Anti-realism (from Greek anti-, “against”, and Latin realis) — A generic name for positions denying that a given domain (the external world, theoretical entities, values, mathematical objects) exists or has properties independently of our minds, practices or language. Like realism, it is always defined relative to a domain, and there is no single anti-realism. Its classic forms include nominalism about universals and the idealism of George Berkeley, for whom to be is to be perceived (esse est percipi). In the philosophy of science, instrumentalism treats theories as tools for prediction, and Bas van Fraassen’s constructive empiricism (The Scientific Image, 1980) holds that science aims at empirical adequacy, not at truth about the unobservable. In ethics, non-cognitivism and error theory deny that there are objective moral facts. Michael Dummett, beginning with “Truth” (1959) and “Realism” (a 1963 lecture), recast the dispute in semantic terms: the realist accepts that every statement of a domain is determinately true or false, even if we cannot know which; the anti-realist ties truth to the possibility of verification or justification, which leads to revising classical logic in favor of intuitionistic logic. Hilary Putnam, with his “internal realism,” is often placed in an intermediate position. Anti-realism is criticized for allegedly struggling to explain the success of science, an objection known as the “no-miracles argument.”
See also: Berkeley, Hilary Putnam, Kant, Truth, Empiricism.
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