ALSTON, W. - A Sensible Metaphysical Realism (2001)

A
Sensible
Metaphysical
Realism
The Aquinas Lecture, 2001
A
Sensible
Metaphysical
Realism
Under the auspices of the
Wisconsin-Alpha Chapter of Phi Sigma Tau
by
William P. Alston
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Alston, William P.
A sensible metaphysical realism / by William P. Alston.
p. cm. (The Aquinas lecture ; 2001)
Under the auspices of the Wisconsin-Alpha Chapter of Phi
Sigma Tau. Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0-87462-168-2 (alk. paper)
1. Metaphysics. 2. Realism. I. Title. II. Series.
BD111 .A47 2001
110dc21 00-012240
All rights reserved.
2001 Marquette University Press
Printed in the United States of America
Prefatory
The Wisconsin-Alpha Chapter of Phi Sigma Tau,
the International Honor Society for Philosophy at
Marquette University, each year invites a scholar to
deliver a lecture in honor of St. Thomas Aquinas.
The 2001 Aquinas Lecture, A Sensible Metaphysical
Realism, was delivered on Sunday, February 18,
2001, by William P. Alston, Professor Emeritus of
Syracuse University.
William P. Alston received his Ph. D. in philoso-
phy from the University of Chicago in 1951. He
has been Professor of Philosophy at Syracuse Uni-
versity since 1980 and Professor Emeritus since
1992. He was Professor of Philosophy at the Uni-
versity of Illinous at Urbana-Champaign from 1976
to 1980 and served as chair from 1977 to 1979. He
was previously Professor of Philosophy at Rutgers
University from 1971 to 1976, serving as acting chair
from 1972 to 1973. He taught at the University of
Michigan from 1949 to 1971 where he become Pro-
fessor of Philosophy in 1961.
Professor Alston is a past President of the West-
ern Division of the American Philosophical Asso-
ciation, of the Society for Philosophy and Psychol-
ogy, and of the Society of Christian Philosophers.
He was a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study
in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University in
1965-66 and Distinguished Visiting Professor of
Philosophy at the Center for Advanced Study in
Theoretical Psychology at the University of Alberta
in 1975. He is a Fellow of the American Academy
6 William P. Alston
of Arts and Sciences, and he received the Syracuse
Universitys Chancellors Citation for Exceptional
Academic Achievement. He conducted NEH sum-
mer seminars in 1978 and 1979, and directed an
NEH Institute on Philosophy of Religion in 1986.
He is founding editor of the journal, Faith and Phi-
losophy. In October, 1987 he led a delegation of eight
American philosophers in epistemology and philoso-
phy of mind for a week of discussions with Soviet
philosophers in Moscow and Leningrad. In Septem-
ber, 1991 he participated in a conference at Castel
Gandolfo, Italy on theology and physical cosmol-
ogy sponsored by the Vatican Observatory.
His publications include several anthologies, Phi-
losophy of Language (Prentice-Hall, 1964), more than
one hundred journal articles, many of which have
been reprinted in anthologies, eighteen articles in
the Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Paul
Edwards (MacMillan, 1967), and numerous reviews.
Two collections of his essays have been published
by Cornell University Press (1989): Epistemic Justi-
fication: Essays in Epistemology and Divine Nature
and Human Language: Essays in Philosophical Theol-
ogy. His most recent books are Perceiving God: A
Study in the Epistemology of Religious Experience,
(Cornell, 1991), The Reliability of Sense Perception
(Cornell, 1993), A Realist Conception of Truth
(Cornell, 1995), and Illocutionary Acts and Sentence
Meaning (Cornell, 2000).
To Professor Alstons distinguished list of publi-
cations, Phi Sigma Tau is pleased to add: A Sensible
Metaphysical Realism.
A Sensible Metaphysical Realism 7
A
Sensible
Metaphysical
Realism
1
Before expounding and defending my sensible
realism, and explaining what is sensible about it, I
had better indicate which of the many varieties of
(metaphysical) realism that are found in the luxuri-
ant jungle so called I will be seeking to develop a
sensible version thereof. Historically the most promi-
nent realisms are the medieval commitment to the
objective reality of universals, and the opposition to
one or another metaphysical idealism, the view that
everything is mental, or an aspect of, or dependent
on, the mental. Moreover, there is a plethora of de-
partmental realisms, in addition to the medieval
realism about universals, each of which claims ob-
jective reality for the apparent objects of some field
of inquiry. Thus we have realism about moral stan-
dards, values, theoretical entities in science, ab-
stract objects like propositions, meanings, and so
on. These departmental realisms are in opposition
8 William P. Alston
both to flat denials that such entities exist and to
reductions of entities of the type in question to
something allegedly more fundamental or less prob-
lematic. Thus a realism about physical objects is
opposed to a phenomenalist reduction of physical
objects to patterns of sensory experience. Realism
about propositions is opposed to their reduction to
classes of synonymous sentences. Realism about val-
ues is opposed to the denial that values have any
sort of objective status. And so on.
1
The realism with which I shall be concerned dif-
fers from all of the above. It differs from depart-
mental realisms in being more global in character.
And it differs from the anti-idealist kind of realism
in the character of its principal opposition. Indeed,
an initial characterization of realism is most effec-
tively couched in terms of what it opposes. To quote
a phrase of J. L. Austins from the old male chauvin-
ist days, it is antirealism that wears the trousers.
The species of metaphysical realism I will treat here
is a denial of the view that whatever there is, is con-
stituted, at least in part, by our cognitive relations
thereto, by the ways we conceptualize or construe
it, by the language we use to talk about it or the
theoretical scheme we use to think of it. This kind
of antirealism stems from Kants Copernican revo-
lution, according to which anything of which we
can have knowledge owes at least its basic structure
to the categories in terms of which we think it, rather
than to the way it is in itself . In a more contem-
porary vein, we may think of my metaphysical real-
ism as defined by the denial of the semi-Kantian
position held by Hilary Putnam. what objects does
the world consist of? is a question that it only makes
sense to ask within a theory or descriptionthere is
more than one true theory or description of the
world.
2
In other words, whatever there is, exists and
is what it is only within a certain way of describ-
ing or conceptualizing what there is. This is a
relativized Kantianism in that it recognizes a num-
ber of equally viable ways of describing or concep-
tualizing or theoretically organizing reality, ways that
would be incompatible if each of them were put
forward as an account of reality as it is in itself. Since
Putnam avoids recognizing Kantian noumena,
things as they are in themselves, he can assert the
conceptual relativity of what there is in a more un-
qualified way than Kant, not restricting it to what
we can know.
As the above quote from Putnam indicates, he uses
a variety of terms to specify that by which he takes
reality to be (partly) constituted on the cognition
sidetheory, description, and (elsewhere) con-
ceptual scheme and language. My initial charac-
terization of the contrast was similarly varied. I
would like to boil down the profusion so as to make
this antirealism, and by derivation my realism, more
specific. Some of the reduction is simple. Since the
language used to describe things and to report facts
gets that function by virtue of expressing concepts,
we may drop the linguistic formulation without
loss.
3
That leaves us with conceptualization and
theory. Since modes of conceptualization are gen-
erally embodied in extensive schemes of concepts, I
will concentrate on the term conceptual scheme.
That leaves us with the question of how different
10 William P. Alston
modes of theorizing, of theoretically organizing a
domain, are related to different ways of conceptual-
izing. Many differences in theorizing go in tandem
with differences in conceptual scheme. Major revo-
lutions in scientific theory, like relativity physics,
involve fundamental reconceptualizations. But it is
not necessarily so. Less radical theoretical innova-
tions can involve reorganizing familiar concepts.
Hence I will need both conceptual scheme and theo-
retical system as factors on the cognition side of the
cognition-reality relationship, choices between
which can be partly constitutive of the reality side,
according to antirealism.
Since my metaphysical realism is a denial of a
universal affirmative proposition (everything de-
pends, at least in part, on our conceptual-theoreti-
cal choices),
4
it is not committed to the contrary of
that proposition, viz., that nothing depends on such
choices. At a minimum, it need only deny that all
of reality is like that. Of course, the most minimum
denial, that there is something that is not so depen-
dent, is hardly significant enough to be worth the
trouble. I will be thinking of metaphysical realism
as holding that large stretches of reality do not depend
on our conceptual and theoretical choices for existing
and being what they are. Much of this essay will be
devoted to exploring the question of just what
stretches do and do not exhibit this independence.
The main respect in which my realism is distinctive
in being sensible is that it recognizes that some
stretches of reality do conform to the account anti-
realism gives of the whole of reality.
2
Before turning to my main taskdeveloping a
characterization, in some detail, of a defensibly mod-
est form of metaphysical realismI must respond
to a doubt about the genuineness of the contrast
between my view and its antirealist opponent. This
has to do with the notion of dependence involved.
More than one reputable philosopher has opined
that the claim that reality depends on our cognition
is either absurd or unintelligiblenot an attractive
pair of prospects.
5
If the dependence is construed as
causal, the view is palpably absurd, as practically
everyone, realist and antirealist alike, agrees. It flies
in the face of overwhelming empirical evidence to
suppose that the heavens and the earth only came
into existence when human conceptualization
6
came
on the scene and came into a position to exercise
causal influence. But if the dependence is not causal,
what is it? No intelligible answer that is not equally
absurd can be found, it is claimed, at least not with-
out transforming the view into something that is
far from what its proponents have intended. It may
be thought that, if this is so, realism stands vindi-
cated, since its chief opponent has turned out to be
only a paper tiger. But if so, it would be a Pyrrhic
victory. Since I have formulated realism in terms of
independence of concepts and theories, it would
seem that if dependence on those factors doesnt
make sense, independence goes down the tube with
it.
Fortunately for my position, we need not accept
the above dilemma. I agree with everyone else in
rejecting as absurd the view that the physical uni-
verse causally depends on human conceptualization
for existing and being what it is. But I do not accept
that there is no form of dependence that renders
the view intelligible without being absurd. No
doubt, the kind of dependence required to make
sense of the view is not obvious on the face of it,
and it is incumbent on anyone who speaks in these
terms to provide an explication of a form of depen-
dence that is appropriate for this purpose. I will pro-
ceed to do so by first looking at a few plausible can-
didates for entities or facts that depend for their
existence and/or for being what they are on a con-
ceptual scheme or theoretical choice for which there
are equally viable alternatives. I will then seek to
extract from the examples a general characterization
of the kind of dependence involved. We can think
of the sort of antirealism in question as an unquali-
fied generalization of this dependence relation. Later
I will be arguing that the attempt at such an un-
qualified generalization results in fatal internal de-
fects of the position, rendering it self-defeating. But
this kind of internal incoherence must be distin-
guished from unintelligibility. As in other such cases,
we have to understand the position before we are in
a position to demonstrate the internal incoherence.
Here are what I take to be some plausible candi-
dates.
1. There are 50 peaks over 14,000 feet in Colo-
rado.
2. Communism is a religion.
Both of these cases depend for their acceptability
on a certain conceptual choice for which there are,
arguably, equally valid alternatives. When counting
peaks in a mountain range we work with certain
criteria for how much lower altitude there must be
between higher elevations to count them as differ-
ent peaks rather than parts of the same peak. And,
obviously, these criteria could be set in different ways.
No doubt, some are more natural than others, but
it seems clear that there will be a variety of more or
less equally natural and intuitive criteria that will
yield somewhat different results as to the number
of peaks in the state.
As for 2., whether this is so depends on what we
choose to regard as necessary for a certain social
phenomenons being a religion. Religion is typical
of many terms for social entities and human prod-
ucts, such as art, poem, democracy, and Chris-
tian, in exhibiting what we might call combina-
tion of conditions indeterminacy.
7
It is easy to list
salient features of paradigm cases of religions, fea-
tures that would readily spring to mind if one were
asked for examples. These include:
1. Beliefs in supernatural beings.
2. A distinction between sacred and profane ob-
jects.
3. Ritual acts focused around sacred objects.
4. Characteristically religious feelings (awe, sense
of mystery, adoration, etc.)
5. Prayer and other forms of communication with
supernatural beings.
6. A world view.
7. An organization of ones life based on the world
view.
8. A social group bound together by the above.
The list could be extended. When we consider a
social organization that exhibits some of these fea-
tures and not others, it might or might not count as
a religion, depending on which of the items on the
central list are considered most important or most
crucial. Depending on such conceptual preferences,
Communism or Confucianism or Humanism might
or might not count as a religion.
A natural reaction to these first cases is to say that
they are not genuine objective matters of fact that
partly are what they are by virtue of conceptual or
theoretical choices, but rather more or less indeter-
minate concepts, the application of which to genu-
inely objective realities is correspondingly indeter-
minate and up for grabs. There is no fact of the
matter that there is some exact number of peaks in
Colorado, or that Communism is (not) a religion,
that is partly constituted by our conceptual prefer-
ences. It is rather that the terms or concepts peak
and religion are not fully determinate. Commu-
nism just is what it is. The only cognition-relative
aspect of the situation concerns our conceptual ap-
plications or abstentions therefrom. Naturally that
is dependent on our conceptual-theoretical choices,
where the concept in question is not so fully formed
as to have a uniquely correct application in every
case. In short, the only thing concept-relative in these
cases is concepts. There is nothing here that requires
any qualification to a full-blown realism.
8
I am not disposed to quarrel with this diagnosis.
Instead I pass on to some other sorts of examples,
the antirealist qualifications of which cannot be so
easily dismissed.
3. All necessary statements express the same propo-
sition.
4. Every human being has an infinite number of
beliefs.
5. The cause of the fire was an overturned candle.
3. and 4. reflect different possible ways of concep-
tualizing and theoretically organizing a subject mat-
ter, in this case, propositional attitudes, treating speech
acts as attitudes for this purpose.
3. holds on a currently prominent way of con-
struing propositions as sets of possible worlds. On
that reading statements that are true in the same set
of possible worlds express the same proposition. This
is counter-intuitive. Most of us balk at the idea that
when I utter 2+2 = 4 and The angles of a Euclid-
ean triangle add up to 180 degrees, I am saying
the same thing, i.e., expressing the same proposi-
tion. Nevertheless, this way of identifying proposi-
tions is useful for certain logical purposes, includ-
ing formal semantics. On a more natural way of
viewing propositions, propositions with different
conceptual content, like the two just cited, will count
as different propositions. So in this case what a
proposition is, as well as what counts as the same
proposition, or the same propositional content of
two psychological states or speech acts, depends on
our choices as to how to structure our account of
this subject matter.
4. represents a simpler example of the same thing.
It reflects a construal of beliefs according to which
when one believes that p, one thereby believes ev-
erything entailed by p, and, given the principle of
disjunction according to which p entails p or q, for
any q, this implies that for any belief one has, one
has thereby an infinite set of other beliefs. 4. as-
sumes, of course, that it is not a necessary condition
for having a belief that one be capable of consciously
entertaining it, or that one is disposed to act as if its
content were true. These assumptions have reason-
able and viable contraries. Hence if 4. is the case, it
is the case only relative to conceptual-theoretical
choices that have viable alternatives.
5. is a somewhat different kind of example. Here
the variability stems not from ways of theoretically
organizing a subject-matter, but from a context de-
fined by what is taken for granted as a background
against which to pick out one of the causally rel-
evant factors for special attention. Clearly an over-
turned candle is not sufficient by itself for a fire in a
house. There must be inflammable material suffi-
ciently close by, enough oxygen in the atmosphere,
etc. But all that was taken for granted in the context
of utterance, and attention was focused on what in
addition to that makes the difference between fire
and no fire.
Harkening back to the dismissal of 1. and 2. as
genuine antirealist cases, I can easily imagine some-
one rejecting 5. as aid and comfort for the antirealist
on somewhat similar grounds. Here it is not an in-
determinacy of concept that is involved, but rather
relativity to interest or to what has already been as-
sumed. And it might well be argued that this is a
feature of the discourse, not of what the discourse is
about. The fire is just what it is, and the causal
contributors to it are just what they are, whatever par-
ticular contributor we pick out as of special interest.
But 3. and 4. are not so easily dismissed. Proposi-
tions and even beliefs are creatures of theory in a
way that fires (and mountain ranges and religions)
are not. We have a choice as to how we construe
and individuate propositions and beliefs, and it
seems that different ways of doing this have an ap-
proximately equal claim to be adequate ways of deal-
ing with the subject matter. Of course, this last judg-
ment may be contested. It may be urged that there
is some unique objective truth about these matters,
just as there is about whether there was a fire in the
house, how it started, and how it spread. But, at
least it is not so obvious that this is the case. And so
I feel entitled to take 3. and 4. as prima facie plau-
sible examples of how states of affairs can be depen-
dent, at least in part, on conceptual-theoretical
choices that have viable alternatives.
Now for extracting a reading of dependence on
conceptual and theoretical choices from examples
3. and 4. The basic idea has been hinted at already.
The nature and individuation of propositions and
beliefs do not confront us as something ready made,
whatever our concepts and theories. On the con-
trary, these matters go one way rather than another
depending on those choices. Hence if we think of
propositions and beliefs as part of reality, part of
what is involved in the way things go in the world
(as we surely do, especially with beliefs, which we
recognize as playing a large role in the motivation
and guidance of behavior), then we must take them
as examples of how the existence and nature of things
in the world, including their individuation, is partly
constituted by one or another way of conceptualiz-
ing them and theorizing about them. This is not
the causal dependence that we have seen to be ab-
surd. Our theorizing clearly does not exercise that
kind of influence. It is what we might call constitu-
tive dependence. Propositions are what they are in
these respects by virtue of our shaping our thought
of them in one or another way.
But we are still not at the end of the needed expli-
cation. Not enough has been said to make clear what
this constitution amounts to, and how it is dis-
tinct from causal production. We can best approach
this task by once more recurring to the alternative
of handling the variation in essence and individua-
tion of, e.g., propositions as having to do solely with
the conceptual-theoretical side of the transaction,
leaving the reality side untouched. Go back to the
hard nosed realist who holds that any differences as
to what propositions are and how they are individu-
ated are only differences as to how we think and
what we believe about them, not differences in
propositions as denizens of reality. With respect to
the latter, propositions are what they are, in some
one unique self-consistent way, however different
theorists might view them. If those views are in-
compatible, then all but one is mistaken, even if we
are unable to say which is the one that alone has it
straight, if, indeed, any of them do.
I find this reaction to be the most powerful chal-
lenge to the idea that there is an unmistakably in-
telligible account of how, e.g., propositions can ex-
hibit different natures by virtue of being embedded
in different conceptual-theoretical structures and do
so themselves as objects of thought and discourse.
To meet it lets move to a different way of thinking
of the dependence involved. Lets say that proposi-
tions enjoy a particular nature not absolutely, but
relative to a certain theoretical-conceptual scheme.
For any sort of reality that is subject to this consti-
tutive dependence on our thought, there is no such
thing as what it is absolutely, tout court, but only
what it is relative to a certain scheme of thought.
With respect to propositions, an absolutist statement
is incomplete. To say Propositions are sets of pos-
sible worlds and leave it at that is to make an in-
complete statement. To render it capable of truth or
falsity we must add an index, relativizing it to a con-
ceptual scheme. The statement must be something
like In C, propositions are sets of possible worlds,
where C denotes a theoretical-conceptual scheme.
And dont take in too literally. It is not that propo-
sitions are themselves constituents of a conceptual
scheme that represents them as sets of possible
worlds. A more literal formulation would be rela-
tive to, rather than in.
One may still feel the need for more explanation
of the kind of relativity envisaged here. Before do-
ing what I can to meet this need, I should point out
a respect in which this is more difficult for me, as a
realist, than it is for someone like Putnam or
Goodman, who universally generalizes the relativ-
ity to conceptual schemes. It is more difficult for
me because, recognizing as I do vast stretches of re-
ality that are absolute, not relative to conceptual
schemes, the problem of why I shouldnt treat my
alleged examples of relativity in the same way is a
live one for me, as the previous discussion makes
clear. Whereas those who take everything to be rela-
tive to alternative conceptual schemes have no con-
trasting, absolutist mode of reality that, so to say,
threatens to swallow up all the putatively relative
entities and banish all relativity to the thought side
of the thought-reality relationship. In a bit I will
argue that the attempt to universalize this relativity
propels antirealists into fatal internal defects. But
the fact remains that the job of explaining what such
relativity amounts to is, in a way, easier for them.
To continue with my burdensome job, I suggest
that some familiar analogues may help us to grasp
the idea. Consider the relativity of motion to frame-
work. Is the train moving? Well, yes, it is moving
relative to the station but not relative to another
train moving at exactly the same speed on a parallel
track. Can we say that the relativity attaches only to
our ways of describing the situation, whereas abso-
lutely the train either is moving or not? That is the
position of one who takes space to be absolute. Ei-
ther the train is changing its location in absolute
space, or it is not. And as far as the train itself is
concerned, in contrast to our ways of describing the
proceedings, that is the end of the matter. But ac-
cording to the now generally accepted relativity phys-
ics, there is no such absolute space and time. The
only motion there is is motion relative to one or
another framework taken as fixed. And there is a
plurality, indeed an infinite plurality, of such pos-
sible frameworks, from which motion can be as-
cribed. We can think of propositions as relative, in
something like the same way, to conceptual frame-
works, to ways of construing the nature and indi-
viduation of propositions.
Another interesting analogy is put forward in Sosa
1999. This involves indexical statements. Consider
someones saying Boston is nearby, and consider
the fact that makes this true. Obviously it is only
relative to a certain spatial position that Boston is
nearby rather than far away. If the speaker had been
in Los Angeles rather than in a Boston suburb, it
would not have been true that Boston is nearby and
there would have been no such fact to make it true.
We can think of this as a relativity of fact to a fea-
ture of discourse, in this case the spatial location of
the speaker, somewhat as motion is relative to frame-
work. This may help us to see how facts about propo-
sitions or beliefs can be relative to ways of concep-
tualizing them, and in that way dependent on
those ways for the details of what they are and how
they are individuated. And note that the depen-
dence in these analogies is not causal. Its not that
the relevant framework, rather than the locomotive
causes the train to move. And what causes Boston to
be nearby is whatever caused the speaker and Bos-
ton to assume their relative positions, not the posi-
tion of the speaker.
I must confess that Sosa does not use the analogy
in the way I just have. On the contrary, he takes the
relativity to location to affect only the content of
the statement (only the thought side of the thought-
world relation), and not the world side. He sup-
poses that the fact that makes it true, when it is true,
that Boston is nearby, is absolute and in no way rela-
tive to the spatial location of speaker or any other
feature of thought or discourse. I have discussed
Sosas take on these and other matters having to do
with realism in my Sosa on Realism (forthcom-
ing). In any event, my present concern is not to use
the indexical phenomenon to prove anything but
only as a stepping stone to help the reader, and
myself, form an intelligible conception of facts in
the world being, in part, relative to features of
thought or discourse.
To be sure, as a realist I do consider things that
exist absolutely and facts that obtain absolutely, not
relative to some optional mode of conception or
theorizing, to be more real, to have a higher mode
of reality than what exists or obtains only relative to
one of several equally viable theoretical-conceptual
schemes. But that does not imply that what exists
or obtains only relative to such schemes has no ex-
istence except for the existence of the schemes them-
selves. To get back to the analogies, it is like the way
in which motion that occurs only relative to one
out of many different frameworks is still something
other than the frameworks themselves. Relative ex-
istence is still existence, even if it is not absolute
existence.
Thus my explanation of constitutive dependence of
things and facts on conceptual-theoretical choices
is in terms of their relativity to such choices, relativ-
ity of the sort exemplified by the analogies. Though
in the sequel I will often speak in terms of depen-
dence and independence, that is to be understood
in accordance with the foregoing. And the canoni-
cal explanation of the contrasting positions is in
terms of relativity.
Antirealism (AR)Everything and every fact ex-
ists or obtains, and is what it is, at least in part, rela-
tive to certain conceptual-theoretical choices that
have equally viable alternatives.
Realism (R)Vast stretches of reality are what
they are absolutely, not in any way relative to cer-
tain conceptual-theoretical choices that have equally
viable alternatives.
3
The next item on the agenda is drawing some
boundaries around the kind of metaphysical real-
ism I advocate here. I have just made explicit the
positive core of the position. But it will be useful to
make explicit certain things that are not involved in
that core. And since this kind of realism frequently
carries various other commitments in its train, it
will not be amiss to point out that I do not conceive
the position as including them. In doing so I do not
thereby reject those views, many of which I hold. It
is just that for present purposes I want to focus on
the independence thesis, separating it from other
commitments with which it is frequently associated
so as to give it a full treatment in its own right.
9
First, I want to bring out, with some examples,
the fact that R is concerned only with independence
of conceptual-theoretical choices, not with other ways
in which things and facts are, or might be thought
to be, dependent on cognition and on other aspects
of the mental. Consider, for example, Berkeleys To
be is to be perceived. This is certainly a kind of
dependence of everything (except minds themselves)
on the mental. The reality of physical objects con-
sists, in one way or another, in the reality of percep-
tions or ideas, whether in human minds or the
mind of God. But Berkeley would reject as firmly
as the staunchest realist Putnams kind of antireal-
ism. He is completely innocent of any tendency to
suppose that objects of perception take on different
natures, depending on how we conceptualize them.
There is no trace of ontological pluralism in his
thought. The same goes for twentieth century phe-
nomenalists attempt to reduce physical objects to
the conditions under which a perceiver would have
certain perceptual experiences. Here too there is no
tendency to suppose that objects of perception are
relative to various ways of conceptualizing or theo-
rizing about them. Both Berkeley and the phenom-
enalist Russell are ontologically as absolutist as any
realist. These cases illustrate the way in which the
kind of metaphysical realism under discussion here
is not opposed either to Berkelyan idealism or to
phenomenalist or other reductions of the physical
to something more mentalistic.
Moreover, R is not opposed to, nor does it en-
dorse, the view that values or moral statuses are a
function of peoples attitudes or interests. That is
not the kind of dependence on cognition that is at
issue between R and AR. This point leads to one
that needs more extensive discussionthe status of
social statuses, such as being married or divorced,
owning property, having a job, being a member of
an organization, being guilty of a crime. These and
many others are social statuses of people, but there
are also social statuses of inanimate thingsbeing a
$10 bill, being a church building, being a football
field, being a wedding ring. In all these cases the
person or thing has this status by virtue of certain
propositional attitudes taken toward it by members
of the society in questionwhat they believe about
it, what obligations, prohibitions, permissions, they
take to apply to it, what behavior is appropriate with
regard to it, and so on. To be a member of an orga-
nization or to have a certain job is to have certain
rights, obligations, and responsibilities that one
would would not otherwise have, and the posses-
sion of those rights, etc. is dependent on their rec-
ognition by members of the society generally. For a
building to be a church building is for it to be gen-
erally recognized that certain activities are appro-
priate there and others inappropriate. For a piece of
paper to be a $10 bill is for it to be generally accept-
able as a medium of exchange. And so on. None of
this is a matter of the adoption of a certain concep-
tual scheme or a certain theoretical orientation
among other alternatives vis-a-vis these matters. The
concepts involved (concepts of obligations, permis-
sions, appropriateness, exchange of goods) are al-
ready in the usual human conceptual scheme,
whether or not they are employed as they are in the
recognitions, acceptances, and so on illustrated
above. To oversimplify in order to make the point
in a concise manner, these social statuses depend on
how concepts are deployed in beliefs and attitudes
that are generally held in the society, not on whether
one rather than another conceptual scheme is used
to organize a certain subject matter. Hence this kind
of dependence on cognition falls outside the con-
trast between AR and R. Though I take the depen-
dence of social statuses on generally shared beliefs
and attitudes in the society to be a crucially impor-
tant example of a dependence of objective facts on
the mental, I will not be citing it as one of the con-
cessions that, I will suggest, a sensible realism should
make to AR.
The example of social statuses brings out the fact
that AR could be construed more generally to in-
clude any sort of constitutive dependence of things
and facts on human cognition thereof, and R, as its
denial, would be correspondingly altered. This
would be a weaker AR, since its universal generali-
zation would be over a wider range of constitutive
dependencies. But for present purposes I will stick
to the more restricted version of AR set out above.
The phenomenon of social statuses illustrates an-
other point that is importantly, though tangentially,
related to this essay. The relativity of things and facts
to conceptual-theoretical choices that AR univer-
sally generalizes and that I acknowledge at certain
points is a malleability, a vulnerability to individual
shifts in cognition. In the examples from section 2,
it is up to each individual theorist whether he or she
adopts one rather than another way of construing
and individuating propositions and beliefs. This is
a maximal relativity, in the sense that each individual
is free to make his or her own choice. But the mal-
leability of social statuses, though real, is not so ex-
treme. I cant just decide to organize marital rela-
tions, mediums of exchange, the rules of football,
or who owns what property, as I like. Who is mar-
ried to whom, who owns what houses, etc., con-
front me as objective facts that I must accept willy-
nilly. I dont have the power to reshape them on my
own. They are subject to change only by a general
shift in beliefs and attitudes in the society. They ex-
ist at the sufferance of propositional attitudes, but
these are generally shared beliefs and attitudes, not
isolated individual ones.
Another feature of the AR-R contrast is that the
AR side involves not only (1) a (partial) dependence
of how things are on our conceptualization, but (2)
a dependence that is (possibly) variable. There are
possible, and sometimes actual, variations in the way
a given domain is conceptually and/or theoretically
organized. Moreover, what I regard as the main ar-
guments Putnam and Goodman give for AR is based
on this alleged variability. And it is this whole pack-
age that R, as I have been presenting it, denies to be
universally applicable. But, of course, one could es-
pouse (1) without (2). We find this in Kant and, in
a different way and less clearly, in Hegel and abso-
lute idealism generally. And I could, of course, con-
strue R so that it is opposed to Kant as well as to
Putnam. I find myself with a strong temptation to
do just that. The realist conviction I am concerned
to defend is also violated, though not as strongly, by
a unique dependence of everything on certain in-
eluctable features of our conceptualization of it, just
as it is by a dependence of everything on a plurality
of equally acceptable conceptualizations. Of course,
Kant and the absolute idealists need different kinds
of arguments for their position than those deployed
by Putnam and Goodman. But they all represent a
generically similar opposition to common sense re-
alism.
10
Moreover, the pluralist and absolutist forms are
not as starkly opposed as they appear to be at first
blush. For though Kant does not take seriously the
idea that human beings might categorize the mani-
fold of sensation in different and equally valid ways,
it is still the case that the force of his transcenden-
tal idealism depends on a contrast with conceiv-
able alternative categorizations. Apart from that,
what does the Copernican revolution amount to?
If we cannot even conceive the abstract possibility
of alternative conceptualizations (perhaps for other
cognitive subjects), if our way of doing it is the one
and only possible way, then how does that differ
from holding that (apart, of course, from mistakes
in details) our way of representing reality is just the
way it is in itself?
Despite all this I will, for purposes of this essay,
confine myself to the AR that takes there to be ac-
tual variations in conceptualization that are consti-
tutive of differences in things and facts with which
we are confronted in the world. And my partial con-
cessions to AR will concern stretches of reality that
are dependent on alternative conceptualizations in
this way.
Now I want to dissociate R from various com-
mitments that are frequently connected to it. For
one thing, my realism carries no epistemological
commitments. Interestingly enough, some philoso-
phers take realism to be committed to the inaccessi-
bility of reality, and others take it to be committed
to its accessibility. Though the independent reality
of, e.g., the physical world would hardly be worth
fighting for if we were fated to remain in complete
ignorance of it, and though I am convinced that we
do know a lot about it, I will set aside those episte-
mological issues in order to concentrate on the in-
dependence thesis. Second, realism is often associ-
ated, or even conflated, with a correspondence
theory of truth, or with a minimalist version of that,
which in Alston 1996 I call a realist conception of
truth. But although I agree that it would be bizarre
for a metaphysical realist to hold an epistemic con-
ception of truth or any other conception that makes
the truth of a statement to consist in something other
than what the statement is about being as the state-
ment says it is, I will abstract my independent real-
ity realism from issues of truth in this discussion.
Finally, in recent decades realism has been frequently
associated with physicalism and with a causal theory
of reference. I can set aside these entanglements with
greater enthusiasm than the first two, since although
I am enthusiastic about independence realism, I hold
no brief for either physicalism or a causal theory of
reference. But my present point is only that in or-
der to hold that large stretches of reality are what
they are independently of our modes of conceptual-
ization, one need not take those stretches, much less
all of reality, to be purely physical; and one need
not accept a causal theory, or any other particular
theory of reference. To be sure, reference is an im-
portant and fascinating problem in itself. And one
must be able to refer to things in order to ascribe
independent existence or anything else to them. But,
fortunately, human beings can succeed in doing so
without being in possession of an adequate theory of
reference. Otherwise we would be in a pretty pickle.
There is other baggage we need to discard. It
should not be necessary to say this, but here goes
anyway. R does not imply that every one of our con-
cepts (terms) denotes something that exists. Every-
one realizes in practice that this is a truism, but
strange things happens when philosophers discuss
realism. In addition to standard textbook examples
like unicorn, there are more interesting, and corre-
spondingly controversial, philosophical examples. In
Alston 1993 I argue that it is a mistake to suppose
that justified, when used in the epistemic evalua-
tion of beliefs, picks out a unique objective epistemic
status. Quine, notoriously, takes the same position
for meaning and analytic, as semantic terms. What
may be less obvious is that the above factthat not
all intelligible concepts denote anythingimplies
that not every intelligible question has an objectively
correct answer. Quine does not hesitate to draw this
inference for Are these terms synonymous? Al-
though I cannot point to documentary evidence, I
have the sense that it is not infrequently assumed
that a serious metaphysical realism would imply that
every meaningful question has a unique objectively
correct answer. Hence the need to take up space to
point out that this is not the case. This reflects a
more general point about R. It is not a thesis about
discourse or thought. It a thesis about (much of )
what exists. The opposition between R and its
antirealist opponents only arises when both parties
have agreed that something exists (obtains) in some
way or other, with some status or other. The ques-
tion is as to which way or which status. This also
implies that R is not, as such, opposed to views that
something or other does not exist at all. Someone
who denies that there are propositions, or unexem-
plified properties, or possible worlds, or unobserv-
able objects, or God, or whatever, is not contradict-
ing R, although various proponents of R may also
disagree with these claims. For, as I say, the issue
between R and its opponents only arises when there
is agreement on somethings existence. Of course,
an advocate of R may hold that Xs exist indepen-
dently even though other thinkers deny that there
are any Xs. It is just that there can be an R-AR dis-
pute between them about Xs only after both admit
that Xs exist in some way.
4
My next task is to explain what I think to be pos-
sible by way of defending realism. I fear my posi-
tion on this will seem disappointing to many real-
ists. I dont see any prospect for a direct argument
for realism. Some, like Devitt, suppose that it can
be supported as the best explanation of our sense
experience. But the presentation of this in Devitt
1984 (5,7, pp. 64-65) is much too sketchy to carry
conviction. A straight enumerative induction would
do no better. That would consist in listing all the
items that enjoy independent existence and then
generalizing from this. If we are properly cautious,
that generalization will not be unqualifiedly univer-
sal, but will be content with the claim that much of
reality exists independently of conceptualization.
The deepest trouble with this suggestion is that if
anyone is disinclined to accept such a modest gen-
eralization, he will be equally disinclined to accept
the status of independence for the individual items.
Thus what seems to me the best way to view the
matter is to take realism to be the default position.
All of us, before we encounter clever antirealist ar-
guments, unhesitatingly ascribe independent exist-
ence to what we take ourselves to encounter in the
world. This is as deeply rooted as any conviction of
common sense. It is to be given up only if there are
strong reasons against it. Hence the only defense
needed is a critique of attempts to give such reasons
and/or an argument for the lack of viability of an
unqualified antirealism.
I will not undertake a criticism of arguments for
AR in this essay. But I will indicate ways in which I
take AR to be self-defeating and hence internally
incoherent. If I am right about that, there is no need
to examine arguments for the position, since it could
not possibly be correct. Remember that the antire-
alism under consideration here is an unqualified
generalization of the relativity to conceptual schemes
I have already acknowledged to hold for certain
matters, a list to which I will shortly make further
additions. The internal incoherence is a direct re-
sult of that unqualified generalizations. Lets say that
we have identified a variety of equally viable con-
ceptual schemes (total ones if you like) such that
physical objects and facts have a certain character
relative to one or another such scheme. Relative to
one of the alternative schemes those objects and facts
have one detailed constitution, whereas relative to
another such scheme they have a somewhat differ-
ent constitution.
11
But now what about those con-
ceptual schemes themselves? And if we are not think-
ing of such schemes as abstract objects but only as
employed by concrete cognitive subjects, how about
those subjects? Do all of these exist and have the
nature they do relative to each of a number of dif-
ferent conceptual schemes? If not, the unrestricted
generalization has been given up. But if so, what
about these second level conceptual schemes. Obvi-
ously an infinite regress looms. The unrestricted
generalization is purchased at the price of an infi-
nite hierarchy of conceptual schemes. And if the
conceptual schemes involved must actually be used
by subjects, we get an infinite hierarchy of subjects,
or at least an infinite hierarchy of employments of
different conceptual schemes by subjects. I take all
this to be obviously unacceptable.
A second fatal internal difficulty stems from an
essential element in the argument for this kind of
antirealism. The different conceptual schemes must
be construed as yielding incompatible construals of
the entities dependent on them. Otherwise there is
no objection to taking the entities to be what they
are absolutely, not relative to one or another scheme.
But they can be incompatible only if they are
construals of the same entities. For if they are
construals of different entities, they can all happily
coexist in one unique reality. But this means that
the view presupposes some common object of
conceptualization. And just by being the shared
object of the different conceptual schemes, it is it-
self immune from relativity to those different
schemes. Thus the view is driven back to something
like the Kantian noumenon, to which the plurality
of schemes of categories is applied. And so the price
of maintaining the basic argument for the position
is an exception to the universal generalization of
relativity. If we try to escape this consequence by
taking what is differently conceptualized in differ-
ent conceptual schemes to be itself relative to dif-
ferent conceptual schemes, and so split it up into
different versions corresponding to those differ-
ent second order schemes, we are off on another
infinite regress. For what are to say of that which is
conceptualized differently in those second order
schemes?
Since an unqualified conceptual relativity is un-
acceptable, I feel justified in taking realism to be
the default position for any putative entity or fact,
taking any such item to be independent of our cog-
nitive activity until it is shown to be otherwise.
Hence the specification of those stretches of reality
that are independent will proceed negativelyby
whittling away at the mass of prima facie indepen-
dent realities (i.e., all of them), and ascribing inde-
pendence to what remains. Thus the process is much
messier than we might hope. It involves a painstak-
ing discussion of all the more promising candidates
for dependence on our conceptualizations, so as to
determine which of them passes the test. I will not
be able to complete such an enormous task in this
essay. And even if I had several volumes at my dis-
posal, the fact would remain that some of those can-
didates will be highly controversial, and arguments
about them could drag on interminably in the way
typical of philosophical arguments. For the present
I will have to restrict myself to, first, making some
distinctions between different kinds of dependence
on human cognition, and, second, making a case
for a significant relativity to conceptual schemes of
some of the most promising candidates. But before
starting on that, let me say that I believe one result
of any such investigation would leave most of the
objects we have commerce with, cognitive and prac-
tical, and most of the facts concerning such objects
with their prima facie realist credentials intact.
5
I will be spending most of my time in this re-
mainder of this essay presenting and discussing can-
didates for the conceptual-scheme-dependent side
of the R-AR opposition. But I will introduce this
by a contrast that seems to me to put into sharp
relief the difference between those entities and facts
that are and those that are not, so to say, imposed on
us by the nature of things willy-nilly. On the one
hand, there are items with respect to the nature and
existence of which we have no choice, which are
what they are regardless of our interests or prefer-
ences, which are, in the strongest sense, stubborn
and unyielding facts; and, on the other side, there
are those with respect to which we do have a choice
as to whether or not to countenance them. Here
is an imaginative example from Sosa 1999.
Artifacts and natural objects are normally com-
posed of stuff or of parts in certain ways. Those
that endure are normally composed of stuff or
of parts at each instant of their enduring.Thus
a snowball exists at a time t and location l only
if there is a round quantity of snow at l and t
sufficiently separate from other snow, and so
forth; and it endures through an interval i only
if, for every division of i into a sequence of
subintervals i
1
, i
2
, there is a corresponding
sequence of quantities of snow Q
1
, Q
2
, re-
lated in certain restricted ways. I mean thus to
recall our criteria of existence and perdurance
for snowballs.
So much for snowballs. The like is true of
chains and constituent links, boxes and con-
stituent sides, and a great variety of artifacts or
natural entities such as hills or trees; and the
same goes for persons and their constituent
bodies
Compare nowthe concept of a snow-
discall, which we may define as an entity
constituted by a piece of snow as matter and as
form any shape between being round and being
disc-shaped. At any given time, therefore, any
piece of snow that constitutes a snowball consti-
tutes a snowdiscall, but a piece of snow might at
a time constitute a snowdiscall without then
constituting a snowball.Whenever a piece of
snow constitutes a snowball, therefore, it con-
stitutes infinitely many entities all sharing its
place with it.
Under a broadly Aristotelian conception,
therefore, the barest flutter of the smallest leaf
creates and destroys infinitely many things, and
ordinary reality suffers a sort of explosion.
(pp. 132-33)
To elaborate on the last two paragraphs of the above,
since there is a continuum of shapes between round-
ness and disc-shape, we could draw a line anywhere
along that continuum and define another kind as a
piece of snow the shape of which falls somewhere
between roundness and that line. So just the example
of hunks of snow enables us to specify an infinite
number of kinds. And since hunks of snow are only
one of a potential infinity of masses of different kinds
of stuff, if we recognize all the snowdiscall sorts of
entities as individuals with their distinctive essen-
tial properties and conditions of identity, we are
faced with a very high order of infinity of individu-
als, and indeed, as the snowdiscall example shows,
an infinity of individuals all occupying the same
space at the same time.
I believe that it will seem intuitively plausible to
most of us that this infinity of snowdiscall-like pu-
tative individuals are not thrust on us by the nature
of things, regardless of our preferences, interests, or
choices. If, for whatever reasons, we choose to ac-
cept the existence of all these individuals, we will
not be flying in the face of any empirical data, though
the consciences of those committed to Ockhams
razor will undoubtedly feel a decided twinge. I think
this intuition can be strengthened by considering
some contrasting cases in which it does seem that
we encounter stubborn, unyielding facts that are
there to be reckoned with, whatever we will.
There are some kinds that are thrust upon us by
the fact that the members of such kinds share nu-
merous properties that are of importance for our
attempts to understand the world. They prove fruit-
ful for taxonomy, for prediction, and for the con-
struction of powerful explanatory theories that of-
ten provide drastic unification of what heretofore
seemed to be diverse phenomena. Salient examples
include the species of organisms, chemical elements,
chemical compounds, crystalline and other physi-
cal structures, fundamental physical particles, basic
types of forces, and so on. This is so oft told a tale
that it is unnecessary for me to belabor the point.
The idea that the form definitive of snowdiscalls has
an ontological claim to be there equal to that of
hydrogen, a cold virus, water, the strong nuclear
force, or protons, runs into the crushing objection
that snowdiscalls share no theoretically or practi-
cally interesting properties that indicate they are
pulling some independent weight in the economy
of the universe. Thus snowdiscalls and the infinitely
numerous other artificially marked out kinds can
be distinguished by a clear criterion from natural
kinds and their members, as being much less wor-
thy of being recognized as existing independently
of our interests and choices.
On which side of this divide should we place arti-
facts? They cant claim the theoretical importance
of organic species, living cells, chemical elements or
fundamental forces. And yet it does seem that desks
and chairs are out there confronting us in a way
that snowdiscalls are not. And I think that there is a
significant basis for this intuition. Artifacts do have
intrinsic, non-arbitrary principles of identity and
persistence, though it comes not from nature but
from art. I will bring this out by reference to a point
Sosa makes near the end of Sosa 1999. He says that
a hammer could also be used as a doorstop. The
remark was designed to provide another illustration
of the ontological explosion. Is there both a ham-
mer and a doorstop confronting us? But the example
leads me to reflect that the hammer has a kind of
foothold on reality lacking to the doorstop that it
constitutes. And that is due to the intentions of the
maker(s). The object was manufactured in order to
do such things as drive in nails. Like anything else,
including organisms, it can be used for various other
purposes. But the intention of the maker, the pur-
pose for which it was constructed, takes a certain
precedence. That provides the primary identity and
persistence conditions by contrast with which the
conditions stemming from other possible uses have
only a secondary status, if that. If we may think of
the essences of natural kinds as intended by a divine
maker, we have a close analogy between natural kinds
and human artifacts. There is still the difference that
the standard way of discovering the natural kind to
which natural substances belong does not normally
go through an investigation of the intentions of the
maker, whereas the opposite is true of artifacts. And
yet in both cases there are objective facts of the mat-
ter that provide a basis for placing an item in one
kind rather than others to which it nominally be-
longs, and giving that kind a special ontological sta-
tus.
Moreover Sosas example of the snowball reminds
me that there are artifact-like things to be found
among ways of dividing up stuff. It is much more
plausible to take snowballs as existing in a context-
free way than to accord that status to snowdiscalls
or any of the other indefinitely numerous putative
individuals that we could dream up in the same way.
Why is that? Presumably it is because there are stan-
dard procedures for shaping snow into balls for a
well defined purposeto throw them at people.
Though it is much simpler to design and construct
a snowball than a gun, it is not too much of a stretch
to think of them as endowed with an essence by
their creators in basically the same way, and hence
as having the same kind of title to context-indepen-
dent existence. The same cannot be said of
snowdiscalls and the like. This opens up the field to
an enormous variety of stuff shaped for a purpose
sugar cubes, medallions of veal, gold rings, etc. And
there are even pieces of stuff analogues to natural
kindssnow flakes and drops of water, for instance.
This discussion has thus far been restricted to the
question of whether certain putative kinds and the
individuals of those kinds exist independently of our
conceptual or theoretical choices. This is a some-
what different issue from the one that bulks largest
in Putnam and Goodman, viz., whether different
conceptual and theoretical choices engender equally
valid ways of describing and theoretically organiz-
ing a given subject matter. To see a clear opposition
here we can contrast the earlier examples of propo-
sitions and beliefs with natural kinds. For both sorts
of cases there are, in principle, alternative ways of
conceptualizing, of determining what the essential
nature is and what the principles of identity and
individuation are. We can define fish as animal
organism that lives in water, or as animal organism
with fins and gills, just as we can define proposi-
tion as a set of possible worlds, or as a complex
conceptual structure capable of a truth value. But
it seems that we have a much greater degree of free-
dom in the latter than in the former case. We can
achieve our cognitive goals at least approximately as
well with one conceptualization of propositions as
with another; whereas the same cannot be said for
fish and other organic species. A specification of the
essence of fishhood in terms of anatomical or physi-
ological structure, or perhaps in terms of DNA con-
stitution, is of much greater theoretical and practi-
cal significance than specifications in terms of more
superficial features, like living in water. There it
seems that a particular way of assigning an essence
to fish and other organisms is thrust upon us re-
gardless of our choices, in a way it is not with propo-
sitions, and even with beliefs.
Having shown my hand as to what I take to have
a status in reality independently of conceptual-theo-
retical choices to which there are acceptable alter-
natives, I can now proceed with further examples of
what I take to be on the conceptually dependent
side of the contrast.
6
I expect that my remaining examples of entities
and facts dependent for their existence and/or their
nature on conceptual-theoretical choices will be
more controversial than the ones already mentioned.
I will try to order them in accordance with degree
of controversiality, beginning with what I believe to
be the least controversial.
One of Putnams favorite examples concerns
mereological sums.
Suppose I take someone into a room with a
chair, a table on which there are a lamp and a
notebook and a ballpoint pen, and nothing else,
and I ask, How many objects are there in this
room? My companion answers, let us suppose,
Five. What are they? I ask. A chair, a table,
a lamp, a notebook, and a ballpoint pen. How
about you and me? Arent we in the room? My
companion might chuckle. I didnt think you
meant to count people as objects. Alright, then,
seven. How about the pages of the note-
book?
At this point my companion is likely to
become much less cooperative, to feel I have
pulled a fast one. But what is the answer to my
question? A logician is likely to say that there is
an ordinary (or perhaps a metaphysical) notion
of an object, according to which, perhaps, the
pages of the notebook are not objects as long
as they are still attached, and according to which
my nose is not an object, only a part of an object
as long as it is still attachedand that there is a
logical notion of an object or entity according
to which anything we can take as a value of a
variable of quantificationis a object; and
that all the parts of a person or a notebook are
objects in this logical sense.
What about the group consisting of my
nose and the lamp? Is that an object at all? Is
there no such object? (Putnam 1989, 110-111)
Lets focus on this last example, which involves
mereological sums. According to mereology, for
any entities, x, y, , there is a entity of which they
are parts. On this approach, the 14th page of my
copy of The Possessed, a crumb beneath the break-
fast table in my house, the spruce tree in my front
yard, and the Taj Mahal make up a composite en-
tity with these as its sole parts. Clearly, on this ap-
proach there is a high order of infinity of such enti-
ties. For not only does any collection of individuals
constitute a complex entity. Any number of such
complex entities constitute a higher order complex
entity. Moreover, the components of these mereo-
logical sums need not be restricted to individuals,
if, indeed, there are entities other than individuals
properties, sets, possible worlds, etc.
So says the mereologist. Should we agree with him?
Is there any unique fact of the matter as to whether
we should? Is there an objective fact of the matter as
to whether there are all these mereological sums,
independently of what we choose to recognize? Or
do we have a free choice in the matter? I cant see
that our choices are limited here by facts that ob-
tain independently of those choices. Each of us is
free to treat any group of entities as an entity, or
refrain from doing so. Here, so far as I can see, is a
prime candidate for facts that obtain only relative
to a certain theoretical choice, to which there are
equally viable alternatives.
Another issue, which, so to say, goes in the oppo-
site direction from the one about mereology, has to
do with whether we should recognize the hunk of
stuff(s) of which something is composed as a dis-
tinct individual from the one it composes, taking
up just the same space for as long as the individual
is so composed. This problem can be broached for
organisms and other individuals that are composed
of a complex organization of stuffs. But in the in-
terest of simplicity discussion is usually focused on
more homogeneous stuffs (at least more homoge-
neous at a macroscopic level) like the marble or
bronze that is fashioned into a statue. Should we
count the marble of which Michaelangelos David
is composed as an individual in its own right, dis-
tinct from the statue so composed, with its own es-
sential properties, conditions of persistence, and so
on? Or should we refrain from doing so, taking the
statue as the one and only individual in that loca-
tion, one that, so to say, swallows up the stuff of
which it is composed as one of its constituent as-
pects or features?
This too strikes me as a matter about which we
have a conceptual-theoretical choice. I cannot see
any facts that we are constrained to recognize, what-
ever our preferences, that dictate one or another
answer to this question. If we wish to count the con-
stituent marble as a distinct individual, we can tell a
completely coherent story in those terms. And an
equally coherent story will result from a decision to
limit the occupants of that location to the statue,
taking that to include its stuff as one part of its in-
dividual being. I suggest this too as a plausible case
of something that fits the AR picture of an issue
that can receive equally viable resolutions in differ-
ent conceptual-theoretical schemes.
These last two issues, like Sosas problem about
the snowdiscalls, concerns what individuals or ob-
jects to recognize. Now lets consider a plausible can-
didate for different ways of conceptually organizing
a domain of reality, which are such that there is no
unique choice between them that is determined by
the way things are apart from our choices or prefer-
ences. Metaphysics is rife with prima facie examples
of such. Here the degree of controversiality goes up
a notch. Whatever ones I pick, I will expose myself
to attack from legions of metaphysicians who are
convinced that they have the independent objective
truth about such matters. But nothing ventured,
nothing gained. I will forge ahead and present what
seems to me prima facie cases of metaphysical
construals about which we have free choice.
One currently prominent opposition in metaphys-
ics concerns the question of whether we should think
of enduring objects as having temporal parts as well
as (for those that are physical) spatial parts. We or-
dinarily think of enduring physical things as being
all there, completely present, at each moment of
its existence. When I encounter my computer each
morning it is the entire object I encounter, not some
(temporal) part of it. If, on the other hand I wipe
off its screen, I am wiping only one part of it, not
the entire object. The sides, the back, the inner hard-
ware is left untouched. If we were to think of a com-
puter as having temporal parts, then I would have
to think of my looking at a different part each time
I look at it, rather than, as we ordinarily suppose,
looking at the same entire computer each time.
Is there a straightforward factual issue between
those who assert and those who deny that physical
objects have temporal parts? Are there objective facts
that determine that one is correct and the other in-
correct? Where would we find such facts? No doubt,
we dont ordinarily think of enduring objects as hav-
ing temporal parts, but is there anything in inde-
pendent reality that constrains us to think that way,
or do we have a choice in the matter? Are we free to
countenance temporal parts if we choose to do
so? In the absence of some conclusive reason for
thinking that there are or are not temporal parts of
enduring objects, it seems very plausible (at least to
me) to suppose that these are different ways of con-
struing the same familiar facts. It would seem that
everything the commonsense advocate wishes to
recognize (apart from the alleged matter under dis-
pute) can equally well be recognized by the tempo-
ral parts advocate. Where the latter will say that I
am now using a 5:00-5:25 PM, 8/18/2000 part of
my computer, the commonsense opponent will say
that I am using my computer, period, at some time
between 5:00 and 5:25 on that day. As far as any-
thing that is obviously thrust upon us by things in
themselves, they are in agreement. It is only that
they wish to conceptually structure this in different
ways.
To take a more global, but allied, metaphysical
issue, consider the opposition between a familiar
common-sense substance metaphysics of the physi-
cal environment and a process metaphysics. Accord-
ing to the former the physical world consists of vari-
ous kinds of relatively enduring substances that
remain identical through change. When I look at
my bedside table on awakening each morning It is
just the same individual that I see each time. Now
contrast this with a process metaphysics such as that
propounded in Whitehead 1927. On this metaphys-
ics the fundamental units of reality are actual occa-
sions, momentary happenings each of which occu-
pies some minimal duration, say 1/20th of a second,
and some very small spatial extent. What in the more
familiar substance metaphysics is construed as a per-
sisting substance like a bedside table is thought by
Whitehead to be a complex society of actual occa-
sions. There is no single individual that remains the
same through what we think of as the life span of
the spruce tree. The bedside table has temporal
parts just as a football game does, and it is such tem-
poral parts that are the fundamental constituents of
reality. From this standpoint it is an illusion to sup-
pose that there is an individual that retains its self
identity through the life span of what we call a be-
side table. What we have here is a succession of events
(or rather a number of such successions) each of
which exists but for a moment.
I had best say something about the relation be-
tween this issue and the previous one about tempo-
ral parts. The previous issue was framed within a
substance metaphysics. It was the question of
whether enduring substances have temporal parts
as well as spatial parts. To be sure, substance meta-
physics has without exception, at least until recently,
been formulated in a way that rules out temporal
parts of substances. But if what it takes, minimally,
for an individual to be a substance (in addition to
being a bearer of properties and not itself a prop-
erty) is that it can remain the same individual
through change, then an individual can be a sub-
stance and also have temporal parts. Just my feet are
on the same bed as my head, though on a different
spatial part thereof, so I can see the same bedside
table this morning as I did yesterday morning, but
a different temporal part thereof, if it does have tem-
poral parts. In that case one and the same bedside
table can be there every day of its existence, though,
on the temporal parts alternative, it is not wholly
there every day, as it is ordinarily taken to be on the
usual substance metaphysics. But a process meta-
physics like Whiteheads represents a more radical
departure from the standard substance metaphysics
on which substances lack temporal parts. For the
basic individuals of the former not only have tem-
poral parts, but there is no sense in which basic in-
dividuals retain their identity through change. This,
of course, as Whitehead recognizes, requires a view
of process as consisting of discrete temporal drops,
each of which occupies a minimal duration without
undergoing change during that duration. Each ac-
tual occasion happens all at once. Of course,
Whiteheads metaphysics is not the only alternative
for a process metaphysics. Another would be a view
of process as a continuous becoming which is not
in any way composed of distinguishable individu-
als. But on either version there is nothing that counts
as an individual retaining its identity through
change.
I make bold to suggest that here too we have an
issue that is, prima facie, grist for the AR advocates
mill. It would seem that reality can equally well
(though not equally familiarly or comfortably or sim-
ply) be construed in either of these ways. Of course,
both substance metaphysicians from Aristotle on,
and process metaphysicians from Heraclitus on,
present arguments that are designed to show that
their chosen metaphysic is the unique truth about
the physical world, and that their opponents are sim-
ply mistaken as to what reality is like. But these
oppositions have persisted for at least 2500 years in
Western philosophy, and there are no signs that a
general consensus is on the horizon. Moreover, it is
not that we are faced with only two contenders. Both
camps are split into many competing factions. I need
only mention the names of Descartes, Spinoza,
Leibniz, Locke, and Kant, to remind us that Aristotle
does not control all of the substance territory. And
Whiteheads metaphysics is only one of the options
on the process side. For those of us who lack a firm
commitment to one of these contending orienta-
tions, it seems not implausible to suppose that a
choice between them is radically underdetermined
by such considerations as can be brought forward.
It seems that the physical reality we are dealing with
is more or less equally susceptible of a number of
different ways of conceptually and theoretically
structuring it.
12
If so, this is at least a prima facie
case of facts that are what they are only relative to a
certain mode of conceptualizing and theorizing to
which there are equally viable alternatives.
I certainly do not expect universal agreement on
my judgment that a unique choice between meta-
physical positions on this issue is not determined
by the objective facts. Those who are strongly com-
mitted to a traditional metaphysical project will, no
doubt, insist that there are unique facts of the mat-
ter as to which of the competing positions have it
right (if, indeed, any of them do), whether we can
definitively show this to be the case or not. To go
properly into this issue I would have to undertake a
thorough discussion of the epistemology and meth-
odology of metaphysics. And there is no room for
that in this essay. I only have space to make one
comment. The usual defense of metaphysical posi-
tions like the above consists in showing that the rel-
evant subject matter can be construed in the favored
way, and that alternative positions face certain prob-
lems. But as for the first point, it turns out that the
subject matter can also be construed in rival ways.
And as to the second point, I dont know of any
metaphysical position that does not face serious
problems.
Before leaving this topic, I must address the fol-
lowing worry. Earlier I presented familiar macro-
scopic itemsorganisms, artifacts, hunks of stuff
as enjoying an objective reality independent of
conceptual choices. But in doing so was I not em-
ploying a substance rather than a process ontology?
If dogs and sofas, as ordinarily conceived, exist and
are what they are regardless of our conceptual choices
and preferences, doesnt that imply that a substance
ontology of the physical world has the same status?
And how can that be squared with the above sug-
gestion that a substance ontology holds only rela-
tive to the choice of one way of construing that sub-
ject matter, as against equally viable alternative ways?
To solve this puzzle I must distinguish between
different aspects of our ways of conceptualizing what
we are talking about. The crucial distinction I will
make is between the ontological aspect and what I
will call the commonsense or detailed factual aspect.
The basic claim will be that although we cant avoid
using concepts belonging to one of a set of compet-
ing metaphysical views in reporting facts, we can, if
we choose, restrict what we are claiming to the lat-
ter aspect. That makes it possible for us to pick out
a fact in a way that is neutral between opposed meta-
physical construals and thus specify the subject
matter about which they are proffering rival
construals.
Go back to my bedside table. In using that ex-
pression I am, no doubt, operating within a sub-
stance metaphysics construal, whether I realize it or
not. That is inevitable just because our language is
structured in terms of such a metaphysics. It is not
as if we can take what I am calling the detailed
factual aspect out by itself and speak in terms that
are restricted to that, as I can, to a considerable ex-
tent, eschew figures of speech and speak plainly and
literally. Even if I were able to avoid substance pre-
suppositions by availing myself of a language con-
structed on process lines (bedside table stages, la
Quine), I would still be utilizing one of the rival
metaphysics rather than others. What I can do is to
disavow the metaphysical implications of my ter-
minology, thereby leaving the other aspect as all I
am claiming in my report. Hence I can say that there
are both substantive and process ways of conceptu-
alizing bedside tables without having prejudiced the
issue in favor of the former by the way in which I
stated the issue. If we consider the full content of a
report like My bedside table has a clock on it, that
includes a commitment to a metaphysics that di-
vides the world up into enduring substances like
tables and clocks and works with a scheme of prop-
erties and activities exhibitable by such substances.
If we wanted to endorse a process metaphysics like
Whitehead, we would not consider this a felicitous
way to talk about the subject matter. But, of course,
even if this metaphysical commitment is part of the
content, it is by no means the whole. It is by no
means any part of a substance metaphysics that there
is a table beside my bed or that my bedside table has
a clock on it. It is not as if I could bring these things
about by adopting a substance metaphysics rather
than by making purchases at a furniture store!
I assume that the above does something by way
of explaining my talk of a metaphysical and a con-
crete aspect of a statement or fact. But since I admit
that we cannot make any statement that exhibits
one of the aspects without its being entangled with
the other, one may feel that this talk of aspects is
still too nebulous, to lacking in determinateness to
provide a sufficient basis for my claim to be able to
specify a subject matter in ontologically neutral
terms. What else can I do here?
I think that the most useful tack is to bring in
patterns of contrast, a technique familiar from lin-
guistics and other sources. The syntactical category
of a word can be specified in terms of what other
words are or are not substitutable for that word, salva
grammaticality. Here too we cannot exhibit syntac-
tic category by finding a word that only has that
feature and no phonological constitution or mean-
ing. But the substitutability test is effective in pin-
ning down the syntactic category. In an analogous
way we can get at the concrete, non-conceptual-
scheme-relative aspect of the fact that there is a clock
on my bedside table by considering the way this fact
contrasts with the (possible) facts that this table is
black, that it has four legs, that it contains a drawer,
and so on. That is, we stay within the same meta-
physical aspect and display the different concrete,
specific contents that facts concerning my bedside
table (or concerning anything else for that matter)
have within that metaphysics. The ways in which
the original fact differs from other facts within the
same metaphysical scheme constitutes the concrete,
non-metaphysical aspect of its content. To exhibit
the metaphysical aspect we display contrasts between
the ways in which the same concrete state of affairs
is construed in different metaphysical schemes.
Imagine yourself in the original situation and using
an event scheme or a scattered particular scheme to
report what is reported in the substantival scheme
by saying, There is a clock on my bedside table.
This set of contrasts exhibits the metaphysical as-
pect of the original fact.
Assuming that this does the job, I have put flesh
on the suggestion that one can make assertions, us-
ing terminology that carries with it an involvement
in one out of several rival metaphysical schemes,
without thereby committing oneself to favoring that
metaphysical scheme over its rivals. And if so, I have
given reason to think that one can use substantival
language to specify the facts that are construed dif-
ferently in substance and process ontologies with-
out begging the question in advance in favor of the
substance alternative.
7
Lest the reader be too easily convinced that I have
gone overboard in recognizing conceptual-scheme
relative facts, let me present another sort of case that
has been treated in this way, but which I prefer to
handle differently. This is the familiar contrast be-
tween the commonsense and scientific pictures
of the physical world. The former consists of rela-
tively enduring objects scattered around in space,
each of which has a certain integrity, properties that
are essential for its self-identity, more or less defi-
nite boundaries, and so on. In the latter picture the
familiar chairs, tables, rocks, mountains, even dogs
and cats have disappeared as distinct individuals.
Instead, in an older version we have elementary
physical particles with a lot of empty space in be-
tween, or, in a more recent version, energy quanta
or even weirder items. The differences between dif-
ferent things that bulk so large in the structuring
of the physical world in the former picture are not
stressed in the latter. From the scientific perspec-
tive it is just a matter of our practical interests that
leads us to make a sharp distinction between, e.g., a
hammer or a dog or a pebble and its immediate en-
vironment. The scientific picture is much more con-
tinuous than the commonsense construal. That is
not to say that the former recognizes no distinctions
between one portion of space and another. But they
all have the same basic constituents, the differences
lying in the ways these are organized and in the dy-
namics of their behavior.
In the preceding paragraph I have deliberately
been representing the contrast in such a way as to
make it a plausible candidate for conceptually rela-
tive existence. The pictures are incompatible if each
is taken as an account of independent reality. Hence
we can accommodate both of them only if each is
accepted as relative to one among a plurality of vi-
able theoretical choices. But a closer look will reveal
other possibilities for reconciliation. The first step
would be to point out that differences in structur-
ing between the perspectives is due to the fact that
the one is dealing with complex totalities that are
analyzed into their fine grained constituents in the
other. After all, it is not a deep insight that complex
things have parts, and that they can be viewed ei-
ther as unanalyzed wholes or, if we have the capac-
ity to delve sufficiently into their fine structure, as
organized systems of ultimate constituents. The sci-
entist need not deny the real (nonrelative) existence
of the dog when he reveals the micro structure
anatomical, physiological, chemical, and physical
of this complexly organized beast.
Though this is the central point, it does not dissi-
pate all the worries. To take a frequently noted one,
the objects that appear as solid in the commonsense
perspective are revealed in the scientific perspective
as mostly empty space with minute particles mov-
ing about in it. How can these judgments be recon-
ciled as both giving us an absolute, nonrelative ac-
count of the matter. The surface of my desk certainly
appears to ordinary observation to be solid matter
all the way through. Chopping it up will uncover
no hollow portions.
Well, it depends on how the term solid is con-
strued whether the judgments can be reconciled on
an absolute construal. If x is (completely) solid
entails x contains no empty space, then we can ac-
cept both pictures only at the cost of relativization.
And, no doubt, before the development of modern
physics, that was the way in which complete solid-
ity was understood. But now that the rudiments of
elementary particle physics is common knowledge,
most of us are happy with a more modest under-
standing of solid. To say that the desk top is solid
is to say that ordinary observation and manipula-
tion reveals no empty portions. That is quite com-
patible with such portions being revealed by more
minute observation and theoretical construction.
After all, we are familiar with the fact that the use of
even an ordinary microscope on organic tissue re-
veals a lot of things that are hidden from the naked
eye. So only a minor adjustment in semantics is re-
quired to maintain the absolute, nonrelative, accep-
tance of both pictures as far as this problem is con-
cerned.
The point about solidity is a particular example
of a general phenomenon, which we might term the
subjectivization of what were regarded as physical
properties under the impact of modern science. An-
other, more widely discussed example concerns color
and other secondary properties. On a naive
construal the colors that physical objects seem to
present to visual perception are intrinsic properties
of those objects, with all their qualitative distinc-
tiveness. But no such properties appear in the
physicists description of the world. Moreover, even
without sophisticated developments of physics, it is
easily shown that apparent colors of objects vary with
differences in factors other than the putative bearer
of those colorsthe light, distance and angle of ob-
servation, background contrasts, condition of the
observer, and so on. Therefore colors, as properties
of physical objects, undergo a reconstrual analogous
to that of solidity. They become relativized to con-
ditions of observation. To say that the cloth is red
(rather than looks red to me now) is to say some-
thing about how it would look to a normal observer
under certain specifiable conditions of observation.
Thus by a combination of reconstrual of prop-
erty terms and a recognition of the difference be-
tween what appears to macroscopic and to micro-
scopic observation, we can reconcile the common-
sense and scientific pictures without taking each of
them to be true only relative to one of a number of
equally acceptable conceptual-theoretical schemes.
8
To sum up, I take it that I have given reason to
hold both that there are indefinitely many objects
that exist and facts that obtain absolutely, not rela-
tive to some conceptual-theoretical scheme to which
there are equally viable alternatives, and that there
are also indefinitely many objects that exist and facts
that obtain only relative to a conceptual-theoretical
scheme to which there are equally viable alterna-
tives. I would add that the absolute existents and
facts are, if not more numerous, at least of a much
greater variety and of much greater importance than
those that enjoy that status only relative to a dis-
pensable scheme. Thus I have given reason to adopt
a sensible realism, one that recognizes most of the
entities and facts with which we have cognitive and
practical dealings and which are of interest and im-
portance to us to exist independently of any par-
ticular conceptual-theoretical scheme, while at the
same time recognizing that this relative status does
attach to some of the objects and facts we, if we so
choose, recognize as existing or holding. This via
media gives something to both the realist and the
antirealist, though, it must be confessed, much more
than half the loaf to the former.
William P. Alston
Syracuse University
Notes
1. This is far from an exhaustive catalogue of the views
labeled realism. For example there are various real-
isms in the philosophy of perception: direct realism,
critical realism, etc.
2. Putnam 1981, p. 49.
3. This does not imply that all human conceptualization
can be achieved without the use of language.
4. Note the restriction to our choices. A view according
to which reality depends on the conceptual or theoreti-
cal choices of some other cognitive subject(s), such as
God, would be a wholly different matter. See Plantinga
1982.
5. See, e.g., Plantinga 1982, Olson 1997, pp. 159-162,
Cortens 2000, Ch. 3.
6. For the sake of concision, I will sometimes refer only
to conceptualization where the conjunction of this
with theorizing is tacitly understood.
7. For a treatment of religion in these terms see Alston
1967.
8. To be sure, this view of the matter presupposes a
particular position on a controversial issue, viz., whether
reality itself is perfectly precise, any vagueness or other
indeterminacy attaching solely to our attempts to
conceptualize and describe it. I cannot enter into this
here except to say that the side of the conflict just
expressed seems to me to be incomparably the superior
position.
9. For a more extended treatment of what this kind of
realism need not be committed to, see Alston What
Metaphysical Realism Is Not (unpublished).
10. This is reflected in the Kantian and Hegelian utter-
ances of Putnam. For example. If one must use
metaphorical language, then let the metaphor be this:
the mind and the world jointly make up the mind and
the world (Or, to make the metaphor even more
Hegelian, the Universe makes up the Universewith
mindscollectivelyplaying a special role in the mak-
ing up). Putnam 1981, xi.
11. It is not necessary for this argument to take antireal-
ism to be so extreme as to hold that the entities and facts
in question are totally different relative to different
schemes. Some significant differences will give the
view a distinctively antirealist character.
12. No doubt, each of the rival metaphysical positions is
faced with difficult problems in working out its scheme
in a wholly satisfactory way. But it is not as if one
unique position is markedly superior to all the others in
this respect.
Bibliography
Alston, William P. 1967. Religion, in Encyclopedia of
Philosophy, ed., Paul Edwards. New York: Macmillan
and Free Press.
Alston, William P. 1993. Epistemic Desiderata, Philos.
Phen. Res., 53, no. 3, pp. 527-551.
Alston, William P. 1996. A Realist Conception of Truth.
Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Alston, William P. Forthcoming. Sosa on Realism, in
a volume on Sosas work in Blackwells series, Philoso-
phers and Their Critics, to be edited by John Greco.
Alston, William P. Unpublished. What Metaphysical
Realism Is Not.
Cortens, Andrew J. 2000. Global Anti-Realism. Boulder,
Colorado: Westview Press.
Devitt, Michael 1984. Realism and Truth. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press.
Olson, Eric T. 1997. The Human Animal. New York:
Oxford University Press.
Plantinga, Alvin 1982. How to Be an Anti-Realist.
Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical
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Putnam, Hilary 1981. Reason, Truth, and History. Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press.
Putnam, Hilary 1989. Representation and Reality. Cam-
bridge, MA: MIT Press.
Sosa, Ernest 1999. Existential Relativity. Midwest Studies
in Philosophy, 23, pp. 132-143.
Whitehead, Alfred North. 1929. Process and Reality. New
York: Macmillan.
The Aquinas Lectures
Published by the Marquette University Press
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All volumes available as ebooks. See web page:
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1. St. Thomas and the Life of Learning. John F. McCormick, S.J.
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42. The Catholic University and the Faith. Francis C. Wade, S.J.
(1978) ISBN 0-87462-143-7
43. St. Thomas and Historicity. Armand J. Maurer, C.S.B.
(1979) ISBN 0-87462-144-5
44. Does God Have a Nature? Alvin Plantinga (1980)
ISBN 0-87462-145-3
45. Rhyme and Reason: St. Thomas and Modes of Discourse.
Ralph Mcinerny (1981) ISBN 0-87462-148-8
46. The Gift: Creation. Kenneth L. Schmitz (1982)
ISBN 0-87462-149-6
47. How Philosophy Begins. Beatrice H. Zedler (1983)
ISBN 0-87462-151-8
48. The Reality of the Historical Past. Paul Ricoeur (1984)
ISBN 0-87462-152-6
49. Human Ends and Human Actions: An Exploration in St.
Thomas Treatment. Alan Donagan (1985) ISBN 0-87462-
153-4
50. Imagination and Metaphysics in St. Augustine. Robert
OConnell, S.J. (1986) ISBN 0-87462-227-1
51. Expectations of Immortality in Late Antiquity. Hilary A
Armstrong (1987) ISBN 0-87462-154-2
52. The Self. Anthony Kenny (1988) ISBN 0-87462-155-0
53. The Nature of Philosophical Inquiry.Quentin Lauer, S.J.
(1989) ISBN 0-87562-156-9
54. First Principles, Final Ends and Contemporary Philosophical
Issues. Alasdair MacIntyre (1990) ISBN 0-87462-157-7
55. Descartes among the Scholastics. Marjorie Greene (1991)
ISBN 0-87462-158-5
56. The Inference That Makes Science.Ernan McMullin (1992)
ISBN 0-87462-159-3
57. Person and Being. W. Norris Clarke, S.J. (1993)
ISBN 0-87462-160-7
58. Metaphysics and Culture. Louis Dupr (1994) ISBN 0-
87462-161-5
59. Medival Reactions to the Encounters between Faith and
Reason. John F. Wippel (1995) ISBN 0-87462-162-3
60. Paradoxes of Time in Saint Augustine. Roland J. Teske, S.J.
(1996) ISBN 0-87462-163-1
61. Simplicity As Evidence of Truth. Richard Swinburne (1997)
ISBN 0-87462-164-X
62. Science, Religion and Authority: Lessons from the Galileo
Affair. Richard J. Blackwell. (1998) ISBN 0-87462-165-8
63. What Sort of Human Nature? Medieval Philosophy and the
Systematics of Christology. Marilyn McCord Adams. (1999)
ISBN 0-87462-166-6
64. On Inoculating Moral Philosophy against God. John M. Rist.
(2000) ISBN 0-87462-167-X.
65. A Sensible Metaphysical Realism. William P. Alston (2001)
ISBN 0-87462-168-2.
About the Aquinas Lecture Series
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