Linguistic Scaffolding and Scientific Realism

Abstract

The various “small metaphysics” puzzles that this book surveys suggest their proper resolutions requires an expanded appreciation of the strategic underpinnings of fruitful descriptive endeavor. In doing so, philosophical analysis should study linguistic adaptation in the same naturalistic spirit as a biologist investigates the environmental adaptations of a particular animal or plant. Doing so effectively requires attending to shaping considerations that arise from a wide variety of sources, including the issues of computational complexity that supply multiscalar tactics with their significant advantages. For various reasons that ultimately trace to the theory T thinking that this book rejects, the philosophical notion of “scientific realism” has become unhappily aligned with various simplistic assumptions with respect to effective word/world alignment. Our conceptions of scientific and linguistic possibility have suffered greatly as a result.