In this sort of case the motivation for the philosophical realism is that there is a real grammatical construction that's actually used in the world, and we're wondering what it's actual truth-conditions are. Maybe the best model for the semantics of this construction will involve graphical models a la Pearl. Or maybe the best semantics will require that we postulate things called possible worlds that have certain ordering properties. In either case, there will then still be a question whether the sentences ever come out true on the best semantics, or w... (read more)
In this sort of case the motivation for the philosophical realism is that there is a real grammatical construction that's actually used in the world, and we're wondering what it's actual truth-conditions are. Maybe the best model for the semantics of this construction will involve graphical models a la Pearl. Or maybe the best semantics will require that we postulate things called possible worlds that have certain ordering properties. In either case, there will then still be a question whether the sentences ever come out true on the best semantics, or w... (read more)