The Limits of Realism - Tapa dura

Button has written a conceptually rich, argumentatively deep, and clearly argued book on some of the deepest and most puzzling problems in metaphysics. I am confident that it will find the large number of readers it doubtlessly deserves. (Jan Westerhoff, Mind)

The clear, insightful, but rather innocent, analysis of Putnam's views on internal and external realism is suddenly turned into a subtle and subversive critique of fashionable metametaphysical positions. (Lieven Decock, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews)

Button's argument for the demise of the internal/external distinction is innovative and compelling (Lieven Decock, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews)

This book is exceedingly excellent, weaving together scholarship and philosophical thought of the highest quality; reading and thinking carefully about it will undoubtedly prove fruitful for anyone interested in such matters. I am really confident that it will structure the debate about realism for years to come (Nathan Wildman, Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung)

Tim Button explores the relationship between words and world; between semantics and scepticism.

A certain kind of philosopher―the external realist―worries that appearances might be radically deceptive; we might all, for example, be brains in vats, stimulated by an infernal machine. But anyone who entertains the possibility of radical deception must also entertain a further worry: that all of our thoughts are totally contentless. That worry is just incoherent.

We cannot, then, be external realists, who worry about the possibility of radical deception. Equally, though, we cannot be internal realists, who reject all possibility of deception. We must position ourselves somewhere between internal realism and external realism, but we cannot hope to say exactly where. We must be realists, for what that is worth, and realists within limits.

In establishing these claims, Button critically explores and develops several themes from Hilary Putnam's work: the model-theoretic arguments; the connection between truth and justification; the brain-in-vat argument; semantic externalism; and conceptual relativity. The Limits of Realism establishes the continued significance of these topics for all philosophers interested in mind, logic, language, or the possibility of metaphysics.