Abstract

Epistemic humility and semantic considerations for perspectival realism are the focus of Chapter 3 by Paul Teller. Teller characterizes perspectivism as the view that human knowledge is always from a particular perspective. Perspectival realism, he argues, is unlike scientific realism, which subsumes a particular kind of semantic realism, which Teller calls “referential realism.” Referential realism fails according to Teller, and his alternative to this general story of reference is pragmatic in character. The upshot of this pragmatic switch is that perspectivism becomes the only philosophy that doesn’t make referential success a miracle.