"A Speculative Rationalist Approach to the Problem of Realism and

Relativism in Pluralist Ontologies"

Leon Niemoczynski
IMMACULATA UNIVERSITY
2014

"A Speculative Rationalist Approach to the Problem of Realism and

Relativism in Pluralist Ontologies"

Pluralism concedes that diverse positions is a fact of life. The most

serious indictment of pluralism is relativism, from the realists
perspective. As historically minded philosophers know, realism and
relativism have an outstanding history and have been opposed to each
other.

It is my view that each object of the universe lays an implicit claim to

the validity of its own assertion to life. That assertion is
countermanded, of course, by any and all rivals.

On this account, however, the position of pluralism seems destroyed

by its own proliferation of composing (and composed) perspectives,
assertions that are diverse in their own claims to, but also
constructions of, truth. In many ways, Nietzsche foreshadows such a
move.

What are the options for the pluralist here? One could, of course, deny
pluralism outright. One could, on the other hand, just be a pluralist,
yet dogmatically undermine their own position, as many pluralist
philosophers who orient their perspective to either material or ideal
objects (exclusively) do, thus stating that only one genuine
philosophical position exists. This defeats the purpose in a classical
reductive monism.

I believe that an orientational realist can squarely resolve the issue

by invoking a claim to rational knowledge concerning the reality of
whatever is in whatever way it is. In the words of Kant,

One must ask whether there can really be more than one
philosophyObjectively, inasmuch as there can be only one human
reason, so likewise there cannot be many philosophies; that is, only
one true system of philosophy based on principles is possible

While there are many orientations, perspectives, and even "claims" to

reality, these may be rationally comprehended and systematized and
then opened to continued and further imaginative speculative inquiry.
Such is the essence of metaphysics.

Because reason is by its very nature universal, the claims of rational

philosophy, too, must be universal and one. Or, as Kant put it, "One
reason, one philosophy." There must be some logical, mathematical,
and rational structure available to all if the very nature of any
perspective, pace Kant, adheres to universalizable principles, at least
generally or in form. Forms of life that lay claim to diverse positions
and which operate according to intelligible form, may, too, lay claim to
rational philosophizing.

When it comes to rational knowledge solving the problem of competing

and plural claims to a reality, an orientational "realism can be
understood in two distinct senses. First, there is a sense in which there
is a real world and knowledge about it. Second, and less traditionally,
there is a sense in which there is no "world" but only "realities"
composed. Knowledge, then, is partitioned among those realities
either diversely or commonly.

The corollary to this latter type of realism is that all things among
these realities (i.e. "orientations" or "perspectives" or "compositions")
are equally real in that they are rather than are not. This was the
idea sharpened by the (neglected) American philosopher Justus
Buchler whose principle of ontological parity states that no one thing
is any more or less real than any other, including orientations of
knowledge. An Amazonian tribes' belief system in the gods is no more
or less "real" than an American banking systems' belief in capitalist
economics. Reality, in this way is ontologically flat, but this does not
mean necessarily that reality is epistemologically relative. There are
forms of generality and contemporaneity among these belief systems.

Let us now admit four theses concerning ontological pluralism and a

corresponding realism about the world; theses both metaphysical and
epistemological.

1. Varying orientational perspectives can simultaneously exist within,

and lay claim to, the same common fact of reality.
2. There may be a unifying body of rational/logical/mathematical
philosophy based upon intelligible form (maximally) or aesthetic affect
(minimally) which is true of, or that can apply within, the same fact of
reality.
3. Rational/logical/mathematical philosophy may consist of a procedure
that is isomorphic to inferences drawn within the one fact of reality.
4. Rational procedure may warrant a consensus among diverse forms
of life within a community of inquiry.
5. While there is no "whole" per se, consensus within the same fact of
reality mandates that rational procedure operate according to a form of
intelligibility that is common to the greatest number of perspectives,
orientations, or compositions within that reality.

There are two positions that deny the above four theses: skepticism
(no rational knowledge is possible), and relativism (there may be some
positions so diverse that rationality elides such and such a perspective
entirely). More broadly put, skepticism and relativism both deny that
there is any common fact of reality that is able to constrain
perspectives. Let us then answer to this objection.

First, various perspectives compose the world but are not "the world"
itself. While it is true that there is no world per se, it is not true that
reality is "simply" diverse perspectives and their claims. One must ask
in light of this: How is error at all possible if the pluralist (in this sense
also a relativist) states that reality is simply the sum of perspectives?
Error in this view would be the error of relativism, in that we could
only know plural perspectives, but not much more about the facts of
perspectives. Skepticism, likewise, cannot stand on its own feet. It
may state that we can never know x, but it does so as a statement that
I ought to know non-skeptically.

Second, we must be careful here to state that relativism is not the

same as relationalism. Interestingly, the pluralists who are relativists
are also particularists and thus nominalists. It is virtually impossible
for a nominalist to be a realist. Many contemporary pluralists focus so
much on the unknowability of particulars that the common relations
among them plummet before the rhetorical flourish and logic of
affect concerning their description. One is never taken to an
adequate level of realism within such an ontology. Being speculative in
the tradition of imaginative and open inquiry, one must not give into
the pull of an authoritarian move such as this, for on their account
One must remain at the level of the particular for, there is nothing but
particulars. The pluralist who hides among particulars still must
develop a cogent case for their position as to why, pluralistically, other
positions must accept their position, or why other positions are less
true than theirs, or are less worthy than their own.

Given this demand for rational defense, the relativist-skeptical pluralist

then decides to refuse to philosophize. However, these philosophers
overlook the fact that the deepest recesses of the world are itself
philosophical. We cannot rely on rhetoric or affect, propaganda or the
expression of the aesthetic without accounting for the world's
coherence and intelligibility, this in order to build a view that is
coherent. To be sure, the option to abandon philosophy is always there,
but we must not be eager to avoid coherence at the expense of
providing rhetorically fashioned opinion or mere gesture when it comes
to the most pressing concerns of our lives and how we take the world
to be.

On my view, rational inquiry is thus an integral component in

philosophizing. The unavoidable piece of philosophy here, I think, is
not just that we are playing a game for its own sake (say, for example,
in speaking of things that we just can't know about rendering all
absolutely "alien,") but, rather, we must orient our thought in such a
way that it clarifies what the world is as much as possible what the
world is and is beyond those innumerable sums of plurals that
compose it. Let us then move to an orientational ontological view of
metaphysical truth that moves from things to the "rational
knowledge of things, a knowledge that supersedes particularity.

Regarding "knowledge," the philosophical truth is that reality, itself

exhibiting the possibility knowledge, equips us with a way to determine
philosophical truth concerning knowledge despite competing claims to
it. That equipment is rationality, or the use of reason.

To conclude, speculative philosophy, if taking a pluralist position, must

paradoxically take the responsibility of making a willful choice to
abandon the "many" particulars as its sole focus of orientation. A truly
pluralist ontology must make the move to the broader orientation of
contemporaneity and reality-commonness to secure its own plural
foundations, accounting for the relations of the world and the possible
structures of rational knowledge to be had among the particulars.
These forms of rational knowledge are available to the philosopher.
Once we move from things to the interactions of things, their relations,
their commonness, the public expression of their inner lives, we begin
to move toward knowledge that is systematic and truly realist in
nature.

I say that this is not a transcendental move geared toward

epistemology as first philosophy. Maintaining Buchlers principle of
ontological parity, it is a lateral move. Any metaphysical philosophy
must nevertheless pursue the truth of what is real, even if that truth
is the temporary validity of its own speculative metaphysical darings.
We cannot without nerve say that we can only dwell among the real
and know nothing of it. While error is possible, we still must seek truth.
Or, as C.S. Peirce once said, "Do not block the way of inquiry!"