Realism and antirealism

3. Epistemological versions

It is common to hear realism characterized in terms of the limits of knowledge as the belief that there are, or could be, ‘recognition-transcendent facts’ (meaning thereby facts which lie beyond our cognitive powers – there is no intention to saddle the realist with the view that there may be facts which simply could not be recognized at all). Antirealism then becomes the view that no such facts are possible.

The motivation for this epistemic version of the realism–antirealism divide is not hard to see. If the way something is is independent of the way we are, what could rule out the possibility that there should be facts about it beyond our powers of knowledge? Conversely, if its whole nature is due to the way we ‘construct’ it through our style of experience and investigation, how could there be anything about it that our cognitive faculties cannot recover? Although understandable, this is quick and imprecise. Consider someone who holds that the nature of the physical world is utterly independent of what human beings may believe it to be, but also has such anthropocentric theological inclinations as to hold that God must have given us cognitive powers equal, in principle, to discovering every fact about it. If we call this philosopher an antirealist on these grounds, we have surely changed the original subject, not just drawn it from another perspective.

This brings out the significance of formulating the epistemic criterion in terms of mere possibility (there could be recognition-transcendent facts) rather than actuality, thus allowing the philosopher who thinks, for whatever reason, that our cognitive powers are in fact a match for reality, still to be a realist by virtue of accepting that our powers might have been more limited without reality being any different.

It is one thing to suggest that there may be facts beyond our powers of recognition, quite another to hold that this is true of certain specific facts; the former is just modesty about our cognitive capacities, the latter a positive scepticism. So to imply an intrinsic connection between realism and scepticism, as some do, is very different from identifying realism with a belief in the possibility of recognition-transcendent facts.

Again, there is a plausible line of thought linking realism closely to scepticism. If a certain type of fact is as it is quite independently of us, then our knowledge of it must depend on an intermediary, namely the effect that it has upon us. But then we encounter the sceptical argument of which Descartes’ fiction of a malicious demon represents the classic formulation: how are we ever to know that this intermediary effect is produced by the sort of thing we think it is produced by, and not rather by something completely different? Hence, starting with realism, we arrive at scepticism.

However, it seems undesirable to use scepticism (and the absence of it) to characterize the realism–antirealism distinction. The classic argument from realism (as independence of the subject) to scepticism may be a formidable one, but it nevertheless involves substantial assumptions which can be challenged; to adopt terminology which makes it sound as if its conclusion were true by definition invites confusion. Besides, scepticism is not itself a precise notion, and there may be forms of it which apply even under certain antirealist conceptions. For instance, one who thinks that truth is to be understood as the opinion that would be reached under ideal conditions may still be a sceptic, because they remain sceptical of our ability to recognize ideal conditions or know how closely we have approximated to them.