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Rorty: It’s immature, in the sense that it is prized for the suggestion that there is some thing big and powerful on the side of us good guys—namely, Reality as it is in itself. It is the equivalent in theoretical philosophy of ‘the will of God’in moral philosophy. One can rubber-stamp the result of one’s theo retical or moral deliberations with expres sions like,‘and that’s the way the world is’ or ‘that’s what God wills’, but it is more grown up not to do so.

Fosl: Yours seems to be an argument from analogy. But isn’t it a strained one? Surely the notion of a transcendent, non-sensible object like ‘God’is significantly different from an independent material reality with which we are direcdy, publicly, technically, and experientially related. Isn’t your characteri sation of realists as simply rubber stamping their results with the seal of ‘reality’some thing of a straw man? Isn’t what’s fundamen tally at stake understanding what knowing …