Realism (from Scholastic Latin realis, from res, “thing”) — The thesis that certain entities, properties or facts exist and are as they are independently of our minds, languages and beliefs. It is not a single doctrine but a family of positions, always defined relative to a particular domain. In antiquity, realism about universals is associated with Plato, for whom the Forms exist separately from sensible things; Aristotle held a moderate version in which universals exist in things. In the medieval dispute over universals, realism was opposed to the nominalism of William of Ockham. Today the term designates theses in several fields: scientific realism (our best scientific theories describe an unobservable reality in an approximately true way), moral realism (there are objective moral facts), mathematical realism (mathematical objects and truths are independent of us), and realism about the external world, contrasted with Berkeley’s idealism. Hilary Putnam first defended a metaphysical realism and later criticized it, proposing “internal realism” (1970s–1980s). Kant, for his part, combined empirical realism with transcendental idealism in the Critique of Pure Reason (1781). Opposing positions are usually grouped under anti-realism.
See also: Plato, Aristotle, Hilary Putnam, Kant, Berkeley.
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