Realist Thought and Truth as a Motivating Reason: An Argument for Disjunctivism About Our Motivational Reasons

Realist and anti-realists disagree about whether our practice of forming empirical judgement is governed by the layout of a mind-independent reality. This paper develops an argument in favour of disjunctivism concerning the motivating reasons provided by experience. It does so by considering what is needed to ground our empirical thinking as subject to realist norms. The argument takes outset in a form of minimal pragmatism which claims that the realist norms governing our practice of forming ordinary empirical judgement must be grounded in the implicit aims the judgement forming community have with engaging in that practice. The paper then defends the idea that we can only ground our realist occupation with the mind-independent world when forming perceptual judgements in our practice of rationally responding to the mind-independent world when we form such judgements. This in turn requires that we adopt disjunctivism regarding the role perception and hallucination plays as motivating reasons for judgment. Hence, if we accept the idea that our aims in forming judgements must ground the norms of that practice, then realists should also be disjunctivists about the role experience plays as a provider of motivating reasons for judgement.