PHILOSOPHICAL REALISM

Contemporary philosophical realism is the belief in and allegiance to a reality that exists independently of observers. Realists believe that theories are successful because they have a correspondence to reality. That is, because the theoretical explanations in question have some correspondence to what actually exists.^[1]

Realists tend to believe that whatever we believe now is only an approximation of reality and that every new observation brings us closer to understanding reality.^[2] Realists tend to embrace what they believe is actually real, despite how unattractive reality itself may be. Most realists arrive at their understanding of reality through critical thinking.

Debates about realism

Despite the straightforwardness of the realist position, there has been a lot of debate about what is real and what is meant by the term "real". Thus, throughout history, the term "realism" has acquired various meanings.

The oldest use of the term comes from Medieval interpretations of Greek philosophy. Here "realism" is contrasted with "conceptualism" and "nominalism". This can be called "realism about universals." Universals are terms or properties that can be applied to many things, rather than denoting a single specific individual--for example, red, beauty, five, or dog, as opposed to Socrates or Athens. Realism holds that these universals really exist, independently and somehow prior to the world; it is associated with Plato. Conceptualism holds that they exist, but only insofar as they are instantiated in specific things; they do not exist separately. Nominalism holds that universals do not "exist" at all; they are no more than words we use to describe specific objects, they do not name anything. This particular dispute over realism is largely moot in contemporary philosophy, and has been for centuries.

In another sense, realism is contrasted with both idealism and materialism, and considered synonymous with weak dualism. In still a third, and very contemporary sense, realism is contrasted with anti-realism, primarily in the philosophy of science.

Both these disputes are often carried out relative to some specific area: one might, for example, be a realist about physical matter but an anti-realist about ethics. The high necessity of specifying the area in which the claim is made has been increasingly acknowledged in recent years.

Increasingly these last disputes, too, are rejected as misleading, and some philosophers prefer to call the kind of realism espoused there "metaphysical realism," and eschew the whole debate in favour of simple "naturalism" or "natural realism", which is not so much a theory as the position that these debates are ill-conceived if not incoherent, and that there is no more to deciding what is really real than simply taking our words at face value.

Notes

References

• Blackburn, Simon (2005). Truth: A Guide. Oxford University Press, Inc. ISBN 0195168240.

See also

• Legal realism
• Scientific realism
• Critical realism
• Naïve realism
• Technorealism
• Truth-value link realism

External links

• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry