Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Contemporary discussion of realism derives via a complex route from the post-Kantian dispute between realists and idealists, and still less directly from the scholastic dispute between realists and nominalists. For the medievals, the question was whether universals exist ‘outside the mind’; for nineteenth-century philosophers, it was whether the world as a whole is mind-independent. No contemporary philosopher can be entirely satisfied with the terms in which these debates were framed. Indeed, although currently it is widely felt that something of real importance is at stake in these longstanding controversies (in contrast to logical positivism's dismissal of them as pseudo-problems) philosophical attention has recently shifted to the problem of saying what this might be.Historical debates yield a variety of vague formulations, images and intuitions, but how these notions might be made clear enough for fruitful investigation and whether there is a uniform way of characterizing realism remain to be seen. For example, one central realist image is of a world that is there anyway, independently of us. But this image, even if it could be made more definite, would not suit realism about mental states. Another common image in realist thought is that of an area of inquiry in which the truth can outstrip even our best epistemic accomplishments. But some moral realists might insist that it ... log in or subscribe to read full text