Realism with a metaphysical skull *

Hilary Putnam's Dewey Lectures aim to chart a route in epistemology between ‘irresponsible relativism’ and ‘reactionary metaphysics’ (Putnam 1994b). Early on in the first lecture (‘The Antinomy of Realism’) he offers various characterisations of this middle way including ‘Deweyean Realism’ and ‘Aristotelian Realism without Aristotelian Metaphysics’. Putnam then proceeds to expound and defend another version of this ‘responsible and non-reactionary’ course, one which he identifies as having influenced John Dewey, namely the pragmatic realism of William James. Thereafter he adds his own distinctive ideas. Thus emerges a broad equivalence between a multi-authored American pragmatism and an Aristotelianism detached from certain ontological assumptions.