Realism, Quasi, or Queasy?

Abstract

Abstract I have often introduced the position I call quasi-realism by a kind of flow chart. We start with a division. On the one hand there is theorizing about some area of our commitments (moral, aesthetic, conditional, causal, or whatever) by seeing them in terms of beliefs, answering to facts or possessed of truth conditions. We may say that this is the realist path, at this choice point, leaving it open whether later on there is room for anti-realist theorizing within this option. On the other hand there is theorizing about the same commitments by seeing them as something different: expressions of attitude, or of other dispositions, or of modes of acceptance of propositions, or of preparedness to adjust other beliefs in various ways, and so on. One voicing such a commitment is certainly expressing a facet of his cognitive or conative make-up, but it is one best theorized about in contrast with the more ordinary case of strict belief. In this scenario the word ‘commitment’ is of course intended to be entirely neutral. It is the word for whatever it is that might turn out to be best thought of as belief, or might turn out to be best theorized about as something else. Someone might be annoyed at this blanket use of the term: is it permissible to use it so that beliefs may turn out to be a proper subset of commitments? That will be decided by finding whether the division between attitudes and the rest on the one hand, and beliefs, can be sustained, so we should accept the term provisionally, in order to conduct just that enquiry.