Copyright © 2012
Avello Publishing Journal
ISSN: 2049 - 498X
Issue 1 Volume 2:
The Unconscious
Jason Wakefield
Review: Naturalism Without Mirrors Huw Price. Oxford University Press. 2011.
This is a hard - back collection of previously published essays that have appeared in The Journal of
Philosophy, Australasian Journal of Philosophy and various books primarily concerning analytic
metaphysics. Although written mostly in Edinburgh and Sydney, most of the ideas have a distinct
Cambridge pragmatist mould. This is with the exception of the conceptual analysis that Frank
Jackson has championed at the John Locke lectures in Oxford and the modal realism or metalinguistic theories that David Lewis once taught at Princeton University.
The elements of Price's collection of essays that cite Frege, Ramsey, Wittgenstein and Carnap
have been more recently discussed at the Cambridge Pragmatism research workshop at the
Winstanley Lecture Theatre, Trinity College, Cambridge on the 31st of May / 1st June 2012 by Bob
Brandom, Simon Blackburn and others. The beauty of Cambridge University's current pragmatists
is that they belong to a congenial, tightly knit faculty as opposed to the fragmented, sprawling, often
contradictory philosophy faculty based at Oxford University.1 There is a greater general consensus
concerning the topics of causation, disquotationalism, functional pluralism, non – cognitivism,
quasi – realism, semantic minimalism and truth - aptness in Cambridge at the moment. My reason
for stressing this point is because there are several thinkers based at Oxford University who share
Price's core interests in truth, naturalism, expressivism and representationalism. Due to the much
larger size of the philosophy faculty at Oxford, there seems to no unified critique of naturalistic
metaphysics as found in the current pragmatist mould of Cambridge.
1 The contradiction of ideas lie in part because of the sheer size and diversity of the department, ranging from the
work on Hume by Peter Millican to the bio – ethical research of Janette Radcliffe – Richards.
1
Although based at different university faculties at the time of writing Naturalism Without
Mirrors portrays the unified thought of Brandom, Blackburn and Price that can be witnessed at
Cambridge lectures today. These lectures consist mainly of expression over representation and
function over reference. To clarify, he favours Rorytian skepticism about representation and
Wittgensteinian pluralism concerning the functions of declarative linguistic behaviour. Prior to
invoking these writers, he analyses metaphysics, naturalism and semantic minimalism through the
thought of Hume, Frege, Carnap, Ramsey and Williamson in pragmatic terms.
Williamson is currently the Wykeham Professor of Logic at Oxford University, first occupied by
Henry Wall (1810 – 1873). Wall was a contemporary of Henry Longueville – Mansel, the first
Waynflete Professor of Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy, currently occupied by John
Hawthorne. Williamson and Hawthorne share Price's interest in the linguistic turn in philosophy,
however do not engage with Quine's Word and Object, Philosophy of Logic or Theories and Things
to develop a discourse on metaphysical pluralism.
A strength of Naturalism Without Mirrors is in the positioning of the tables and figures to
illustrate crucial points. For example, table 11.1 gives us options for quietism in a crucial section
about Blackburn's quasi – realist reading of Wittgenstein, Wright and Rorty. Earlier there is another
crucial illustration, table 10.2 that identifies three species of linguistic theory. This helps unpack a
contrast with 'a McDowellian theory of meaning grounded on deflationary truth, expressivism about
evaluative judgements is essentially immodest' (Price 216: 2012). Readers familiar with Price's
Facts and the Function of Truth (1988) will recognise this is where Price is at his philosophical
best. Here Price's choice of theorist is also of interest to our editorial board member Adrian
Johnston, who has talked about John McDowell, Nancy Cartwright and Wilfred Sellars at the
Vitalism and Antivitalism in Contemporary Philosophy conference in Zagreb, June 17th -19th 2011.
Price's discussion of McDowell does not explore the debates that Brassier, Hägglund,
Johnston and Malabou had at the round – table evening sessions during this conference; however a
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juxtaposition of the videos recorded in Zagreb and the videos recorded in Cambridge at
Winstanley Lecture Theatre, Trinity College this summer could potentially form the basis of an
excellent book.2 On a more critical note, Dummett's Frege: Philosophy of Language (1973) could
have been analysed more closely by Price. There is a reference to Dummett's intuitionist logic and
the Fregean sense – force distinction but the incompleteness of concepts and functions is perhaps
much more important to any linguist who wishes to defeat representationalism. Despite this
limitation, Price does give a logical, convincing argument on how to obtain 'naturalism without
Representationalism, or naturalism without mirrors' (Price 5: 2011). This is because 'science is only
one of the games that we play with language' (Price 31: 2011) as 'semantic deflationism already
challenges Representationalism' (Price 32: 2011). Although this is logical and convincing, Price
does not cover much new ground here. There does not seem to be much progression past Humean
intuitionist tendencies or orthodox semantic and metaphysical deflationism. This recapitulation of
already common ideas is concluded with some contradictory remarks regarding how we should
support Brandom's interventions endorsing representationalism where assertion is the fundamental
language game. Price's contradiction is clear in a book that he cites in his final chapter Making it
Explicit: 'the inferentialist's attempt to turn the explanatory tables on the representationalist tradition
must be deemed desperate and unsuccessful' (Brandom 136: 1994).
In conclusion, my evaluation is that the primary readership of Naturalism Without Mirrors does
not consist of Australian students interested in modern 20th Century philosophy, but consists of
English and American students interested in the intricacies of vocabulary in literature and language.
This is because of Price's emphasis on Carnap's bizarre rejection of the reality of the external world
as guided by Wittgenstein. What Price offers is an analysis of the referential aspect of language,
clarification of grammatical misunderstandings, indexical cases and modal cases. To clarify, Price is
more focused on the semantic relation between words, rather than Brandom's more philosophical,
2 The book Deconstruction and Pragmatism by Critchley, Derrida, Laclau & Rorty (1996) derived from the
symposium organised in Paris by Mouffe on May 29 th 1993 is in need of an update in the light of the recent
conferences in Cambridge and Zagreb.
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Hegelian project about the social constitution of concepts. Where Hegel and Brandom have a
philosophic disposition to truth – conditions, as Price has in his earlier work, Price and Blackburn
have a linguistic disposition to propositions. It is not the work of Dewey and Rorty which Price has
inherited but the work of Ramsey and Wittgenstein.
The canonical context of Price's argumentation does not stray far past what has previously
been published by Searle and Geach in their stock philosophical debates. Many of these debates
have formed the subject matter of conversations that have ensued after my recent visits to G.E
Moore's grave which is situated in the same cemetery as Wittgenstein, Ramsey and two of Darwin's
sons grave. It should be noted that Wittgenstein served as an officer on the frontline during World
War I, which is why one has taken a photograph of his grave (in Cambridge), in addition to a
photograph of a statue (in London) based on Field Marshall Herbert Kitchner, British Secretary of
State, who died half way through the war. Naturalism Without Mirrors is an excellent addition to
collectors of his work that have been interested in Price since his exertions on Einstein popularised
by Time's Arrow and Archimedes Point: New Directions for the Physics of Time. Price is currently a
fellow of Trinity College, whose alumni include six British prime ministers, King George VI,
several heads of other nations, physicists Isaac Newton and Niels Bohr, and the Soviet spies Kim
Philby, Guy Burgess and Anthony Blunt. My last, recent visit to Trinity was for architectural
reasons and not to discuss representationalism with Price, as the Clock Tower in the Great Court is
named after Edward III after being redesigned by Thomas Neville. Naturalism Without Mirrors is
like a greatest hits compilation of an intellectual stars greatest years, it is well worth buying unless
you already have Minds, Worlds and Conditionals: Essays in Honour of Frank Jackson where
chapter 12 first appeared.
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