quick response to Deontologistics

As is often the case, Deontologistics has A QUICK AND VERY DETAILED DISAGREEMENT with me already posted.

I still owe him one response from some weeks ago, I believe. His posts are generally intricate enough that they take some time to digest. However, I think part of his implication that I’m unfairly carving up the landscape comes simply from the fact that he’s overdetermining my use of a couple of words. Here’s a key passage from his response to me:

“Broadly speaking, it thus seems as if we have three different positions: anti-metaphysical realism (positivism), and two forms of metaphysical realism, one which denies any form of material excess and one which accepts it. Graham’s position (and its affiliates) falls into the latter of the three categories. Problem solved? Not quite. The issue is that Graham is strongly suggesting that any position which gives some form of primacy to science falls into ’scientific realism’, as opposed to ‘metaphysical realism’.”

But there was a very specific reason that I put “scientific realism” and “metaphysical realism” in scare quotes here. Namely, I’m well aware that many scientific realists are adamant in their claims to be doing metaphysics. Nor do I have any objection to their using it as such. Nor am I overidentifying them with positivism, as the post claims. “Scientific realism” is a handy term simply because it conveniently distinguishes one sort of familiar approach from my own: the approach that wants to naturalize human consciousness in some way. The possible subtle gradations of that approach were not the topic of my previous post, nor relevant to it. Meanwhile, my use of the term “metaphysical realism” (for Whitehead’s approach and my own) was not meant to imply that there is no metaphysics in the others. I just couldn’t think of a better term while posting. Hence the scare quotes. If there are objections, we could call it something else, but I can’t think of a good replacement at the moment.

But as for the (incorrect, but understandable) claim that I was denying metaphysics to that side, I want to point out that the opposite insinuation, made by others, is far more common. How often it happens in the blogosphere that, if I say that all of philosophy cannot be reduced to science, comments are made saying that I “hate science,” “reject science,” or even “fear science.” I clearly remember at least 4 or 5 cases where that has happened in our corner of the blogosphere.

How strange this is. I also reject the idea that all philosophy is reducible to a genre of literature. Does this mean that I “hate,” “reject,” or “fear” literature? Obviously not. I simply don’t think it deserves hegemonic status over the entire discipline.

So, why is it that only in the case of science, to say that philosophy is irreducible to science is supposedly to show contempt for science? Why this strange idea that science must be everything or else it is being denounced as nothing?

His post deserves a longer engagement, but now as always it’s a question of trying to squeeze it in. He does write thoughtful criticisms as a rule.