Realism

Realism is commonly defined as a concern for fact or reality and rejection of the impractical and visionary. However, the term realism is used, with varying meanings, in several of the liberal arts; particularly painting, literature, and philosophy. It is also used in international relations. In Philosophy realism is the view that there is an external world that exists independant of our perception of it.

Realism in philosophy

Main article: philosophical realism

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Realism in philosophical thinking is the belief that properties, usually called Universals, exist independently of the things that manifest them. Thus a realist would hold that even if one were to destroy all of the manifestations of the color red the universal red would still exist. Competing views contrasted with realism, such as nominalism, hold that universals do not "exist" at all; they are no more than words used strictly to describe specific objects, and do not name separately existing things.

Related Topics:
Universals - Nominalism

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In another sense, realism is contrasted with both idealism and materialism, and considered synonymous with weak dualism. In still a third and very contemporary sense, realism is contrasted with anti-realism.

Related Topics:
Idealism - Materialism - Weak dualism - Anti-realism

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Both these disputes are often carried out relative to some specific area: one might, for example, be a realist about physical matter but an anti-realist about ethics.

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Increasingly these last disputes, too, are rejected as misleading, and some philosophers prefer to call the kind of realism espoused there, "metaphysical realism," and eschew the whole debate in favour of simple "naturalism" or "natural realism", which is not so much a theory as the position that these debates are "ill-conceived" if not "incoherent," and that there is no more to deciding what is really real than simply taking our words at face value.

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See also: legal realism, critical realism, scientific realism, naïve realism, socialist realism, philosophical skepticism, technorealism

Related Topics:
Legal realism - Critical realism - Scientific realism - Naïve realism - Socialist realism - Philosophical skepticism - Technorealism

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