From Reality To Grammar:the Switch Of Horizons In Contemporary Realism

This dissertation tries to disclose a new approach emerging from the discussions of contemporary realism. The traditional realistic picture understands reality as a certain entity which stands independent of our ordinary language and life; it insists that only through a "metaphysical reality", can those basic realistic concepts like reference, truth, perception and causation be properly understood. Hence one of the important theories of traditional picture is so called "metaphysical realism", which claims that an external world determines the references of our words, the world reveals itself as one fixed totality consisting of different kinds of objects and properties, and the meanings of words are just the objects or properties referred by them. Accordingly, metaphysical realism claims that the truths of words originate in the correspondence between our sentences and reality, the external world determines all the propositions to be true or false, and there’s just one true description of the world. In the empirical aspect, this realism also holds that the final sources of our perception and experience are the objects within the world which are independent of our mind. Metaphysical realism presupposes a mysterious and "non-epistemic" ability in its picture of the relation between words and world, thinks that a non-linguistic reality can determine our linguistic facts, and people seem like having the ability to grasp the non-epistemic things in cognition. In the light of the doubt about that non-epistemic ability, a trend within scientific realism seeks to cash out the relation between language and world in causality. The early theories of Putnam are typical in this trend. It thinks that the causal force issued from the world can determine the references of our words outside our understanding of them, whether we know it or not. Similar points occur in the theories about truth and perception, which claim that causal forces determine our language and the truths of sentences, and the final sources of perception are the nervous stimuli caused by world. However, this modification cannot avoid the essential problems of metaphysical realism. The causal forces outside our cognition cannot help that independent reality get rid of its mystic and non-epistemic features. More critically, we cannot even entertain an adequate understanding of causality from this point of view. We’re hence aware that the metaphysical relations cannot tell us to use which kind of discourses, cannot determine the truths of our language or the situations of experience.However, metaphysical realism is not the only form of traditional realistic picture, traditional picture also appears in many theories under the title of "anti-metaphysical realism" or even "anti-realism". These theories either take the "observable objects in observable circumstances" in the sense of naturalism as reality, or accept the "primary qualities" as its basic presupposition. The essential problem of traditional picture lies in its neglect of ordinary life and language, trying to isolate a fundamental reality in despite of the actual statues of this concept in our real life. This picture changes our language into a kind of material "marks and noises" which were agreed on for the convenience of social communication, and overlooks its aspects of life forms and world forms. From the viewpoint of the deflationary theory about truth which is quite prevailing today, truth is not considered responsible for the reality; it is rather an inductive linguistic device towards our "observable acts in observable circumstances". Based on this point, this theory claims a naive and deflationary realism, which is the naturalistic world. However, this realism still presupposes the traditional picture, in the sense that it takes the scientifically observable world as reality. On the one hand, it thinks that language is just one more kind of observable events of observable world; while on the other hand, this theory feels confident that it can occupy an absolute neutral standpoint from which it can undertake objective reports about our language. In other words, although it appeals to the scientific worldview with which we are familiar, this theory still insists a conception of reality that is radically strange to ordinary language. As for the kind of theories which take the immediate experience or sense-datum as fundamental, insist that reality and perceptual objects are just "theoretical posits", the traditional picture is also deeply presupposed. Among these theories, Ayer’s picture is quite typical. In the particular expression, this picture claims that the direct presenting "phenomenon" is the foundation of knowledge, so called objective reality is just posited object for the purpose of theoretical economy. However, as Strawson trenchantly points out, in the picture of Ayer, the immediate sense-datum and indirect material reality are in fact suppositions which are defined by each other. So the primary qualities of Locke would not appear subsidiary in Ayer’s picture for the reason of their indirect feature; on the contrary, this conception of material object is just the basic presupposition of this picture as well as traditional realistic picture. While in the most widespread "cognitive science" which seeks to explain perception in terms of nervous stimuli, that presupposition appears more obviously.Understandings of Wittgenstein’s concept of grammar suggest a possible switch of horizons of contemporary realistic discussions, which comes from the traditional picture to a grammatical point of view. We can find the first trace of this grammatical point in Frege’s view of logic. Frege resists traditional realistic picture as well as psychologism, especially correspondence theory. He firstly insists that our judgment and thought must presuppose objective laws which cannot be psychological laws; or our thought would lose the bases it stands, and the expressions of ideas would be impossible. Thought must presuppose formal laws which are usually called logical laws. Thought would not be a thought unless it obeys logic, and illogical thought is simply not thought at all. Based on this view, Frege attacks traditional realistic picture; he points out that out thought about reality must also presuppose logic, otherwise there would not be any "thinking" at all. Hence, from his point of view, there cannot be any pure reality outside logic. In this sense, the logical laws are in fact the reality. Although Frege’s viewpoint is not yet the ordinary picture that we are talking about in the sense of late Wittgenstein and Austin, it is quite "ordinary" compared with traditional picture’s effort of pursuing a reality outside thought. Since the laws of thought would doubtlessly be much more ordinary than metaphysical reality.However, whereas Wittgenstein inherits Frege’s view of logic, he also thinks that Frege bases an inappropriate realism on that view. Whether the logical forms or grammatical rules can only be reflected in ordinary language, and cannot serve as objects of our thinking, otherwise we would step outside thought and world, producing simply nonsense. Compared with Frege, the viewpoint of early Wittgenstein appears much more ordinary. And this kind of ordinariness is a touchstone of understanding Tractatus, which develops further into the late thought of Wittgenstein, finding its mature form in the concept of grammar. In general, we see the logic-oriented, crystallized ordinariness gradually evolves into a much more living and practical form. The concept of grammar that Wittgenstein talks about is not one of linguistics or philology; it is rather our forms of life. About this concept, people tend to hold a "grammatical realism" similar to Frege’s "logical realism", which thinks that the reality is just the grammatical rules, and grammatical propositions are the ultimate truths about reality. So accordingly, the criticism set against "logical realism" can also be applied on "grammatical realism":grammatical rules are our forms of life, which can only be reflected in ordinary language and life. They cannot serve as the objects of our thought; otherwise we would step outside life and language, which is nonsense. The so called "grammatical realism" is just an expression of this nonsense, which is still a form of traditional picture, its final possibility.This grammatical point of view criticizes the conception of reality of traditional picture, denies that the reality is some kind of entity or certain concrete thoughts or propositions. This viewpoint guides our eyesight from entity to life and practice; it tells us the reality is within our grammatical rules, but emphasizes that grammatical rules are not some certain propositions that "unconditionally true". Grammatical rules are forms of acting and practice, so reality is also one practical concept. When we actually undertake to solve different kinds of problems of life in particular circumstances, we would find ourselves dwelling in reality in a vivid way. Our study hasn’t provided a final answer to realistic question. It rather discloses an acting switch of horizons, whose insights would renew our frames of thinking towards realism or even philosophy.