Realism versus Postrealism

I think [Arthur] Fine's [postrealism] view (which I take to be in the same spirit as Wittgenstein's) is both deeply right and deeply wrong. To my mind, both thinkers rightly reject reflectionism [the view that the mind reflects reality] in favour of what I've been calling the "rail-less" view [according to which logic is imposed neither by reality on mind nor vice versa], but wrongly think that in doing this they are committed to rejecting metaphysical realism in favour of postrealism. It is quite right to say that we cannot describe extra-linguistic reality from a standpoint outside language. But why can't we describe extra-linguistic reality from within language? There is all the difference in the world between saying (rightly) that we can never conceive-of-reality apart from language, and saying (wrongly) that we can never conceive of reality-apart-from language.

--Roderick Long, Wittgenstein, Austrian Economics, and the Logic of Action 

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