The method of metaphysics: Metaphysics is empirical but depends not, like the sciences, on recondite experience but on close attention to aspects of everyday experience we ordinarily scarcely notice. "Real" is a broader concept than "exists" (which applies only to particulars) and also applies to phenomena, kinds, and laws, which are real, but not, of course, existent entities. But "there are real kinds, laws, etc." doesn't imply that all the kinds and laws we believe are real, are. I call my approach "Innocent Realism" because--though it's certainly not naive--it requires attending to experience, so far as possible, without substantial preconceptions. There is one real world, enormously varied but also integrated. It includes physical stuff, kinds, laws, etc. and, here on earth, a vast array of human artifacts, physical, social, intellectual, and imaginative, all intimately interconnected. All this requires human mindedness (a better word than "mind" because it doesn't suggest that human mentality is an organ like the heart or the liver). Rather, it's a complex congeries of dispositions and abilities: to understand even such a relatively simple thing as what's involved in someone's believing something, we need to take account of the person's dispositions to behavior, verbal and otherwise; to the neurophysiological realizations of these dispositions; and to their connections to the world and to words in the person's linguistic community--this last requiring other people's words-world connection. "Virtual" reality is just one more computer artifact, clever, no doubt, but not metaphysically startling. It's oversold, but this is advertising hype, not serious metaphysics.

The idea that science is objective, or able to achieve objectivity, is in large part responsible for the role that science plays within society. But what is objectivity? The idea of objectivity is ambiguous. This paper distinguishes between three basic forms of objectivity. The first form of objectivity is ontological objectivity: the world as it is in itself does not depend upon what we think about it; it is independent of human thought, language, conceptual activity or experience. The second form of objectivity is the objectivity of truth: truth does not depend upon what we believe or justifiably believe; truth depends upon the way reality itself is. The third form of objectivity is epistemic objectivity: this form of objectivity resides in the scientific method which ensures that subjective factors are excluded, and only epistemically relevant factors play a role in scientific inquiry. The paper considers two problems that arise for the notion of epistemic objectivity: the theory-dependence of observation and the variability of the methods of science. It is argued that the use of shared standard procedures ensures the objectivity of observation despite theory-dependence. It is argued that the variability of methods need not lead to an epistemic relativism about science. The paper concludes with the realist suggestion that the best explanation of the success of the sciences is that the methods employed in the sciences are highly reliable truth-conducive tools of inquiry. The objectivity of the methods of the sciences leads to the objective truth about the objective world.

مساله ارتباط احکام اخلاقی با واقعیت از مسائل مهم فلسفه اخلاق است. گروهی که اکثریت فیلسوفان اخلاق مغرب زمین را تشکیل می دهند، به نفی آن پرداخته و در مقابل، گروهی نیز آن را پذیرفته اند. در این نوشتار با مطرح نمودن انتقادها و پیامدهای نادرست نفی رابطه اخلاق و واقعیت بر ارتباط آن دو، تاکید شده است. مهمترین پیامد نفی رابطه میان آن دو، مساله نسبیت اخلاقی و در نتیجه نفی هر گونه بحث و تبادل نظر درباره آن است؛ چیزی که هیچ عالم صاحب گفتاری در عمل بدان پای بند نیست. دیگر پیامد مهم نفی رابطه یاد شده، انشایی بودن احکام اخلاقی است که این امر به نوبه خود پیامدهای ناپذیرفتنی بسیاری به دنبال دارد. از نظر نگارنده، گزاره های اخلاقی ضرورت دارد و ضرورت آن از ملاحظه تاثیر فعل اخلاقی در کمال فاعل آن به دست می آید و این نظریه را می توان بطور غیر مستقیم از گفته های همه فیلسوفان اخلاق که فعل اخلاقی را هدفمند می دانند، به دست آورد.