Abstract

ABSTRACT:This essay describes three commitments that have become central to the author's philosophical outlook, namely, to liberal naturalism, to metaphysical realism, and to the epistemic and ontological objectivity of normative judgments.Liberal naturalismis contrasted with familiar scientistic versions of naturalism and their project of forcing explanations in every field into models derived from one or another particular science. The form ofmetaphysical realismthat the author endorses rejects every form of verificationism, including the author's one-time ‘internal realism’, and insists that our claims about the world are true or false and not just epistemically successful or unsuccessful and that the terms they contain typically refer to real entities. ‘Representationalism is no sin’. The central part of the essay is an account oftruthbased on a detailed analysis of Tarski's theory of truth and of the insights we can get from it as well as of the respects in which Tarski is misleading. The account ofthe objectivity of the normativein this essay draws on insights from Dewey as well as Scanlon.