Christopher Norris

This article offers a critical perspective on two lines of thought in recent epistemology and philosophy of science, namely Michael Dummett?s anti-realist approach to issues of truth, meaning, and knowledge and Bas van Fraassen?s influential programme of?constructive empiricism?. While not denying the salient differences between them it shows how they converge on a sceptical outlook concerning the realist claim that truth might always transcend the restrictions of some given state of knowledge. The author puts the case that such sceptical arguments, if followed through consistently, must involve giving up all claim to account for our knowledge of the growth of scientific knowledge. He also takes issue with Dummett?s idea of truth as nothing more than a matter of?warranted assertibility? and with van Fraassen?s likewise verificationist conception of empirical warrant as the most we can have by way of epistemic justification. Thus it is wrong to suppose that the realist is merely indulging in a display of? courage not under fire? when she assumes ontological commitments in excess of the observational data. This disavowal of realism in favour of a theory which?saves the appearances? has a less-than-distinguished prehistory in the range of compromise strategies adopted by upholders of a dominant metaphysics or world-view, starting out with the orthodox Catholic attempt to defuse the implications of the heliocentric hypothesis advanced by Copernicus and Galileo. Such theological motives are nowadays not so prominent although? it is suggested fithey do emerge at certain points in Dummett?s writing. More constructively, this article presents a case for objectivism with regard to scientific truth and also for inference to the best causal explanation on both the micro- and the macrophysical scale as the only approach with an adequate claim to make sense of the history of advancements in scientific knowledge to date

In this path-breaking study Christopher Norris proposes a transformed understanding of the much-exaggerated differences between analytic and continental philosophy. While keeping the analytic tradition squarely in view, his book focuses on the work of Jacques Derrida and Alain Badiou, two of the most original and significant figures in the recent history of ideas. Norris argues that these thinkers have decisively reconfigured the terrain of contemporary philosophy and, between them, pointed a way beyond some of those seemingly intractable issues that have polarised debate on both sides of the notional rift between the analytic and continental traditions. In particular his book sets out to show - against the received analytic wisdom - that continental philosophy has its own analytic resources and is capable of bringing some much-needed fresh insight to bear on problems in philosophy of language, logic and mathematics. Norris provides not only a unique comparative account of Derrida's and Badiou's work but also a remarkably wide-ranging assessment of their joint contribution to philosophy's current - if widely resisted - potential for self-transformation.

This book brings together three main topics - deconstruction, philosophy of language, and literary theory - that have figured centrally in Christopher Norris's work over the past two decades. It offers a refreshingly clear and vigorous statement of his views as to how ‘theory' might profit from a greater awareness of current philosophical debates while philosophy might likewise gain by adopting a more open-minded attitude toward developments in literary theory. Most significant here is Norris's continuing exploration of the various points of contact between Jacques Derrida's thought and the kinds of concern - especially with issues in philosophical semantics and speech-act theory - that have preoccupied thinkers in the ‘other', mainstream-analytic line of descent. However his focus is consistently on matters that should be of interest to philosophers and literary theorists alike. Thus Norris devotes some penetrating commentary to topics such as modal or ‘possible-worlds' logic as it bears upon issues in narrative theory; the ‘two cultures' controversy; the different ways in which literary theory has alternately embraced and rejected the appeal to ‘scientific' modes of analysis; and some possible reasons for Wittgenstein's well-known aversion to Shakespeare. He also suggests a novel approach to the free-will/determinism issue by way of debates about the nature of language and the scope it affords for expressive creativity despite - or owing to - the limits imposed by various structural constraints. Altogether this important new book provides a welcome overview of the author's current thinking and an equally welcome enlargement of horizons in contrast to the narrowly specialised character of much present-day academic discourse.

Christopher Norris raises some basic questions about the way that academic philosophy has been conducted over the past quarter-century and, in doing so, offers a strong counter-statement to the overly specialised character of much recent work in the analytic mainstream.Topics addressed include speculative realism, the 'extended mind' hypothesis, experimental philospophy, the ontology of political song, Shakespearean language as a challenge to the norms of linguistic philosophy, and anti-realism as a antitode to epistemological scepticism. In many cases Norris shows how the acceptance of prevailing academic codes of discourse has resulted in a narrowing of sights to the point where other, more expansive or philosophically productive approaches are blocked from view.As well as mounting this critique of local practice Norris also puts the positive case that continental philosophy, or certain developments under that broad rubric, may be seen to hold the most promising resources for a creative renewal of analytic thought

This article examines various dilemmas (or, as I suggest, pseudo-dilemmas) that have dogged epistemology and philosophy of language since the 1940s heyday of logical empiricism. These have to do chiefly with the problem those thinkers faced in overcoming the various dichotomies imposed by their Humean insistence on maintaining a sharp distinction between logical 'truths of reason' and empirical 'matters of fact'. I trace this problem back to Kant's failure to offer any plausible, explanatorily adequate account of the process whereby 'sensuous intuitions' were brought under 'concepts of understanding' through the joint (somewhat mysterious) agency of 'judgement' and 'imagination'. The argument then proceeds, via Quine's (on the face of it) radically anti-dualist critique of logical empiricism, to more recent attempts - by Davidson and McDowell - to locate the residual dualism in Quine (that of scheme and content), and thus to bring philosophy out on the far side of all these vexing dilemmas. I maintain that the problem goes much deeper and re-emerges with full force both in Davidson's coupling of a formalized (Tarskian) truth-theoretic approach with a strain of radical empiricism and likewise in McDowell's revisionist, supposedly 'naturalized', but none the less dualist reading of Kant on the twin powers of 'spontaneity' and 'receptivity'. Its ultimate source - I suggest - is the normative deficit, i.e., the lack of rational and justificatory values that has typified empiricist thinking from Hume to Quine, along with its attendant sceptical outlook as regards the existence of causal powers or the status and validity of causal explanations. My paper concludes by indicating briefly some alternative resources that might point a way beyond this longstanding impasse.

This article offers a critical review of various ontological-relativist arguments, mostly deriving from the work of W. V. Quine and Thomas K hn. I maintain that these arguments are (1) internally contradictory, (2) incapable of accounting for our knowledge of the growth of scientific knowledge, and (3) shown up as fallacious from the standpoint of a causal-realist approach to issues of truth, meaning, and interpretation. Moreover, they have often been viewed as lending support to such programmes as the 'strong' sociology of knowledge and the turn towards wholesale cultural-relativist doctrines, whether of the Wittgensteinian ('language-games') or Heideggerian (depth-hermeneutic) varieties. Thus Richard Rorty recommends that we should henceforth drop all that old-fashioned talk of 'truth', 'knowledge', or 'reality', since whatever warrants those descriptions from time to time is just the product of some currently favoured language-game or range of elective metaphors. Such ideas have little in common with Quine's general outlook of robust physicalism, nor again - though the case is less clear - with Kuhn's reconsidered approach to these issues as set forth in his 1969 Postscript to The Structure of Scientific Revolutions . However, both thinkers have left themselves open to misconstrual by adopting a sceptical-relativist fallback position in response to the well-known problems with logical empiricism. This essay therefore reviews those problems with reference to alternative, more adequate accounts of what is involved in the process of scientific discovery and theory-change.

In What's Wrong with Postmodernism Norris critiques the "postmodern-pragmatist malaise" of Baudrillard, Fish, Rorty, and Lyotard. In contrast he finds a continuing critical impulse--an "enlightened or emancipatory interest"--in thinkers like Derrida, de Man, Bhaskar, and Habermas. Offering a provocative reassessment of Derrida's influence on modern thinking, Norris attempts to sever the tie between deconstruction and American literary critics who, he argues, favor endless, playful, polysemic interpretation at the expense of systematic argument. As he explores leftist attempts to arrive at an accommodation with postmodernism, Norris addresses the politics of deconstruction, the issue of men in feminism, Habermas' quarrel with Derrida, narrative theory as a hermeneutic paradigm, musical aesthetics in relation to literary theory, and various aspects of postmodern debate. A chapter on Stanley Fish brings several of these topics together and offers a generalized statement on the function of current criticism.

Should the truth-value of statements be thought of as epistemically constrained or as determined by objective factors that stand quite apart from our best knowledge, evidence, or powers of conceptual grasp? The anti-realist/realist debate turns ultimately on this disagreement. My article takes its lead from a famous pronouncement by US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfield to the effect that there are ‘known knowns’, i.e. ‘things that we know we know’; ‘known unknowns’, or ‘things we know we do not know’; and lastly, ‘unknown unknowns’, ‘things we don’t know we don’t know’. Whether Rumsfeld was talking gobbledegook, making some acute logical points, or just pulling the wool with regard to Iraq’s disputed weapons capability is matter for debate. Still, his remarks may be useful for clarifying certain fundamental issues about knowledge and truth, especially in the context of assertions - by anti-realist philosophers such as Michael Dummett - that truth cannot possibly transcend our best powers of proof or ascertainment. On the other hand such scruples may have just the opposite (obfuscating) effect when we are faced with a complex and case-specific question, such as whether or not Iraq truly possessed weapons of mass destruction. My article contends that a wide range of reliably knowledge-conducive procedures, while indeed they fall short of absolute, indubitable truth, nonetheless offer grounds for arriving at a reasoned assessment of the evidence and for not consigning statements of the Dummettian ‘disputed class’ to a limbo of ultimate undecidability

This essay responds to Jeff Malpas's foregoing article, itself written in response to my various publications over the past two decades concerning Donald Davidson's ideas about truth, meaning, and interpretation. It has to do mainly with our disagreement as regards the substantive content of Davidson's truth-based semantic approach in relation to the problematic legacy of logical empiricism, including Quine's incisive but no less problematical critique of that legacy. I also raise questions with respect to Malpas's coupling of Davidson with Heidegger, intended to provide a more adequate depth-ontological grounding for the formalized (logico-semantic) conception of truth that Davidson adopts from Tarski. My essay then argues the case for an outlook of objectivist causal realism joined with a theory of inference to the best, most rational explanation that would satisfy this need in more philosophically (as well as scientifically) accountable terms.

In this book Christopher Norris develops the case for scientific realism by tackling various adversary arguments from a range of anti-realist positions. Through a close critical reading he shows how they fail to make adequate sense on any rational, consistent and scientifically informed survey of the evidence. Along the way he incorporates a number of detailed case-studies from the history and philosophy of science. Norris devotes much of his discussion to some of the most prominent and widely influential source-texts of anti-realism. Also included are the sophisticated versions of verificationism developed by thinkers such as Michael Dummett and Bas van Fraassen. Central to Norris's argument is a prolonged engagement with the once highly influential but nowadays neglected work of Norwood Russell Hanson. This book will be welcomed especially by readers who possess some knowledge of the background debate and who wish to deepen and extend their understanding of these issues beyond an introductory level.

Norris presents a series of closely linked chapters on recent developments in epistemology, philosophy of language, cognitive science, literary theory, musicology and other related fields. While to this extent adopting an interdisciplinary approach, Norris also very forcefully challenges the view that the academic "disciplines" as we know them are so many artificial constructs of recent date and with no further role than to prop up existing divisions of intellectual labour. He makes his case through some exceptionally acute revisionist readings of diverse thinkers such as Derrida, Paul de Man, Wittgenstein, Chomsky, Michael Dummett and John McDowell. In each instance Norris stresses the value of bringing various trans-disciplinary perspectives to bear while none-the-less maintaining adequate standards of area-specific relevance and method. Most importantly he asserts the central role of recent developments in cognitive science as pointing a way beyond certain otherwise intractable problems in philosophy of mind and language.

In this essay, I offer a critical evaluation of Hilary Putnam's writings on epistemology and philosophy of science, in particular his engagement with interpretative problems in quantum mechanics. I trace the development of his thinking from the late 1960s when he adopted a strong causal-realist position on issues of meaning, reference, and truth, via the "internal realist" approach of his middle-period writings, to the various forms of pragmatist, naturalized, or "commonsense" epistemology proposed in his latest books. My contention is that Putnam's retreat from a full-fledged realist outlook has been prompted in large part by his belief that it cannot possibly be reconciled with the implications of quantum mechanics for our understanding of processes and events in the subatomic domain. However, I suggest, this response should be seen as premature given the range of as-yet unresolved problems with quantum mechanics on the orthodox (Copenhagen) interpretation and also the existence of an alternative account - David Bohm's hidden-variables theory - which perfectly matches the established predictive-observational results while providing a credible realist ontology. I also examine Putnam's case for adopting a nonstandard (three-valued) "quantum logic" in relation to the thinking of other philosophers - Michael Dummett among them - who have espoused a more global or doctrinaire version of anti-realism. I conclude that Putnam's early (causal-realist) position is by no means untenable in light of the various arguments that he now takes as counting decisively against it.