Putnam's ‘Home Coming’

Abstract

Approximately a year ago in this Journal Haldane wrote of Putnam's 'coming home to metaphysical realism'.' As is well known Putnam's work since 1976 has been devoted to developing a philosophical position, variously called a form of anti-realism or 'internal realism', which is radically at odds with metaphysical realism. But Haldane had been studying Putnam's latest work, and he noted that Putnam's views on perception, in particular his rejection of representative realism, seem to necessitate a return to a position substantially the same as that of Aristotle and Aquinas. Moreover, this is simply one of many occasions over the last two decades in which Putnam's thought has been converging, 'perhaps unwittingly'2 on orthodoxy. This gradual return to metaphysical realism is a kind of conversion experience which Haldane said has the quality of 'coming home'. Haldane concluded his paper by saying that he very much hopes that Putnam's gradual conversion to metaphysical real-