“The problem that all these guys [namely, postmodernists and poststructuralists] have is that once you give me that first premise—that there is a reality that exists totally independently of us—then the other steps follow naturally. Step 1, external realism: You’ve got a real world that exists independently of human beings. And step 2: Words in the language can be used to refer to objects and states of affairs in that external reality. And then step 3: If 1 and 2 are right, then some organization of those words can state objective truth about that reality. Step 4 is we can have knowledge, objective knowledge, of that truth. At some point they have to resist that derivation, because then you’ve got this objectivity of knowledge and truth on which the Enlightenment vision rests, and that’s what they want to reject.”As Searle points out, once we admit that there is an ordered reality independent of our thoughts about it, then language really can refer to reality. Many of our words, and the concepts they represent, do refer to objective things in reality, and clearly many concepts we have (signified by words or sounds) are constrained, limited and defined by reality. Or, as some analytic philosophers would say, language is isomorphic to thought (including concepts and ideas), and in turn language can indirectly correspond and refer to reality (Schwartz 2012: 182), as is also argued by modern linguists and in the discipline of evolutionary epistemology. Objective truth follows from the way language can describe or picture reality. This leads us directly to the most convincing theory of truth: the correspondence theory.
Postrel, Steven R. and Edward Feser. 2000. “Reality Principles: An Interview with John R. Searle,” Reason (February)
http://reason.com/archives/2000/02/01/reality-principles-an-intervie
Moreover, note clearly how Searle’s argument works just as well if we adopt an idealist ontology, when we make the appropriate changes: for then the reality that objectively exists independently of our own subjective feelings or wishes or desires simply becomes the world of sensory experience created by Berkeley’s god or some “supermind.” In the world of sensory experience, we find a high degree of regularity, consistency and order. Berkeley’s “objects of perception” become those mental “objects and states of affairs” to which our words can refer and name.
Most of us, however, find the argument for indirect, physicalist realism more convincing than idealism and so argue for a real external world.
I often hear from advocates of Postmodernism that these views are “out of date” or “behind the times,” or few believe these ideas any more. As a matter of fact, most professional academic philosophers think objective truth and an external world are the most convincing views of epistemology and ontology.
A recent survey of 931 academic philosophers in 99 leading departments of philosophy around the world completed in 2009 gives us very good evidence on what most philosophers think (Bourget and Chalmers 2014).
We find in this survey that 81.6% of academic philosophers endorse or favour the arguments for the existence of an external world (Bourget and Chalmers 2014: 494). Only 4.3% would endorse some form of idealism (Bourget and Chalmers 2014: 494).
We also find that 64.9% still endorse or favour a valid analytic versus synthetic truth distinction and 71.1% accept the existence of real analytic a priori knowledge (Bourget and Chalmers 2014: 493).
Just because in what passes for “philosophy” down in the languages/literatures or cultural studies departments we find a lot of people who reject objective truth, it does mean professional philosophers have followed this path.
These findings are not a good argument for objective truth, of course. They are simply an interesting fact.
The idea of objective truth is justified by the good arguments and evidence in its favour, not ultimately by how many people believe it. Even if the majority people did not believe it, there would still be good arguments for it.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bourget, D. and Chalmers, D. J. 2014. “What do Philosophers Believe?,” Philosophical Studies 170: 4 65–500.
Postrel, Steven R. and Edward Feser. 2000. “Reality Principles: An Interview with John R. Searle,” Reason (February)
http://reason.com/archives/2000/02/01/reality-principles-an-intervie
Schwartz, Stephen P. 2012. A Brief History of Analytic Philosophy: From Russell to Rawls. Wiley-Blackwell, Chichester, UK.
