Anti-realism

In analytic philosophy, anti-realism is the position that the truth of a statement rests on its demonstrability through internal logic mechanisms, such as the context principle or intuitionistic logic, in direct opposition to the realist notion that the truth of a statement rests on its correspondence to an external, independent reality.[1] In anti-realism, this external reality is hypothetical and is not assumed.[2][3]

There are many varieties of anti-realism, such as metaphysical, mathematical, semantic, scientific, moral and epistemic. The term was first articulated by British philosopher Michael Dummett in an argument against a form of realism Dummett saw as 'colorless reductionism'.[4]

Anti-realism in its most general sense can be understood as being in contrast to a generic realism, which holds that distinctive objects of a subject-matter exist and have properties independent of one's beliefs and conceptual schemes.[5] The ways in which anti-realism rejects these type of claims can vary dramatically. Because this encompasses statements containing abstract ideal objects (i.e. mathematical objects), anti-realism may apply to a wide range of philosophical topics, from material objects to the theoretical entities of science, mathematical statements, mental states, events and processes, the past and the future.[6]

  1. ^ Realism (1963) p. 146
  2. ^ Truth (1959) p. 24 (postscript)
  3. ^ Blackburn, Simon ([2005] 2008). "realism/anti-realism", The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy, 2nd ed. revised, pp. 308–9. Oxford.
  4. ^ Realism (1963) p. 145
  5. ^ Miller, Alexander (2019), "Realism", in Zalta, Edward N. (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2019 ed.), Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, retrieved 2021-09-28
  6. ^ Realism (1963) pp. 147–8