidel, 1969) hesays:

The linguist' s decision as to what to treat as native signs of assent and dis­sent is on a par with the analytical hypotheses of translation that he adoptsat later stages of his enterprise; they differ from those later ones only incopring first, needed as they are in defining stimulus meaning. This initialindeterminacy, then, carries over into the identification of the stimulusmeanings. (312)

This is in tension with the idea that the facts about stimulus meaning are objective. In alater paper, "Mind and Verbal Dispositions," in S. Guttenplan, ed. Mind and Language(Clarendon Press, 1975), Quine seems to reaffirm a commitment to the objectivity ofassent and dissent, construed behavioraIly:

It has been objected that assent is no meremindless parroting of an arbi­trary syllable; utterance of the syllable counts as assent only if there is theappropriate mental act behind it. Very weIl, let us adopt the term surfaceassent for the utterance or gesture itself. My behavioral approach doesindeed permit me, then, only to appeal to surface assent. ... (91)

35. Observation sentences are those which prompt assent only after an appropriate prompt­ing stimulation, and whose stimulus meanings are (approximately) the same for all speak­ers. By truth functions of such sentences I mean those native sentences which are formedby joining simple observation sentences with the truth-functional expressions of the lan­guage. Such complex sentences will be objectively translatable because both the simpleobservation sentences and the truth-functional expressions are objectivity translatable,according to Quine. See chapter two of Word and Object, for the details. I say that thetranslations of these sentences are "fairly weIl" determined by their stimulus meaningsbecause Quine later acknowledges indeterminacy even for these sentences. See PursuitofTruth (Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990), §§ 15-16, where Quine con­cedes that even the translation of observation sentences is not objective, but depends on"empathy." The tension in Quine's view is now very strong. For he holds both that "Therequirement of intersubjectivity is what makes science objective" (5), and that there is nofact of the matter about how to translate even observation sentences.

36. "Ontological Relativity," 31

37. See Word and Object, 50.

38. Ibid., 33.

39. "Ontological Relativity," 49.

40. Some philosophers accept both Quine's requirement that there be an objective basis forusing intentional notions and his scientific naturalism, but dispute bis skeptical conclusion.They argue that there may be other scientific facts which, in conjunction with those Quinementions, are sufficient to determine the translation of terms. For example, Hartry Field,in "Tarski's Theory ofTruth," The Journal ofPhilosophy, vol. LXIX, no. 13 (1972), and"Conventionalism and Instrumentalism in Semantics," Nous 9 (1975), has argued thatthere may be a scientific basis for ascribing particular references to an investigator' swords. On Field's view our words may have unique references, even if we require a sci­entific basis for attributing references to them. I don't find this response to Quine con­vincing. I doubt that there is a scientific basis for attributing particular references ormeanings to a speaker's words. But I won't defend this claim here. Instead, I want to con­sider what our attitude should be to Quine's scientific naturalism, if it implies that agree­ment and disagreement are not objectively determined.

Noam Chomsky has denied that facts about meaning and reference must be deter­mined by physical facts in order for semantics to be scientifically legitimate. See "Quine's

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Empirical Assumptions," in Words and Objections. Chomsky claims in effect that seman­tics is a respectable "special science," and so it is not subject to the requirements Quinelays down for determinacy. It seems to me that Chomsky is confusing the legitimacy ofrational inquiry into reference and meaning with the scientific legitimacy of reference andmeaning. I do not think that all "facts"--{)r true statements-are scientific; some are partof our commonsense, everyday practices. Although from Putnam's perspective it is obvi­ous that (a) ordinary statements about what a person refers to and means can be objectiveor "factual," it does not follow that (b) such statements can be part of a scientific descrip­tion of the world. It seems to me that many philosophers who are convinced by Chomsky' sreply to Quine are in effect sliding from (a) to (b). This slide is unwarranted in my view.

41. From "On Truth," in Leigh S. Caumon, ed., How Many Questions ? (Indianapolis: Hackett,1983),43.

42. Ibid., 45.

43. See, for example, Field's articles, "Tarski's Theory ofTruth," The Journal 0/Philosophy,vol. LXIX, no. 13 (1972), and "Conventionalism and Instrumentalism in Semantics,"Nous 9 (1975), and Michael Devitt' s book Designation (New York: COIUITlbia UniversityPress, 1981).

44. Even as late as "Realism and Reason," the paper in which Putnam first announces his turntowards internal realism, he claims to hold a scientific theory of reference and belief:

... a 'correspondence' between words and sets ofthings (formally, asat­is/action relation, in the sense of Tarski) can be viewed as part of anexplanatory model of the speaker' s collective behaviour.... Let me referto realism in this sense-acceptance of this sort of scientific picture of therelation of speakers to their environment, and of the role of language-asintemal realism. (123)

Putnam sketches this explanatory model of speaker' s collective behavior in "Referenceand Understanding" in Meaning and the Moral Sciences. Perhaps more than any other ofPutnam's papers on reference, this one seems incompatible with my interpretation. Ican't go into details here, but I be1ieve that what I say about Putnam's interest in scientifictheories of reference is the first step towards reconciling "Reference and Understanding"with the interpretation I favor.

45. See Saul Kripke, Naming and Necessity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,1980), 93. On 68-70 Kripke explains why a successful theory of reference must not becircular.

46. The non-circularity condition makes it extremely unlikely that a theory of reference couldbe stated using ordinary intentional notions. The reason is that these notions are part ofwhat Quine calls "Brentano's circle", and therefore implicitly presuppose the notion ofref­erence. I think it is equally unlikely that a theory of reference could be given in purely nat­uralistic terms, though I will not try to defend this claim here.

47. From "Language and Reality" in Mind, Language and Reality (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1975), 283.

48. Ibid., 286.

49. Putnam was probably too optimistic in his early writings about the prospects for devel­oping a theory of reference, but this does not affect the point I am making here. I agreewith Thomas Blackburn, who argues in "The Elusiveness of Reference" in P. French, T.Uehling, Jr., H. Wettstein, eds., Midwest Studies in Philosophy, Vol. XII (Minneapolis:University of Minnesota Press, 1988), that there is no way to deve10p a theory of refer­ence from the sketches Putnam and others have given uso The reason is that the conceptsof reference and belief are essentially interdependent. (Blackburn does not put it this way,but I be1ieve that his arguments work only because of this interdependence.) Because theyare interdependent, we can't give a non-circular statement of what reference consists in.The best we can do is to sketch a picture of reference which traces some of the intercon­nections between reference and other intentional notions, like belief.

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50. In "The Meaning of 'Meaning' ," often taken as the locus classicus of Putnam'sMetaphysical Realism, he is quite clear that he takes his view to be a kind of realism pre­cisely because it makes use of an inter-theoretical notion of extension. This emergesclearly when he notes the contrast between anti-realist positions and the position heendorses:

. . . for a strong anti-realist truth makes no sense except as an intra­theoretic notion.... The antirealist can use truth intra-theoretically in thesense of a 'redundancy theory'; but he does not have the notions of truthand reference available extra-theoretically. But extension is tied to thenotion 0/ truth. The extension of a term is just what the term is true ofRather than try to retain the notion of extension via an awkward opera­tionalism, the anti-realist should reject the notion of extension as he doesthe notion of truth (in any extra-theoretic sense). Like Dewey, he can fallback on a notion of 'warranted assertibility' instead of truth.... (236)

This passage, seen against the background of my reading of Putnam, shows how we areto understand his realism. We need the notion of inter-theoretic extension to make senseof commonsense and scientific agreements and disagreements, as we have seen above. Theanti-realist cannot accept that notion. But then the anti-realist cannot make sense of thenorms governing our commonsense and scientific practices. This is a reductio ad absur­dum of the anti-realist's view, according to Putnam. Note also that Putnam associates thenotion of 'warranted assertibility' and operationalism with this kind of anti-realist view.Since it is not part of Putnam's interna! realism to abandon the idea of inter-theoreticextension, he ought still to maintain that we should not identify meaning with warrantedassertibility. He is sometimes confused on this point, as I argue below, and this is no doubtone reason why he has been misunderstood.

51. Reason, Truth and History, x.52. Ibid., 130.

53. J. Conant, ed., Realism with a Human Face (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UniversityPress, 1990), vii. This is not the only place where Putnam makes this kind of claim.Similar claims appear in many of his writings on internal realism. For example, here is apassage from Representation and Reality:

The suggestion I am making, in short, is that a statement is true of a situ­ation just in case it would be correct to use the words of which the state­ment consists in that way in describing the situation.... We can explainwhat "correct to use the words of which the statement consists in that way"means by saying that it means nothing more nor less than that a sufficientlyweIl placed speaker who used the words in that way would be fully war­ranted in counting the statement as true in that situation. (115)

54. Preface to Realism with a Human Face, viii.

55. In fact, it seems to me that any situation in which this statement is true is one in which Iamjustified in believing that it is false (supposing that I amjustified in believing anythingat all).

56. Perhaps Putnam would deny that we really understand the statement "Last night my brainwas transferred into a vat of nutrients, and my neural receptors are now stimulated in justthe way they would have been stimulated had my brain not been removed." But it seemslike a meaningful statement, it does not violate any of the conditions on meaning set outin section one, nor is it self-refuting. I see no reason to conclude that it does not makesense. Note that the situation described by (*) is different from the hypothetical situationin which my brain is always in a val. In the first chapter of Reason, Truth and History,Putnam argues that the latter possibility can't be actual, on the grounds that my supposi­tion that I am always a brain in a vat is se1f-refuting.

57. From Representation and Reality (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1988), 115.

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