Realism and Truth by Michael Devitt, Causal Realism: An Essay on Philosophical Method and the Foundations of Knowledge by John C. Cahalan

Abstract

BOOK REVIEWS 168 Certainly, a good case can be made for the proposition that the modern revolution in philosophy resulted in no small degree from the changed view of the cosmos wrought by Nicholas of Cusa, Copernicus, Galileo, and others, culminating in a mechanistic world devoid of quality and purpose. The starting point, thus, may have pertained more to ontology than to noetics. But epistemology rather than ontology (or natural philosophy) might still have been the primary base of operations for the philosophers from Descartes to Hume. Indeed, the very agreement upon the mechanical character of the world among the intelligentsia of the early seventeenth century led to the problem of how to reground human knowing after immediate knowledge of the external world had come to be seen as impossible, and here the initial choice was between (1) turning to putative revelatory ("innate") ideas in the mind-rationalism and (2) making the best of sensory and reflective data as all that we haveempiricism . Finally, even if we have misgivings about the argument just offered (and left undeveloped out of concern for keeping this review decently short), the empiricist-rationalist division might still be more significant for us than the alternative division advocated by Loeb. If so, then, after we have given due acknowledgment to other ways of coming at preKantian modern philosophy, we could still legitimately follow the good old " standard" division. Nonetheless, it must be said that Loeb presents his case well. His work deserves to be carefully considered and has the very real merit that it calls us to a healthy reexamination of our entrenched suppositions-a better response than grumpily and peremptorily rejecting proposals that threaten our mental inertia. Dominican House of Studies Washington, D.O. NORMAN E. FENTON, O.P. Realism and Truth. By MICHAEL DEVITT. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984. Pp. ix + 250. $25.00. Causal Realism: An Essay on Philosophical Method and the Foundations of Knowledge. By JOHN C. CAHALAN. Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America, 1985. Pp. x + 503. $19.25 (paper); $36.50 (hardbound). Converging views in philosophy-where members of distinct and historically opposed traditions begin to find themselves more and more in mutual agreement-are as time-honored as philosophy itself. In the 164 BOOK BEVIEWS eighteenth century, empiricism and rationalism crept closer together as English and French thought found rapprochement. In the nineteenth century, idealism and scholasticism gave birth to the phenomenological movement which inaugurated the twentieth. So too scholastic realism and analytical empiricism begin to find more cause for common vision as the one polishes its lenses and the other casts away its blinders. Both Realism and Truth and Causal Realism argue for a full-blooded common sense realism and a return from the interstel:ar space of logical constructionism , the first from the analytic, the second from the scholastic perspective . Both books argue for a correspondence theory of truth. But the approaches are so different that the mutual exchange of advantages is far from ready to begin. In Realism and Truth the author defends two particular theories: A. Truth by correspondence: that sentences of a given type are true or false in virtue of their structure, the objective referential relations between their parts and reality, and the objective nature of that reality; B. Realism: that tokens of the most current common-sense, and scientific, physical types objectively exist independently of the mental. Central to the author's case is the logical independence of both A and B, an independence not at all surprising. For clearly an idealist, a realist, a Kantian , and a pragmatist can all assent to A; each will understand objectivity after his fashion. Nor need a realist embrace B; for commitment to the entities of common sense and current science is compatible with a Tarskian theory of truth in which semantic satisfaction is analytically more primitive than referential correspondence. The real heart of the book and its most notable achievement is the sustained app~ication of A and B to various contemporary ontologies. And here the very thorough treatment given current anti-realistic and anti-correspondence programs is enough to recommend the book. But caution, too, is needed. Many will regard the thesis expressed...