Summary: | We talk about the world in different ways; by better understanding the ways we talk, we can better understand the world. Anyone who can appreciate this thought can appreciate the position here called discourse pluralism, or 'pluralism' for short. This covers a family of views in the realism debate, notably those of Michael Dummett (in one guise at least), Crispin Wright and Simon Blackburn. They believe that language is divided up into discourses corresponding to traditional areas of philosophical interest, like ethics, physics, aesthetics and mathematics. They think, moreover, that these can be categorised in terms of various hallowed philosophical notions like truth, belief, knowledge, and objectivity, with different areas accorded different statuses.
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