It’s a Postrealist World

The obvious and the self-evident are also the hallmarks of prejudice and danger. And what
could be more obvious than that our maps, theories and histories of the world help us
understand the world because they reflect reality. Science works because it is uncovering how
the world really is.

Self-evident common sense it may be – and one that Michaela Massimi and Simon Blackburn
endorsed in their debate with me in After Relativism – but it is a mistake, and a dangerous
mistake to boot. The name of this philosophical mistake is realism.

What is dangerous about realism is that it encourages those who believe they have uncovered
the truth to dismiss other accounts and sometimes to describe these alternative perspectives
with derision or worse. From suicide bombers and terrorists to dictatorial governments and
fanatical cults, the most ardent and violent supporters are typically realists. In the name of
truth and in the name of having uncovered how the world ultimately is, it is possible to
sanction almost any crime. So let us not think this seemingly arcane philosophical argument
about metaphysics does not bite where it matters.

When James Frazer published The Golden Bough in 1890, a comparative study listing
hundreds of religions and magical beliefs side by side, it sent shock waves through a culture
that was still largely realist about such matters. For it was widely assumed that religious and
moral beliefs were supported by the objective and independent character of reality. Ten years
later, an updated edition caused further outrage by including Christianity as merely one
alongside many other religious and magical belief systems. It was not long, however, before
the plethora of perspectives turned outrage into the forced retreat of religious and moral
realism.

The attack on realism gathered momentum in the early twentieth century as language ceased
to be seen as a neutral conveyor of thought, and philosophy caught the bug in the so-called
“linguistic turn”. With an indefinite number of possible languages each with their own
concepts and perspective, the puzzle of what was ultimately out there became more
perplexing. If each language carried its own unique account of the world how could we from
our Indo-European perspective hope to describe an independent reality? The subsequent
failure of the project to describe how language is hooked onto the world led Wittgenstein to
abandon realism and remains perhaps the core evidence that realism is an error.

In the wake of a religious, moral, cultural, historical and linguistic relativism, the last
remaining bastion of realism post-war was science. Science is, of course, itself a language,
but scientific realists wish to ring-fence this particular vocabulary and methodology to retain
a notion of “the real” that is independent of thought and language. Thomas Kuhn's
demonstration of the manner in which scientific paradigms could be maintained in the face of
contrary evidence was a threat to this remaining haven of realism. Paul Feyerabend in his
historical examination of the church's response to Galileo, and his demonstration that the
Aristotelian view of the heavens was quite capable of accounting for the evidence, left
scientific realism in disrepair.

It is surely implausible to suppose that there is rather magically one form of language and
description that is somehow able to reach through the perspectival character of thought and

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say how things really are. Of course it can look like that to us, just as many in the late 19th
century thought Christian and moral beliefs were objectively true. Science is our dominant
cultural frame for understanding the world just as once it was Christianity. So it can look to
us as if “atoms” and “forces” and “quarks” are not the particular concepts of a particular set
of cultures in a particular historical epoch, but have somehow stepped outside of the
limitations of language and thought to reach through to the world as it is. But there is not a
going viable explanation about how such a thing could be possible, let alone be actually the
case. Moreover the history of science and the competing and sometimes contradictory models
of our current framework demonstrate the implausibility of such a notion.

Many of the major philosophers of the last century or so, both in the English speaking and
European traditions, have been critics of realism. These philosophers would include the
dominant figures of Wittgenstein and Derrida, the founder of logical analysis Bertrand
Russell, as well as the seminal philosophers Nietzsche and Heidegger. In the pantheon of
great philosophers, out and out realists are rather hard to find. Yet the everyday
commonsense view is for realism.

So why the divide? Realists often present themselves as being sensible and down to earth and
critics of realism as being somehow romantic and airy-fairy. Yet the inverse applies. Realism
is maintained in the face of intellectual challenge often without any real attempt to provide a
response. It is held as a faith, as a ‘commonsense’ position, as if this is enough to sustain it.
As a result, realism is often held out of emotional conviction rather than intellectual rigour.
This is perhaps understandable. To give up the notion that our theories are effective because
they describe the world is, seemingly, to leave ourselves adrift in a universe that we cannot
comprehend. Russell, Wittgenstein, Nietzsche, and Derrida did not question realism because
their heads were in the clouds, but because they were ardent rationalists seeking to make
sense of what it is to be alive. In pursuit of that goal they were not prepared to dodge or
evade difficult issues that threatened everyday beliefs and assumptions.

At its most prosaic, we have to find an alternative to realism because we do not have a decent
theory which makes realism plausible. And its apparent alternative, relativism, is also not a
possibility because relativism relies on an implicit realism to be expressed. If “there is no
truth” is that not itself an example of a truth? If “we operate in a world of competing
perspectives”, is not that description an ultimate and realist account of how things are?

This is the predicament that contemporary thought is facing and it is a predicament that has to
be addressed. The Enlightenment story that has driven intellectual and economic progress for
the last few hundred years has been undermined. Nor is it completely implausible to say that
the contemporary relative weakness of the West and the uncertainties that beset its populace
are linked to this theoretical malaise.

In the face of this insistent and critical puzzle, I have had my own stab at a response in the
theory “Closure” which argues that the world is open and it is we who create particularity
through the process of closure. You won’t be surprised to hear that I think this account has
value and potential to help us out of the conundrum. But I do not of course claim to have
uncovered how things ultimately are. There will be others with different and perhaps more
powerful accounts. Instead of seeking the answer to the world we should be seeking to create
effective tools to enable us to intervene more successfully. There is no one correct tool, but
many different tools with different strengths and weaknesses.

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The alternative to realism is not relativism, but non-realism or what might be called
postrealism. In answer to the question, “what is out there?” the postrealist says the world is
out there but it does not have the character of language or thought. It is not divided into bits
and things, objects, qualities and relations. We can hold it as these things through our senses
and our thought and we can as a result intervene successfully in the world. The world
provides a constraint on which closures we are able to realise and which are successful. But
closures do not map or describe how things are. Instead they are implements and tools to
enable us to change the world.

So it is that the postrealist gives up the fantasy that we will find the answer. Be it through a
guru, a philosopher or a cosmologist. Yet is this so much to abandon? Millennia of human
endeavour have not enabled us to arrive so far. Shouldn’t we conclude that it’s just not going
to happen? Imagine, after all, if a theory of everything was uncovered. Would we close down
our research establishments and vacate our churches? Simply to propose such an outcome is
to identify its implausibility. We are never going to come to the end. We are never going to
uncover how the world is. Science, philosophy, religion are equally limited. They provide
ways of holding the world but they are not going to enable us to uncover the world itself.

While postrealism has to give up the Enlightenment dream that we will uncover how the
world ultimately is or what is “really out there”, it has a more viable and potentially more
exciting dream to replace it. Namely that there is no potential limit to the ways we can close
the world, and therefore no limit to the ways we can intervene. Not all of these will be
successful, not all will be desirable, but there is also no limit on what we can do and what we
may be able to achieve.

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Searle vs Lawson: After the End of Truth -
part 1 - (by John Searl)
I have been a professional teacher of philosophy now for 60 years. One persistent
philosophical confusion I have discovered is the temptation among intelligent undergraduates
to adopt a conception of relativism about truth. It’s not easy to get a clear statement of
relativism, but the general idea is something like this: there is no such thing as objective truth.
All truth statements are made from a perspective and the perspective is inherently subjective
and the result is that truth is always relative to the interests of the truth-staters. So what is true
for me is true for me, and what is true for you is true for you. Each of us has a right to our
own truth.

Part of the appeal of this view is that is seems both empowering and democratic. It is
empowering because I get to decide what is true for me, and democratic because everybody
else has the right to decide what is true for them.

I think this view cannot be stated coherently, and what I want to do is to expose its
incoherence.

Let us start with objectivity and subjectivity. These notions are ambiguous between an
epistemic sense and an ontological sense, where “epistemic” means having to do with
knowledge and “ontological” means having to do with existence. If I say Rembrandt was
born in 1606, that statement is epistemically objective because its truth can be settled as a
matter of fact. If I say Rembrandt was the greatest painter that ever lived, well that is a matter
of “subjective opinion;” it is epistemically subjective. Underlying this distinction is a
distinction in modes of existence. Mountains and molecules have an existence that does not
depend on being experienced by a human or animal subject; they are ontologically objective.
Pains, tickles, and itches exist only insofar as they are experienced by a subject. They are
ontologically subjective. Given this distinction, we can now state the thesis of the relativity of
truth with a little more precision: granted that there is a reality that exists independent of
human beings, all statements about that reality are made from a subjective point of view, and
hence all statements are epistemically subjective. The ontological subjectivity of statement-
making is sufficient to guarantee the truth of relativism. All statements are epistemically
subjective because all claims are made relative to the point of view of the statement-maker,
so there is no such thing as objective truth.

It should be apparent already that there is something fishy about relativism because it is
confusing ontological subjectivity with epistemic subjectivity. All statements are indeed
made by conscious subjects from their ontologically subjective point of view, but it doesn’t
follow that the statement made is about something ontologically subjective, nor does it follow
that the statement made is thereby epistemically subjective. In a word, perspectivalism does
not imply relativism. Every statement is indeed made from a perspective, but relativism does
not follow.

There is a traditional, and I think correct, refutation of relativism, that goes as follows: how
about the statement of relativism itself, is it objectively true, or is it just a matter of subjective
opinion? If it is objectively true, then the thesis is self-contradictory because it is refuted by
itself as an example of objective truth. If relativism is an objective truth, then why shouldn’t

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there be a whole lot of other objective truths? If relativism is only a subjective opinion, then
we have no more reason to accept it than its negation. Defenders of relativism feel that there
is some sort of logical trick involved in this objection, that it really does not get at the point
behind the radical perspectivalism that motivates relativism. If all claims are only made from
a perspective, and perspectives are inherently subjective, then relativism could still be true
even though there are these logic chopping objections that can be made to it.

The real incoherence of relativism comes out in the following: there is an essential principle
of language and logic sometimes called disquotation. Here is how it goes: for any statement
‘s’, that statement will be true if and only if ‘p’, where for ‘s’ you put in something
identifying the statement and for ‘p’ you put in the statement itself. So to take a famous
example, the statement “Snow is white” is true if and only if snow is white. This is called
disquotation, because the quotes on the left-hand side are dropped on the right-hand side.

Disquotation applies to any statement whatsoever. You have to make some adjustments for
indexical statements, so “I am hungry” is true if and only if the person making the statement
is hungry at the time of the statement. You don’t want to say “I am hungry” is true if and only
if I am hungry, because the sentence might be said by somebody else other than me. But with
such adjustments, disquotation is a universal principle of language. You cannot begin to
understand language without it. Now the first incoherence of relativism can be stated. Given
the principle of disquotation, it has the consequence that all of reality becomes ontologically
relative. “Snow is white” is true if and only if snow is white. But if the truth of “Snow is
white” becomes relative, then the fact that snow is white becomes relative. If truth only exists
relative to my point of view, reality itself exists only relative to my point of view. Relativism
is not coherently stated as a doctrine about truth; it must have consequences about reality
itself because of the principle of disquotation. If truth is relative, then everything is relative.

Well perhaps relativists should welcome this result; maybe all of reality ought to be thought
of as relative to individual subjects. Why should there be an objective reality beyond
individual subjects? The problem with this is that it is now a form of solipsism. Solipsism is
the doctrine that the only reality is my reality. The reason that solipsism follows immediately
from relativism about reality is that the only reality I have access to is my reality. Perhaps
you exist and have a reality, but if so I could never say anything about it or know anything
about it, because all the reality I have access to is my conscious subjectivity. The difficulty
with relativism is that there is no intermediate position of relativism between absolutism
about truth and total solipsism. Once you accept disquotation – and it is essential to any
coherent conception of language – relativism about reality follows, and relativism about
reality, if accepted, is simply solipsism. There is no coherent position of relativism about
objective truth short of total solipsism.

Well what does all this matter? It matters because there is an essential constraint on human
rationality. When we are communicating with each other, at least some of the time we are
aiming for epistemic objectivity. There is no way we can state that two plus two equals four
or that snow is white, without being committed to objective truth. The fact that such
statements are made from a point of view, the fact that there is always a perspective, is in no
way inconsistent with the fact that there is a reality being described from that point of view
and that indeed, from that subjective point of view we can make epistemically objective
statements.

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Searle vs Lawson: After the End of Truth -
part 2 (by Hilary Lawson)
It is time to put behind us the arguments between realism and relativism. Realism has
failed. Relativism is incoherent. We must find a new philosophy that is neither realist nor
relativist.

John Searle and I have fundamental differences but let me begin with some common
ground. The relativism that has typically been espoused by generations of students cannot be
expressed without relying on an implicit realism, and is at once paradoxical. At its most
elemental, to say ‘there is no truth’ is self-denying when applied to the claim itself. Some
thirty years ago at the outset of my career, in ‘Reflexivity: the post-modern predicament’, I
argued that this self-referential puzzle could not be evaded and was central to 20th century
philosophy.

The incoherence of relativism does not however validate realism. As Hilary Putnam cogently
argues, realism has failed in the sense that a century on from Russell’s founding of analytic
philosophy there is no credible theory about how language hooks onto the world nor is one on
the horizon. Pointing to the evident puzzles inherent in the relativist position does not make
realism valid or create a credible realist theory. Nor does the distinction between
epistemological and ontological subjectivity and objectivity aid the debate since it already
carries within it the assumption that objectivity is possible.

Rather than address the lack of a credible realist theory, realists are often tempted by a
populist appeal to supposedly obviously true claims such as ‘London is the capital of
England’ or ‘Rembrandt was born in 1606’ or ‘these are my thumbs’, as if their mere
assertion was sufficient to win the argument. These examples appear persuasive because they
are embedded in a complex web of socially agreed closures, or ways of holding the world,
and it is not at once immediately apparent that their truth is context dependent and thus
challengeable.

As a preliminary indication of the flaws in this approach let us examine John Searle’s
example ‘Rembrandt was born in 1606’ a little more carefully. There are many different
calendars, amongst them Chinese, Gregorian, Julian, Islamic and so forth, which provide a
variety of dates for Rembrandt’s birth. So the claim is at once dependent on a whole set of
other measures, such as days, years, the movement of sun and earth, and the historical figure
of Christ. All of these underlying concepts are themselves ways of holding the world and
each could be held in a different manner. Each is under close examination contestable – the
birth date of Christ for example. Time is not an ultimate measure but is the consequence of
comparisons. Each of these comparisons could be made differently with different resulting
measures. So the claim ‘Rembrandt was born in 1606’ is not an immediately obvious
temporal fact at all, but is the consequence of a complex series of closures which result in this
particular way of holding the world.

Furthermore, the phrase ‘Rembrandt was born’ is also not straightforward. An art historian
might argue ‘the baby that was to become Rembrandt was born in 1606, but the great artist
we know as Rembrandt was not born until at least the 1630’s.’ Then again we can imagine a

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culture theorist beginning a lecture ‘Rembrandt was born along with the first cave paintings
some 35000 years ago’.

So in place of the initial claim ‘Rembrandt was born in 1606’ we now have a range of
alternative facts claiming radically divergent dates. In response to these alternative ‘facts’,
realists sometimes resort to a distinction between literal and metaphorical truth. Thereby
retaining a core of factual claims that are privileged. But there is no reason or foundation for
supposing that scientific or material claims are somehow more central or core to our
conceptual framework. And without a means of privileging some ‘facts’ there is no means
of determining which context is primary and therefore which can be taken as objective.

But this is all incidental skirmishing. The core idea sustaining realism is that behind the
different claims, or perspectives, there is a single reality or state of affairs, which validates
the perspectives. According to this version of realism, which John Searle appeared to
endorse in our debate, there may be many different alternative accounts but they are not in
conflict and are explained by an underlying state of affairs which justifies all of the different
claims. This underlying reality is an ‘x’ which can however never be described directly
because all descriptions are from a particular perspective and context. And it is this
transcendental assumption of an ‘x’ which accounts for our different ‘facts’ and perspectives
that is at the root of my disagreement with John Searle.

We can provide no characterisation of the reality ‘x’, nor can we explain the relationship
between the ‘x’ and our descriptions of ‘it’. It is the presumption of a transcendental reality
that is a fantasy and for which we can in principle have no evidence. It is my contention
therefore that we should abandon this fantasy. Just as Christian or Muslim believers claim an
unseen and unseeable God as the explanation for our world, so the Enlightenment equivalent
is to propose an unseen and inaccessible reality that is an explanation for our beliefs and
descriptions. Since we can give no account of this underlying reality there are good grounds
for abandoning the presumption on Occam’s razor grounds alone.

Despite the evident failure of realism, a failure that was called not by myself or Hilary
Putnam, but by Wittgenstein in the Tractatus a century ago, it has remained a prevalent
view. One possible explanation for this is that it is often assumed that the only alternative to
realism is relativism and such a position is unpalatable because it provides no external
constraint on claims and is logically incoherent to boot.

Instead however of debating the weaknesses of realism and relativism we should recognise
that they are both flawed and are unable to account for our ability to make sense of and
intervene in the world. Instead we require a philosophy that recognises the failure of realism
and the incoherence of relativism. The eighteenth century German philosopher Kant started
from the assumption of knowledge and attempted to build a system that would account for
how that knowledge was possible. Our predicament is the reverse. We have to start from the
assumption that there is no knowledge of a transcendental reality and build a theory that
accounts for how we are nevertheless able to be so precise and effective in our interventions
in the world.

The theory of Closure that I have put forward is one such account. It is not anti-realist, for
that would be self-referentially incoherent. It is instead a non-realist or postrealist
philosophy. It does not deny the existence of an independent reality but instead proposes an
alternative framework that does not rely on realism. It begins from the seemingly unlikely

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starting point that the world is not a thing or combination of things and instead we should
hold it as open. It then proposes that we close the openness of the world and in so doing
enable intervention based on our closures. Centrally the framework of closure provides an
account of how we can refine our closures and thereby improve our interventions in the world
even though our closures do not refer to or describe an independent reality. In so doing the
theory of closure provides an account of how the theory itself is possible.

Now of course I do not claim the theory of closure has seen through to the essential character
of the world. It is, like all theories, itself a closure, a way of holding the world, which seeks
to make sense of experience and language in a world which is apparently other. While it may
not claim to be objectively true, the framework of closure has value and potential to make our
theories and interventions in the world more effective. I contend for example that we are
more likely to be successful building an intelligent machine on the principles of closure and
openness than by operating a realist framework.

Nevertheless, there will be other accounts and philosophies with different advantages and
strengths. And there will be no end to alternative frameworks and ways of holding the
world. So while we should pursue our theories and refine them in the light of their ability to
enable effective intervention, it is time to say goodbye to the dangerous enlightenment
fantasy that we are progressing to the one true theory, which correctly describes an
independent and transcendental reality.