Metaphysical Realism
New here.
Is anyone active in philosophy and defending metaphysical realism?
By that I mean:
I shall understand "realism" to consist of two claims. The first is ontological in nature and the second is epistemological:
There are beings which exist, and are what they are independent and apart from, anyone's cognition of them.
These beings can be known more or less adequately, often with great difficulty, but still known as they really are.
There is more to it, but that's the main thesis.
Is anyone active in philosophy and defending metaphysical realism?
By that I mean:
I shall understand "realism" to consist of two claims. The first is ontological in nature and the second is epistemological:
There are beings which exist, and are what they are independent and apart from, anyone's cognition of them.
These beings can be known more or less adequately, often with great difficulty, but still known as they really are.
There is more to it, but that's the main thesis.
Comments (24)
I'm sure that there are many forms of realism, however, "being apart" is a somewhat difficult stance to embrace post-quantum physics. In addition , things are in some quantum state, but it is not clear"what they are", independent of an observing mind, since this is how we know things.
I would say I am a metaphysical realist but not as stated in your description.
Could you point me in the direction of something concise that lays out the problem you suggest?
And well, there is no necessity to have full, or even robust knowledge of what they are - apart from a mind. This would be a move back to a God's Eye perspective on reality, which is impossible, yes.
The issue would be that what we are able to know is generated, or allowed for, metaphysically by that the nature of the thing as it is apart from cognition. Rather than, on the other hand, only knowing products of cognition or our own cognitive processes.
I'm not sure how it would go for post-quantum things, but a way to think about it opposed to perspective-independent views might be: are there aspects of the thing in question that would be salient, were many (non-human) beings able to perceive them - such an aspect, it seems, would not be reducible to cognition yet hint perspective independent.
(I recognize that might not be very clear)
I just so happened to be reading this article which may be a start:
https://phys.org/news/2013-07-quantum-physics-macroscopic.html
Awesome, thanks!
The Philipapers survey found that 81.6% of professional philosophers accept or lean toward: non-skeptical realism.
Only 4.3% accepted idealism.
Overwhelmingly, idealism has been rejected by those who study philosophy; that it is such a commonplace hereabouts is perhaps a reflection of the undergraduate background of our companions.
Why 'beings'? By beings, are you referring to billiard balls, trees, stars, and mountains? In normal discourse, there is only one type of entity that is referred to as 'a being'.
Quoting Banno
It's been bred out of them by materialism, propagated for economic reasons. Besides, only a very small number of persons ever are actual philosophers.
4.3%.
Thanks! I didn't know that, that's a high percentage. But I wouldn't limit the opponents to idealism. Anti-realism takes many forms, not limited to, but importantly, the Kantian constructivist view. I see Putnam as an opposition force, too
I can elaborate on this point, from the same paper:
(a) A real being is a being whose existence and nature is independent of its being thought about or, in general, being cognized. Its existence and nature is not dependent upon the fact that it may be an object of awareness. Note carefully, therefore, that mental or psychological activities, since they do not have to be objectified or known in order to exist or be what they are, are not mind-dependent in the sense contrasted with real beings. On the contrary, they are a subset of real beings.
(b) A being of reason is a being whose existence and nature is dependent on its being thought about. It is an object-of-thought, or more exactly, an object-of-awareness. It would be wrong, however, to identify a being of reason with the psychological activities sufficient for its existence. A being of reason is in principle distinct from a real being— regardless of whether it be physical or psychological—for a being of reason only exists in relation to some knower. It is for that reason an objective being. A real being does not exist only in relation to some knower. It does not require a subject to which to be related. It could, then, contrary to what is common in English usage, be termed a "subjective" being, be it physical or psychological.
(c) A physical being is a being whose existence is independent of mental or psychological activities. Sometimes a physical being is also called a "real" being in order to indicate the dependency of the psychological on the physical, but not vice-versa. In other words, mental or psychological activities do not exist apart from physical states, such as neurological conditions of the brain, but physical states can exist apart from mental or psychological activities. This is, of course, not to say the mental or psychological can be reduced without remainder to the physical.
(d) A mental or psychological being is an activity of a particular mind or consciousness. It is important to note that while a mental or psychological being, for example, an act of perceiving or of conceiving, cannot exist apart from a particular knower, a being of reason, for example, the concept of hydrogen or the character Hamlet, is independent of any particular knower. It is, however, not independent of every particular knower, tout court.
The word being, I think, comes from the tradition this particular philosopher comes from. But yes, it would be bad if it was left undefined.
Doesn't that mean, by definition, 'a being of which we have no knowledge'?
A lot of that is due to the bent of Philosophy Academia where most of the professors are non-skeptical realists and very few students can get their idealist dissertations approved or get jobs. Even Rorty, who said he wanted to write on Heidegger and Nietzsche, wrote his dissertation on analytic philosophy because he knew "what side of his bread was buttered." So, it is not, in itself, a foundation supporting non-skeptical realism's superiority. And the Continental schools would likely have a different result.
Right. This is a typical hang-up, and I think a crucial point. In a sense, yes. It is not possible to have a perspective-free view of something. Nor is that the goal of realism, but those "beings" are foundational. There were things around before there were living things, to be simple. Doesn't mean we can know them before being here, or in all their detail, but we are possible because of them.
When I write, I try to articulate the difference by using the word generativity. A real being has existence and a nature that is independent of cognition, e.g., cognition (nor a particular mind) doesn't generate the existence, or whole nature of the thing. Now, cognition might add to the nature of the thing (and sensory means might be selective) or the way in which the thing exists - something might be colored for us and not for a dog (which brings up a whole different discussion of essentialism of a non-reified/platonic/metaphysical variety - but rather essentialism as a logical tool [neo-Aristotelian, Veatch took this road])
... but the point is that what allows for and, in part, what generates our knowledge of the thing is not reducible to cognition.
So, perhaps not very adequately at times or at all, we can come to know this remainder. This is still not perspective independent knowledge, but that's not the point of realism. We need not know all of reality at once, nor in all it's detail.
The point of realism is that a real being comes prior to cognition, and is what it is, before it is (which is not to say it is as you and I may see it, right now!) in any way determined by cognition - by virtue of this we are not trapped within cognition's bounds, if you will. The first premise of that is against idealism, the second is against Kant and others. Hume and even Russell.
We are always within a perspective, but the nature of things can be known in a way that is not wholly reducible to or generated by that perspective. Think metaphysically passive, but epistemologically active when it comes to cognition.
The path to that nature is difficult, but (I suggest, as a thought experiment, very tentatively and not with foolproof examples) you could consider small cross section of reality that is salient in an inter-perspectival sense (maybe not color, but physicality, or motion, or light, etc.)
Well I will eventually do my dissertation on Nietzsche despite being analytic. I hope the juxtaposition of Nietzsche and idealists was limited to your mentioning Rorty, and not that there's a case to be made there, though!
Quoting Zach Johnson
I'd prefer to think of it as the latter.
Quoting Zach Johnson
'Before' is a matter of perspective - which only a mind can bring to bear.
Magee on Schopenhauer.
Kant himself:
Quoting Zach Johnson
I don't say that everything is reducible to perspective but perspective is inextricably part of whatever we know. If something exists altogether outside of any perspective, then what is being discussed? An 'ideal object' or 'real being' which transcends appearances altogether? That appears to be what you're saying.
Quoting Zach Johnson
And again I question your use of the word 'being' in this context. A hundred years ago, you might have argued that the 'fundamental entity' was an atom, but that is no longer tenable, so instead you use the placeholder term, 'real being'. But again, what does it mean? The only beings we know empirically, are human beings. We might colloquially refer to the higher animals as 'beings'. But are inanimate objects 'beings' or 'things'? Is there a difference? It's a difficult question; I believe there is, but that this is a difference which is not generally recognised in modern philosophy.
What I'm not at all sure about is ontology. The world exists regardless of what I think, perceive or know about it. That is almost certainly true. Whether we can truly carve nature at it's joints and describe in terms of one category or another is questionable.
It's also true that the mind plays an important role in how we perceive and understand the world, but the mind itself is shaped by being embodied. We have bodies that move about and change in space and time and communicate with other similar bodies. The mind is part of that, not separate from it.
Can you prove that he is wrong? Johnson refuted it by kicking a rock; Moore by waving his hands around. My favoured method is throwing spitballs.
These, of course, are not proofs. What is happening in each is that the antagonist shows the reality of the stuff of the world that gives meaning to our words.
When kant claims that "Appearances are all representations" he has already assumed his case by speaking about appearances rather than cups, kettles, rocks, hands and spitballs.
Of course it takes a mind to know.
But things can be the case, unbeknownst.
Kant seems (as presented here) not to take that distinction into account.