While the concept of truth we appear to be working with does seem to have characteristics that require a realist understanding of things (for example, it seems to be that we have to be right at least some of the time for the concept to have any applicability) nothing actually guarantees the applicability of the concept. Arguments from evolutionary adaptation smack strongly of arguments from design, comforting, appealing and specious. Even aside from the all too present to mind possibilities of other sorts of intelligence or changes to the nature of our own intelligence, our concepts can simply change. It does help clarify the nature of a nonrealist metaphysics as project, I think- one would involve the wholesale replacement or elimination of the concept of truth. Similarly, it would appear that it's not possible to seriously assert the nonexistence of beliefs as serious assertion implies belief among other things, but it's not clear that we actually can seriously assert anything, for an example of this being handled badly, one can always read Paul Churchland.

In any case, a descriptive account of our operative concepts continues to seem to me the proper concern of first philosophy, hence the continuing appeal of Austin. Other examples that come to mind, with regard to, say, esthetics, are Deleuze's cinema books or Pierre Bourdieu's 'Distinction', while this last is pretty nonphilsophical in its focus on differentiation of concepts rather than shared ones, it still has exactly the characteristics I find most interesting. Also interesting in this regard are Cavell's books on movies, though maybe they're less sophisticated in some ways, maybe that's a good thing. It's strange how many preoccupations I share with that guy, sometimes makes me feel sort of unsympathetic and hostile to him.