Philosophical realism
Philosophical realism – usually not treated as a position of its own but as a stance towards other subject matters – is the view that a certain kind of thing (ranging widely from
Realism can also be a view about the properties of reality in general, holding that reality exists independent of the mind, as opposed to non-realist views (like some forms of skepticism and solipsism) which question the certainty of anything beyond one's own mind. Philosophers who profess realism often claim that truth consists in a correspondence between cognitive representations and reality.[9]
Realists tend to believe that whatever we believe now is only an approximation of reality but that the accuracy and fullness of understanding can be improved.[10] In some contexts, realism is contrasted with idealism. Today it is more often contrasted with anti-realism, for example in the philosophy of science.[11][12]
The oldest use of the term "realism" appeared in medieval scholastic interpretations and adaptations of ancient Greek philosophy.
Etymology
The term comes from Late Latin realis "real" and was first used in the abstract metaphysical sense by Immanuel Kant in 1781 (CPR A 369).[13]
Varieties
Metaphysical realism
Metaphysical realism maintains that "whatever exists does so, and has the properties and relations it does, independently of deriving its existence or nature from being thought of or experienced."
Naive or direct realism
Immanent realism
Scientific realism
Scientific realism in physics
Moral realism
Moral realism is the position that ethical sentences express propositions that refer to objective features of the world.
Aesthetic realism
Aesthetic realism (not to be confused with Aesthetic Realism, the philosophy developed by Eli Siegel, or "realism" in the arts) is the view that there are mind-independent aesthetic facts.[16][17]
History of metaphysical realism
Ancient Greek philosophy
In
In Aristotle's more modest view, the existence of universals (like "blueness") is dependent on the particulars that exemplify them (like a particular "blue bird", "blue piece of paper", "blue robe", etc.), and those particulars exist independent of any minds: classic
Medieval philosophy
Medieval realism developed out of debates over the
Proponents of moderate realism included
Early modern philosophy
In
The roots of Scottish Common Sense Realism can be found in responses to such philosophers as John Locke, George Berkeley, and David Hume. The approach was a response to the "ideal system" that began with Descartes' concept of the limitations of sense experience and led Locke and Hume to a skepticism that called religion and the evidence of the senses equally into question. The common sense realists found skepticism to be absurd and so contrary to common experience that it had to be rejected. They taught that ordinary experiences provide intuitively certain assurance of the existence of the self, of real objects that could be seen and felt and of certain "first principles" upon which sound morality and religious beliefs could be established. Its basic principle was enunciated by its founder and greatest figure, Thomas Reid:[21]
- If there are certain principles, as I think there are, which the constitution of our nature leads us to believe, and which we are under a necessity to take for granted in the common concerns of life, without being able to give a reason for them—these are what we call the principles of common sense; and what is manifestly contrary to them, is what we call absurd.
Late modern philosophy
In
According to Michael Resnik, Gottlob Frege's work after 1891 can be interpreted as a contribution to realism.[26]
Contemporary philosophy
In
See also
- Anti-realism
- Critical realism
- Dialectical realism
- Epistemological realism
- Extended modal realism
- Legal realism
- Modal realism
- Objectivism
- Philosophy of social science
- Principle of bivalence
- Problem of future contingents
- Realism (disambiguation)
- Truth-value link realism
- Speculative realism
- Direct and indirect realism
Notes
- ^ Craig, Edward (1996). "Realism and antirealism". Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Routledge.
- ^ Miller, Alexander (2019). "Realism". The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. Retrieved 30 December 2020.
- ^ Honderich, Ted (2005). "realism and anti-realism". The Oxford Companion to Philosophy. Oxford University Press.
- ISSN 0306-3127.
- ^ Khlentzos, Drew. "Challenges to Metaphysical Realism". In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2016 ed.).
- ISSN 0269-1728.
- ISBN 978-90-481-5234-6.
- S2CID 150893870.
- veritas est adaequatio rei et intellectus ("truth is the adequation of thought and thing") was defended by Thomas Aquinas.
- ^ Blackburn p. 188
- ISSN 0039-4238.
- ^ Boyd, Richard. "Realism, approximate truth, and philosophical method". University of Minnesota Digital Conservancy.
- ^ Heidemann, D. "Kant and the forms of realism". Synthese (2019).
- ^ Laird Addis, Greg Jesson, Erwin Tegtmeier (eds.), Ontology and Analysis: Essays and Recollections about Gustav Bergmann, Walter de Gruyter, 2007, p. 107.
- ^ Scientific Realism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
- ^ Nick Zangwill, The Metaphysics of Beauty, Cornell University Press, 2001, p. 3.
- . (subscription required)
- ^ Realism – philosophy – Britannica.com
- ^ John Marenbon, Medieval Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, 2016, p. 72.
- ^ Nominalism, Realism, Conceptualism – Catholic Encyclopedia (1913)
- ^ Cuneo and Woudenberg, eds. The Cambridge companion to Thomas Reid (2004) p 85
- ^ a b c d Gestalt Theory: Official Journal of the Society for Gestalt Theory and Its Applications (GTA), 22, Steinkopff, 2000, p. 94: "Attention has varied between Continental Phenomenology (late Husserl, Merleau-Ponty) and Austrian Realism (Brentano, Meinong, Benussi, early Husserl)".
- ^ Liliana Albertazzi, Dale Jacquette, The School of Alexius Meinong, Routledge, 2017, p. 191.
- ^ Mark Textor, The Austrian Contribution to Analytic Philosophy, Routledge, 2006, pp. 170–1:
"[Husserl argues in the Logical Investigations that the rightness of a judgement or proposition] shows itself in our experience of self-evidence (Evidenz), which term Husserl takes from Brentano, but makes criterial not of truth per se but of our most secure awareness that things are as we take them to be, when the object of judgement, the state of affairs, is given most fully or adequately. ... In his struggle to overcome relativism, especially psychologism, Husserl stressed the objectivity of truth and its independence of the nature of those who judge it ... A proposition is true not because of some fact about a thinker but because of an objectively existing abstract proposition's relation to something that is not a proposition, namely a state of affairs." - ^ Sean Creaven, Marxism and Realism: A Materialistic Application of Realism in the Social Sciences, Routledge, 2012, p. 33.
- ^ Michael Resnik, "II. Frege as Idealist and then Realist," Inquiry 22 (1–4):350–357 (1979).
- ^ Bertrand Russell, Philosophy of Logical Atomism, Open Court, 1998 [1918].
- ^ Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Routledge 2001 [1921].
- ^ Austin, J. L., 1950, "Truth", reprinted in Philosophical Papers, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press 1979, 117–33.
- ^ Karl Popper, Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge, 1963.
- ^ Thornton, Stephen (2015-01-01). Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). Karl Popper (Winter 2015 ed.). ("Popper professes to be anti-conventionalist, and his commitment to the correspondence theory of truth places him firmly within the realist's camp.")
- ^ Gustav Bergmann, Logic and Reality, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1964; Gustav Bergmann, Realism: A Critique of Brentano and Meinong, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1967.
- ^ Putnam, H., Realism and Reason. Philosophical Papers, vol. 3. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
- ^ Putnam, H. Realism with a Human Face. Edited by James Conant. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1990, p. vii.
- ^ A. M. Ferner, Organisms and Personal Identity: Individuation and the Work of David Wiggins, Routledge, 2016, p. 28.
- ^ Paul John Ennis, Post-continental Voices: Selected Interviews, John Hunt Publishing, 2010, p. 18.
- ^ Mackay, Robin (March 2007). "Editorial Introduction". Collapse. 2 (1): 3–13.
References
- ISBN 978-0-19-516824-2.
External links
- Miller, Alexander, "Realism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP)
- O'Brien, Daniel, "Objects of Perception", The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (IEP)
- An experimental test of non-local realism. Physics research paper in Nature which gives negative experimental results for certain classes of realism in the sense of physics.