Hegeler Institute

SKEPTICAL REALISM: A REALIST'S DEFENSE OF DUMMETT

Author(s): John Bigelow
Source: The Monist, Vol. 77, No. 1, The Ontology of Scientific Realism (JANUARY 1994), pp.
3-26
Published by: Hegeler Institute
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27903366 .
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 SKEPTICAL REALISM: A REALIST'S DEFENSE OF DUMMETT

7. The self-definition of some realists

There is an important family of philosophical positions which deserve

the name "realism", and there is a natural diagnosis of what all these posi
tions share in common. There is also an important family of philosophical
positions which deserve the name "antirealism", and there is a natural
diagnosis of what all these positions share in common. These two families
are feuding, but the nature of the conflict between them is far from clear.
When we extract the definition which realists would give for their position,
and the definition antirealists would give for their position, we find that the
antirealists do not see themselves as denying quite the same thing that the
realists see themselves as asserting. I will begin by discussing the self
definition of some realists.
Consider the family of philosophical positions which deserve the name
"realism". "Scientific realism" is one of this family, and I will seek a
characterization of scientific realism which portrays it as clearly being one
of the broad family of "realisms". One of the best current guesses about
what realist positions all have in common is that all realists are realists
about some classes of entities or other, and a realist about a class of entities
is someone who asserts the existence of entities in that class. To be a realist
about Xs is to believe thatXs exist. To be a scientific realist is to be a realist
about the entities spoken of in the sciences; and to be a realist about those
entities is just to believe that they exist.
This is in many ways an insightful way of defining realism. It is a
definition which comes naturally to realists. I learned it from Devitt, and it
is well expressed for instance in his book on Realism and Truth. Ellis sums
up the view clearly and concisely as follows:

A scientificrealist is one who thinks thatmost of the theroreticalentitieswhich

are postulated to explain observable phenomena are real, independentlyexisting
things.Some scientificrealistsmight quibble about what kinds of theoreticalen
tities theyare committed to believing in. But it is clear thatwhether one is a
scientificrealist or not depends on what one believes; it does not depend on
one's theoryof truth. If you believe in the kinds of thingsthat scientificrealists
believe in, and you think that these things exist and have the properties they
have independentlyof your beliefs about them, thenyou are a scientificrealist.
(Ellis, 1992b, p. 390)

"SkepticalRealism:A Realist's Defense of Dummett" by JohnBigelow,

TheMonist, vol. 77, no. 1,pp. 3-26. Copyright? 1994,THE MONIST, La Salle, Illinois61301.

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4 JOHN BIGELOW

Ellis's realist is one who believes, o/most of the things which are in fact
postulated by current science, that those things are real, independently ex
isting things. The key word here is "existing": the realist is one who believes
that certain things exist. The added qualification "real" is probably redun
dant; and the requirement that these "real" things be "independently ex
isting" things is something I will comment on at some length later. The key
point is that the realist is being characterized as one who thinks that certain
things exist. It is beliefs about the things themselves, not beliefs about
theories, thatmakes someone a scientific realist, on this conception.
Ellis says a scientific realist is one who thinks "that most of the
theoretical entities which are postulated to explain observable phenomena
are . . . existing things"; at first that sounds clear enough, but it is in fact
open tomisinterpretation. Imagine someone who has no idea what entities
are postulated by current scientific theories, but who assumes thatwhatever
they are, any entities postulated by science are bound to be real. Such a per
son does, in one sense, think that "most of the theoretical entities which are
postulated to explain observable phenomena are . . . existing things". But
such a person does not believe of any of those entities that they are real. For
instance, such a person has not heard of, say, electrons, so such a person
cannot be said to believe, of electrons, that they are real. And so on for the
other postulates of current science.
Is such a person a scientific realist? In one sense, perhaps. You might
think of a scientific realist as one who may not know what science says, but
who thinks thatwhatever it is that science is saying, it ismostly true.A more
cautious person might say that what current science is saying may or may
not be true, but it is at least intended to be true?that is, that the recognized
criterion of success for science is that the stories it tells be true. This is how
van Fraassen, for instance, thinks of realism. However, this is not the self
conception that Ellis is voicing. The opinion that science intends to give true
stories is clearly a theory about theory, a metatheory, and it is a theory
which makes explicit appeal to some notion of truth. That is not what Ellis
has inmind.
When Ellis says the realist thinks "that most of the theoretical entities
which are postulated to explain observable phenomena are real, in
dependently existing things", what is intended could be that the scientific
realist thinks, of these entities, both that they constitute "most of the
theoretical entities which are postulated" by current science, and that they
"are real, independently existing things". As a definition, however, this re
quires rather a lot of the realist. It requires the realist tomake a mental list
of all the things postulated by current science. Most of the people I would

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 SKEPTICAL REALISM 5

like to call scientific realists have not done that, so that is not the way to
define a scientific realist.
The interpretation of Ellis's definition that gets closest to the heart of
thematter is as follows. Consider the theoretical entities which are in fact
postulated by current science at a given point in history. People living at
that time then count as scientific realists just in case they believe that these
things exist. The scientific realist nowadays for instance is someone who
believes that electrons exist, and DNA, and viruses, and so on. A person
who believes that these things exist is a scientific realist, whether or not it is
also believed of these entities that they figure in some body of theory that
can be called "current science", or that they constitute a fairly comprehen
sive list of the entities postulated by current science. The person who
believes, of enough of the entities postulated by science, that they exist is
what Pargetter and I, in Science and Necessity, called an extroverted scien
tific realist. The extroverted realist does not go in for introverted reflection
on the nature of words or ideas about things, but just thinks about things
themselves, unselfconsciously as itwere.
The description Ellis gives of realism, interpreted in the extroverted
way I have sketched, is one which has many merits. Lewis says very similar
things about realism in the introduction to his Philosophical Papers,
thereby aligning himself with Devitt and Ellis and against a rival conception
which emanates mainly from Dummett. Lewis is famous as a defender of a
doctrine known as modal realism; but Lewis wants it to be known that his
doctrine is not to be understood as anything like the sort of thing that an
tirealists such as Dummett describe as "realism". Rather, Lewis wants to be
seen as a realist in an extroverted Devitt-and-Ellis sense: he is a realist about
nonactual things because he affirms the existence of nonactual things. The
Devitt, Ellis and Lewis conception of realism is very seductive; and yet in
the end it cannot be right.

2. The skeptical realist

It is possible for a skeptic to be a realist. In this context, what I mean

by a skeptic is simply someone who suspends judgment about something;
for instance, someone who is skeptical about the existence of the theoretical
entities posited in physics will be someone who suspends judgement about
the existence of those entities. Such a person does not assert that such en
tities exist. And yet such a skeptic can nevertheless be a scientific realist.
Therefore the Devitt, Ellis, Lewis characterization of realism ismistaken.
Realism is a metaphysical stance, and this is not to be conflated with the
epistemologica! stance adopted by the opponent of skepticism.

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6 JOHN BIGELOW

Some examples may help to clarify the distinction between the

metaphysical doctrine of realism, and the epistemological stance of the an
tiskeptic. One of the twomost significant events in epistemology in this cen
turywas the appearance of Popper's theory of scientificmethod. (The other
was the appearance of naturalized epistemology, as championed, for in
stance, by Quine.) Notoriously, Popper was, likeHume, a skeptic. Science
does not, Popper said, seek to verify theories; it is no part of science to offer
justifications for believing that theories are true. Yet Popper was also a
scientific realist. In fact itwas partly because he was a scientific realist that
he was a skeptic. Thus scientific realism cannot be identified with a doctrine
which holds, of the entities in a certain class, that those entities exist.
I begin from the assumption that there is a family of philosophical doc
trines or viewpoints or orientations or inclinations which all deserve the
common name of "realism". There is scientific realism; there is mathe
matical realism or Platonism; there ismodal realism; there ismoral real
ism; and so on. There is something important that all these have in com
mon. They form, in an important sense, a natural kind. The question is:
What is it that is shared by all and only these things?
It is desirable to draw distinctions where there are differences. One
should aim to say the same things of things that are the same, and to say dif
ferent things of things that are different. Furthermore, the samenesses and
differences marked by the term "realism" should not be superficial
ones?rather, the deeper the better. The trouble with the Devitt conception
of realism is that itdraws distinctions where there are only relatively super
ficial differences masking a deeper sameness. In particular, the Devitt con
ception notes that there is a difference between a skeptic and most of the
people who call themselves scientific realists, since most self-styled realists
endorse the assertions of current science with a high degree of confidence. It
is tempting tomark this difference by saying that one who is skeptical about
the existence of certain things cannot be a realist about those things. Thus
for instance van Fraassen is often seen as an opponent of scientific realism,
because he says it is not rationally justified and it is no business of science to
affirm the existence of the theoretical entities postulated by current
theories. And yet, I will argue, the highly visible difference between a skep
tic and most relatively dogmatic scientific realists masks a deep tie between
the skeptic and the realist, a tie which is best marked by a more subtle
definition of realism.
A little reflection reveals that there is a close relationship between
realism and skepticism. Skeptics mount arguments which intrigue and un
nerve many philosophers. What the skeptic conjures up before themind is

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 SKEPTICAL REALISM 7

an image of one or another vast subject matter, of a sort thatwe really care
about, and yet the skeptic tells us that we can never know anything about
what is going on in this vast realm?as for instance what is going on in the
thoughts and feelings of others, or what happened in the past. Suspension
of judgement on those matters is a disquieting prospect. Antirealism offers
a cure-all for any such skeptical fears. If you are not a realist about the
whole subject matter in the firstplace, then there is in a sense nothing to be
skeptical about.
Antirealism, then, is often motivated by the desire to ward off skep
ticism. Yet if a realist is by definition a non-skeptical believer in the ex
istence of various things, how can realism be seen as a slippery slope leading
down towards skepticism? How can abandonment of realism be of any help
inwarding off skeptical worries? Realism must have some ingredient other
than a confident belief in the existence of certain things, and this other in
gredient must be the thingwhich gives realism a natural gravitational attrac
tion towards skeptical conclusions. A dogmatic realist has a realist concep
tion of certain things, and has a high degree of confidence that such things
exist; what the skeptic argues is that given the realist conception of those
things, there is no warrant for such a high degree of confidence that such
things exist. The antirealist aims to ward off skepticism, not by challenging
the belief that the relevant things exist, but by supplanting the realist con
ception of what it really amounts to for such things to exist.What the an
tirealist challenges is something deep which is common ground between the
realist and the skeptic.
In theoretical physics and in pure mathematics, the tie between realism
and skepticism comes into relatively sharp relief. The state of the art in
quantum mechanics and relativity theory is such as tomake itvery rational
to harbour a considerable degree of skepticism about whether things are as
the theories seem to say they are. Does such skepticism betoken antirealism?
In a sense perhaps itwould not be misleading to say so. And yet there is also
a kind of antirealism which is a very far cry from the sort of skepticism
which any would-be realist would be rational to feel about current physical
theory. A real antirealist, as itwere, is not someone who would be a realist
about quarks and so on, if only the evidence were a little stronger. Rather,
the real antirealist is someone forwhom the very question of whether or not
such things exist simply does not arise. The real realist, in contrast, is
someone forwhom, on the contrary, the question cannot be avoided. Take
Einstein for instance. He was skeptical about quantum theory; but that
failure to believe did not betoken antirealism. On the contrary, itwas a firm
scientific realism that sustained Einstein's skepticism about quantum
theory.

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8 JOHN BIGELOW

In pure mathematics, the tie between realism and skepticism has been
given special poignancy by the discovery that there are things which it is in
principle impossible for us either to prove or to disprove. A vivid example is
to be found in Cantor's Continuum Hypothesis. Very roughly, this is the
hypothesis that there is no kind of infinity between that of the natural,
counting numbers (one, two, three, . . . ) and that of the points along an
idealized Euclidean line segment. The Continuum hypothesis asserts that if
some collection of things is so infinite that you cannot pair each of them
with a different natural number, then it is at least as large an infinityas that
of the points on a line?which is to say that every point on the line (or
equivalently, every real number) could be paired, one-to-one, with a distinct
one of these things. Note that the Continuum Hypothesis asserts the ex
istence and nonexistence of various sorts of relations, construed as sets of
ordered pairs. Someone who asserted the existence of these thingswould be
a realist in the Devitt sense.
Yet Cohen has proved that there can be no proof or disproof of the
Continuum Hypothesis from the (other) axioms of any standard set theory
(assuming that these set theories are not inconsistent?something else which
has proved to be unprovable). Is the Continuum Hypothesis true? Suppose
we take a skeptical stance: we say that itmay be true and itmay be false, but
we do not know which. Imagine several such skeptics. Some are optimists
who think (as Cohen did) that one day we will find indirect reasons for one
or other verdict on the Continuum Hypothesis (Cohen suspected that it
would eventually come to seem obvious that the Continuum Hypothesis is
false?see the final few pages of Cohen [1966]). Imagine also some other
skeptics who are pessimistic and think that we will probably never know
whether the Continuum Hypothesis is true or false. Imagine yet further
skeptics who take it to have been shown that it is in principle impossible for
us ever to know the truth of the matter. All these skeptics, I suggest, are
realists.
Skepticism about the Continuum Hypothesis is in fact a relatively
reliable litmus for detecting true realists about pure mathematics. Godei for
instance was a true realist (see for instance Godei 1947), but the symptom of
this lay not just in his confident belief in the existence of certain sets, but
also and very vividly in his moderately skeptical stance with respect to the
Continuum Hypothesis. As a realist, he assumed that either there are or
there aren't the sorts of one-to-one relations which would be required to
constitute the truthof theContinuum Hypothesis. But he did not pretend to
know for sure which. Like Cohen, G?del was a bit of an optimist. Unlike
Cohen, he thought the Continuum Hypothesis was probably true, and he

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 SKEPTICAL REALISM 9

expected that we would one day find intuitively evident axioms fromwhich
it could be proved. But his realism is not especially revealed by that op
timism. Quite to the contrary, such optimism about future verification
could be confused with the leanings of the real antirealists in the philosophy
of mathematics, namely the intuitionists. That is, one might mistakenly
think thatGodei held the view that the potential existence of future verifica
tions somehow constitutes what it is for the Continuum Hypothesis to be
true or false.
If G?del had been less of an optimist, and yet had still thought there
was a truth of thematter concerning the Continuum hypothesis even though
no one could ever know it, that would surely have betrayed a very extreme
realist disposition. Far from being inconsistent with realism, skepticism
about the Continuum Hypothesis is one of the clearest symptoms of the
depth of a person's commitment to realism.
Newton furnishes another example which highlights the tie between
realism and skepticism. Newton was a scientific realist. In particular, he was
a realist about absolute space and time. Leibniz mounted an attack on many
fronts against Newtonian absolutism; and one of Leibniz's lines of attack
consisted in the demonstration thatNewtonian realism about absolute space
in particular would entail the possibility of certain sorts of skeptical
hypotheses. On Newtonian theory itwould seem tomake sense to suppose,
for instance, that all the things we observe share a component of motion in
one particular direction at some given constant speed, but that we never
notice this component of motion because it causes no alterations in any
relative positions of anything we observe. Leibniz takes this to be a sort of
reductio ad absurdum of theNewtonian theory. I do not; but what ismost
pertinent here is the link between Newton's realism and a distinctive kind of
skepticism. What makes Newton a scientific realist with respect to absolute
space is not the confidence with which he asserts that themean rectilinear
motion of the observable universe is zero. He would be no less a realist ifhe
took a skeptical stance, and said thatwe will never know what themean rec
tilinear motion of the universe actually is. Quite to the contrary: itwould be
an index of extreme realism ifhe held that there is a truth of thematter even
if there is no way we can ever know what that truth is.
Consider also Newton's realism about time, and in particular about
time's metric. Imagine a first event occurring, then some time later a second
event, and then at some still later time a third event. Newton assumed that
there is a fact of the matter about whether more time passed between the
first event and the second, or whether more time passed between the second
and the third, or whether neither interval was longer or shorter than the

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10 JOHN BIGELOW

other. There are, of course, various ways in which we can estimate how
much time passed during these two intervals. The general recipe is to deter
mine how much change occurred in some observable process or other, such
as the motions of the heavenly bodies. Yet there is no unconditionally
necessary entailment of the form: "If more time passed then more change
occurred". Nor is there any unconditionally necessary entailment of the
form: "If more change occurred thenmore time passed". To be a realist
about absolute time is to take it that the amount of change which occurs in
an interval of some given duration is a contingent matter. So there is room
for skepticism. It is always logically possible that our best clocks are getting
itwrong, and that our best evidence tells us thatmore time has passed be
tween two events and less between two others, when in fact the truth is the
reverse. Again we find that the true realist is not the dogmatist but rather,
the one who is open to skeptical doubts.
The ancient Greeks were all, arguably, realists about time; but Plato
and Aristotle and the Stoics and the Epicureans were none of them realists
about absolute time inNewton's sense. They all took time to be a "measure
of motion", so thatmore change entails more time, less change entails less
time, and no change entails no time. The only textswhich carry any hint of
a Newtonian conception of absolute time come to us from Skeptics, like
Sextus Empiricus. The Skeptics argued that, however much you might
assume that some given method of measurement is reliable, it is always
possible that it is not. You may be confident, for instance, that whenever
more time passes, the heavens will have moved further. Nevertheless, the
Skeptics argue, this is not an unconditional necessity. It is not self
contradictory to suppose that the heavens might be speeding up or slowing
down, or even that time might be passing although the very heavens have
ceased to exist. The same applies to any other kind of motion or change that
you might use tomeasure how much time has passed between any one given
event and another. Time therefore is one thing, and themotion of bodies is
another. This conclusion is an antireductionist one concerning time's
metric. It is also, and very obviously, a realist conclusion. Again we see that
the realist need not be a dogmatist, but, on the contrary, skepticism is a very
natural bedfellow for a realist.
So, I urge, Devitt is wrong. Scientific realism is not inconsistent with
skepticism. This has been articulated especially clearly in pure mathematics.
In mathematics it is not the skeptic but the intuitionist who is the real an
tirealist. The rigour of mathematics has forced antirealists to clarify their
position, and the upshot has been intuitionism, not skepticism. Dummett
has seized on the intuitionism which emerged in mathematics, and has

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 SKEPTICAL REALISM 11

generalized from this basis to a diagnosis of what is essential to realisms of

all kinds. I will argue that Dummett is closer to the truth thanmost realists
realize.

3. Deviti's half-hearted extroversion

Nevertheless, there is something right about the Devitt conception of

realism, and it is important not to throw that baby out with the bath water.
There is something very healthy about the attempt to find a characterization
of realism which appeals only to beliefs about theworld, and not to concep
tions of truth, theories about theories, thoughts about thoughts, and other
such metatheoretic sophistications.
A scientific realist does not have to be a dogmatist. Yet although not all
scientific realists need be dogmatists, some dogmatists are scientific realists.
In fact, there is a way of being dogmatic which does constitute a sufficient
condition for being a scientific realist. If you dogmatically believe that cer
tain sorts of things exist, then that does make you a scientific realist. Thus,
one way to try to get a grip on the nature of scientific realism is by beginning
with a close consideration of the kind of realist who happens also to be a
dogmatist.
This is how Devitt approaches scientific realism; he defines scientific
realists to be people, like himself, who confidently assert that the entities
spoken of in the sciences exist. In consequence, Devitt misses something im
portant because he fails to allow adequate conceptual space for the skeptical
realist. And yet Devitt also captures something important, something to
which Dummett does not give due weight. It is important to recognize that
the holding of a certain sort of belief about things other than words can
constitute a sufficient condition for being a scientific realist. A scientific
realist does not have to hold any metatheoretical views about theories, or
any self-reflexive theories which make assertions about themselves.
Philosophers specialize in theories about theories, and some philosophers
are scientific realists, so some scientific realists do hold theories about
theories. But the reasons we should count such philosophers as realists lie
deeper than the fact that they hold those theories about theories. Devitt
rightly identifies a certain sort of extroverted, object-directed attitude as ly
ing at the core of realism. You do not have to have any distinctive beliefs
about words or thoughts in order to be a scientific realist. There are many
sciences whose subject matter consists of inarticulate and insensate things,
and you can be a realist about such things without having to pay any atten
tion to anyone's words or thoughts, even your own.
Bacilli exist. In saying that, I reveal myself to be a realist about bacilli.

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12 JOHN BIGELOW

If you are an antirealist, no doubt you could sincerely utter the very same
words?but be wary, because what I mean when, as a realist, I utter those
words may not be the same as what you mean when you utter them.When I
said that those things exist I was using words but I was not mentioning
them. I was expressing one of my beliefs but I was not describing myself or
my beliefs. I am happy to go on to say things about my own words and my
own beliefs; but what makes me a realist about bacilli is what I say about
bacilli not what I say about myself or about my words, my thoughts, or my
theories.
Antirealists, too, might say the words "Bacilli exist". Maybe there is
something sensible that they mean when they say these words, and maybe
what theymean is quite right and I can agree to it, though / would not put
their point quite theway they do. For instance, if they are antirealists of the
instrumentalist variety then perhaps theymean that theories featuring the
word "bacilli" give good predictions, and if that iswhat theymean then I
agree with them, though I would not express that thought by saying "Bacilli
exist". But even if antirealists about bacilli utter the words "Bacilli exist",
they are not expressing the belief that bacilli exist. That is, they are not ex
pressing a belief which I, as a realist, would describe as a belief that bacilli
exist. If someone has a belief which I would describe as a belief that bacilli
exist, then that person is a realist about bacilli. Believing they exist is
enough tomake you a realist about them.
Devitt rightly sees the importance of extroverted beliefs about what ex
ists. In fact, in one respect Devitt does not go far enough in his characteriza
tion of realism as an extroverted doctrine about theworld rather than about
words, thoughts and theories. He begins with the core idea that the realist
about certain sorts of things is someone who believes that those things exist.
But then he makes an ad hoc revision, and adds the further requirement that
the realist about a given collection of things has to be someone who believes
that these things exist and that they exist independently of the perceptions,
will, and theories of conscious agents. The second half of this belief is self
reflexive. According to Devitt, believing that bacilli exist is not enough to
make me a realist about bacilli. In order to be a realist about bacilli Imust
also believe something about minds and theories: that the existence of
bacilli is "independent" of minds and theories.
Yet this is a mistake. The very idea that bacilli exist independently of
minds and theories is not the sort of thing thatwould occur naturally to the
realists who first discovered them. It is not a thought that would occur to
anyone unless they had been exposed to philosophical idealism. You do not
have to believe that idealism is false in order to be a realist. You do need to

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 SKEPTICAL REALISM 13

lack a belief in idealism: but failing to believe something is not the same
thing as believing its negation.
Pargetter and I argued in Science and Necessity thatwhat is essential to
realism is not a belief in independence, but the lack of a belief in any
necessary dependence of the existence of the things in question on the
perceptions or thewill or the theories of the person who believes in them. It
seemed safe to attribute to realists a lack of belief in dependence; and this
weaker condition seemed to do all the work that Devitt required from his
stronger condition, a belief in independence. Nevertheless I now think it is a
mistake to require even the weaker condition, of a lack of belief in
dependence. A belief in themind-dependence of certain things need not pre
vent one from being a realist about those things.
One should, for instance, be a realist about one's children, even though
their coming into existence was causally mind-dependent. It may also be
that theywill not continue to exist unless you continue tomind them. Fur
thermore, ifKripke is right in his modal intuitions (as I think he is), then
you can also say that the children would not have been the people they are if
they had not had the parents they did have. So their existence is not just
causally but logically dependent on that of their parents. Furthermore, on
some "psychological continuity" theories of personal identity, children
would not be the people they are if they had had radically different upbring
ings. So on such theories also, the existence of those individual children is
not just causally but logically dependent on their parents. Would theDevitt
definition have us say therefore that parents should not be realists about
children? Clearly not, but why not?
You might think that the existence of children at a given moment is not
dependent on any of your own mental states at that verymoment. And you
might say that for this reason their existence is not "mind-dependent" in
the sense relevant to the definition of realism. Yet thiswould not be an ade
quate response to the difficulty.What is crucial to realism is not just that
there is a time lag between the causal mind-dependence of the thing, and the
realist's belief in the existence of the thing. Even while you are bringing
something into existence, so that its existence does depend on your current
act of will, you may nevertheless be a realist about that thing. The thing in
question may depend not only causally, but even logically, on your act of
will?and yet you may still be a realist about it.
Consider the case of a free action. Suppose you are of the opinion that
itwould not have been the act that itwas if it had had a different cause.
Davidson, for instance, took it as a criterion of identity for events that
events are identical ifand only if they have the same causes and the same ef

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14 JOHN BIGELOW

fects (see for instance Davidson, 1980, p. 179). Surely you could be a realist
about an action you are performing, even as you are performing it, even
though you believe its existence is logically dependent on your will.
Devitt, Ellis and other realists are misguided in requiring realists to
believe in themind-independence of the things they are realists about. It is a
" '
waste of time trying to fiddle until you get the right sense of independence'
to characterize realism. It is perfectly possible to be a realist about mind
dependent things, no matter what sense of "dependence" you are working
with.

4. Everyone's a realist, in their own way

The reason Devitt contaminates his otherwise healthy, robust, ex

troverted realism is that he wants tomake absolutely sure that his definition
of realism runs no risk whatever of entailing that the notorious
philosophical idealist, Bishop Berkeley, could be counted as a scientific
realist. Devitt wants to make sure that Berkeley cannot be counted as a
realist about, say, cherries. Yet Devitt isworried by the fact that, ifyou read
Berkeley, you find him affirming uninhibitedly and without the faintest
trace of skepticism, as dogmatically as you could hope for, that "cherries
exist". If a realist about cherries is just someone who says that cherries ex
ist, then it appears that this would entail that Berkeley was a realist about
cherries. Devitt takes that to be a reductio ad absurdum of the simple defini
tion of a realist about something as someone who believes that this
something exists. That iswhy he adds a requirement: that the realist must
also affirm that the thing in question exists independently of minds, theories
and so on.

Devitt is wrong to be so confident that Berkeley is not a realist. It is

necessary here to take special pains to keep present to your mind the ques
tion: "Is he a realist about what!" Berkeley is a realist about the things that
he is calling cherries (or at least, about the things he is calling cherries when
he is writing philosophy). He is a realist about the things he calls cherries,
though he is a reductionist about them, holding as he does that they are
nothing more than bundles of ideas in the minds of conscious agents. A
cherry is, according to Berkeley, a complex entity which consists in, or
"reduces to" nothing more than an aggregate of such perceptions as those
of roundness, redness, sweetness and so on. But a reductionist is not an an
tirealist. Berkeley is a reductionist realist about the thingswhich he is calling
cherries, planets, tar-water and so forth.Everyone (or almost everyone) is a
realist. (I have been fortified in this bold claim by correspondence with
Barry Smith, who has argued this position formany years.)

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 SKEPTICAL REALISM 15

The trouble with Berkeley is not that he is not a realist. He is a realist

about the things he is calling "cherries". The trouble with Berkeley is that
he is not a realist about cherriesl He is a realist about the bundles of ideas
that he is calling "cherries", so he would be willing to utter the words
"Cherries exist"; but when he does so he will not mean what I or Devitt
would mean ifwe were to utter those words. He would not in fact be saying
that cherries exist. Not at any rate while he iswriting philosophy and speak
ing about cherries in the abstract. When he handles real cherries, and he
believes that they exist, then he does believe, o/what are in fact cherries,
that they exist. But that is only because he does not believe that they are
cherries. He thinks they are bundles of ideas. That is, he believes, of things
which are not bundles of ideas but cherries, that they are bundles of ideas.
He does not believe that they are cherries, and that iswhy he believes (with
such confidence), of them, that they exist. Properly understood, with care
over the semantic scope of the belief-operator, it can be seen that Berkeley
does not believe that cherries exist?not in the sense which would be re
quired to make him a realist about cherries.
To believe, of things which are in fact cherries, that they exist is clearly
not sufficient tomake one a realist about cherries. Consider a parallel case.
Imagine there really were such things as leprechauns, although Berkeley
thought there weren't. Imagine that while walking in the gardens Berkeley
glimpsed the bald head of a leprechaun, but he took it to be a melon.
Berkeley might then believe, of what is in fact a leprechaun, that it exists;
but this does not make him a realist about leprechauns! Likewise Berkeley
believes, of what are in fact material objects, that they exist; but this does
not make him a realist about material objects.

Berkeley may have been inconsistent. Perhaps he was after all a realist
about cherries when he let down his philosophical guard. It is said that his
contemporary, Dr. Johnson, kicked a stone, saying "I refute him thus";
and it is said that once Berkeley knocked on the door of Jonathan Swift,
who declined to open it for him since "being a mere idea, it should offer
him no resistance". I take it that Johnson and Swift found it impossible to
believe that Berkeley could really fail to believe, of stones and doors, that
they are stones and doors?that is, that they are the sorts of things that
Johnson and Swift and Devitt and I are referring to when we speak of
stones and doors. Perhaps Berkeley was in real life a realist about the things
which, in his philosophical works, he denied to be even intelligible let alone
existent. If so, then he was inconsistent. However, the Berkeley that Devitt
is worried about is not the complicated real person but only the much

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16 JOHN BIGELOW

simpler authorial persona. Someone who believes what Berkeley asserts in

his written works is a realist all right, but not about cherries.
Berkeley was a realist about the thing he called "cherries", but he did
not believe in the existence of cherries. If you agree with Berkeley, then you
presumably would use the word "cherries" with the same meaning that
Berkeley would give it. So you would not say "Berkeley was not a realist
about cherries"?you could not express your agreement with me by echoing
my very words. But you should agree with me when I say Berkeley was not a
realist about cherries, ifyou understand what Imean when I say this, even if
you would not say this in those words. The conclusion stands: Berkeley was
not a realist about things like cherries simply because he did not believe that
cherries exist. He would affirm "Cherries exist", and thereby he was assert
ing of things that are in fact cherries that they exist, but he was not express
ing the belief that cherries exist.
Hence Devitt did not need to tack on an ad hoc qualification to his
otherwise admirably extroverted insight, that someone who believes that
cherries exist is a realist about cherries. You do not have to say that
Berkeley failed to count as a realist about cherries because he believed that
they were mind-dependent. Rather, because he believed, of cherries, that
theywere mere bundles of ideas, it follows that he believed, of cherries, that
they were not cherries. He believed, of cherries, that they exist, but only
because he did not believe that theywere cherries. Berkeley did not believe,
in the sense required for realism, that cherries exist. That iswhy he was not
a realist about the things Devitt is a realist about: he did not believe that
those things exist. Berkeley was a realist, but about things other than the
thingsDevitt is a realist about. The mind-dependence of the things Berkeley
is a realist about does not prevent him from being a realist about those
things: rather, it just ensures that those things he is a realist about are not
the same things as the ones Devitt is a realist about.
To be a scientific realist, it is a sufficient condition that you believe that
bacilli, electrons, dinosaurs, cherries and so forth exist. (I include cherries
under both commonsense and scientific realism; a scientific realist should
be a realist about not just the unobserved theoretical entitities of physics,
and not just the no longer observable macroscopic things like dinosaurs, but
also the observable subject matter of sciences like botany.) Devitt takes a
belief in the existence of such things (in the company of what I say is an er
roneous ad hoc qualification) to be a sufficient condition for being a scien
tific realist. And I urge that (dropping the ad hoc qualification) Devitt is
right: believing that these things exist is a sufficient condition for being a
scientific realist.

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 SKEPTICAL REALISM 17

However, Devitt also takes it to be a necessary condition for being a

scientific realist, that one believe that things like bacilli, electrons, dinosaurs
and cherries exist. If you do not believe such things exist then you are not a
realist, according to Devitt. So a skeptic could not be a realist. I will argue
that Devitt is wrong about this.

5 Existential beliefs not necessary for realism

As a challenge to Devitt*s overly restrictive definition of realism, I will
present what may be called an argument from degrees of belief. Devitt takes
it to be a necessary condition for being a scientific realist that you should
believe that things like the anthrax bacillus exists. But there are degrees of
belief. Imagine someone who believes, without ever a glimmer of doubt,
that such things as bacilli exist?an extreme dogmatist. Compare this
dogmatist with a more rational person who entertains a small degree of
doubt. The difference between these two people is not important enough, or
not important enough in the right sort of way, to justify classification of the
extreme dogmatist as a realist and themore moderate realist as not being a
realist. Both are realists. Devitt would be ill-advised to restrictmembership
of the realist club to those True Believers whose level of confidence requires
an irrational leap of faith.
How much can your level of confidence be whittled away before you
cease to be a scientific realist? Wherever you draw the line, there will be
people on one side of the line and people on the other who differ only in a
very superficial respect. The person you count as a realist may differ from
the antirealist only in, for instance, having some extra bit of evidence which
tips the scales and brings his epistemic probability over the chosen
threshold. Or perhaps the realist may differ only in that some piece of
available evidence against the existence of the things in question has not
been noticed, or has not been given due weight. These differences between
the person we are calling a realist and the one we are calling an antirealist
will be extraneous and superficial ones: not ones which mark the sort of
significant difference which it is appropriate to mark with the label
"realism".

This objection is not, by itself, overwhelming. It is easy to imagine

parallel cases in which an argument of this form would lead to a clearly
unacceptable conclusion. The appropriate objection to raise against an
argument of this form is that a demonstration that a distinction comes in
degrees is not a proof that there is no distinction there to be made. Thus,
Devitt could maintain that just as there are degrees to which you may
believe that an entity exists, so too there are degrees to which you are a

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18 JOHN BIGELOW

realist about that entity. Realism is not, he may say, a simple on-off matter.
My argument from degrees of belief only demonstrates that a Devitt defini
tion would entail that there are degrees of realism; and this is scarcely a
reductio ad absurdum of Devitt's definition.
Devitt's definition can be made especially plausible if we keep our
focus on the locution which Devitt places at centre stage. Devitt is not con
cerned with what it is to be a realist about "whether or not there are Xs".
Rather, Devitt is concerned about what it is to be a realist about Xs, with
various substitutions for "X". The more confidently you believe thatXs ex
ist, themore of a realist you are about Xs. It is not at all implausible to sup
pose that there are degrees to which you may be a realist about Xs.
Yet it should also be recognized that there are important thingswhich
remain constant even while degrees of belief vary. As more evidence
becomes available, a person's degree of belief that Xs exist has varied. But
there are also very fundamental respects inwhich her attitude toward Xs may
not have varied at all. In particular, shemay not have changed at all inwhat
she thinks Xs are like, assuming there are any. Even if her degree of belief
falls to zero and she is sure beyond a shadow of doubt that there are no Xs,
shemay not have changed at all inwhat she thinksXs would have been like if
there had been any. As she changes her degree of belief thatXs exist there is
no change in her conception of what a thingwould have to be like if itwere
to be an X. What remains constant is, we may say, a realist conception of
Xs.
A skeptic about Xs suspends judgment about whether there are any Xs.
Such a person is to be distinguished from someone who holds a zero degree
of belief that there are any Xs?someone who believes, without a shadow of
doubt, that there are no Xs. It would be best to call such a person not a
skeptic but a nihilist about Xs. Dogmatists, skeptics and nihilists differ in
one important dimension. Nevertheless they all share something very im
portant in common: a realist conception of Xs. This thing that they agree
about is more fundamental than the things over which they differ. And
there are views which differ in that fundamental respect from dogmatism,
skepticism and nihilism alike: It is these fundamentally different views that
we should call by the name antirealism.
It is useful here to compare scientific realism with moral realism. The
differences between moral dogmatists, skeptics and nihilists are important:
but none of these views is really of the same natural kind as the views which
are properly called antirealisms about morality?emotivism for instance. A
nihilist, for example, likeMackie, really has much more in common with
moral realists like Moore than with emotivists like Ayer who deny that

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 SKEPTICAL REALISM 19

moral judgements have any "cognitive content". Likewise in the case of

scientific realism. A so-called antirealist like van Fraassen, or Popper, really
has much more in common with a realist like Smart than with an antirealist
like Dummett.
What realists share most fundamentally in common is not some degree
of belief that certain things exist, but rather the sheer entertaining of the
possibility of those things existing. You are playing the same game as the
realists if you even wonder whether these things exist, whatever degree of
belief you settle on in the end, if any. You may engage in semantic ascent
and you may add various reflexive, introverted observations to your scien
tific realism. But these added higher-order thoughts are not essential ingre
dients of realism. All that is required for realism is that you do not supple
ment your stock of beliefs with introverted thoughts which transform your
whole conceptual space so radically that it transforms the identities of your
previous thoughts, so that you no longer have any of the thoughts you used
to have when you were a realist. The essential ingredient in realism is an ex
troverted belief about theworld, not a self-reflexive belief about people and
theories. Devitt was right to shift emphasis from themeta-level down to the
object-level. Though a realist should feel free to contradict the antirealista
metatheoretic assertions it should be remembered that such metatheoretic
matters are mere adjuncts or corollaries of realism, not its essence.

f5.The truth inDummett's definition

Devitt sees his arch opponent as Dummett. He sees Dummett as wrong
twice over. He sees Dummett as firstmisdefining the difference between
realism and antirealism, and then as taking thewrong side and backing the
antirealist side of the divide, thus defined. I share Devitt's conviction that
Dummett places himself on the wrong side of the divide, thus defined. Yet
Dummett's description of the nature of this divide was not as far wrong as
Devitt maintains.
Dummett is noted for having defined realism by reference to the law of
bivalence. A realist about a given subject matter is said to be someone for
whom the law of bivalence plays a distinctive role within that subject mat
ter. The law of bivalence is a very general, metatheoretic, semantic proposi
tion, of something like the form: "Any proposition (or any proposition in
this domain) is either true or false". This law brings together generality, in
the word "any", and semantics, in the words "true" and "false". Devitt,
rightly I maintain, thought that one could be a realist without ever ar
ticulating, noticing, or affirming any such general, semantic hypothesis.

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20 JOHN BIGELOW

There is another law which is closely related to the law of bivalence: the
law of excluded middle, aptly expressed by the schema "P or not-P". This
schema, it should be noted, lacks thewords "true" and "false", and indeed
it lacks any semantic vocabulary at all. But the use of the schematic letter
"P" does convey generality. In order for the law of excluded middle to arise
as an issue for a person, that person does have to undergo a relatively
sophisticated theoretical ascent. A Dummettian, or even any quasi
Dummettian position, whether it appeals to bivalence or to excluded mid
dle, appears to operate at a metatheoretic level which contrasts sharply with
Devitt's object-level, extroverted realism.
Yet there is a way that a realist can take on board some of Dummett's
insightswithout infiltrating any essentially metatheoretic commitments into
healthy extroverted realism. The realist about bacilli for instance may not
give any thought to abstruse points of logic, such as whether or not the law
of bivalence or the law of excluded middle hold for assertions about bacilli.
But such a realist may simply wonder whether bacilli exist or not. And in
wondering this, realists are not thereby engaging in semantic ascent of any
sort. They are not diluting in the least their extroversion. Their attention re
mains world-directed: they are just wondering about bacilli. They may even
say, without ceasing to be world-directed: "Well, either they exist or they
don't". This is not a highly theoretical or general claim, nor is it a semantic
one. And yetwe, reflecting on the realists from the outside, may take this as
a very significant symptom of their holding a realist attitude towards bacilli.
It is, I would say, a reassuring sign that they are indeed wondering about
bacilli, they are not musing in a realist way about something other than
bacilli, nor are theymusing in an antirealist way "about" nothing at all.
The realist need not be someone who says that for all P, either or not
P. The realist need not be one who believes in excluded middle in sensu
composito. But when the particular question arises concerning the existence
of bacilli, the realist will be someone who assumes, and who may even ex
plicitly think, that either they exist or they don't. So for this particular the
realist believes that either or not-P. The realist believes in excluded middle
in sensu diviso. The realist may, but need not, believe that for all P, either
or not-P?this sophisticated belief is an optional extra for the realist. What
ismuch more plausibly identifiable as an essential feature of realism is that,
for any given that arises within the relevant subject matter, any realist
who raises the question whether or not will assume that either or not-P.
Devitt is right to try to locate realism at the object-level. But you do not
need to weaken that insight at all in order tomake use of Dummett's hunch
that realism is closely bound up with the law of excluded middle.

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 SKEPTICAL REALISM 21

The realist about, say, bacilli is someone who believes that bacilli exist,
or someone who doubts whether they exist, or someone who wonders
whether they exist or not?or at least, someone who thinks about bacilli.
Unless such a person assumes that either they exist or they don't, then that
person is not thinking about bacilli at all. Bacilli just are, essentially, the
sorts of things such that either they exist or they don't. No one can be a
realist about them without having thoughts about them; and no one can
have thoughts about them without recognizing them as things that either ex
ist or don't exist. If anyone has thoughts about bacilli, really about bacilli
and not about something else that theymight call "bacilli", then that per
son automatically falls into the same natural kind as the clear cases of
realists who dogmatically believe that bacilli exist.
The case of scientific realism about absolute space and time illustrates
the same pattern as that displayed by scientific realism about bacilli. The
scientific realist about absolute space and time is someone who thinks about
where things are, and about how much time has passed between one event
and another. And note thatwhat Imean when I say this is that the scientific
realist about absolute space and time is someone who thinks the thoughts
thatNewton would describe as thoughts about "where things are" or "how
much time has passed". I do not mean that the scientific realist about ab
solute space and time is someone who thinks thoughts about relative
distances in space or time, about how far objects are from one another, or
about how much change has occurred between one event and another. The
realist is someone who thinks thoughts that Newton would describe as
thoughts about where things are (unrelativized to any physical objects) or
about how much time has passed (unrelativized to any clock). Such a person
assumes that where things are, and how much time has passed, are quite
separate matters from how far these things are from other things, and how
much change has occurred. Absolute space and time, the thingsNewton was
a realist about, just are, essentially, quite distinct matters from relative posi
tions and amounts of change. No one can be a realist about absolute space
and time without recognizing them as loose and separate from facts about
relative positions and amounts of change.
If anyone has thoughts about absolute space and time, really about
these things and not about other things that they may call by the same
names, then that person automatically falls into the same natural kind as
the clear cases of realists who dogmatically believe that there is absolute
space and time. The antirealist about absolute space and time is not
someone who just holds a low degree of belief in propositions concerning

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22 JOHN BIGELOW

absolute space and time. Rather, the antirealist is someone who finds the
realist's thoughts about absolute space and time incoherent.
Realists can vary and vacillate in the degrees of belief they assign to the
possibility that various things exist.What ismost important about realism is
not the belief that these things exist but something deeper which the having
of this belief presupposes, namely the ability to entertain the thought of
those things existing, to understand what itwould be for those things to ex
ist?the possession of a realist conception of things of that kind. Devitt's
definition of realism seizes on what is less important; Dummett's definition
gets closer in this respect to what ismost important.

7. A concluding taxonomy
Dummett's conception of realism gets things right in one respect
because it allows a skeptic to be a realist. Or at least it allows all but
(perhaps) the very most extreme of Pyrrhonist or Zen skeptics to be realists.
Even a skeptic who completely suspends judgement about whether a thing
exists can nevertheless believe that either it exists or it doesn't.
Devitt's conception of realism, however, gets things right in another
respect because it construes the core of realism as an extroverted, object
level attitude not concerned with people and theories but just with the things
themselves. The right theory is the conjunction of the right bit of Dummett
with the right bit of Devitt. Pargetter and I argued for a characterization of
realism in very much this spirit, in Science and Necessity. The argument of
this paper differs in aiming tomake some conceptual space for the skeptical
realist.
The upshot is a taxonomy within which there are two quite different
distinctions which need to be drawn. There is an irresistible temptation to
enlist the one word "realism" tomark both of these quite different distinc
tions. This can be confusing. It also furnishes themakings of a more con
ciliatory, ecumenical resolution of the debate between the chief rival defini
tions of "realism".
I have so far stressed the respects inwhich Devitt misconstrues what is
most fundamental about realism. The issue is not entirely a verbal one, and
I stand by my arguments against theDevitt definition. Nevertheless there is
a purely verbal issue in the neighborhood, and on that issue it is pointless to
insist thatDevitt is "wrong" to use theword "realism" in the way he does.
There is a distinction to be drawn, which he draws with the term "realism";
and it is unprofitable to complain that there is also another distinction
which needs to be drawn, and to insist that the term be reserved for that
other distinction. We should allow that there simply are, in this area, two
important distinctions to be drawn; I will explicate these two distinctions as
follows.

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 SKEPTICAL REALISM 23

Broad realism about a class of entities encompasses all those who share
enough common understanding to agree that either these entities exist or
they don't. Skeptics and nihilists should be classed together with other
realists, broadly construed, when the contextually relevant contrast class is
that of strong antirealists, who find the realists' thoughts not just doubtful
but incoherent. The burden of this paper has been to argue that there is a
deep natural kind which marks out broad realism from strong antirealism.
Under the umbrella of broad realism, however, we may distinguish
three subgroups: the nihilists, the skeptics, and ... the remainder. We need
a name for this "remainder", for the nondeviant, paradigm realists, for the
realists who do believe with some confidence that the entities they are
realists about do exist. Narrow realists about a class of entities are those
who believe that these entities exist.When the contextually relevant contrast
class includes skeptics or nihilists, then the "realists" we are concerned with
are not most saliently contrasted with strong antirealists. Rather, in such a
context the narrow realists about a class of entities are to be contrasted with
weak antirealists, who simply do not believe that those entities exist. Weak
antirealists fall into two kinds, depending on whether their lack of belief
does or does not derive from their finding the very idea of such entities in
coherent.

Sometimes the term "realism" marks the distinction between broad

realism and strong antirealism. In the philosophy of mathematics for in
stance, this is themost salient distinction to be drawn. The important con
trast is between the broad realism of the Platonist and the strong antirealism
of those who find Platonism incoherent. Likewise for realism about ab
solute space and time: the important agenda here is one of coherence rather
than existence.
In other contexts, however, the important agenda is not one of
coherence but just of existence. Consider for instance scientific realism
about atoms, or about the anthrax bacillus. A strong antirealist could no
doubt become troubled about the very coherence of the realists' hypotheses.
But for a great many scientists and philosophers the obvious issue is not one
of coherence but of existence. In these contexts therefore the term
"realism" most naturally marks out the distinction between narrow realism
and weak antirealism. This is, we may note, the distinction that Devitt
marks by his definition of "realism".
Devitt's realism is narrow realism; Dummett's antirealism is strong an
tirealism. Their dispute is largely at cross purposes. Devitt's narrow realism
draws the distinction which is most salient in the context of scientific
realism about things like atoms and bacilli. Dummett's strong antirealism
draws the distinction which is most salient in the context of scientific

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24 JOHN BIGELOW

realism about things like absolute space and time, mathematical objects,
universals, fictional entities, and so forth.
The idea that there is a kind of ambiguity to the term "realism" is not
new; but the ambiguity I am describing is not the one which is commonly
alleged. It is commonly thought that "realism" sometimes refers to a
a
semantic doctrine framed in metalanguage, and sometimes to a doctrine
framed in an object language and concerned directly with the things in
themselves. This is not the kind of ambiguity I am alleging. The two distinc
tions I draw both exist at the same level: neither is at a meta-level, both are
object-level distinctions.
Sometimes it is appropriate to construe "realism" broadly, whereas at
other times it is appropriate to reserve the label for just the paradigmatic
core. This is an instance of a very pervasive mechanism in natural
languages, by which a term for a very general class sometimes constricts in
its application so that it applies only to the "unmarked" instances of that
broad kind. Originally women ("wo-men") were a marked subclass within
the broad class of "men", but gradually the term "men" came to refer, in
more and more contexts, exclusively to the unmarked members of the
broader class. Similarly the word "animal" can be used tomark out a very
broad class which is to be contrasted with the "vegetable" and the
"mineral". Yet if asked for a paradigm instance of an "animal", I might
cite a dog or an elephant but I would be unlikely to cite a human. In fact, if
asked for a paradigm "animal" you would probably not cite an insect, or a
bird, or a fish, or a reptile. In some relatively more specialized contexts the
word "animal" ismost naturally used to pick out just the paradigmatic core
of the natural kind to which it refers inmore theoretical contexts. Itwould
be misleading to say "There's an animal in that closet", meaning that there
is a flea, or even just a bacterium, in that closet. The same mechanism is at
work in the usage of the term "realism". Sometimes the term is used for a
broad natural kind, and sometimes it is useful to use the word tomark out
just a paradigmatic core.
Scientific realists, broadly construed, do not need to be dogmatists.
Nor need they be self-reflexive philosophers with theories about theories as
distinct from theories about the things themselves. Some realists may
become confident in their belief that the entities mentioned in the sciences
exist, but this is an optional extra. Some realists may engage in semantic as
cent, and may come to hold theories in semantics and in logic, theories
about theories, thoughts about thoughts, beliefs about beliefs, talk about
talk, but this too is an optional extra for a scientific realist. Realists can be
skeptical extroverts without compromising their realism. What is fun

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 SKEPTICAL REALISM 25

damental to realism, to broad realism, is a conception of entities which are

essentially such that: either they exist or they don't. The antirealist, the
strong antirealist, is not someone who just assigns a low degree of belief to
one of those alternatives, but rather is someone who finds those alleged
alternatives deeply incoherent.

John Bigelow
Monash University
Australia

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 26 JOHN BIGELOW

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