The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden

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Let realism be the position that there is a way that things are that is independent of all representations of how things are.

Searle argues that realism in this sense is a true position, because a commitment to its truth is a necessary condition of making and understanding ordinary statements of fact. In this sense, realism is a condition of the intelligibility of our ordinary praxis and, therefore, can be denied only by a statement that is pragmatically self-refuting.

While I fully accept Searle's argument as far as it goes, I should wish to go further and argue that the denial of realism is also absolutely self-refuting. Why? Because the denial of realism implies that the statement, "Nothing exists," or "There is nothing," could conceivably be true, and because this statement, so far from possibly being true, is absurd. It is absurd, because the contradictory of this statement, "Something exists," or "There is something," could not conceivably be false

January 1996

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