Semantic Challenges to Realism: Dummett and Putnam

David Castle is an assistant professor of philosophy at the University
of Guelph.

This book defends a realist conception of truth by responding to two
anti-realist critics: Michael Dummett and Hilary Putnam. Gardiner
defends a version of semantic realism: the view that our linguistic
practices and theory of meaning commit us to certain claims about
objective reality, even if we cannot always recognize when those beliefs
are true or false. By contrast, semantic anti-realism contends that we
have no recourse to mind-independent verification of our beliefs.
Meaning and truth are thus mind dependent; properly construed, they
reflect how we actually acquire and use language. They do not reflect
how the world is independent of us.

Dummett argues that an adequate theory of meaning must harmonize with
an adequate theory of understanding, and therefore associates sentence
meaning with assertibility rather than truth-conditions. We can be
taught when there is enough evidence to warrant an assertion, but cannot
discern when a sentence would be true independent of this evidence. This
insight entails semantic anti-realism. Roughly, when neither p nor not-p
are correctly assertible, p can be neither true nor false.

Putnam’s “internal realism” is based on the intuition that
reality does not come predivided into categories, and that therefore
external objects are in some important sense dependent for their
existence on our conceptualizing of them. It follows, on Putnam’s
view, that what is true or false depends on our theory of the world.
There is neither one true theory nor a perspective outside of our theory
from which one could determine which theory is “really” true or
“really” false.

Gardiner painstakingly dissects Dummett and Putnam’s anti-realist
positions, offering plausible and occasionally compelling criticisms of
them. It should be noted that the argument strategy throughout is
negative—it seeks to deflate the anti-realist position. Realism is not
supported by sustained argument, but is vindicated by the rejection of
anti-realism. The approach is methodical, and the arguments are
sometimes technical. Accordingly, this book will not find favor with a
novice audience wishing to break into the realist–anti-realist debate,
but would be suitable for graduate students and professional
philosophers.