• TheWillowOfDarkness
    2.1k


    The point is correspondence between language doesn't matter to realism because, as realism is metaphysical, whether or not any use of language (in the world) corresponds makes no difference. What we say in the world doesn't have to match what is there for realism to obtain. All that's at stake with "correspondence" is whether or not someone knows what exists. It serves no purpose in the realism of metaphysics.

    Indeed, realist metaphysics are, in this sense, anti-correspondence because the "match" between the world and spoken in words (that is language in the world) is both irrelevant to them and contrary to what the position of realism argues. The entire point of realism is things are given in themselves: they don't need anyone to speak about them, any experience to "correspond" to them, to be.

    The debate between the realist and anti-realist or idealist on the basis of "correspondence" begins with entirely the wrong assumption: that language use is outside the use of language, such that it is required for the metaphysical point that things are given in-themselves. What the anti-realist does, and quite a number of realists do, in this debate is assume the unexperienced must have significance in their language. Despite the fact the entire point of something being unknown is that it is outside the language which is used at the time.

    Noting the worldly nature of language undoes this mistake. When we realise that language is a question of a state of the world, rather than that which makes existence possible, we let go of the idea that language is required for something to exist. We can say, for example, that is something unknown, which IF we had language which talked about it, we could say what it is. But at present (noting one's language in the world), we don't have language which talks about it, so we can't say what it is.

    The problem with the shallow realist/anti-realist debate is both argue their position using a known states state example, as they are trying to demonstrate something known, either as an example of the world which exists without experience (the realist) or as the failure of our descriptions to get outside language (anti-realist). Both fail to examine the most critical point, what we don't know, and how it relates to language. As a result the realist is left grasping for a unknown world within language, while the anti-realist is stuck denying the unknown world can possibly be significant in language (which is blatantly false: events we don't know have meaning in language all the time. Indeed, that's what an "unknown" is. Here the argument of the anti-realist turns back on itself: if anything which affects us, anything which we MAY talk about, is within only language, how then can unknowns- which can become known by their definition- be impossible to capture in language? The anti-realist position makes all unknowns meaningless, for there is nothing to say or learn about them).
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