Human Studies 13: 309-322, 1990. © 1990 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

"Threading-the-needle: The case for and against common-sense realism"

PAUL TIBBETrS Department of Philosophy, University of Dayton, Dayton, OH 45469

If I say "this mountain didn't exist then", I presumably mean that it was only formed later on - perhaps by a volcano.

If I say "this mountain didn't exist half an hour ago", this is such a strange statement that it is not clear what I mean... Perhaps you think that the statement that the mountain didn't exist then is quite clear, however one conceives the context. But suppose someone said "This mountain didn't exist a minute ago, but an exactly similar one did instead". Only the accustomed context allows what is meant to come through clearly.

Wittgenstein, On Certainty (1969:237)

Humans create then act within a wide range of structures: buildings, expressways, policies, bureaucracies, ideologies, etc. Some of these we label 'physical,' others 'social.' (As suggested by these examples, this paper will only deal with those physical and social structures that are human artifacts.) Although all such structures introduce behavior-constraints and behavior-definitions into our individual and collective lives in one way or another, structures such as buildings and expressways initially appear to physically constrain us in ways social structures do not. On a common- sense account, ignoring physical structures such as stairwells, walls and guardrails has immediate effects on our intended or unintended movement through space. Violating or ignoring the metaphorical equivalents of walls and guard rails associated with social structures issues in quite different penalties (dismissal, divorce, excommunication, etc.).

However, there are a number of convergencies between the two typesof structures: (a) Both are heavily invested with human interests and intentions and without these neither type of structure would have come into existence in the first place nor continue over time. (b) Nor does appeal to the

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'materiality' of the one or the 'ideational' character of the other sharply differentiate the two types of structures given that expressways and malls, chains of command and apartheid policies, are all cultural constructs. Whether they are cultural artifacts in the same sense remains to be seen. (c) Both types of structures evolve over time, equally adapting to physical and social contingencies (as confirmed by the respective histories, say, of architectural or organizational structures). (d) Nor will the presence or absence of emotional investment for the one as against the other type of structure distinguish them. (Witness, for example, the romance surrounding Route 66, the Spitfire, the art work in Depression-period train stations, or Chartres Cathedral. Who would claim any of these to be an entirely physi- cal structure?) (e) Nor is it the case that all physical in contrast with social structures have clearly demarcated boundaries: except for a few miles of cement locks, the Panama Canal is only loosely defined by rising and receding lake shores, landfills, hillsides, silt deposits, and marker buoys. On the other hand, the 'boundaries' associated with social structures are not necessarily more amorphous and non-rigid than some physical structures: the codes defining appropriate conduct within a military academy, prison or monastery can be as rigid as the enclosing cement walls. (f) Moreover, one major manifest function of both types of structures is the creation of order and the structuring of some dimension of human existence. That is, in Wittgenstein's sense in PI (par. 23), both structures create 'forms of life.'

As Pitkin (1972:132) remarks,

. . .human life as we live and observe it is not just a random, continuous flow, but displays recurrent patterns, regularities, characteristic ways of doing and being, of feeling and acting, of speaking and interacting. Because they are patterns, regularities, configurations, Wittgenstein calls them forms; and because they are patterns in the fabric of human exist- ence and activity on earth, he calls them forms of life.

Still, our common-sense realist reservations persist that despite these possible points of convergence there is a fundamental difference between physical and non-physical, cultural structures and that the former possess a priority and unique significance denied the latter. For C.I. Lewis (1946:129), for example, our everyday observational vocabulary is "largely pre-empted to the assertion of objective realities and events." Similarly, for Alfred Schutz (1971:201,233), the world we live in is

a world of well-circumscribed objects with definite qualities, objects among which we move, which resist us and upon which we may act... [This] world of working in daily life is the archetype of our experience of reality. All the other provinces of meaning may be considered as its modifications.

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Accordingly, social structures are perceived as cognitive or noetic constructions, even if collectively constructed. This is why on such an account bureaucratic policies, for example, are more abstract than, say, the Manhattan Skyline or the Erie Canal. In response, one might dismiss such realist reservations as due to physicalist prejudicies and argue that policies and priorities have as much a substantial existence to them as skyscrapers or canal locks. One might even claim that social structures have an even greater reality at times than physical artifacts given the considerable effect institutional policies, for example, can have on our collective social and even continued physical existence! Both sides to this debate can therefore lay claim to common sense regarding the reality of the one or the other type of structure.1

Of course, even advocates of this response generally observe the restric- tions associated with physical constructions and differentiate between the behaviors appropriate within physical as against social structures. To put it bluntly, procedures for exiting from organizations appear to be quite different from exiting the burning building housing that organization! Accordingly, one could argue that social structures are merely cognitive constructions which we then (metaphorically) wrap around ourselves and our actions with differing degrees of opportunity or suffocation. (Such a demythologizing account is not unlike Feuerbach's proposal that the gods are human fictions projected onto an equally fictitious heaven which we then endow with a more perfect reality than our own and adjust our be- havior accordingly.)

Following are examples of a relatively simple then of a more complex artifactual structure initially beating striking family resemblances to one another. The common-place nature of the former type of structure is entirely intentional, for reasons to be seen. In addition, these respective examples of 'threading-the-needle' suggest the reductionistic nature of common-sense realism as well as of scientific realism in dealing with social as well as with physical artifacts. In spite of the convergencies between the two types of artifacts suggested in items (a)-(f) above, it will later be argued that there are at least two salient differences between the two types of structures.

Example one

Ahead of me stretches a two-lane secondary road running through an urban neighborhood. Vehicles are parked on both sides and, given the narrowness of the street, traffic must slow down as it literally threads its way through this needle-like eye stretch of road until it widens up ahead. On a common- sense realist's account the distance between the curbs minus the width of

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the parked vehicles defines the width of the needle's eye. Subtract the width of your own vehicle and you have the distance between you and an acci- dent. Supposedly, there is nothing subjective in all this; noetic, interpretive considerations on the part of drivers are irrelevant. Even Professor X, after delivering a lecture brilliantly defending an idealist account of material objects and the doctrine of internal relations, will drive no less cautiously than a common-sense realist through this needle that evening. No idealist account will expand the eye or contract the thread represented by his vehicle. Nor is it all that controversial whether his vehicle made contact with another; fault may be in question but not contact! The eye of the needle is only so wide and contact carries more than intellectual conse- quences. Accordingly, the ontology Professor X presupposes while driving is not at all the one defended in the lecture hall.

The interest theorist might counter that it was human interests that created built environments and a technology of transportation, including two-way streets and traffic. Accordingly, the vehicle-as-thread and the distance-between-vehicles-as-eye is contingent on human interests as reflected in parking ordinances, street construction codes, industry stan- dards for vehicle widths, driving protocols, etc. Therefore, on this line of reasoning, the threading-the-needle issue is entirely conditional on socially- contingent interests and intentions. Of course, even for the interest theorist vehicles and roads are not merely ideas; rather, they are the embodiments or realizations of such ideas and interests. In this sense, ideas and embodied- interests are necessary and perhaps sufficient for the existence of vehicular threads and eyes. Standing in this same spot, say 250 years ago, there would be nothing but trees and brush. Before the threading-the-needle issue and the matter of vehicular clearance could even arise there first had to be built environments, vehicles, roadways, traffic ordinances, etc. Accordingly, what constitutes 'success' in threading your vehicle along this or any street presupposes a considerable amount of prior social noetic activity.

The question is, however, are any of these subjective considerations regarding interpretive frameworks relevant for the common-sense realist? No! At any given time in the evolution of vehicles and street widths, there will only be a certain amount of clearance in the eye and the frequency of accidents will proportionally increase as vehicles become wider or streets narrower. In other words, it is not human subjectivity but collision rates and liability claims that provide an inverse measure of vehicular clearance. The ratio of vehicle to street width, then, is a constant at any given time and - continuing the realist case - it is this ratio of thread to needle width that reinforces our common-sense realist rather than relativist inclinations. For the realist, then, all cases of threading-the-needle reinforce our common- sense beliefs regarding a reality-with-determinate-structure account.

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Example two

I now turn to an example of a bureaucratic-created needle. A number of years ago the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) created 'Victor Airways.' In effect, these are highways in the sky that crisscross the U.S. connecting a series of signal-emitting towers, or VORs (for 'Very High Frequency Omnidirectional Range Stations'). The Victor Airways linking these VORs are 8 nautical miles wide, with their floors at 1200ft. above the ground and their ceiling 18,000 ft. above sea level. While proceeding from one VOR station to another, aircraft are required to remain within the boundaries of the airways. If the aircraft is 4 1/2 nm off the airway center- line or outside the lower or upper limits the pilot is in violation and can be cited, esp. given the current concern over air safety. (Ground-based radar and signal-emitting equipment within the aircraft indicate to air traffic controllers whether the aircraft is within these boundaries.)

These Victor Airways are therefore largely bureaucratic rather than material constructions. As such they are invisible to the human eye. However, these airways are 'visible' in at least two ways: (a) their vertical walls are electronically defined by VOR signals (operating within the 108.0 to 117.95 MHz frequency band). (b) In addition, the floor and ceiling are defined by the aircraft's altimeter, that is, by relative pressure differentials between sea-level atmospheric pressure and the atmospheric pressure at a given altitude. If either the VOR stations or the VOR-signal receiver(s) in the aircraft is inoperative then you cannot define ('visualize') the walls of the airway. On the other hand, with a faulty altimeter you might have walls but no way to define the floor or ceiling. Finally, rather than the horizontal clearance established by curbstones and fenders on the roadway, the altimeter is used to establish a 500' vertical clearance between aircraft. Though the eye of the needle is roughly an elipse and that of the airway a rectangle, both are geometrical shapes extended into three-dimensional space. Still, only the airway requires a closed, continuous perimeter to be defined whereas the roadway has no ceiling (except through tunnels and underpasses).

Some contrasts between a Victor Airway and our street-as-needle metaphor might be obvious:

(1) Unlike a sideview mirror on a vehicle, an aircraft's wings will not part company should the airway wall be contacted.

(2) Airway widths are defined electronically rather than by stone cur- bings.

(3) Airways can disappear at any moment, i.e., become electronically undefined; roadways have a more substantial existence.

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(4) The width and height of airways can be modified by bureaucratic redefinition and whim and the twist of a dial or two; not so roadways.

(5) Airways unlike roadways are not detectable by our human senses. (6) Magnetic disturbances in the atmosphere could (theoretically) bend an

airway's walls by bending the signals that define the airway, just as differences in atmospheric pressure between two segments of an airway could introduce variation into the lower and upper limits of airways. (A 1 inch change in atmospheric pressure between two points translates into a 1000 ft. altitude difference!) About the only force that could do this to roadways are earthquakes.

(7) Resetting a dial can redefine the one; redefining the other requires a bulldozer!

(8) Changes in the shape and size of an airway can be initiated remotely by air controllers hundreds of miles from the VORs and airways. Road work must be done in situ.

As suggested earlier, for the realist the ratio of vehicle to street width requires reference at some point or other to physically-defined parameters. However, given items (1)-(8) the same realist may be reluctant to appeal to such parameters regarding the shape and size of Victor Airways and clearances within the needle's eye. Initially, there appears to be con- siderable difference of logical types between the parameters respectively defining the shapes and sizes of roadways and airways (1, 2 and 6 above), how the two come into and go out of existence (2-4, 7-8), and the detec- tability of each type of structure (5). Still, the common-sense realist could counter that even airways are defined by physical rather than exclusively social or noetic considerations. After all, frequency bands and megahertz wave lengths represent energy levels in the electromagnetic spectrum, and what is the aneroid barometer in aircraft measuring if not pressure differen- tials. And in order to have VOR signals you must have generating plants, a transmission technology and signal-generating and receiving-equipment. Consequently, a scientific realism can do justice to items (1)-(8) - though (4) remains problematic.

A possible reply to this realist, reductionist account is, 'Well, the airway example is different because, as noted earlier, airways are bureaucratic creations and incorporate organization-created conventions.' Going one step further, one could also claim that this is also the case with our road- way, which is but one minor element in a bureaucratically- and therefore socially-ordained transportation system. Accordingly, a nation's highways are as much a social as a physical creation.

As Harvey Brooks (1981:35) has observed, technology, including road- building technology,

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must be sociotechnical rather than technical, and [accordingly] a technol- ogy must include the managerial and social supporting systems necessary to apply it on a significant scale.

Relevant to our earlier roadway example, Brooks (1981:38) adds that,

the system of... highways and highway maintenance .... of traffic controls and law enforcement, all comprise the technological system of automobile transportation. Their creation constitutes a part of the innovation process in which the automobile is the central artifact. In this sense, we see that innovations are not conceived and created all at once, but,, rather, that they evolve in close interaction with society.

No roadway is therefore merely or entirely a physical structure, no more so than concentration camps, branding irons, chevrons, wedding rings or driver's licenses are just so much wire, cement, iron, cloth, gold or plastic. It considerably weakens the common-sense as well as the scientific realist's cases to recognize that few physical - let alone social - constructions can be analyzed in reductionistic, non-social terms.

For Habermas (1971:316), the flaw in such a reduction is

the substitution of technology for enlightened action. It directs the utilization of scientific information from an illusory viewpoint, namely that the practical mastery of [facts] can be reduced to technical control of objectified processes.

Accordingly, for Habermas (1971:vii),

the analysis of the connection of knowledge and interest should support the assertion that a radical critique of knowledge is possible only as social theory.

Given that roadways and airways both originate from human interests, the two are not radically different sorts of entities. On this constructivist account whatever differences there are between the two are differences in the language games and contexts of interest within which we talk about the one or the other. Where the languages of civil engineering, highway departments and vehicle users jointly provide the language context(s) of the one, the sciences of electronics and altimetry, the FAA and pilots constitute the language-game(s) situating the other. Whatever differences there are between threading-the-needle in examples one and two are therefore on a constructivist account entirely attributable to slippage or non-congruency between the social interests, language-games and associated forms-of-life respectively associated with roadways and airways.

However, in spite of this reference to social interests as the point of convergence between material and social structures, two salient differences

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that have received little attention need to be developed. The intention in the preceding pages was to take two supposedly different logical types of structures and reduce the conceptual differences between them. I now argue for two points of non-convergence. It is not my intent in what follows to reinforce whatever common-sense intuitions we might have regarding such differences. My concern is rather with the more technical issue of which type of structure is more epistemically foundational for the other in the ways we talk about our world.

First point of difference

It is interesting to note that in talking about socially-constructed structures such as organizations and policies we employ a number of striking physicalistic metaphors: taking the pressure off; loosening or tightening controls; turning the heat up; smoothing out the operation; reinforcing, shoring up, strengthening; casting and recasting; gearing, engaging and coupling; we talk of organization policies as splintered, riveted in place, shattered, fragmented, tapered, flexible, cyclical, rigid, balanced, off-center, running true, reciprocating, contracting, expanding, solid, soft, stationary, having momentum, building up steam, accelerating and of tightening controls, and so on.

The above metaphors descriptive of social structures are then frequently extended to the individual members of such structures. We deploy physicalist imagery to describe persons as: engaging, eccentric, explosive, unhinged, abrasive, polished, rough, coarse, malleable, flexible; people can also be shafted, screwed, reamed out, under stress or tension, energetic, radiant, hardened, requiring recycling or retooling, have nerves of steel, an iron will, etc.

The common thread in all these metaphors is that they are descriptive of mechanical structures or processes. E.g., to talk about reinforcing, shoring up or reframing a policy directive is to borrow language from building construction; talk about leverage, rigidity, fracture and stress points, is the language of the engineer; and talk about people as screwed, unhinged, eccentric, reamed or engaging is to employ the language of the machine tool shop. Interestingly, the reverse metaphorical deployment of language from social to physical systems is far less frequent. A possible reason for this is that such material objects as hand tools and their use have simply been around longer and therefore had more occasion to filter into our everyday language. Another argument is that everyone has employed or at least observed some sort of tools and simple machines (levers, cranks, screwthreads, files, gearing, pulleys, etc.).

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I contend that the far greater frequency of physical metaphors in our descriptive vocabularies is simply that we can directly see, touch and manipulate what it means for something to be flexible, engaged, coarse, tightened, and so on. Of course, we have to culturally acquire the informal logic and contexts-of-use surrounding such activities and associated concepts. But the point is these particular physical and mechanical metaphors heavily inform the descriptive vocabulary of the form of life of our everyday life-world, in contrast with the more specialized vocabularies and metaphors associated with technical languages. For good reason, then, Schutz (1970:96) referred to the former as the 'pre-scientific vernacular of everyday life.'

Therefore, one suggestion as to why mechanical and physical metaphors have been conceptually imported into talk about social structures and talk about persons is that such metaphors are graphic, concrete and firmly anchored in Schutz's vernacular of everyday life. (As obvious with such locutions as 'grounded,' 'concrete' and 'anchored,' it is difficult to avoid employing physically-denoting metaphors even on a meta-level analysis re. the relation between discourse and world!) Accordingly, the first salient difference between physical and social structures is that metaphors descrip- tive of the latter are frequently parasitic on language descriptive of the former.

Second point of difference

Related to the above conclusion, the reason why some structures and processes are, metaphorically speaking, more concrete is simply because they are resistant to our bodily actions and praxis. Of course we do talk about social structures and events as resistant, solid, etc., but such metaphors are borrowed from the context of bodily action and what-is-at- hand. In other words, it is here claimed that our descriptive metaphors are ultimately grounded in our capacity to physically grasp and manipulate with our hands - or extensions of our hands. 2 While recognizing the hierarchies of increasingly abstract vocabularies associated with various technical languages and language games, I contend that the pragmatic context of a 'world-at-hand' remains basic. It is not being claimed that physical struc- tures and events per se are foundational. This is the realist move. Rather, I claim that what we come to refer to as our 'world' and as 'reality' cannot be conceptually disengaged from our constituting actions and interests. To quote Schutz (1970:73) again,

Our bodily movements - kinaesthetic, locomotive, operative - gear, so to speak, into the world, modifying or changing its objects and their mutual

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relationships. On the other hand, these objects offer resistance to our acts which we have either to overcome or to which we have to yield. In this sense it may be correctly said that a pragmatic motive governs our natural attitude toward the world of daily life. World, in this sense, is something that we have to modify by our actions or that modifies our actions.

This recognition of the constitutive role of interests and actions in reality ascriptions was earlier recognized by William James (1890:295):

the sense in which we contrast reality with simple unreality, and in which one thing is said to have more reality than another, and to be more believed, reality means simply relation to our emotional and active life. This is the only sense which the word ever has in the mouths of practical men. In this sense, whatever excites and stimulates our interest is real. 3

The common-sense and scientific realist are therefore wrong for at least two reasons. First, their exclusive focus on the physical dimension of reality ignores the contributions of contingent human interests and bodily praxis in constituting the so-called 'physically real world.' Together, interests and praxis point the way out of the fly bottle of the realist-idealist controversy. Realists simply ignore the seemingly endless human capacity for construct- ing universes of discourse and their associated ascriptions of reality, and the extent to which such reality-denoting discourse is interest- and praxis- informed. Among contemporary epistemologists, Bemstein (1971), Rorty (1979) and Hacking (1983) have particularly noted the role played by these pragmatic considerations in knowledge-generation. E.g., in the context of the debate over realism, Hacking (1983:31) has remarked that,

Most of today's debate about scientific realism is couched in terms of theory, representation, and truth. The discussions are illuminating but not decisive. This is partly because they are so infected with intractable metaphysics. I suspect there can be no final argument for or against realism at the level of representation... Thefinal arbitrator in philosophy is not how we think but what we do.

This recognition of praxis as grounding theoria has also been tumed against idealism. E.g., Dewey (1929a:21) was rightly critical of an overly intellectualist account of material things and contended that such things are

objects to be treated, used, acted upon and with.. .even more than things to be known. They are things had before they are things cognized. (Emphasis added.)

This 'intellectualist fallacy,' as Dewey (1929b:291) termed it, is common to idealist as well as to realist theories of knowledge. As Dewey remarked in The Quest for Certainty (1929b:22-24),

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Idealist theories hold that mind and the object known are ultimately one; realist doctrines reduce knowledge to awareness of what exists indepen- dently... But they all make one common assumption. They all hold that the operation of inquiry excludes any element of practical activity that enters into the constraint of the object known... The common essence of all these theories, in short, is that what is known is antecedent to the mental act of observation and inquiry... The theory of knowing is modeled after what was supposed to take place in the act of vision. A spectator theory of knowledge is the inevitable outcome...

All of these notions about...the nature of the real world all flow from the separation between theory and practice, knowledge and action.

Turning from the contribution of bodily praxis and action to that of the social dimension in our accounts of 'reality,' Bloor (1977:12-13) has observed that even our best scientific knowledge

is largely a theoretical vision of the world that, at any given time, scientists may be said to know. It is largely to their theories that scientists must repair when asked what they can tell us about the world... Another agency apart from the physical world is required to guide and support this component of knowledge. The theoretical component of knowledge is a social component, and it is a necessary part of truth, not a sign of mere error.

Second, realist claims for the supposed priority associated with physical structures and events are not clarified by obscure references to the 'reality' of such structures. Interestingly, realist vocabulary - with its accompanying obscurity - is sometimes present even in those authors usually considered as critics of realism. E.g., Barnes (1977:10) clearly endorses a realist ontology in the following remarks, together with a duality between human knowledge and praxis. (The reader might also note in the following two quotations that about all this realist ontology manages to introduce - without clarification of course - is the four letter word 'real' !)

Knowledge is not related to activity rather than reality; it is related to activity which consists precisely in men attempting to manipulate, predict and control the real worm in which they exist. Hence knowledge is found useful precisely because the worm is as it is; and it is to that extent a function of what is real... (Emphasis added.)

Again (1977:25-26),

Everything of naturalistic significance would indicate that there is indeed one world, one reality, 'out there', the source of our perceptions if not their total determinant .... But this reality should not be identified with any linguistic account of it, or, needless to say, with any way of perceiv- ing it, or pictorial representation of it. Reality is the source of primitive causes, which, having been pre-processed by our perceptual apparatus,

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produce changes in our knowledge and the verbal representations of it which we possess.

Ironically, Barnes (1977:4-5) earlier stated in this same study that his strategy was to analyze knowledge-generation and -representation as "essentially a constructed and socially mediated process in the light of particular interests." Obviously, for Barnes these important constructivist and interest considerations in knowledge-generation somewhere lost out to the mere verbalizations of realism.

In conclusion, and in opposition to the obscurity of such realist claims, I contend that ascriptions of physical reality are bounded by a secular trinity of social interests, linguistic preferences and a world-at-hand. This proposal does not beg-the-question concerning whether there is an independent real world given that these three axes are the foundation for our having any 'world' at all! We are not disembodied, pure consciousness, noetically constituting a world. On this point I fully concur with the realist, though not with the latter's assumption that idealism can be disarmed by obscure references to what is 'real' or to 'physical reality.' Claims regarding the latter cannot be disengaged from the three axes (social interests, discourse and a world-at-hand) which contextualize human knowledge-generation. I contend that this is true for all our epistemic and ontological claims re. both social and physical structures. It also applies to the meta-level claims being made in this paper. This defuses the typical realist response that even the constructivist must somewhere reintroduce realist claims, if not as theorist then as agent. Regarding such realist claims, when I try to conceive of this so-called 'independent reality' all that comes to mind - or to hand - are structures, shapes, sizes, events, relations, and properties set against or within the context of human interests, a world-at-hand and one or another contingent context of discourse.

This conclusion applies to the reality of the physically- and socially- constructed needles discussed earlier. The intuitions of the common-sense realist that in some sense roadways are more real than airways are war- ranted, though not because the one incorporates a mysterious dimension ('reality') denied the other. It is not an added dimension that differentiates physical from social artifacts. Rather, it is the three-fold context discussed above which situates the former in one way and the latter in another. Even the verbal ascriptions of the realist regarding physical objects and reality are no less contingent constructions than other human artifacts. As Wittgenstein (1969: Para. 36) remarks,

And is this an empirical proposition: "There seems to be physical objects"?

"A is a physical object" is a piece of instruction which we give only to someone who doesn't yet understand either what "A" means, or what

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"physical object" means. Thus it is instruction about the use of words, and "physical object" is a logical concept . . .

Notes

1. There are few clear-cut examples of 20th-century common-sense realists. Not even G.E. Moore (1925) in his classic paper, "A Defense of Common Sense," qualifies, given that for him propositions about the physical objects of everyday perception are translatable into propositions concerning sense data. Moore (1925:44) could write that, "I am one of those philosophers who have held that the 'Common Sense view of the world' is, in certain fundamental features, wholly true." Still, for Moore (1925:58), "there seems no doubt" concerning the proposition that perception is of sense-data rather than of physical objects.

Given the lack of a clear-cut case of a common-sense realist, then, 'common-sense realist' will here be used as a limiting case, an "ideally constructed pure type" in Max Weber's sense. For Weber (1978:23-25), the methodological warrant for this is that

the only choice is often between a terminology which is not clear at all and one which is clear but... 'ideal-typical'. In this situation, however, the latter sort of terminology is scientifically [and philosophically] preferable.

Accordingly, 'common-sense realism' for purposes of this paper will be associated with three claims: (a) the material objects of ordinary perception exist independently of human noetic activity, (b) such material objects constitute 'physical reality,' in opposition to any scientific reductionist or phenomenalist account, and (c) such non-physical phenomena as social events and social structures therefore have only a noetic and derivative status.

2. This point was particularly developed in the writings of G.H. Mead, especially in The Philosophy of the Act (1938:13): "What a thing is is found in contact experience alone." This follows for Mead given that physical manipulation and behavioral responses provide the most consistently reliable criteria the organism can resort to in its transactions with the environment. Accordingly, for Mead (1938:187),

It is impossible to exaggerate the fundamental nature of this co-operation of the human animal with his contact environment or his dependence upon it. He rests upon it, demands and beseeches it in every position and at every step. The solid earth is dependable, the bog is treacherous, the shaft or haft is inviting to the hand, and the balance of the weapon or tool is com- panionable.

3. In a quite different vein, John Austin (1962:70) once remarked that, the term 'real ' as in 'a real duck' only has a definite sense by way of contrast with a decoy or toy duck. Generally speaking, realists do not deploy the term 'real ' or 'reality' in this fashion but as denoting something behind, below or above the mere contingencies of ordinary perception and language. (See Tibbetts, 1988, 1985.) For Austin, they further assume there is a single referent for these terms (as in the Barnes' quote above with its references to 'the real world' and 'what is real'). For Austin (1962:70), on the contrary,

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the attempt to find a characteristic common to all things that are or could be called 'real' is doomed to failure; the function of 'real' is not to contribute positively to the characterization of anything, but to exclude possible ways of being not real - and these ways are both numerous for particular kinds of things, and liable to be quite different for things of different kinds.

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