[Inquiry] Question On Realism

[Jon Awbrey]

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QOR.  Note 1

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ML = Martin Lefebvre (addressing the Peirce List)

ML: What follows is a question (with a possible answer)
    and I'd be interested to know how members of this
    community see the problem (and its solution).

ML: Like many readers of Peirce I have dismissed the little I have read by
    R. Rorty on truth and reality.  I'm not a professional philosopher and
    since most of the philosophy I read is connected in one way or another
    to Peirce, I have not spent much time wondering how to counter Rorty's
    claims.  That is until now, until Rortyans (and other extreme relativists)
    invaded my classroom.  This is forcing me to find what I condider the best
    arguments possible to counter their various forms of "nominalism" and argue
    for the value of Peircean realism in all of its complexity.  Now the best
    argument I could come up with concerns error and doubt.  For Peirce doubt
    is surely a manifestation of a reality that is independent "of what you or
    I or anyone else" think it to be.  In other words, if our inquiry can be
    shown to have been properly conducted and if our expectations have not
    been met, it is obviously because something is resisting:  a Secondness
    that doesn't fall under the rule of this particuliar reasoning.  Now
    this seems to me right now to be the best way to rebutt the Rortyans
    since any positive claim (such as:  'if I can predict that this stone
    will fall as soon as I remove my hand from under it, it is because the
    law of attraction is real') can be recuperated by their nominalism.
    In short -- and in semeiotic terms --, it seems to me that as long
    as we go about this with a positive proof we will not be able to
    illustrate what distinguishes the dynamic object from the immediate
    object.  Of course, that distinction jumps at us (the clash of the
    real) the moment we consider the error of our judgment (perceptual
    or otherwise).  In the little I've read from Rorty, he seems to
    confuse truth and warranted assertion which I would say is
    precisely what the distinction between dynamic and immediate
    objects enables us to avoid.

ML: For the moment I don't see a better argument.
    I'll be grateful if anyone has one.

Martin,

I don't have any knock-down arguments that would impress folks
so well insulated from brute realities, but it is an interesting
diagnostic problem.  I think I would approach it by deconstructing
the kinds of naive nominalism and relativism that we find here, in
comparison to experienced, sophisticated, or realistic varieties of
the same perspectives.  To do this we would have to ask ourselves:
What are the insightful bits of truth that reside at the hearts of
nominal and relative thinking, the singular cores that makes these
cliches of thought so initially attractive, and where exactly do
they go wrong, when they exaggerate their initial insights to
such uncritical degrees that they become such ludicrous
caricatures of rationale-ity?

Jon Awbrey

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