Philosophical Realism
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Philosophical Realism

Philosophical realism is usually not treated as a position of its own but as a stance towards other subject matters. Realism about a certain kind of thing (like numbers or morality) is the thesis that this kind of thing has mind-independent existence, i.e. that it is not just a mere appearance in the eye of the beholder.[1][2][3] This includes a number of positions within epistemology and metaphysics which express that a given thing instead exists independently of knowledge, thought, or understanding.[4] This can apply to items such as the physical world, the past and future, other minds, and the self, though may also apply less directly to things such as universals, mathematical truths, moral truths, and thought itself. However, realism may also include various positions which instead reject metaphysical treatments of reality entirely.[5][6]

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.[7]

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.[8] In some contexts, realism is contrasted with idealism. Today it is more usually contrasted with anti-realism, for example in the philosophy of science.

The oldest use of the term "realism" appears in medieval scholastic interpretations and adaptations of ancient Greek philosophy.


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).[9]


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."[10]

Naive or direct realism

Naive realism, also known as direct realism, is a philosophy of mind rooted in a common sense theory of perception that claims that the senses provide us with direct awareness of the external world. In contrast, some forms of idealism assert that no world exists apart from mind-dependent ideas and some forms of skepticism say we cannot trust our senses. The naive realist view is that objects have properties, such as texture, smell, taste and colour, that are usually perceived absolutely correctly. We perceive them as they really are.

Scientific realism


Scientific realism in physics

Realism in physics (especially quantum mechanics) is the claim that the world is in some sense mind-independent: that even if the results of a possible measurement do not pre-exist the act of measurement, that does not require that they are the creation of the observer (contrary to the "consciousness causes collapse" interpretation of quantum mechanics). That interpretation of quantum mechanics, on the other hand, states that the wave function is already the full description of reality. The different possible realities described by the wave function are equally true. The observer collapses the wave function into their own reality. One's reality can be mind-dependent under this interpretation of quantum mechanics.

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.[12][13]

History of metaphysical realism

Ancient Greek philosophy

Plato (left) and Aristotle (right), a detail of The School of Athens, a fresco by Raphael. In Plato's metaphysics, ever unchanging Forms, or Ideas, exist apart from particular things, and are related to them as their prototype or exemplar. Aristotle's philosophy of reality also aims at the universal. Aristotle finds the universal, which he calls essence, in the commonalities of particular things.

In ancient Greek philosophy, realist doctrines about universals were proposed by Plato and Aristotle.[14]


Aristotelian realism is the view that the existence of universals is dependent on the particulars that exemplify them.

Medieval philosophy

Medieval realism developed out of debates over the problem of universals.[15] Universals are terms or properties that can be applied to many things, such as "red", "beauty", "five", or "dog". Realism (also known as exaggerated realism) in this context, contrasted with conceptualism and nominalism, holds that such universals really exist, independently and somehow prior to the world. Moderate realism holds that they exist, but only insofar as they are instantiated in specific things; they do not exist separately from the specific thing. Conceptualism holds that they exist, but only in the mind, while nominalism holds that universals do not "exist" at all but are no more than words (flatus vocis) that describe specific objects.

Proponents of moderate realism included Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure, and Duns Scotus (cf. Scotist realism).[16]

Early modern philosophy




Late modern philosophy

In late modern philosophy, a notable school of thought advocating metaphysical realism was Austrian realism. Its members included Franz Brentano,[18] Alexius Meinong,[18] Vittorio Benussi,[18] Ernst Mally,[19] and early Edmund Husserl.[18] These thinkers stressed the objectivity of truth and its independence of the nature of those who judge it.[20] (See also Graz School.)

Dialectical materialism, a philosophy of nature based on the writings of late modern philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, is interpreted to be a form of ontological realism.[21]

According to Michael Resnik, Gottlob Frege's work after 1891 can be interpreted as a contribution to realism.[22]

Contemporary philosophy

In contemporary analytic philosophy, Bertrand Russell,[23] Ludwig Wittgenstein,[24] J. L. Austin,[25] Karl Popper,[26][27] and Gustav Bergmann[28] espoused metaphysical realism. Hilary Putnam initially espoused metaphysical realism,[29] but he later embraced a form of anti-realism that he termed "internal realism."[30] Conceptualist realism (a view put forward by David Wiggins) is a form of realism, according to which our conceptual framework maps reality.[31]

Speculative realism is a movement in contemporary Continental-inspired philosophy[32] that defines itself loosely in its stance of metaphysical realism against the dominant forms of post-Kantian philosophy.[33]

See also


  1. ^ Craig, Edward (1996). "Realism and antirealism". Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Routledge.
  2. ^ Miller, Alexander (2019). "Realism". The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. Retrieved 2020.
  3. ^ Honderich, Ted (2005). "realism and anti-realism". The Oxford Companion to Philosophy. Oxford University Press.
  4. ^ Khlentzos, Drew. "Challenges to Metaphysical Realism". In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2016 ed.).
  5. ^ Conway, Daniel (1999). "Beyond Truth and Appearance: Nietzsche's Emergent Realism". In Babich, Babette E. (ed.). Nietzsche, Epistemology, and Philosophy of Science. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science. 204. Dordrecht: Springer. pp. 109-122. doi:10.1007/978-94-017-2428-9_9. ISBN 978-90-481-5234-6.
  7. ^ The statement veritas est adaequatio rei et intellectus ("truth is the adequation of thought and thing") was defended by Thomas Aquinas.
  8. ^ Blackburn p. 188
  9. ^ Heidemann, D. "Kant and the forms of realism". Synthese (2019).
  10. ^ Laird Addis, Greg Jesson, Erwin Tegtmeier (eds.), Ontology and Analysis: Essays and Recollections about Gustav Bergmann, Walter de Gruyter, 2007, p. 107.
  11. ^ Scientific Realism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
  12. ^ Nick Zangwill, The Metaphysics of Beauty, Cornell University Press, 2001, p. 3.
  13. ^ Gavin McIntosh (2004). "Review: The Metaphysics of Beauty". Mind. 113 (449): 221-226. doi:10.1093/mind/113.449.221. (subscription required)
  14. ^ Realism - philosophy - Britannica.com
  15. ^ John Marenbon, Medieval Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, 2016, p. 72.
  16. ^ Nominalism, Realism, Conceptualism - Catholic Encyclopedia (1913)
  19. ^ Liliana Albertazzi, Dale Jacquette, The School of Alexius Meinong, Routledge, 2017, p. 191.
  20. ^ Mark Textor, The Austrian Contribution to Analytic Philosophy, Routledge, 2006, pp. 170-1:
  21. ^ Sean Creaven, Marxism and Realism: A Materialistic Application of Realism in the Social Sciences, Routledge, 2012, p. 33.
  22. ^ Michael Resnik, "II. Frege as Idealist and then Realist," Inquiry 22 (1-4):350-357 (1979).
  23. ^ Bertrand Russell, Philosophy of Logical Atomism, Open Court, 1998 [1918].
  24. ^ Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Routledge 2001 [1921].
  25. ^ Austin, J. L., 1950, "Truth", reprinted in Philosophical Papers, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press 1979, 117-33.
  26. ^ Karl Popper, Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge, 1963.
  27. ^ 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.")
  28. ^ 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.
  29. ^ Putnam, H., Realism and Reason. Philosophical Papers, vol. 3. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
  30. ^ Putnam, H. Realism with a Human Face. Edited by James Conant. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1990, p. vii.
  32. ^ Paul John Ennis, Post-continental Voices: Selected Interviews, John Hunt Publishing, 2010, p. 18.
  33. ^ Mackay, Robin (March 2007). "Editorial Introduction". Collapse. 2 (1): 3-13.


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