The Problem of "The World"

Contemporary analytic philosophy abounds with invocations of something called 'the world' (or, similarly, 'reality'); but, Avner Baz argues, it is none too clear what is meant by 'the world' in such invocations. The Problem of "The World" demonstrates case by case-from the metaphysics of magnitudes, through cognitive science, epistemology, and the philosophy of language, all the way to metaethics-that those invocations of 'the world' are meant to refer to the world as captured or reflected in our objective representations-paradigmatically, but not exclusively, those of the natural sciences-when those representations are true. At the same time, however, the philosophers making them take that world-as thus captured or reflected-to be altogether independent of our representations of it, and hence independent as well of the conditions under which those representations have whatever sense they have for us. These philosophers thus reveal themselves as transcendental realists, in Kant's sense. Drawing on Kant, but revising and expanding his ideas under the inspiration of (the Later) Wittgenstein, Cora Diamond, Merleau-Ponty, and Stanley Cavell, Baz argues that transcendental realism ultimately amounts to no more than an empty gesture. At the same time, his critique of transcendental realism has a positive, transcendental idealist upshot: it reveals our sense-making as conditioned, or situated, and shows that, and how, philosophers get themselves in philosophical trouble when they try to hold on to sense apart from its (worldly-historical) conditions.