Abstract

Hilary Putnam’s later works capture a dissent from the idea that descriptions ‘map’ an ontology of the mind-independent world. He argues that descriptions ‘project’ an ontology onto the world. However, it is evident from his arguments that he is not against endorsing existential claims about the world. He agrees that the world and entities exist. But, when we attempt to know ‘what exists,’ we use language and consequently compromise the ‘real’ as it is in itself. One can see, in a certain sense, an entity realist thrust in Putnamian internal realism. That is, he acknowledges the causal component in the act arriving at existential claims. Surprisingly, at the same time, he is doubtful whether the ‘known’ is indeed real as it is in itself. I argue that Putnam’s mid-career works on internal realism incorporate a realism about entities and an antirealism about theoretical descriptions. The first two parts of the paper provide the landscape of the debate over realism by starting with two unavoidable tenets of standard scientific realism. The subsequent parts provide a direction of thought, to an entity realist reading of internal realism.