Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The doctrine that there is nothing whose characters are independent of all actual thought about them.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun philosophy Any position involving denial of objective reality of certain entities, or denial that certain general statements are either true or false.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

anti- +‎ realism

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Examples

  • Scientific realism became dominant in philosophy of science after the demise of the forms of antirealism about science associated with the logical positivists, namely semantic instrumentalism, according to which theoretical terms are not to be interpreted as referring to anything, and theoretical reductionism, according to which theoretical terms are disguised ways of referring to observable phenomena.

    Structural Realism Ladyman, James 2009

  • “Yes, but ¦ Some skeptical remarks on realism and antirealism.”

    Structural Realism Ladyman, James 2009

  • His antirealism is sceptical rather than dogmatic, and does not depend on the distinction between theoretical and observational terms.

    Structural Realism Ladyman, James 2009

  • These forms of antirealism rely upon discredited doctrines about scientific language, such as that it can be divided into theoretical and observational parts, and that much of it should not be taken literally.

    Structural Realism Ladyman, James 2009

  • Magnus and Callender argue that “wholesale” arguments that are intended to support realism (or antirealism) about science as a whole (rather than “retail” arguments that are applied to a specific theory) are only taken seriously because of our propensity to engage in the ˜base rate fallacy™ of evaluating probabilities without knowing all the relevant information.

    Structural Realism Ladyman, James 2009

  • Thanatos: Idealism sensu Plato is an ontological view, not an epistemological one, which is what realism or antirealism is.

    Note from Kansas - The Panda's Thumb 2007

  • Realism and antirealism are best understood as positions about the goal of science

    Note from Kansas - The Panda's Thumb 2007

  • Realism and antirealism are best understood as positions about the goal of science.

    Note from Kansas - The Panda's Thumb 2007

  • There's absolutely no guarantee that our cognitivie endowment is such that we can reliably know about such things; still, this point doesn't push me toward antirealism about them at all.

    Morality is Objective (And People Are Wrong) 2006

  • Finally, this underdetermination of the metaphysics of individuality by the physics has important implications for the realism-antirealism debate.

    Identity and Individuality in Quantum Theory French, Steven 2006

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