A Sensible Metaphysical Realism

by William P. Alston

A Sensible Metaphysical Realism

Genres: Philosophy

Paperback

First published June 20, 2002

About the author

William Payne Alston (November 29, 1921 – September 13, 2009) was an American philosopher. He made influential contributions to the philosophy of language, epistemology, and Christian philosophy. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago and taught at the University of Michigan, Rutgers University, University of Illinois, and Syracuse University.

Reviews

[Raymond Lam · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a copy of the Aquinas lecture in 2001. It is another fine piece of philosophical work expected from Alston. In this work, Alston offers a realism of how to think about the external world: "that vast stretches of reality are what they are absolutely, not in any way relative to certain conceptual-theoretical choices that have equally viable alternatives."  This realism is intended to defeat the kind of anti-realism that suggests everything exists is relative to alternative conceptual-theoretical schemes.

In typical Alston manner, he clearly sets up the problem by providing helpful definitions and distinctions. Hence, he clarifies that he is not talking about  entities that are known to be in and of themselves conceptual-theoretical entities, such as various measurement systems to quantify things , possible worlds as propositions, abstract objects, linguistic entities or, institutional entities. What is most interesting in Alston's realism is that his realism is a 'negative project'by "whittling away at the mass  of prima facie independent objects, ascribing independence to what remains." (P.34). He does not deny that one can talk about things in the world at various levels, such as common sense level or scientific levels; but there are things of independent existence in the outside world about which we can talk about. He also finds it helpful to have taxonomies to classify things based on different level of scientific theories such as species of organisms, chemical elements and compounds, crystallines, etc.  That seems obvious. One probably does not want to view the world down to the most fundamental particles in quarks and bosons. As long as you are human, you  want to talk about things such that cats, chairs, and buildings exist. However, scientific classification of things can be modified based on facts revealed. If one day we found some wild cat having the same DNA as domestic cats, it would affect biologists how to classify that species of wild cats as well as domestic cats. So Alston's realism does tolerate different conceptual schemes.

[John Reis · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was Alston’s Aquinas Lecture in 2001. It is a short work. He spends a great deal of time qualifying his position before he gets around to stating it. As he sees it, a sensible realism allows that most things are not theory laden, but he is willing to allow that some things are.