Must do better

Abstract

This chapter begins by reminding us that while the fruitfulness of many philosophical debates has been called into question, those debates have often resulted in significant intellectual advances. It argues that this is, to some extent, the case with debates over truth and realism – issues about which we know more now than we did forty years ago. The reason we know more is that we have made important strides in articulating our philosophical intuitions with extreme logical precision. Nonetheless, we can and must do much better in this regard. We must adopt a methodology largely inspired by mathematics, one that prizes clarity, rigor, and open-eyed reflection on the sorts of constraints – including logical constraints – that should be held to fix the contours of the debate. Only by doing so can we hope to make philosophical progress.