Philosophical realism
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Contemporary philosophical realism, also referred to as metaphysical realism, is the belief in a reality that is completely ontologically independent of our conceptual schemes, linguistic practices, beliefs, etc. Philosophers who profess realism also typically believe that truth consists in a belief's correspondence to reality. We may speak of realism with respect to other minds, the past, the future, universals, mathematical entities (such as natural numbers), moral categories, the material world, or even thought.
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. In recent times, debates concerning realism have become quite contentious due mostly in part to the influence of postmodernism.
See also
- Analytic philosophy
- Critical realism
- Epistemological realism
- Legal realism
- Modal realism
- Moral realism
- Moderate realism
- Naïve realism
- Objectivism
- Philosophy of social science
- Platonic realism
- Scientific realism
- Truth-value link realism
- Idealism
Critics
