Kinds Of Realism Research Articles

Научный реализм в истории античной философии

The article is devoted to the consideration of the possibility of applying the methodological principles of scientific realism in the history of ancient philosophy. The author shows that in its strong version, scientific realism is not an appropriate basis for historical research, since it involves minimizing the number of interpretations of philosophical material of the past. Another serious drawback of applying strong versions of scientific realism in the history of philosophy is their focus on the correspondent theory of truth. This theory does not fit the historian of philosophy, since she aims not only at creating a realistic picture of the past, but also at incorporating the philosophical ideas of the past into the modern context, therefore a coherent theory of truth is more likely to meet her objectives. After a brief review of the weak versions of realism (H. Putnam’s “internal realism”, S. Blackburn’s “quasi-realism” and “sensibility theory”), the author concludes that these kinds of realism are more suitable for the history of philosophy in general and for the history of ancient philosophy in particular. As a result, the author concludes that the historian of philosophy must take into account the objectivity and independence of the philosophical ideas of the past, and inevitably be guided by his own conceptual and terminological facilities in order to incorporate the ideas of the past into the modern philosophical context.

Political realism and international relations

AbstractIn this article, I explore recent work on realist political theory and international politics. I discuss how scholarship on the topic emanates from two different fields—International Relations and political philosophy—and argue that there is a good case for greater engagement between them. I open by delineating various kinds of realism, showing that the term covers a wide variety of methodological and political approaches. In particular, I suggest, it is important to recognize the difference between liberal and radical approaches. The remainder of the essay examines assorted examples of realist international political theorizing, work that ranges from attempts to rewrite the canon of 20th century political thought to contributions to the vibrant global justice debates.

The Verisimilitudinarian approach to ‘the Truth’

AbstractThe Verisimilitudinarian approach to scientific progress (VS, for short) is traditionally considered a realist-correspondist model to explain the proximity of our best scientific theories to the way things really are in the world out there (ʻthe Truthʻ, with the capital ʻtʻ). However, VS is based on notions, such as ʻestimated verisimilitudeʻ or ʻapproximate truthʻ, that dilute the model in a functionalist-like theory. My thesis, then, is that VS tries to incorporate notions, such as ʻprogressʻ, in a pre-constituted metaphysical conception of the world, but fails in providing a fitting framework. The main argument that I will develop to support this claim is that the notions that they use to explain scientific progress (ʻestimated verisimilitudeʻ or ʻapproximate truthʻ) have nothing to do with ʻthe Truthʻ. After presenting Cevolani and Tamboloʻs answer (2013) to Birdʻs arguments (2007), I will claim that VS sacrifices the realist-correspondist truth in favor of an epistemic notion of truth, which can obviously be compatible with certain kinds of realism but not with the one the authors have in mind (the correspondence between our theories and the way things really are).

The Unrealities of Time

Is time flowing? A-theorists say ‘yes’, B-theorists say ‘no’. But both take time to be real, which means that B-theorists accept that time is real, even if lacking a property usually ascribed to it. In this paper, I ask what the different properties usually ascribed to time there are in order to draw the list of different possible kinds of realism and anti-realism about time. As we will see, there are three main kinds of anti-realism. I will argue that if time is defined as the universe's fourth dimension, there is no way time could be unreal.

Getting Real or Staying Positive Legal Realism(s), Legal Positivism and the Prospects of Naturalism in Jurisprudence

The relationship between legal realism and legal positivism has been a constant source of debate since the emergence of realist theories in the first half of the 20th century. The discussion has been further complicated by the related difficulty of assessing the internal relationship between the two main strands of realism: American and Scandinavian.More is at stake in this debate than taxonomic neatness; at stake are wide‐reaching methodological questions as to what kind of a science the study of law should be according to legal realism, questions that are often formulated in a modern context as questions about the potential for naturalism in legal science.Much confusion seems to stem from a failure to correctly identify the kind of rule‐skepticism underlying realism or from the related failure to correctly identify possible differences on this issue between the two kinds of realism. With specific regard to American realism recent work, notably by Brian Leiter, has admittedly been helpful in correcting some of these misunderstandings. But with regard to Scandinavian realism we do not seem to be much farther along today than where Hart left us half a century ago with his hugely influential but equally mistaken writings on legal realism.In this paper I suggest bringing discussion forward by introducing a distinction between two kinds of rule‐skepticism, i.e. between so‐called forward-looking rule‐skepticism which is implicational and decisional and backward-looking rule‐skepticism which is regressive and foundational. I then argue that we ought to see American and Scandinavian realism as being based respectively on forward‐looking and backward‐looking rule‐skepticism. This gives us a clearer understanding not only of the fundamentally different kinds of theoretical relationship between each of the two realisms and legal positivism but also of the equally different prospects of naturalism delivered by each of them.

Realism and Eroticism: Re-Reading Bazin

Bazin's distinction between different kinds of realism discriminates between an authentic mode of apprehension and mere sight, or between revelation and spectacle, as it were, where spectacle, significantly, is connected with the arousal of physical sensation. My argument is that this resonates in unexpected ways with a ‘modernist’ conceptual paradigm, specifically in relation to the persistent prioritization of the temporal over the spatial as the superior aesthetic register, itself based upon a residual resistance to the visual realm. To pursue this, I shall return to some of Bazin's most influential texts and concepts. In addition, a consideration of his more marginal discussions of cinema, sex and censorship will offer an oblique entry point into some of these broader issues at play in his work.

Three Kinds of Realism About Photographs

In this essay, I will explore the nature of photographs by comparing them with handmade paintings, as well as by comparing traditional film photography with digital photography, and I shall concentrate on the question of realism. Several different notions can be distinguished here. Are photographs such that they depict the world in a “realist” or a “factive” way? Do they show us the world as it is with accuracy and reliability other types of pictures do not possess? Do they allow us, as some have suggested, to literally see the world through them? Below, I will distinguish three kinds of realism about photographs, reject two, and partly endorse one. Indeed, the label “realism,” when concerning photographs, can stand for a variety of very different claims. The first (and quite obvious) distinction to start with concerns what the realist thesis is about: the claim that somehow photographs are more accurate or more reliable or that they somehow depict the world better than handmade pictures can be a claim about the photographic image itself or alternatively a claim about the way in which photographs are produced. In the former case, realism is a thesis about how photographs look and what sort of information they contain, while in the latter case realism is a claim about the process of production of photographs. It is the

Interactive Realism

I investigate a new understanding of realism in science, referred to as ‘interactive realism’, and I suggest the ‘evolutionary progressiveness’ of a theory as novel criterion for this kind of realism. My basic claim is that we cannot be realists about anything except the progress affected by myriad science-reality interactions that are constantly moving on a continuum of increased ‘fitness’ determined according to empirical constraints. Moreover to reflect this movement accurately, there is a corresponding continuum of verdicts about the status of the knowledge conveyed by theories–ranging from stark in-strumentalism to full-blown realism. This view may sound like a pessimistic inductivist’s dream, but actually this is so only if one evaluates it from within a traditional context where the ‘truth’ of a single theory is the exclusive criterion for realism. I, on the other hand, want to redefine the terms of realist debate in such a way that the units of assessment of realism are sequences of theories evaluated according to their ‘evolutionary progressiveness’. I unpack ‘interactive realism’ by defining my notion of ‘evolutionary progres-siveness’, the notion of ‘truth-as-historied reference’ underpinning it, and the continuum of interaction between theories and aspects of reality it affects. I conclude that, although interactive realism is a radically non-standard kind of realism, it is at least more realistic about science as a fractured complex multi-faceted enterprise than most other kinds of realism on the block, because it shows coherence amidst fragmentation.

In Defence of Empty Realism

In my article (Demeter 2009) I argued that there is a meaningful distinction to be drawn between two kinds of realism. One of them consists in a realist (factualist) interpretation of a class of sentences and is committed to the claim that the given class has independent truthmakers. The other, which I label as an almost "empty" one, does not entail anything more than an ontological commitment to some entity. I explore the distinction thus drawn concerning folk psychology in the first respect, and mental entities in the second. J?nos T zs?r (2009) has challenged my distinction between the two kinds of mental realism, arguing mainly on the ground that it overlooks the problem of the mark of the mental. T zs?r's general point is that it is impossible to be realist about anything without some knowledge of the entity itself that we are realist about (377, 379). The particular point is that with respect to realism about mental entities, at least some of the knowledge stored in our folk psychology must be true about them, otherwise our realism would not be about mental entities (379). Accordingly, there are two main points of disagreement between us. The first is whether realism about an entity is possible without some knowl edge of it. T zs?r's answer is negative, and in this respect he is in good company, indeed. He seems to agree with Descartes's (1985: 78) dictum: "we must never ask (fit is, until we first understand what it is"?we need to know first what we are talking about and only then can we decide if it is real or not. But if I am right in claiming that realism about an entity is logically presupposed by any kind of empirical investigation into it, T zs?r's negative answer entails that we must have some a priori knowledge of what we are realist about. If realism is logically prior to empirical investigations and if realism entails knowledge about the entity, then this knowledge must be a priori. In my eyes, this is an unwelcome con sequence of T zs?r's position, as I do not think that a priori knowledge about how things are in the world is possible. My answer is affirmative: we can be realists about an entity without any kind of knowledge about it. I suggest that understanding what an entity is presupposes at least tentative ontological commitment?which, as such, can be withdrawn as a result of, e.g.,

The Dynamism of the Trinity in Bonaventure and Eckhart

The Dynamism of the Trinity in Bonaventure and Eckhart Thee, God, I come from, to thee go, All day long I like fountain flow, From thy hand out, swayed about Mote-like in thy mighty glow. These verses of Gerard Manley Hopkins are a succinct expression of the dynamic procession of all things from God. Hopkins did not write matching lines to express the return, or consummation, of the universe in its divine source, at least in this poem, but a passage from “The Wreck of the Deutschland” captures his sense of God as the goal of all life and action: Stanching, quenching ocean of a motionable mind; Ground of being, and granite of it: past all Grasp God, throned behind Death with a sovereignty that heeds but hides, bodes but abides. The master paradigm of exitus and reditus, the procession out and return to God, is perhaps natural to the religious mind as it reflects upon the nature of the universe. In Western thought the evolution of this dynamic This essay was presented March 11, 2006, at Saint Louis University during a symposium in honor of Zachary Hayes, OFM. I am happy to be able to dedicate this paper to my old friend and colleague. As its content will make clear, I owe him an immense debt of gratitude for his scholarship over the years, especially on Bonaventure . Gerard Manley Hopkins. A Selection of His Poems and Prose, by W.H. Gardner (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1953), No. 63 (untitled); and “The Wreck of the Deutschland,” No. 1, Stanza 32. 137 Franciscan Studies 65 (2007) 08.McGinn.indd 137 12/5/07 17:51:26 Bernard McGinn 138 paradigm was shaped by the way in which Neoplatonic thinkers, both pagan and Christian, sought to express how the First Principle overflows into the universe while at the same time drawing all things back to Itself. What was unique to Christian theologians was how they brought this dynamic process into God’s very self as a way for expressing the Church’s faith in God as Trinity. From this perspective, the extra-divine dynamism of creation is rooted in the intra-divine flow of life found in Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I. A Brief Sketch of Some Aspects of the Evolution of Trinitarian Theology This dynamic view of God as Trinity is rooted in New Testament texts, especially in the Gospel of John. During the pre-Nicene period, the time characterized by what Bernard Lonergan called a mixture of naïve and dogmatic realism concerning the doctrine of the Trinity, Christian theologians expressed the inner divine life by appealing to concrete images, such as vegetative growth, flowing water, and the radiation of light. When they attempted a more systematic view of their belief that the one God was nevertheless three they turned to the philosophical vocabulary available to them. Thus Athenagoras, writing about 176 C.E., says that “the Son of God is the Word of the Father in Ideal Form and Energizing Power (en idea kai energeia),” making use of both Platonic and Aristotelian terms. He goes on to describe the Holy Spirit more concretely as “an effluence of God (aporraian … tou theou) which flows forth from him and returns like a ray of the sun.” During the fourth century, the clarification of the Church’s faith at Nicaea and its defense and elaboration during the half-century between Nicaea and the First Council of Constantinople produced a basic trinitarian grammar that placed the mystery in its proper dogmatic language. This led to the beginnings of the critical realism (again, Lonergan’s term) that On Lonergan’s categories of three kinds of realism (naïve, dogmatic, and critical ) and their application to the development of the doctrine of the Trinity, see Bernard Lonergan, The Way to Nicea. The Dialectical Development of Trinitarian Theology (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1976), especially 106-37. Tertullian in chapter 7 of his Adversus Praxean used the analogies of “roottree -fruit,” “fountain-river-stream,” and “sun-ray-apex” to present the Trinity. Athenagoras. Legatio and De Resurrectione, edited and translated by William R. Schoedel (Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1972), Legatio 10 (20-22). On early Christian trinitarianism...

A realistic colour realism

Whether or not one endorses realism about colour, it is very tempting to regard realism about determinable colours such as green and yellow as standing or falling together with realism about determinate colours such as unique green or green 31 . Indeed some of the most prominent representatives of both sides of the colour realism debate explicitly endorse the idea that these two kinds of realism are so linked. Against such theorists, the present paper argues that one can be a realist about the determinable colours of objects, and thus hold that most of the colour ascriptions made by competent speakers are literally true, while denying that there are any positive facts of the matter as to the determinate colours of objects. The result is a realistic colour realism that can certify most of our everyday colour ascriptions as literally correct, while acknowledging the data regarding individual variation.

Realisms. Temporal and spatial

Conceptual realism acknowledges the existence of abstract objects: theoretical realism acknowledges the existence of non-observable objects; whereas classical realism acknowledges the existence of observable objects. Similarly, temporal realism accepts the existence of future and past events along with present ones, and spatial realism accepts the events which occur there (else-where) as well as those that occur here. We dealt earlier with the three former kinds of realism and their opposites: nominalism, instrumentalism and (ontological) idealism [2]. This paper contains an examination of the two latter forms of realism: temporal and spatial, and their counterparts: temporal and spatial irrealisms. Analogies and connections between these standpoints will be the focus of the paper.

La poesia catalana dels anys seixanta i els diversos usos del realisme

Resum : This essay presents a revision of the Catalan poetry of the 1960s linked to the historical realism, starting from the different ideas and heterogeneous formulations at that time. After introducing the divergent positionings of the critics, the essay revises the poetic programme from the making up of an action-taking discourse as planned by ideologists, from the making up and tuming-into-myth of poetic models, from the recovery of a given tradition such as that of Salvat-Papasseit, and from the existence of platforms of dissemination. Then follows a more exhaustive analysis of the various kinds of realism in the poetry of the writers of the 1960s. Paraules clau : poesia catalana: anys seixanta; realisme; Joan Salvat-Papasseit

A Question of Beginnings

A Question of Beginnings Robert B. Alter The durability of The Rise ofthe Novel among works of literary scholarship is altogether remarkable. Before long, half a century will have elapsed since its initial publication and more time than that has already passed since Ian Watt completed his first draft in 1947. Disagreements with the perspective of the book on the novel began as early as its first reviews , the central one being that Watt's concentration on what he called "the realism of presentation" gave short shrift to other kinds of realism, or to trends in the novel not easily identifiable with realism. Nobody has summarized these objections more succinctly and more wittily than Watt himself. In an essay wryly entitled "Serious Reflections on The Rise of the Novel," published a decade after the appearance of the book, Watt explains that by cutting three concluding chapters on Fielding, Smollett, and Sterne, he ended up tipping the balance in his account of the genre more than he would have liked: "As a result I have had to grow accustomed to figuring in some minds as a permanent picketerfor the Union Novel (International President H. James), carrying a sign which reads 'Cervantes Go Home' on one side and 'Fielding is a Fink' on the other."1 Watt of course cannot avoid taking responsibility for the final form of his own book, in which the reader's "belief in the reality of report" is seen as the novelistic trait par excellence, and any "patent selectiveness of vision" by 1 Ian Watt, "Serious Reflections on The Rise of the Novel," Towards a Poetics of Fiction: Essays from "Novel," a Forum on Fiction 1967-1976, ed. Mark Spilka (Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press, 1977), p. 92. EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION, Volume 12, Number 2-3, January-April 2000 214 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION undermining that belief or deflecting "attention from the content of the report to the skill of the reporter,"2 ultimately goes against the grain of the genre. The issues involved in this judgment are still worth debating, but it should be said that Watt is so finely intelligent, such a shrewdly informed reader of novels in their dense contexts of social and intellectual history, that his somewhat tilted perspective proves to be far less a detriment than one would have imagined. Despite its one-sidedness, The Rise ofthe Novel remains the most illuminating account we have of the emergence of the new genre in eighteenth-century England. After all these years, it still conveys a sense of the excitement of intellectual discovery. It is scarcely necessary to say that a whole series of new waves have swept through literary studies since the publication of The Rise of the Novel. In their wake, many would be inclined to conclude that Watt's study is now superannuated, hopelessly parochial in its exclusive focus on eighteenth-century England and on three canonical white male writers. Watt tried to defend himself in "Serious Reflections" against the early harbingers of such objections by pointing out that his book was, after all, subtitled "Studies in Defoe, Richardson and Fielding." Nevertheless, the use of the definite article before "Novel" in the title proper was a little misleading: although Watt was undertaking an ostensibly delimited investigation of a new trend in English prose narrative between 1719 and 1749, both his title and many ofthe terms ofhis analysis made larger claims about the nature of the novel. Critics who saw the novel rising elsewhere and earlier were also likely to have somewhat different views about the defining characteristics of the genre. If, for example, Cervantes, instead of being invited to go home, was assumed to be the central innovator of the new genre, as Harry Levin, Marthe Robert, and a host of other critics have plausibly argued, then the confrontation between reading and living, the problematic of fiction-making, would be the pre-eminent novelistic concern, and not the realism of presentation. If La Princesse de Clèves was taken as the point of departure for the genre, then the minute analysis of feeling, the nuanced narrative embodiment of moral dilemma, would be the distinctive novelistic concerns, necessitating certain characteristic narrative procedures...

Three Kinds of Realism About Universals

Journal Article Three Kinds of Realism About Universals Get access Roger Teichmann Roger Teichmann Merton College, Oxford Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Philosophical Quarterly, Volume 39, Issue 155, April 1989, Pages 143–165, https://doi.org/10.2307/2219636 Published: 01 April 1989

Social Realism in the Dialogue of Eighteenth-Century French Fiction

Social Realism in the Dialogue oj Eighteenth-Century French Fiction VI VIENNE MYLNE One element of French novels which shows a marked change during the eighteenth century is that of dialogue. The simplest and most obvious way of describing the change is to say that, in a significant number of novels, dialogue becomes more “realistic” in manner and presentation: the style of conversations in a work by Balzac is more like the way people talk in real life than is, say, the dialogue style of La Princesse de Cleves. However, once we try to go beyond simplistic statements of this kind, the criterion of “realism” becomes less satisfactory. There are problems in ap­ plying the criterion (some of which involve conflicts between different types of “realism”); and in any case, “realism” alone cannot serve as a criterion of literary excellence. In this essay we shall consider the theoretical problems as they arise in the course of discussing our examples, while the question of the evaluation of literary merit will be left until the end. In order to keep the discussion within manageable limits, I shall concentrate here on the kinds of realism which can be most easily identified. These are the cases where a novelist indicates—by grammar, vocabulary and even spelling—that the character in 265 266 / VIVIENNE MYLNE question does not use the language of well-educated Parisians. Such divergences from standard French thus carry implicit infor­ mation about the character’s social class, level of education, and place of origin. Before considering eighteenth-century developments, however, we need to look briefly at some of the conventions concerning dialogue which were in force toward the end of the seventeenth century. There are two main points which should be mentioned here. The first is merely one aspect of the more general question of levels of style: the concept of literary genres, and of maintain­ ing a style consonant with each genre or type of work. This “rule” was followed in fiction as well as in drama and poetry, and it covered not only passages where the voice is that of the narrator, but dialogue too. Thus, in France, it was only in comic fiction, and more especially in burlesque novels or anti-romans, that one found common characters talking in a low style. Far more frequent were novels in which the protagonists were noble and the dialogue was presented in correct and fairly formal language. Commenting on the style of such works, Henri Coulet says: Sa politesse amortit toute violence, toute erudite, son absence d’elan est propre a insinuer la tristesse; les conversations sont tres souvent rapportees au style indirect, dans le meme but d’attenuation , et quand elles sont transcrites au style direct, toujours tres eloignees de la phraseologie baroque, elles ne sont pas moins eloignees du dialogue familier.1 This regular correlation between certain identifiable kinds of fiction and their corresponding stylistic registers is one that begins to break down in the eighteenth century; and dialogue, as we shall see, is one of the elements which contributes to the breakdown. Coulet’s remark about the frequency of reported speech brings me to my second point concerning conventions. In this case we are dealing with a specific device or technique. Besides using indirect speech liberally, seventeenth-century writers also had frequent recourse to what one might call narrated speech, which presents the gist of what was said—sometimes fully, sometimes in a Social Realism in the Dialogue ofFrench Fiction I 267 compressed form—but without supplying the actual words of the speaker. Narrated speech is often combined with reported speech, and this mode of presentation continued throughout the eight­ eenth century. In the hands of a skillful writer the technique can be quite lively and effective. The following passage, by Louvet de Couvray, relates a scene in which the Count is teasing the Marquise, in her husband’s presence, about her guilty secret (“Mile Duportail” is in reality young Faublas himself, disguised as a girl): Preludant avec la Marquise par de legeres epigrammes, il protestoit qu’elle seule, jusqu’a present, savoit precisement combien Mademoiselle Duportail meritoit d’etre aimee. La Mar­ quise, egalement adroite et prompte...

Beckett And Expressionism

IT IS AMONG NORTHERN PEOPLES that imaginative creation has most often taken the Expressionist path, first in the plastic arts, and then in literature. A certain amount of light seems to impose the conviction that the exterior world exists and that bodies are bodies. In contrast, the Irish philosopher, Berkeley, elegantly formulated the theory of the absence of the perceived world .... For the Northerners, the physical corporeal objects in the work of art are not reflections of the same kind of reality; nor are they manifestations of a spiritual reality, a corresponding Idea; instead, they emanate by projection from the artist's feelings. In literature, from Romanticism on, one can trace the transition of many kinds of realism (including Impressionism) toward what one might call meaningful hallucination, by the end of this systematic deformation. Faust or Flaubert's Temptation of St. Anthony herald an Expressionism which will explode differently in and outside of Germany— Strindberg and ]arry, for example. First and foremost, there must be affective surexpression, and true Expressionism emerges when that surexpression moves from the feeling subject to the objects which are evoked by strong and disturbed feelings. Thus, Jarry's burlesque Expressionism of King Ubu, with its phantasms of conflict and destruction, is parallelled by the non-burlesque Expressionism of Nights and Days, with its essential characteristic of this mode: like wishes in fairy tales, these fears, desires, and hatreds take form and become "reality," but a different kind of reality, in which every form is dedicated to deforming itself in the sense of the emotion it expresses.