Caspar Wilson (KCL) - 2014-15 Students
caspar.c.wilson@kcl.ac.uk

Trading realism for the world

Mainstream metaphysics has its roots in Quine’s rejection of the analytic-synthetic distinction, or the end of the linguistic turn in philosophy. In my work I argue that metaphysical realism relies on a flawed philosophy of language. The metaphysician requires pre-conditions of our theorising which cannot themselves be subject to our theorising and occasion independent truth-bearers; when such things cannot be true at all. I recommend metaphysics to take a factive turn. However, as I take the nature of facts to be ultimately linguistic, structures
in the world which bear on our thoughts and utterances, this factive turn will ultimately be a return to the linguistic one. Once one view language
as a species of action, a species of confrontation and participation with the world, one have a realism consistent with the rejection of Cartesian scepticism. I take these considerations to require metaphysics to become pragmatic.