Realsim vs anti-realism

[Eugene I]

Interesting discussion addressing facets of realism vs anti-realism dichotomy other than purely metaphysical or ontological ones

The death of realism
In defense of realism
Post-realism

Post-realism offers a solution to a highly dangerous world of competing perspectives where everyone supposes that they are right. Namely, we give up believing we are right and the belief that there is a right to be found. Some ways of holding the world prove to be remarkably effective and others can cause untold distress. It is our joint task to examine and explore the perspectives available and identify their strengths and weaknesses. The future of philosophy is not the pursuit of the one answer. There is no single definition of a term. No point of view that will be sustained in all circumstances. We have not found it in the last few thousand years and few can imagine that it is about to be uncovered. Instead the future of philosophy is to be found in the exploration of alternative frameworks in search of solutions to the many problems that we face.

Philosophers should challenge current theories that are left unexamined because they are familiar and commonplace. They should identify weaknesses in these outlooks, including their own, while at the same time striving to build new accounts of the world to address these flaws and to formulate precise theories that can be applied and tested. The solutions will not be definitive or final. They will not be objectively true. They will not be descriptions of openness. But, as systems of closure, they will enable us to intervene to valuable effect, and just perhaps help us make a better world.

[Simon Adams]

I have mixed views on Hilary Lawson. Sometimes he seems to take such an extreme post modernist view that he makes no sense at all ( such as in this debate on realism https://iai.tv/video/after-the-end-of-truth)

On the other hand he does seem to get different views ... by accepting everything as valuable and nothing as true, you can at least say that he is open minded

[Eugene I]

My take on this is that there is a "reality" and "truth", but as opposed to the traditional realists views, as well as anti-realist views:
- The conscious experience (experiencing) itself is absolutely real, which means that there is definitely a reality of some sort.
- Such reality is not (necessarily) "external" and not mind-independent
- When trying to comprehend the reality, we can only operate with the meanings of thoughts, but the most fundamental layer of reality (whatever it is) is (likely) not a meaning of a thought, but something fundamentally different from a meaning, therefore any our mental representation of the "truth" or "reality" can never be the "truth" itself, but only some distorted and inaccurate reflection of it. Nevertheless, it can reflect or describe the truth and reality with some degree of adequacy and accuracy in a never-ending process of iterational-approximation journey of consciousness to understand the reality.

This approach is open and ontologically agnostic and not necessarily idealistic at this point. In addition, once we choose the idealistic ontology, the approach to realism can be further refined. An example is Hoffman's "consciousness realism".

[Simon Adams]

Yes I broadly agree with that. Truth is a big word, difficult for us as we are right now to really approach. There are some simple abstract truths we can be aware of, such as in maths. However even then it’s arguable that we can only have a very partial view of them. We have numbers to represent quantities, but the reality of what they are in my view sits at a level out of reach to us. Yes we can get that 1+1=2, and why. But to fully grasp even that, I would argue that we would need to understand the way in which maths is deeply entwined into nature itself.

Nonetheless we get these things enough that we can have conversations about them and all be at least vaguely talking about the same thing, even if from different angles. Once you get to some of the terms used in philosophy, it’s difficult to imagine that there is anything that can be said that reaches anywhere near to being something this close to even being a pointer to an actual truth.

I’m starting to sound like a postmodernist, but I guess the big difference is that I think there is an actual absolute truth, just out of our grasp in terms of any abstraction or conceptualisation. There are definitely ideas that are closer to truth, in that they accord with reality as far as we can grasp, and ideas that are simply wrong and have nothing of truth in them.

Another way that I have sympathy with the postmodernists (and there aren’t many ) is that there are ideas that fit or don’t fit into a certain ontology. For example, you get some physicalists who are compatibilists or even libertarian (with regards to free will), which just doesn’t fit. Part of the physicalist ontology is accepting determinism, so in that ontology you simply can’t argue that free will is ‘closer to truth’. That said, from a physicalist perspective with matter as the foundation of reality, it’s difficult to even imagine what truth could be. I guess “truth” equates to “facts”, but when you start peeling that onion you’re eventually going to run out of onion. When that was my world view I thought I believed in truth, but I guess truth itself is a good example of something we can’t even start to describe in a true way, other than resorting to negative philosophy. I think the classic philosophy idea of spheres of knowledge is useful. Maybe these are independent spheres, such that someone focussing on consciousness can attain a level of direct access to the whole of that sphere (the eastern enlightenment). Someone studying maths can have a high level of at least abstract access to that sphere. But I think truth itself sits in a sphere that is simply beyond the human intellect, except maybe in mystic experiences that are never retained in any conceptual or communicable form.

[Simon Adams]

Getting back to realism, I’d agree that conscious experience is indisputably real. I guess this is one confusion some people have of idealism - not distinguishing the contents of the mind from mind itself. This is where it gets tricky, because from my perspective there is a sense in which physical objects are real, even if the real aspect is that which is being represented (rather than the representation itself). To me, a tree in the world is more real than the unicorn in my mind, even though I accept that both are at some level made of the same stuff.

If I think about it, I have an intuitive hierarchy of ‘realness’, that places ‘non existent’ things in my mind below inanimate objects in the world, which are themselves below living creatures. I’m not sure why, maybe it’s based on ...something only I perceive -> something everyone perceives -> something that can itself perceive ...

After that there is probably the ideas or archetypes that give form to everything (including the likes of maths) and finally -> that which perceives everything

I’m not sure that would hold up or is meaningful, but realism seems to have so many different meanings to so many people that I’ll allow myself my own version until I hear one that makes more sense to me