- 1 For this essay I have paid particular attention to what Putnam has to say in Pragmatism as a Way of (...)
- 2 For example, Putnam often notes that he bases his account of James on his writings on radical empir (...)
1Hilary Putnam’s evolving positions have often left commentators, myself included, unsure of how best to interpret a number of his well-known theses. It has also been a source of consternation to those who joined him in advocating for a position only to be left at the station when his train pulled out.1 I, however, am among those who have always found Putnam’s willingness to abandon his own positions admirable. What for me is even more impressive is that before changing his mind, he has often been the most prominent proponent of these ideas and has made lasting contributions to our understanding of them. Nonetheless, this shifting of positions does make it hard to offer any singular account of his relationship to Pragmatism. For Putnam went from being a critic, as a metaphysical realist, to being a champion of the pragmatic picture, as an internal realist, to challenging some of its basic tenets, as a modified metaphysical/natural realist. How far one thinks Putnam drifts from Pragmatism is, of course, dependent on which pragmatic thinkers one has in mind. Those he most often cites are the Classic American Pragmatists, James, Dewey, and to a lesser extent Peirce. And it is on their versions of pragmatic thought I intend to focus. In what follows I will comment on what I see as significant similarities and distinctions between Putnam’s and the Pragmatists’ positions. My view of these matters, though, rests on my interpretation of the writings of the Classic Pragmatists, which in places is at odds with Putnam’s.2
2Reflecting on his philosophical development, Putnam notes that he began his career under the influence of the Logical Positivists. This is not surprising since by the mid-twentieth century Pragmatism had been pushed off center stage in analytic circles in large part due to the attractions of the Logical Positivists’ programs and projects. The usual story is that in reaction to Idealist, post-Hegelian thought, the Logical Positivists argued convincingly that if philosophy was to be taken seriously, it needed to adopt the methods of science, as articulated in the language of modern logic. In a paper (1988), “Whatever Happened to Pragmatism?,” I agreed, but I thought this account tended to miss a bigger picture. For one, the Pragmatists themselves argued that to become respectable philosophy had to adopt the scientific method. The difference was they focused on the nature and practices of scientific inquiry rather than on the formal analysis of scientific concepts.
3Second, although the Pragmatists, too, sought to undermine the Idealists, they also aimed to undermine the positions of Positivist thinkers of their own time. For as they saw things most Idealists and Positivists assumed the dualisms of realism vs. anti-realism, fact vs value, monism vs pluralism, mind-dependent vs mind-independent, observation terms vs theoretical terms, the analytic vs the synthetic and more, that the Pragmatists rejected. Their warnings, though, were not heeded, and the dualisms they rejected played a prominent role in structuring the Logical Positivists’ claims and arguments.
4Putnam early on moved away from his initial attachment to the Logical Positivists’ program, and came to challenge these dualisms. However, he did not abandon his interest in them. He took the issues at stake to be substantive and demanding answers, and while changing his mind over time, he typically came down forcefully on one side or the other. The Pragmatists, on the other hand, sought to challenge the very significance of the dualisms. They argued that both sides in these debates came to the table with similar, but untenable, assumptions about what the options were. The Pragmatists sought to undermine these assumptions, and pull the rug out from under both positions. They maintained that minus the mistaken common ground, the dualisms collapsed of their own weight. As long as they were in place, however, little progress on the legitimate problems that remained could be made.
- 3 See Rorty 1993 for a similar analysis.
5Putnam explains his ultimate break with the Pragmatists’ understanding of the status of the Idealist and Positivist assumptions in Lecture One of his Dewey Lectures (Putnam 1994) and in later papers. He says he came to believe that the Pragmatists, along with contemporaries like Rorty, Goodman, Dummett, and continental deconstructionists, went too far. In rightly turning their backs on the older versions of the dualisms, they threw out the baby with the bathwater. They did not adequately consider and confront “the central metaphysical issue of realism,” and failed to appreciate that their own theories led to subjectivism, pernicious relativism, and in places solipsism. I see Putnam’s focus throughout his career on the realist/anti-realist debate and the related metaphysical issues he finds necessary to address, a major reason for his efforts to distance himself from the Pragmatists.3 Enough said, though, about my diagnosis of Putnam’s reluctance to go all in with their positions. Rather I will proceed to examine several areas where such differences in views surface. Putnam has much more of importance to say on all of theses topics, but I have limited my discussion to points where comparisons with the Pragmatists seem revealing.
- 4 In a number of places Putnam states his position as the rejection of positing anything like sense d (...)
- 5 Putnam (2017a: 140) also says “[James] is the first philosopher to present a completely worked out (...)
6As a case in point, I will start with a brief look at Putnam’s theory of perception. Putnam (1994, 2016) says his own writings on perception are aimed primarily at combating the Cartesian view of mind and perception – a view he finds enduring in contemporary discussions of issues even in their materialist versions. Putnam maintains that most theories of perception, old and new, posit a perceptual interface between us and the world.4 This, he maintains, has disastrous consequences; for it prevents perceivers from being in touch with the world as it is. Putnam (1994, 2016) says the Pragmatists, especially James, pointed the way to challenge analyses that put such an impregnable barrier or veil of ignorance between perceiver and the world perceived. He says that he, like the Pragmatists, is a “natural realist.” We are in direct touch with reality. Although on occasion we may be led astray by illusions, there is no reason to doubt that in general what we see corresponds to the world as it is independent of us. Putnam argues that this is both the common sense view, as well as the Pragmatists’ view, and he sees no grounds for opposing common sense. Perception is transparent.5
7Now I do not deny that James and Dewey see themselves as natural realists, but the motivation and rationale for their position is somewhat different from Putnam’s. For one, they do not take Cartesian skeptical worries seriously. Beginning with Peirce, they argue that Cartesian doubt is not real doubt, and empirically based inquiry is the way to solve serious doubt. The Pragmatists also found no need to be beholden to common sense in the way some of Putnam’s remarks might suggest. In challenging Descartes’ claim that we cannot doubt what our senses tell us about our own mind, Peirce argues that this view was overturned by Berkeley’s theory of vision. Berkeley agreed, if you ask the “man on the street” whether he sees distance immediately, he would undoubtedly say he did. Nonetheless, Berkeley correctly reports that most doing empirical work in vision science, agreed with him that in and of itself distance cannot be seen. Berkeley argues, however, that positing sensory intermediaries or sensations in no way leads to skepticism. There is nothing wrong in talking with the vulgar in everyday contexts while allowing that the scientific study of vision shows that perception of things “out there” is not immediate.
8The Pragmatists’ empirical account of spatial perception is in this Berkeleian tradition. In the Principles of Psychology, James assumes a sensation/perception distinction. Perception is a two-stage process. Physical stimulus to a sense organ triggers an experience of the phenomenal qualities definitive of each sense. These sensations are immediately perceived. They in turn give rise to a mediate perception of space, once vision is correlated with movement and touch. James and Dewey did argue that in practice there are no pure sensations unaffected by past experience and habits, and this blending or fusing occurs soon after birth. Philosophers might have reason to distinguish between knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description, but this dualism is artificial.
9Likewise, the Pragmatists, along with Berkeley and looking forward to Austin, do not believe that illusions, such as the bent appearance of an oar in water, pose a metaphysical problem for theories of perception. Thus, they have no need to counter the Argument from Illusion and its supposed implications. Sensations are neither veridical nor illusory; in and of themselves they make no inferences. What is more, it is a real property of a straight oar to appear bent in water, as it is a real property of the oar to look straight when not half submerged. Similarly, it is a real property of a white wall to appear yellow under yellow light. “Illusory” sensations, therefore, do not stand between the perceiver and the objects perceived. Putnam, by contrast, sees the phenomena of illusions as a challenge to direct theories of perception. He considers disjunctivist responses, but mainly relies on the fact that with further inquiry we are typically in a position to sort things out. Both the Pragmatists and Putnam reject foundationalist accounts of inquiry. They are epistemic holists. As Peirce argued, just as a strong rope is built of weaker strands of fiber, we can build strong theories from less robust pieces of evidence. There is no need to appeal to sense data as incorrigible, phenomenally certain premises to secure objective warrant for our theories.
10The Pragmatists allow that although they have no qualms with the everyday claim that veridical perceptions correspond to reality, they do have problems with the notion “reality” that underlies the picture. They argue that the idea of realty simply “out there,” “ready-made” waiting to be seen and discovered is otiose. The notion of the world independent of any human contribution is a non-starter. Thus, for the Pragmatists, the objects of perception are themselves mind-dependent. Putnam rejects the claim. Veridical perception is of a reality that is “not of our own making.” These matters will be fleshed out in the sections to come on truth, constructivism, and worldmaking.
- 6 Appeals to current work in vision science will not resolve issues for there is no agreement in this (...)
11Putnam (1994, 2016) thinks an argument for natural realism can be found in the work of John L. Austin. Austin does challenge skeptical claims about phenomenal intermediaries that stand in the way of our seeing things as they are. On the other hand, he also shows in detail that everyday talk about perception is loose, malleable, and not committed to any philosophical views of the issues. Common sense talk of seeing directly and seeing indirectly is OK for its purposes, but not for the philosophical issues supposedly at stake in epistemic and metaphysical contexts. According to Austin, philosophical talk about being out of touch, or for that matter being in touch with the world, is just talk, fostered by all sorts of assumptions about knowledge and justification that are constrained by little more than unfounded intuitions. The Pragmatists would agree.6
12Both James (1978: 64) and Austin (1962: 3) remark that one of the problems with philosophers is that they are entranced by small numbers, usually two. In the case of perception, the options are direct or indirect. If the former, you are a realist; if the latter you are an anti-realist. If, however, the options are more than two or so, philosophers declare the choice cannot be a philosophical problem. As will emerge in the following pages I find unclear what it means exactly for Putnam to be a natural realist – a realist who is neither a metaphysical realist, nor an internal realist, nor a Pragmatic realist, nor simply someone who takes the theoretical claims of science at face-value. Keep in mind, too, that Putnam, like the Pragmatists, is a pluralist. There are many non-reducible, true descriptions of what there is. Putnam, though, does not say much about which of these realities we can be said to see directly or what this might mean for the status of things we see only with the use of instruments. Putnam’s (1962) own arguments challenging the distinction between observational and theoretical terms highlight the difficulties to be faced. I believe Ruth A. Putnam (2017: 15) nicely summarizes where things stand, “I am not saying that the Pragmatists have no philosophy of perception: I am saying that their philosophy of perception is not meant to be a response to skepticism.”
- 7 See Putnam’s 2015a for qualms with McDowell’s own position on these matters.
13In sum, Putnam believes that it is important to stake out a position in favor of natural realism, and thus support realism against the anti-realism. If all this amounts to is accepting claims that people experience distance and see physical objects without intervening conscious thought, who should disagree. Clearly, Putnam wants more. Put in MacDowell’s terms, he thinks that if perception posits intermediaries, there will not be the perceptual friction necessary to distinguish fact from fiction. The Pragmatists believe that if everyday talk and science do not support there being an impenetrable wall between us and the world, what is the source of the worry? Crucial to Putnam’s problematic, as it is to McDowell’s, is the assumption that there is a sharp metaphysical and epistemic boundary between causal and non-causal accounts of our perceptual encounters with the world. I do not see this assumption playing a major role in the Pragmatists theory of perception. Nor do I see Putnam’s related worries about functionalist theories of mind as core Pragmatic concerns.7
14Putnam (2016: 211) indicates that he finds empirical support for his realism in the perceptual psychologist James J. Gibson’s transactional model of spatial perception. Gibson rejects cognitive models of processing as well as over-intellectualized accounts of the function of vision. This includes the 2-stage model both Berkeley and the Pragmatists endorse. In any case, for Gibson, the end-product of spatial perception is not conception, but action, or as he puts it “affordances.” Affordances tell the perceiver which things are reachable, liftable, soft, sharp, etc., and serve to guide motor action. Putnam, however, wishes to extend the Gibsonian model beyond sensori-motor affordances to conceptual affordances that shape thought. Not an easy task.
15Be that as it may, in practice Putnam does the sort of work the Pragmatists would applaud. He does not seek to downplay everyday talk about what we do or do not see. He recognizes as well that “perception” is a catch all word for the multitude of sensory ways we learn about how things are. When not worrying over large metaphysical issues, Putnam turns his attention to more particular local matters. He has much to say of interest about the role observation plays in justifying claims in the various fields of physics, among the physical sciences, between the physical and social sciences as well as differences in justifying mathematical statements, value judgments, and constructing ethical principles.
16When Putnam championed internal realism, his views on truth were more or less in line with that of the Pragmatists. Subsequently he argued that this was a mistake, and claimed his main objection to Pragmatism is its theory of truth. Although a critic of the theory, Putnam is also quick to point out that the Pragmatists simply did not hold the view, often attributed to them, that the true is whatever persons find satisfactory or see as being in their best interests to believe. And he acknowledges, too, that the Pragmatists did not think they were giving a definition of truth; albeit in places his own criticisms seem so directed. As James says, an acceptable definition of truth can be found in any dictionary, namely truth is “correspondence with reality.” His complaint is that this definition has no substantive content. The terms “correspondence” and “reality” have the right ring to them, but they resist fleshing out in any empirically insightful way. What, after all, is the correspondence relation, and what “really” is reality? Most significantly, James is also clear that his goal is not to offer a better definition of truth than the common sense one. It is, instead, to give the “go” of truth. To explain how the concept of truth functions in practice, in particular the practice of inquiry.
- 8 Putnam (1994 Lecture III) would demur. He does not think accepting a disquotational account of trut (...)
17Dewey’s position on the issue is much the same. He urges that in most philosophical contexts it is best to drop use of the term “truth,” and in its place substitute the idea of warranted assertibility. Dewey’s point is not that truth means warranted assertability, but that this is the role the truth-idea plays in inquiry. Warranted assertability can do most all the work truth is supposed to do without appealing to the mysterious notions of “correspondence” and “reality.” It is also frequently overlooked that in a book Dewey co-authored with Bentley (1991: 39-40), Knowing and the Known, they praise Tarski’s then recently published metalinguistic theory of truth, noting that unlike other theories it avoids appeals to ideal entities like propositions and other abstractions “whose meaning is never made clear and unambiguous.” The authors go on to say, however, that they very much wish that Tarski move beyond his formal theory of truth and offer an account of how truth works in practice, i.e. the “go” of truth. Thus, Dewey had no complaint with Tarski’s claim that, “P” is true if and only if P. Accepting the biconditional in no way spoke against his and James’ positions. Hence, if accepting the biconditional made one a Realist, I believe James and Dewey fit the bill.8
18So why is Putnam adamant in rejecting the Pragmatists’ theory of truth that he more or less endorsed in his internal realism period? He says he reversed course when he realized that the Pragmatists’ theory depended on unacceptable verificationist principles that undermined any warranted assertibility analysis of truth. For what is verifiable and warrantedly assertible fluctuates over time. Truth, by contrast, is absolute, tenseless, and immutable.
19For Putnam (2017b), a related strike against the Pragmatists’ theory is that he is convinced that there are truths that could never be verified. Some are truths about the past where all relevant evidence is lost. Some truths in principle lie beyond what inquiry can reveal. Putnam’s favorite example of the latter are truths about events that fall outside our light-cone, thus beyond the limits of what can be observed. I believe such criticisms by Putnam and others miss the point of the Pragmatists’ account. Obviously, many statements as a matter of fact or principle cannot be asserted with warrant or confirmed by the evidence. Not being warrantedly assertable now or in the future neither means nor entails that a statement is true, false, or meaningless. All it means is that we are not justified in asserting it is true or false. The “go” of truth is to withhold judgment. And an assertability analysis certainly does not imply, as Putnam claims it does, that for the Pragmatists the truth of statements about the past depend on what happens in the future. What James (1978: 106-7) says is, “When new experiences lead to retrospective judgments, using the past tense, what these judgments utter was true, even tho no past thinker had been led there.”
20Again, it is important here to keep in mind that the Pragmatists were not offering a definition of truth. Putnam also admits in places that for the most part some version of a warranted assertiblility thesis can do most of what needs to be done. Given, then, that the thesis does not have the dire results Putnam says it has, Pragmatists remain convinced that their warranted assertibility analysis does capture the “go” of truth.
- 9 Putnam does not think that warranted assertability entails subjectivity; it is equating warranted a (...)
21Finally, Putnam argues that equating truth with warranted assertability threatens to make truth “mind-dependent,” and to that extent subjective not objective.9 Now the Pragmatists argue that a sharp mind-dependent/mind-independent dualism is untenable. Be that as it may, there is no reason to think that if some event or thing is mind-dependent, statements about it are subjective. For by definition, what is warrantedly assertible depends on objective evidence that what is asserted is the case.
22Putnam (2017c) recognizes another strand in the Pragmatists’ treatment of truth that is more to his liking. Peirce had argued that true statements or beliefs are those that would be left standing at the end of inquiry, where the end did not mean the end of human inquiry but inquiry in some cosmic sense. Although Putnam thinks this version of Peirce’s theory is headed in the right direction, it still leaves matters of truth absolute and mind-independent insufficiently secured. Peirce offered another version of his theory that Putnam finds more satisfactory. True statements or beliefs are those that are “fated” to be converged on as inquiry continues into the future. Putnam suggests that Peirce’s position on truth would be stronger if he had taken into account that inquiry need not and probably will not converge on a single theory. Peirce’s approach to truth is taken by many to have realist credentials. For Putnam this is a plus, but in the end he rejects it too for its verificationist taint.
23Putnam (2017c, 2017d) also argues, that appearances to the contrary, there is evidence that James and Dewey too had such a Peircean absolutist picture in mind. I think the Pragmatists would resist this interpretation of their views. Convergence, like the success of inquiry in general, can be readily accommodated within a warranted acceptability account of the truth-concept. With new empirical evidence and serious inquiry there is nothing surprising that our theories improve. Projects and products generally improve over time when serious effort is made to make them better. It is only natural, after all, for people to converge and adopt theories that provide better answers to their intellectual questions, and better solutions to the practical problems they encounter. More on this below in the section on language.
- 10 See Lamberth (1999: 219-22) for a similar criticism of Putnam’s use of this quote.
24Putnam (2017c) cites a passage of James to support his claim that the Pragmatists had a more robust theory lurking behind their seemingly anti-realist views. He quotes James’ (1978: 106-7) as saying “The ‘absolutely’ true, meaning of what no farther experience will ever alter, is that vanishing-point towards which we imagine all our temporary truths will someday converge. It runs on all fours with the perfectly wise man, and with the absolutely complete experience; and if these ideals are ever realized they will all be realized together.” Putnam assumes that this quote shows that truth absolute plays an important role in the Pragmatists’ thinking about truth and inquiry. I would argue that the context makes clear that what James says here is a tongue-in-cheek concession or throw away line. Although Pragmatists are fallibilists, they need not deny that one theory might prevail over time, but this is just an empirical fact with no deep epistemic consequences. That we could actually know, however, that inquiry is at a point where a theory best settles forever all there is to settle is more a wish than a promise. Thus, James (1978: 107) says, “we have to live in the to-day by what we can get to-day and be ready tomorrow to call it falsehood.” And Dewey (1960: 264) says, “The scientist finds no help in determining the probable truth of some proposed theory by comparing it with a standard of absolute truth and immutable being.” This again is the “go” of truth.10
25Putnam thinks a realist picture has more punch. It serves as a regulative idea, a goal that constrains and guides inquiry. Pragmatists do not deny that we have regulative ideals, but regulative ideals or principles in the transcendental sense have no place. In fact, positing them tends to distort the nature of inquiry. By contrast, the principles of inquiry embedded in the scientific method do have content. And as long as they remain in place, they do have normative force and regulate present inquiry. On the other hand, they are not immune to challenge when inquiry itself shows that there are better methods available to meet our theoretical needs and accommodate recalcitrant evidence.
26Most importantly, for the Pragmatists, truth is not realistically the goal of inquiry. As Peirce (1982: 67) himself says “Hence the sole object of inquiry is the settlement of opinion. […] The most that can be maintained is that we seek for a belief that we shall think to be true. But we think each one of our beliefs to be true, and, indeed, it is a mere tautology to say so.” For Pragmatists truth may be conceived as a regulative principle, but it cannot function as a target we can actually aim at or aim to get closer to. Truth is not like an ideal gas or frictionless surface. While they are ends that we will never reach, we know where we are headed as well as when we are getting closer to them. These scientific idealizations can serve as targets to aim at, and we can meaningfully talk of closing the gap. By contrast, with truth fixed and eternal we have no conception of the end-state that has articulable content. Therefore, I believe that even if the Pragmatists did have an absolutist idea of a regulative principle in the back of their minds, that is where it largely remained.
27As mentioned above, Putnam’s own theory of truth like the Pragmatists’ is pluralistic. Given alternative sets of concepts and conceptualizations there can be competing hypotheses that may not only be equally warranted but equally true. Realist critics draw the line here. They argue that such pluralism is at odds with their own idea of correspondence and reality. Although on this Putnam sides with the Pragmatists, he does not seem to go as far as they do. They allow that not only there may be more than one theory competing for top billing, but the theories may be in straightforward conflict with one another. More will be said on this matter in the section on constructivism and worldmaking.
28For the reasons spelled out, I believe that Pragmatists would find Putnam’s critique of their theory of truth unconvincing. In particular, it seems to lack what they see the need to clarify. Namely, it fails to provide a substantive statement of what it means for concepts and beliefs to be “answerable or responsible to reality,” beyond meeting the constraints and demands of serious inquiry. Still, I think Putnam’s position comes much closer to the Pragmatists’ account of truth than he admits. As Putnam (2017c: 187) says, it is a mistake to think “that there is something metaphysical beneath our practices of making and criticizing truth claims, which makes that practice possible.” Pragmatists would certainly agree.
29One further remark before closing this section on truth. It is related to Putnam’s complaint that the Pragmatists’ position on truth is a verificationist account. It is important to keep in mind that the Pragmatists’ notion of instrumentalism is not that of the Logical Positivists. The Pragmatists are not reductionists worried about reducing meaningful concepts and hypotheses to the observational. Pragmatic instrumentalism is not an ontological thesis about what it is or is not legitimate to posit. It is rather a completely general claim that we should think of concepts and language in general as instruments for enabling us to better cope with our intellectual and behavioral environment. From this standpoint, apples, Antarctica, and atoms all pass muster. Both observational terms and theoretical terms can be meaningful and useful. If serious inquiry finds a need to posit an entity’s physical existence that is a reason to do so. In response to a criticism of Putnam’s teacher Reichenbach, Dewey (1989: 585) says “The foundation of his criticism is his belief that my identification of the scientific object with relations commits me to the doctrine of the non-reality of scientific objects […] I certainly never intended to say anything which could lead directly or indirectly to a belief that I hold a ‘non-realistic, interpretation of scientific concepts’.”
30The Pragmatists do allow that not all empirically useful terms need be treated as referring expressions. Some like “force” or the physical constants may be better understood as aids or instruments of calculation and the perspicuous statement of laws. Others like molecules, waves, and atoms are most usefully treated as referring expressions, and the best scientific evidence indicates that these entities do exist. Determining this, however, is the job of science, not philosophy. Pragmatic instrumentalism is not anti-realist verificationism.
31In both the depth of his analyses and the breadth of topics covered Putnam has made major contributions to the study of language. No detailed comparison of his position to the Pragmatists’ is possible here. I do find his overall views, however, quite congenial with Pragmatic thought. Most significantly, the Pragmatists and Putnam are holists. The content of terms and statements are a function of the theories or systems of discourse in which they are embedded. The Pragmatists and Putnam also deny there is a metaphysical or epistemic significant analytic/synthetic dualism. In a footnote in Principles of Psychology, James (1950: 661-2) states that he will not say much about Kant’s distinction since it does not square with the facts of language use. Dewey attacks the dualism at numerous places in his writings, and a good account of his position can be found in White (1956).
32Differences between the Pragmatists and Putnam’s views of language do show up around the edges. As indicated above, the Pragmatists champion the idea that concepts and language are best thought of as instruments or tools for organizing experience in ways that are useful for getting around in our cognitive and physical environments. Putnam now and then mentions that he too is willing to treat concepts and language as instruments, but as I read him, he is not willing to take the claim quite as literally as the Pragmatists are.
33I think his reluctance to do so is related to his reasons for rejecting the Pragmatists’ account of truth. Tools are not judged for truth; they are judged by their success in use. This instrumentalist view of concepts and language fits in well with the Pragmatists’ account of the “go” of truth. For the goal of inquiry is not truth absolute. On the other hand, we are warranted asserting hypothesis that serve as useful tools for predicting and explaining phenomena of intellectual and practical interest. As opposed to the idea of getting closer to final truth, the Pragmatists believe their approach to language provides a usable standard for measuring epistemic progress. It is not necessary then to appeal to realist truth to explain why inquiry and the concepts and language in which they are embedded improve over time. As with physical instruments, we are constantly attempting to make our cognitive instruments fit better with experience, and fit in better with the concepts and discursive practices we have on hand.
34I wish to end this short section on Putnam’s theory of language comparing and contrasting the Pragmatists’ and Putnam’s views on reference. In his groundbreaking paper on semantic externalism, “The Meaning of ‘Meaning’,” Putnam (1975) argues that water is necessarily identical to H2O and gold to the atomic number 198. He explains/complains over and over, however, that much of the criticism of his position rests on misunderstandings of what his identity claim comes to. Commentators tend to run together his position with Kripke’s view that such identities are metaphysically or modally necessary. Putnam denies that they are, and as opposed to Kripke, argues that his position does not rely on or underwrite claims about essences.
- 11 Putnam argues elsewhere against there being a metaphysical distinction between natural and non-natu (...)
35Putnam’s (1975, 2015b) thesis is that when it comes to “natural kind” terms, reference is stable across time. Thus, he claims that even for our ancient ancestors water and gold were assumed to be identical to their underlying structures as revealed by future inquiry. Although our ancestors had no idea what these structures may turn out to be, in using these concepts they intended to commit themselves to identifying water and gold with whatever physical constituents science determines them to have. Were future science to determine that these identities are empirically false, then what the terms “water” and “gold” really refer to now, and did all along, were not H2O and atomic number 198. Instead, the terms refer to and had always referred to the new underlying structures revealed.11
36Interestingly, James and Dewey both discuss the claim that water is necessarily H2O, and dismiss it as not in keeping with the facts of how science and language work. They argue that those who adopt the idea that water must be H2O are privileging one discourse, say, chemistry, over other equally good ways of thinking about water. In everyday talk, and science more widely conceived, there is no reason to metaphysically prioritize H2O. In chemistry there is a need to focus on molecular structure for chemical laws and theories depend on it. The term “water” itself plays no role in the equations or explanatory apparatus of chemistry. Pragmatists, though, do not deny that for certain purposes and in certain contexts the practice is to align everyday talk with what a particular science mandates. But for other purposes and contexts, it need not.
37Pragmatists question, too, the empirical basis for Putnam’s claim that our ancestors intended to or were actually committed to the idea that future findings of underlying structure captured what they were talking about. The Pragmatists readily admit that in discussing matters of the past we perforce use words as we do at present. This does not mean, though, that past use of terms always maps onto present practices. For according to the Pragmatists, not only does the meaning of our terms grow and conflict with past understandings, but reference, too, evolves in step with the theories in which they are embedded. And as the demise of the analytic/synthetic distinction indicates, there is no hard and fast distinction between what changes are to be attributed to fact and what to language. One way focuses on the continuity of inquiry, the other focuses on disconnects. For the Pragmatists although we translate Democritus’ Greek word as “atom,” the claim that he was actually referring to divisible entities seems strained. In any case, as Howard Stein (1989) has pointed out, the picture is more complicated. For example, we now accept the existence of atoms and reject that of the ether, although the definitions and purported structures that introduced the terms are better met by the ether than by atoms. Linguistically, things could have gone the other way. The Pragmatists would agree.
38While discussing related matters, James (1978) took heed of these diachronic and synchronic language phenomena. He distinguishes between two types of semantic theories, the saltatory and the ambulatory. The saltatory does not pay attention to the evolving history of usage. It offers no account of how a term’s semantics emerges out of and along with inquiry. It provides a snapshot of current usage. The ambulatory, as the name suggests, traces the details of a term’s evolution. The difference between the two models is similar to the one discussed concerning approaches to truth. The saltatory model gives the truth conditions as they are fixed at a time. Tarski’s theory of truth does that. The ambulatory focuses on the “go” of semantics that Dewey and Bentley urged Tarski to explore. It is the one that it is necessary to employ in accounting for the actual development of language in the practices of inquiry. Pragmatists believe that focusing on the saltatory model and ignoring the details of the evolution of concepts, is in part responsible for thinking that the dualisms they rejected are fixed, eternal, and hence of major metaphysical and epistemic significance.
39One of the Pragmatists’ themes that Putnam finds misguided and most out of step with his commitment to realism is the idea that we play a role in making our world. Now, everyone can agree that if the only sense of the term “making” one allows for is physical making, critics are right. The worldmaking thesis is absurd. The making Pragmatists’ have in mind, however, is cognitive making. The basic thought is that the world itself has no inherent ontology. The mere claim that the world or reality exists has no substantive content. It does not tell us anything about what there is. In turn, the idea that the world is given to us pre-sorted into natural kinds, with joints or boundaries that determine or limit the entities our theories must recognize, is a non-starter. Thus, James (1920: 295-6) says:
The world per se may be likened to a cast of beans on a table. By themselves they spell nothing. An onlooker may group them as he likes. He may simply count them all and map them. He may select groups and name these capriciously, or name them to suit certain extrinsic purposes of his. Whatever he does, so long as he takes account of them, his account is neither false nor irrelevant. […] If he simply counts or maps, he obeys a subjective interest as much as if he traces figures. Let that stand for pure “intellectual” treatment of beans, while grouping them variously stands for non-intellectual interests. All that Schiller and I contend for is that there is no “truth” without some interest, and that non-intellectual interests play a part as well as intellectual ones. Whereupon we are accused of denying the beans, or denying being in anyway constrained by them! It’s too silly.
40According to James, sorting the world into kinds is up to us, and we do it for both intellectual and non-intellectual reasons. Some organizations will be useful for purposes that are scientifically significant, some for everyday uses, and some merely represent flights of fancy. Still, one grouping is not more true or real than any of the others.
- 12 Here’s a place where Putnam’s endorsing James’s account of the metaphysics of kinds is in the tensi (...)
41Putnam (2015d, 2017c, 2017e) often cites James’ quote to support his own thesis of scientific or natural realism. We forge the categories needed to delineate the worlds inhabitants, and doing so is obviously mind-dependent. Moreover, our efforts are not constrained a priori. In principle, all groupings are metaphysically legitimate.12 Putnam insists, though, that what is not mind-dependent are the beans. They are denizens of the “way the world is anyway.” They anchor our theories to reality and are the constraint needed for inquiry is to be objective. I think Putnam’s conclusion about the nature of objectivity is not entirely what James has in mind.
42James (1978) elaborates his more radical understanding of matters in Pragmatism, Lecture VII. His discussion of the ontological status of constellations is a nice case in point. Constellations are the subject of astronomical and everyday talk about the heavens. The firmament, though, is not given to us with ready-made boundaries that delineate the constituents of constellations. It can only be taken to be that way. Constellations are not natural kinds. It makes no sense to claim they cut the universe at its natural joints. The fact that we see the stars that constitute a constellation as on a plane, is due to the limits of human space perception, not to the actual distribution of the stars in the firmament. It is not stretching words too far to say that constellations are “made up,” or mind-dependent, things.
43Yet the kind, “constellation” is no less real, and the statements predicated of them no less truth-apt, than statements about the individual stars that constitute them. For example, the statements “The Big Dipper contains 7 stars” and “The total mass of the Big Dipper stars is greater than the mass of Mount Everest” are true statements. What makes it relevant to construct the Big Dipper as a subject of discourse is that there are practical and scientific reasons to posit constellations. Being able to identify and locate constellations is useful for earthly navigation and astronomical observation, and it also gives aesthetic pleasure.
44Some critics retreat and allow that constellations exist as cognitive artifacts, but insist they are not part of the “furniture of the world.” The situation is different with the stars that constitute constellations. These, they say, are clearly mind-independent. The Pragmatists response is that what holds for constellations holds for stars. The heavens do not have the final say determining which masses of matter count as stars. Just as the heavens do not and did not have the final say in determining whether or not Pluto is a planet. The Pragmatists go further. Indeed, they argue that their account of ontology holds all the way down. James argues specifically that even our basic concepts of “thing,” “object,” “cause,” and “possibility” are shaped by our cognitive needs and interests. Where the boundaries are drawn among things depends on the way things look and are conceived from a human point of view. There is neither a God’s-eye view, nor a view from nowhere. Without human drawn criteria of sameness and identity, there is no determinate, fixed ontology to articulate. As James put it, the “human serpent is over everything.” What is, is a function of what we take it to be.
- 13 I develop and flesh out my understanding of this version of constructivism and worldmaking in Schwa (...)
45In sum, proponents of worldmaking argue it is not possible to give content to the “what” in “what there is” independent of the concepts we forge to cope with experience. This does not mean we are free to posit anything we want. Without the constraints experience imposes, there is nothing we are entitled to say, and without the framework our theories and concepts draw, there is no substantive what it makes sense to posit.13
- 14 See Cox 2003, where to clarify issues he suggests the term “constitute” as a replacement for “creat (...)
46In retrospect, I believe my and others’ use of the term “worldmaking” to label this constructivist position has been a mistake, and has been responsible for some of the resistance to the thesis. I think it better to understand the thesis as claiming that without the framework inquiry provides, neither a substantive ontology of what there is, nor one of what there is not, is possible. Thus, James says “We create the subjects of our true as well as our false propositions” (1978: 122; emphasis added). Whether it be stars or phlogiston, atoms or the ether, dinosaurs or dragons, we create the frameworks that are constitutive of their being what they are. At the same time, whether things as thus humanly constituted exist remains an empirical matter.14
47Putnam, I believe would not find such terminological maneuvering sufficient to remove his objections to the Pragmatists’ world-making thesis. He insists that claims of truth must be “answerable to a reality not of our own making.” And he has other than terminological reasons for rejecting their constructivist position; reasons that he appears to share with other critics. They are scattered throughout his writings, not laid out in one place. Let’s turn to three of them and see what the Pragmatists’ response could be.
481. We saw that Putnam thinks the Pragmatic theory of truth cannot make sense of claims about the past that outrun available evidence. It borders on the absurd then for Pragmatists to maintain that we might actually make things like stars, dinosaurs, and mountains that existed long before there were humans.
49Pragmatists: If the claim is that we physically brought things into existence before we came on the scene, it would obviously be false. According to the constructivist world-maker, we play a role in setting the criteria of sameness and identity that determine what it is to be a star, dinosaur, or mountain, as we do for constellations, things, and objects in general. And our best theories claim that stars, dinosaurs, and mountains, so constituted, made their appearance long before us. Evidence for these theories is what makes positing their existence warranted. If these objects did not exist in the past, these theories would be literally false. Without the scaffolding of our concepts and theories, however, there is no substantive content to claims of either existence or non-existence.
502. In places, Putnam seems to join others in arguing that it is not possible that every thing is constructed. You cannot make something from nothing.
51Pragmatists: Pragmatists agree. The making that is relevant to the thesis is cognitive construction not physical making. It is important, though, to distinguish between the claim that everything constructed is constructed from something, versus the claim that there is something that everything is made from. The latter would be a problem. Putnam does not deny that what serves as a primitive/premise in one system is defined/proved in another. He seems to accept both James’ and Goodman’s claims about geometric constructions. For example, we can construct lines from points or treat points as intersections of lines. In the first case, points are taken as primitives and unconstructed. In the second, lines are taken as primitive and unconstructed. In neither case is something constructed from nothing.
52James (1978 Lect. IV) makes a related point in his discussion of the problem of the one versus the many. He argues that we can start with atomic elements of a system (e.g. the many), and build up to the whole (e.g. the One), or vice versa. For that matter we can start in the middle and work out in both directions. Every construction, physical or cognitive has a starting place, but no starting place is epistemically or metaphysically privileged. This is not deny that there may be some basic element everything is made of, be it atoms, quarks, strings or something inconceivable at this time. If so, this would be a finding of physics, not metaphysics.
533. Pragmatists are pluralists, but it is argued there is only one Reality, and there can be only one ultimately correct description or version of it.
54Pragmatists: Putnam joins the Pragmatists in rejecting this criticism. They endorse both “vertical” and “horizontal” versions of pluralism. Vertically the world can be described from many standpoints – common sense, physicalism, phenomenally, the natural sciences, the social sciences, the arts, ethics, and more. In addition, there is no reason to assume that the versions can be reduced to one another, let alone to a single base. Physics may have some neat features the others lack, but this does not make it epistemically or metaphysically prior. There are no grounds for treating the fruits of other inquiry as second-class enterprises or not truth-apt. Putnam and the Pragmatists are also horizontal pluralists. There can be alternative true descriptions within a single domain of inquiry that cannot be reduced to one another. As long as there is no incompatibility within and between domains, it is possible to conjoin all the alternative true versions. Reality can then be thought of as one, a conjunctive one.
55The Pragmatists, however, accept the more radical claim that there can be true descriptions or versions of the world that conflict. Where true versions conflict, they cannot be conjoined on pain of inconsistency. The most you can do is collect them together as disjuncts. No contradiction there. Many thinkers deny that it is possible for true statements to really conflict, and try to explain the contradictions away. I think this is Putnam’s own solution to squaring his pluralism with his realist convictions. Pragmatists are not inclined to take this escape route and thus face what most see as unresolvable paradox. If there can be more than one true version, and they conflict, which reflects reality as it “really” is. Which must our true statements correspond? The physicist Eddington offered a much-discussed version of the problem. He noted that a table is usually thought of as solid, but at an atomic level it is constituted of more empty space than filled. The puzzle is which is the real table, the macro or micro version.
56The Pragmatic answer is that both are real, so there is no need to choose. Both versions are warranted and acceptable. In practice this does not cause a problem, as long as you do not attempt to apply them at the same time. Concepts and theories function as instruments of cognition, and there is nothing unseemly using different instruments in different contexts and situations. For most Realists this solution to the puzzle is a non-starter. There is only one reality, and it cannot be inconsistent. Putnam cannot accept the Pragmatists’ response.
57I think we are now in a position to return to the beans quote. Putnam’s discussion of the quote suggests that although the groupings (the predicates) are mind-dependent, the beans (the subject) are not. The Pragmatists argue that we must not forget that the beans too are constructed. We play a role in determining the sameness and identity conditions of the subject, the beans. Putnam, however, talks as though realism is vouchsafed by the beans. In the example, they are simply given as evidence, independent of the taking. But for the Pragmatists, this is not so. The status of the beans as evidence depends on the kind-“beans” or at the very least on the kinds “object” or “thing.” Putnam has a stake in holding that it is the mind-independent beans that provide the needed constraint on objective inquiry. The Pragmatists are just as likely to say it is the experience of beans that does the job.
58When all is said and done, I do not see Putnam disagreeing with much of the overall Pragmatic constructivist picture of inquiry. It is clearly in line with his anti-essentialism. He also admits the beans like the other items we posit are not metaphysically fundamental, he too points out that our concept “object” is constantly evolving, and he explains more generally why our conception of “what” in “what there is” also evolves. He seems to balk, though, at the idea that in fashioning our conception of the what, we constitute the subject as well as the predicate.
59Be that as it may, the Pragmatists would welcome Putnam’s penetrating articles about the differences between the varied systems of inquiry, how and why none are privileged, the futility of reduction, that relevant observation and methods differ depending on the area of inquiry, and that such differences do not make an area of inquiry subjective. Likewise, they would applaud his rejection of a sharp meaning/fact and conventional/non-conventional dualism. Unlike them, he is reluctant to abandon the idea of a sharp version/world dualism that the Pragmatists’ constructivist instrumentalism suggests. In his three papers on Goodman’s worldmaking (reprinted in McCormick 1996) I think Putnam makes a good case for why this dualism too should be abandoned.
60As I have attempted to show, one thing that looms large in all of Putnam’s writings is a commitment to there being a substantive and important realism/anti-realism distinction worth defending. Putnam (2015d: 84) says of his final realist position, natural realism, that it amounts to “giving up of thinking of either experiences or concepts as ‘between’ us and external realities.” Pragmatists maintain that their positions on perception, truth, language, constructivism, and world-making do just that. Moreover, they do not see why arguments for or defense of their accounts rely on accepting unacceptable verificationist commitments. Putnam thinks otherwise. He argues that the Pragmatists’ understanding of the nature of the problems of philosophy and their solutions to them fail to offer a satisfactory defense of objective inquiry. According to him, the Pragmatists and their followers have not insured that their warranted theories are “answerable to the world,” “responsible to reality,” “correspond to how the world is anyway,” “capture the way things just are independent of mind.” In response, the Pragmatists maintain that one way or another these complaints assume robust sense can be made of the idea that truth is correspondence with reality. For the Pragmatists, this idea and its several variants have no work to do in an account of inquiry.
61As for myself, I agree with the Pragmatists and with Rorty (2015c: 871) when he says, “rejecting metaphysical realism should lead us to drop the realism/antirealism issue altogether. Putnam wants to say that the realists were right about something and their critics wrong. […] I cannot see that he has given what he would call ‘full intelligibility’ to a notion he says plays a deep role in our lives […] namely that ‘our words and life are constrained by a reality not of our own invention’.” I also think the Pragmatists would find Goodman’s stance of “Irrealism” most agreeable. The best policy is not to think you have to decide between two unrealistic options. A sharp realist/anti-realist dichotomy is itself an untenable dualism.
62What then is the proper way to understand Putnam’s relationship with the Pragmatists? I believe his positions on the matters discussed are more in line with their views than he allows. In any case, no one can fail to be engaged, enlightened, and impressed by Putnam’s field-changing writing on a truly large, diverse, and important set of topics.
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