JOHN R. SEARLE
703
both sides, because I think that otherwise it is impossible to explain why
the contestants don't seem to make any contact with each other. They
seem to be talking about two different sets of issues. I believe that is be–
cause they proceed from different sets of assumptions and objectives. If I
have succeeded here in articulating the two sets of assumptions, that
should be enough. However, the philosopher in me insists on making a
few comments about each side and stating a few assumptions of my own.
I think the basic philosophical underpinnings of the challengers are weak.
Let us start with the rejection of metaphysical realism. This view is de–
rived from deconstructionist philosophers as well as from an interpreta–
tion of the works of Thomas Kuhn and Richard Rorty. The idea,
roughly speaking, is that Kuhn is supposed
to
have shown that science
does not give us an account of an independently existing reality. Rather,
scientists are an irrational bunch who run from one paradigm to an–
other, for reasons with no real connection
to
finding objective truths.
What Kuhn did for science, Rorty supposedly also did for philosophy.
Philosophers don't provide accounts that mirror how the world is, be–
cause the whole idea of language as mirroring or corresponding to real–
ity is flawed from the beginning. (The works of Kuhn and Rorty, by the
way, are more admired in academic departments of literature than they
are in departments in the sciences and philosophy.) Whether or not this
is the correct interpretation of the works of Kuhn, Rorty, and the de–
constructionists, the effect of these works has been to introduce into
various humanities departments versions of relativism, anti-objectivism,
and skepticism about science and the correspondence theory of truth.
Because of the limitation of space, I am going to be rather swift in
my refutation of this view. The only defense that one can give of meta–
physical realism is a transcendental argument in one of Kant's many senses
of that term. We assume that something is the case and show how that
metaphysical realism is a condition of possibility of its being the case.
If
both we and our adversaries share the assumption that something is the
case and that which we assume presupposes realism, then the transcenden–
tal argument is a refutation of our adversaries' view.
It
seems to me ob–
vious in this case that we as well as the antirealists assume we are com–
municating with each other in a public language. When the antirealists
present us with an argument, they claim to do so in a language that is
publicly intelligible. But, I wish to argue, public intelligibility presup–
poses the existence of a publicly accessible world. Metaphysical realism is
not a thesis; rather, it is the condition of the possibility of having theses
which are publicly intelligible. Whenever we use a language that pur–
ports
to
have public objects of reference, we commit ourselves to real–
ism. The commitment is not a specific theory as to
holV
the world is, but
