Strong Realism Research Articles

Изобретение концепта реализма в схоластике

The ancient separation of the world into the domains of ideas and things created the ground for questioning about true existence. Thus, reality could be attributed to ideas, or it could be attributed to things. Given the tension between Platonic and Aristotelian ontologies, the problem of the status of general notions was embodied in medieval philosophical discussion, often clothed in theological form. The article reconstructs the controversy around the ontological status of universals within several scholastic doctrines. The essence of this dispute, from a perspective that is of ontological and gnoseological interest, comes down to clarifying the categorical grid, within which it is possible to make statements concerning reality. There are at least three main positions that refl ect the views of scholastic thinkers on the ontological nature of universals: realism, nominalism and conceptualism. The basic difference between them is determined by confl icting opinions regarding the issues of autonomy of the existence of universals, their dependence on the mind and things, and also about their materiality. This study reproduces the crucial moves of the scholastic thought of realists (A. Canterbury), nominalists (W. Occam), conceptualists (P. Abelard) and moderate realists (F. Aquinas), around which the conceptual background of the conversation about reality is formed. At the same time, it became obvious that the concept of realism (which was not yet in the philosophical vocabulary during the period of scholasticism) acquires its features in the intersections and contradictions between positions in the range from strong realism to extreme nominalism. Besides, it has been demonstrated in actual analysis that a set of alternative solutions to the problem of universals was refl ected in the broad philosophical problems of Modern (along the epistemological teachings of rationalism and empiricism) and contemporary thought (in projects of speculative realism, fl at ontologies, as well as in the fi eld of philosophy of mind). At the same time, it must be recognized, as a result, that the later development of the concept of realism and the problems of cognition associated with it had a retrospective impact on the correlation of scholastic positions with each other.

Analyzing the Reasons for the Crime Drama The Knockout Going Viral

In early 2023, The Knockout had gained tremendous popularity since its initial broadcast. As a visual expression of the results of China’s crime crackdown and the education and rectification of the political and legal teams, The Knockout has realized a new path of crime drama creation by virtue of its strong realism, and truly reproduced the scene of China’s crime crackdown. It adopts a three-act narrative structure to build the main logic of the plot, which makes the audience resonate strongly; through the characterization of reality, it provokes the audience to think deeply about good and evil, human nature and the causes behind crimes. In the balance of artistic storytelling and real life, it enhances the depth of the work and provides many lessons for the creative development of crime drama.

The meta-metaphysics of group beliefs: in search of alternatives

The aim of this paper is to argue that our understanding of the issue of institutional group minds might be broadened if we consider alternative meta-metaphysical frameworks to those which are presently presupposed in the field. I argue that the two major camps in the contemporary philosophical debate about group beliefs, namely strong realism and eliminative reductionism, share a commitment to some form of meta-philosophical realism. Two alternative metaontological frameworks for the discussion of the issue of group belief are outlined: fictionalism and deflationism. Fictionalism about group minds, although unpopular in the philosophical debate, is still a much-discussed option in legal theory and the theory of the firm in economics. I argue that, once formulated properly, the fictionalist position deserves serious consideration. The other alternative option is deflationism: I develop a sketch of the deflationary approach to group beliefs that is based on Thomasson’s approach to the existence of groups. The final parts of the paper are devoted to a discussion of the resulting four-element classification of the possible views on the reality of group minds: realism, eliminative reductionism, fictionalism, and deflationism. I offer some proposals with regard to the criteria that might be used to choose between these theories.

On the Strangeness of Quantum Mechanics

The extravagances of quantum mechanics (QM) never fail to enrich daily the debate around natural philosophy. Entanglement, non-locality, collapse, many worlds, many minds, and subjectivism have challenged generations of thinkers. Its approach can perhaps be placed in the stream of quantum logic, in which the “strangeness” of QM is “measured” through the violation of Bell’s inequalities and, from there, attempts an interpretative path that preserves realism yet ends up overturning it, restating the fundamental mechanisms of QM as a logical necessity for a strong realism.

Disentangling Dispositions from Powers

AbstractMany powers-realists assume that the powers of objects are identical with the dispositions of objects and, hence, that ‘power’ and ‘disposition’ are interchangeable. In this article, I aim to disentangle dispositions from powers with the goal of getting a better sense of how powers and dispositions relate to one another. I present and defend a modest realism about dispositions built upon a standard strong realism about powers. I argue that each correct disposition-ascription we can make of an object is made true by the manifestations towards which a given power or collection of powers of the object is directed.

Strategi China di Kawasan Asia Timur

The East Asian region has always been warm because of China's dominance in influencingcountries. Some of China's strategies, on the one hand, make regional stability more conducive;on the other hand, its neighbors feel threatened. Therefore, this study aims to look at China'sstrategy in the economic and defense fields and how the neighboring countries react to China'smaneuvers. The method used is content analysis with strong realism views. Seen from the pointof view of realism, China and its surrounding countries' behavior is very relevant, namely thenature of human egoism and greed in various things, especially political realism, which alwaysemphasizes countries to pursue power and fulfill the "national interest" of each country. Chinawill continue to strengthen its influence in the region. This has sometimes made regionalinstability and stability the key to increasing countries' economic growth in the region.Keywords: East Asia, economic and defense strategy, regional stability, realism, nationalinterest

The Place of Subjectivity

Abstract The modern debate on the theory of prudential values is largely structured around the issue of how to accommodate the role of subjectivity: a prudentially good life (unlike, say, a morally good life) seems to be necessarily a life that is good for the person living it. The present article aims at clarifying this crucial role of subjectivity in the ontology of prudential values. It tries to show that this role, rightly understood, can be fully and satisfactorily accounted for by a strong realism in the theory of prudential value. Subjectivist intuitions that prove incompatible with such a realist framework, it is argued, can be convincingly rejected on independent grounds.

Modality and constitution in distinctively mathematical explanations

Lange (2013, 2016) argues that some natural phenomena can be explained by appeal to mathematical, rather than natural, facts. In these “distinctively mathematical” explanations (DMEs), the core explanatory facts are either modally stronger than facts about ordinary causal law or understood to be constitutive of the physical task or arrangement at issue. Craver and Povich (2017) argue that Lange’s account of DME fails to exclude certain “reversals”. Lange (2018) has replied that his account can avoid these directionality charges. Specifically, Lange argues that in legitimate DMEs, but not in their “reversals,” the empirical fact appealed to in the explanation is “understood to be constitutive of the physical task or arrangement at issue” in the explanandum. I argue that Lange’s reply is unsatisfactory because it leaves the crucial notion of being “understood to be constitutive of the physical task or arrangement” obscure in ways that fail to block “reversals” except by an apparent ad hoc stipulation or by abandoning the reliance on understanding and instead accepting a strong realism about essence.

CONTINGENCY AND NORMATIVITY: THE CHALLENGES OF RICHARD RORTY BY ROSA M. CALCATERRA

Reviewed by: Contingency and Normativity: The Challenges of Richard Rorty by Rosa M. Calcaterra Chris Voparil (bio) Rosa M. Calcaterra. Contingency and Normativity: The Challenges of Richard Rorty Leiden; Boston: Brill Rodopi, 2019; xv + 138 pp. Somewhat unexpectedly, given the weighty baggage of anything-goes relativism that long trailed him, a central concern in work on Richard Rorty since his passing in 2007 has been his normativity.1 Rosa Calcaterra's Contingency and Normativity is the most ambitious and most illuminating effort to date in this vein. The book helps us better understand Rorty's pragmatism by using his challenges to us as the basis for an inquiry into epistemic and moral normativity in the wake of the critique of foundationalism and rise of "contingentism," which Calcaterra understands as "a conceptual net tied to the criteria of indeterminacy, ambiguity, uncertainty and randomness" (ix). Ultimately, Calcaterra's contribution is the systematic explication of Rorty's philosophical project that he himself, for various complex reasons, was disinclined to offer. All those who either have hoped or demanded that Rorty provide such an account will find the book immensely enlightening. Refreshingly, Calcaterra offers "not an apology for Rorty" but rather an invitation to take up his provocations—critically, to be sure, but, in contrast to much existing work, in a spirit of hermeneutic charity. As she recounts in the preface, she overcame her long-held skepticism about what yet another work on Rorty's neopragmatism possibly could contribute only after many years of continual confirmation of how often and how thoroughly his stances have been mischaracterized and misunderstood. This orientation makes Calcaterra one of our best readers of Rorty. In contrast to the recent generation of thinkers who encountered pragmatism because of Rorty, Calcaterra has turned to the leading neopragmatist relatively late in a career devoted to understanding Peirce, James, Dewey, and Mead, among others. The book's chapters span the full breadth of Rorty's philosophico-political project. The opening one settles, hopefully once and for all, that Rorty's interest in pragmatism predated his foray into the analytic game. Calcaterra rightly emphasizes the continuity of Rorty's pragmatic interests, from early to late, beginning with his early attention to metaphilosophical cul-de-sacs from which pragmatism provides an exit. A novelty in Calcaterra's account of the early Rorty is her focus on the influence of Carnap's semantics of the 1950s, which she suggests, "help us to illuminate the link between neo-pragmatism and the 'strong realism' that we can find in the original pragmatism of Peirce, [End Page 351] Dewey, Mead and Lewis" (10). Rorty's critiques of representationalism and foundationalism, as well as his linguisticism, Calcaterra establishes, all owe something to Carnap. The second chapter illuminates Rorty's "linguistic pragmatism," which Calcaterra immediately clarifies entails "the coextension of language and reality" rather than a linguistic idealism severed from objective reality. By focusing on the shared "post-Cartesian" orientation, she usefully depicts Rorty's thought as a product not only of post-Wittgensteinian analytic philosophy, like that of Sellars and Davidson, but also the pragmatism of Peirce, James, and Dewey. Although their escapes from Cartesian-Kantian epistemology's conceptual net of "experience, foundation, objective reality, and representation structure" follow different routes—reconstructing vs. jettisoning altogether the notion of experience as the "internal world" that functions as "the basis and guarantee of cognitive processes" (26)—Calcaterra shows how a desire "to restore the language–world question to the concreteness of socio-linguistic practices" unites not only the classical pragmatists, post-Wittgensteinians, and Rorty himself, but the work of those who follow Rorty, including Robert Brandom, Michael Williams, Huw Price, and Bjørn Ramberg. Many would concur with her conclusion: "Probably Rorty should have just questioned the ambition for a total description of experience, recognizing the plurality of semantic and functional values that this notion acquired in the works of classical pragmatists" (37). Yet the careful accounting of what Dewey, Quine, Sellars, Davidson, and Rorty share that gets her there suggests the putative classical-neopragmatist divide runs less deep than often characterized. Chapter 3, devoted to Rorty's views on truth and justification, recounts how Rorty arrived at his...

Физикализм и моральная ответственность: презентация деривативного аргумента последствий

In this paper, the author introduces the derivative consequence argument, which aims to demonstrate that moral responsibility is impossible in the world where physicalism and the strong realism about the laws of nature are both true. The basic intuition of the argument is that if the laws of nature determine the events, then nobody can be responsible for those events, because nobody is responsible for the laws of nature. This intuitive idea is formalized in the categories of derivative causation and motion. This argument is compatible with determinism and indeterminism, and all types of physicalism

The crowbar model of method and its implications

There is a rough, long-term tradeoff between rate of innovation and degree of strong realism in scientific practice, a point reflected in historically changing conceptions of method as they retreat from epistemological foundationism to a highly fallibilistic, modeling perspective. The successively more liberal, innovation-stimulating methods open up to investigation deep theoretical domains at the cost, in many cases, of moving away from strong realism as a likely outcome of research. The crowbar model of method highlights this tension, expressed as the crowbar compromiseand the crowbar fallacy. The tools-to-theories heuristic, described and evaluated by Gigerenzer and colleagues, can be regarded as an attempt by some scientific realists to overcome this compromise. Instead, it is an instance of it. Nonetheless, in successful applications the crowbar model implies a modest, instrumental (nonrepresentational) realism.

Validity of VR Technology on the Smartphone for the Study of Wind Park Soundscapes

The virtual reality of the landscape environment supplies a high level of realism of the real environment, and may improve the public awareness and acceptance of wind park projects. The soundscape around wind parks could have a strong influence on the acceptance and annoyance of wind parks. To explore this VR technology on realism and subjective responses toward different soundscapes of ambient wind parks, three different types of virtual reality on the smartphone tests were performed: aural only, visual only, and aural–visual combined. In total, 21 aural and visual combinations were presented to 40 participants. The aural and visual information used were of near wind park settings and rural spaces. Perceived annoyance levels and realism of the wind park environment were measured. Results indicated that most simulations were rated with relatively strong realism. Perceived realism was strongly correlated with light, color, and vegetation of the simulation. Most wind park landscapes were enthusiastically accepted by the participants. The addition of aural information was found to have a strong impact on whether the participant was annoyed. Furthermore, evaluation of the soundscape on a multidimensional scale revealed the key components influencing the individual’s annoyance by wind parks were the factors of “calmness/relaxation” and “naturality/pleasantness”. “Diversity” of the soundscape might correlate with perceived realism. Finally, the dynamic aural–visual stimuli using virtual reality technology could improve the environmental assessment of the wind park landscapes, and thus, provide a more comprehensible scientific decision than conventional tools. In addition, this study could improve the participatory planning process for more acceptable wind park landscapes.

Realismo e obbiettivismo: Alexius Meinong

Meinong has become a central reference point in the contemporary revival of realism. However, prima facie, it might seem paradoxical to call him a realist since he explicitly wanted to do away with any kind of bias in favor of reality. It is therefore worth asking in which sense the Theory of Object, as far as it resolutely goes beyond reality, can be characterized as essentially realist. As a Brentanist the Austrian philosopher endorsed a strong realism with regard to empirical reality; in his view, this is the proper object of metaphysics. However, it seems more difficult to make sense of his realism in respect of those objects that are not real - and, as a matter of fact, of every kind of object - which he calls ‘objectivism’. This paper investigates the real meaning of such ‘objectivism’ and sees in that stance, beyond its superficial (neo- )Kantian features, an anti-Copernican revolution in philosophy that proclaims the unconditional precedence of the object over thought. Reading Meinong thus helps us to understand better what realism is.

John Duns Scotus and Peter Auriol on the Ontological Status of Relations

In this article, the problem of the ontological status of real relations is first examined as it was generally formulated by the scholastics of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, that is, within a solid and defining Aristotelian substance/attribute framework. I then examine John Duns Scotus’s strong realism on relations, giving his key arguments for his teaching, as also his arguments against the rival non-realist, conceptualist view. This latter view was championed most strongly and extensively by Peter Auriol, and I examine both his arguments for his novel conceptualist theory of relations, along with his counter-arguments to Scotus’s criticisms. I conclude by showing how some early fourteenth- century thinkers were beginning to reject key traditional assumptions of the scholastic debate.

Pragmatic Diction:Owen Barfield, the Inklings and Pragmatism

Owen Barfield (1898-1997) has been a very eclectic writer: poet, novelist, and philosopher. Though almost unknown to philosophy scholars, his thought has been very influential on the work of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien and it is worth being studied, understood, and used in connection with pragmatism. His philosophy amounts to a strong metaphysical realism that can parallel Peirce’s view of scholastic realism and, more generally, the pragmatist attitude toward a comprehension of reality based on continuity. Moreover, Barfield sustains a view of knowledge as ‘participation’ that is very close to Peirce’s understanding of knowledge as representation. Finally, he proposes a form of ‘synthetic’ reasoning that goes the same direction as many classical pragmatists’ attempts. Therefore, the threefold philosophical aim of this paper is (1) to introduce Owen Barfield’s main theories, (2) to show the parallel between Barfield’s and pragmatists’, and especially Peirce’s tenets, and (3) to show how pragmatism and Barfield’s theory can be reciprocally useful Men do not invent those mysterious relationsbetween separate external objects,and between objects and feelings or ideas,which it is the function of poetry to reveal.These relations exist independently, not indeed of Thoughtbut of any individual thinker. (Poetic Diction, 79)

Social theory, current affairs, and Thailand’s political turmoil: seeing beyond reds vs. yellows

The paper argues for social theory’s potential for productive critical engagement with news and current affairs accounts. Such accounts typically offer free-floating, surface, spectacles, and oversimplified linear narratives. Social theory suggests that it is much more appropriate to embed complex social processes in plural and configurational narratives. A synthesis of strong structuration theory, critical realism, and cultural sociology is employed to produce a theorised frame – underpinned by configurations of powers, norms, and values – through which to critically engage with, and assess, media accounts of current affairs. A sustained and focused analysis of recent political conflict in Thailand reveals the superior capacity of social theory to deal with the complexity of the moral, causal, and strategic issues involved.

Modalny status zdań matematycznych

The paper contains an analysis of three counterexamples to the view that all mathematical statements are necessary, i.e. necessarily true or necessarily false: an argument from contingent, relational, empirical properties, an argument from properties based on conventional representations and an argument from model relativity. The first and the second argument can be rejected easily, while to answer the third argument one has to adopt a quite strong set-theoretic realism.

Conhecimento, Verdade e Significado

O que se segue tem como objetivo expor um argumento de Wittgenstein contrauma versão do realismo filosófico, o realismo forte sobre a verdade. O argumento deWittgenstein tem a forma geral de um modus tollens, cuja premissa condicional diz que orealismo forte sobre a verdade implica a hipótese do erro maciço. A negação do conseqüenteestá baseada na incompatibilidade entre a hipótese do erro maciço e a normatividadeessencial da linguagem. Mas o argumento de Wittgenstein é compatível com umaversão fraca do realismo sobre a verdade. Na última secção eu examino o argumento deStroud contra a tese suposta por Austin no seu argumento contra o ceticismo segundo aqual verdades sobre o modo de uso de “conhecimento” (e expressões correlatas) implicamverdades sobre o conhecimento. Procuro mostrar que o argumento de Stroud pressupõe aforma de realismo que alvo do argumento de Wittgenstein.

The Logic of Being: Eriugena's Dialectical Ontology

AbstractIn his major work, the Periphyseon, the ninth century Latin philosopher John Scottus Eriugena gives, with the help of what he calls "dialectic", a rational analysis of reality. According to him, dialectic is a science which pertains both to language and reality. Eriugena grounds this position in a realist ontological exegesis of the Aristotelian categories, which are conceived as categories of being. His interpretation tends to transform logical patterns, such as Porphyry's Tree or the doctrine of the categories, into a structure which is both ontological and logical, and to use them as tools for the analysis of the sensible world. The combination of dialectic interpreted as a science of being, capable of expressing truths about the sensible world as well as about discourse, with an ontological interpretation of logical concepts allows Eriugena to develop his metaphysical theory, a strong realism. Eriugena not only supports a theological realism (of divine ideas), but also, and principally, an ontological realism, the assertion of the immanent existence of forms. Eriugena claims that genera and species really subsist in the individuals: they are completely and simultaneously present in each of the entities which belong to them.

Interrelations between the BDI primitives: Towards heterogeneous agents

The study of formal theories of agents has intensified over the last decade since such formalisms can be viewed as providing the specifications for building agent-based systems. One such theory views agents as having beliefs, desires and intentions (BDI). The BDI paradigm provides us with the means of describing different types of agents; a desirable quality, since agent-based systems are employed in various domains with diverse characteristics and therefore different requirements. This is accomplished by adopting a set of constraints that describe how the three attitudes are related to each other, called a notion of realism. Although three such notions have been explored in the literature, namely strong realism, realism and weak realism, no systematic attempt has been undertaken to study other available options. In this paper we explore the dynamics and possible interrelations between the three attitudes and we propose notions of realism for heterogeneous BDI agents. We explore a wider range of possibilities by considering a combination of the types of relations between accessible worlds. Moreover, we distinguish between two broad categories of agents, bold and circumspect, according to the relation between beliefs and intentions. We explore several interesting notions of realism for such agents and we argue that these come close to the desiderata for rational BDI agents.