Last week, on December 27th, Michael Dummett passed away. Dummett was an important and influential British philosophy of the 20th century, probably most famous for his interpretations of Frege. Indeed it was his early work which helped to revitalize an interest in Frege’s work in the second half of the 20th century. (The PEL episode on Frege can be found here. An interview of Dummett talking about Frege on Philosophy Bites can be found here.)
Dummett was also important for his work in the philosophy of mathematics, logic, language, and metaphysics. His most original work involved the suggestion that we understand disputes in metaphysics over realism as disputes in logic. This turns on the principle of bivalence (the semantic principle which says that every statement is either true or false). Insofar as realists think that entities are mind-independent, they will accept bivalence. Truth is conceived as transcending our abilities to know. Anti-realists on the other hand don’t accept bivalence since they think that the entities in question are mind-dependent. They take truth to be epistemologically constrained.
There are unfortunately not a lot of videos of Dummett on the web, but if you want to join the Bodleian Philosophy Faculty Library, you can get a long interview of Dummett by Donald Davidson here. Dummett was undoubtedly a significant philosopher of the 20th century. And he will surely be remembered for many years to come.
-Brad Younger
Is there a source which can explain the concepts mentioned here in coloring book form? I’m intrigued by the notion of truth transcending our abilities to know, and conversely it’s opposite.
Hey Daniel! I’ve been trying to find a good source which isn’t too technical, but I must admit that I’ve been having trouble finding anything. I’ll keep looking around but I think in the meantime a good place to start is the Standford encyclopedia of philosophy. There is a section called “realism and anti-realism” on the topic of truth which deals with these issues. You can find that here: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/truth/#ReaAntRea
As for Dummett’s characterization of realism and anti-realism, the way that it should be thought about is not in complete general terms, but rather as relative to the specific domain in question. For example, just because one is a realist about science, that doesn’t mean one has to thereby be a realist about mathematical objects (Platonism). That would be far too simplified.
Personally, I’m a realist about the past and the future. That is, I think that the past and future are just as real as the present. Compare this to the anti-realist about the past and the future (a view called presentism). Whereas the realist thinks that truths about the past and future are true regardless of whether there’s any evidence or whether we are capable of knowing such truths (since statements about the past and future are statements about real mind-independent entities). The anti-realist denies this. Insofar as the anti-realist thinks that the past and future don’t exist and are thus not ontologically real, truths about such will be a function of what evidence we have or what we are capable of knowing. So while the realist would accept the principle of bivalence in regards to statements about the past and future, the anti-realist wouldn’t. So this turns on whether statements about the future are true now. The anti-realist thinks that there is no fact of the matter because the future has yet to exist. While the realist thinks that every statement about the future has a determinate truth-value (true or false) since the future is real and in some sense already “out there”.
But anyways, I’ll keep looking around to see whether I can find any other sources which are not too technical. I’ll let you know!