Abstract

In order to take a further step in my argumentation, I must clearly define my concept of objective realism. That is the task of this third chapter. Its solution is essentially orientated towards my map of the realism-antirealism debates that I presented in the previous chapter. In the first subchapter (3.1), I pursue Michael Dummett’s idea that the various debates that deal with the concept of realism and its opposites, whether these discussions concern numbers, colours, possible worlds, scientific theories, unobservables or the external world, not only show family resemblances, but that in all cases a single philosophical core question is articulated in them. Considering whether this idea is correct, and what that question may be, helps us to better understand more fully the systematics of the numerous related discussions on a philosophical level and to identify the problems that characterise the debate as a whole. In doing so, I reflect on whether there is a common philosophical core to the local, metalocal and global questions, and why, although its connection with considerations belonging to philosophy of language and theories of truth must be recognised, the focus here is on the ontological and epistemological levels (3.1.1). I argue in favour of Dummett’s thesis of a core of these discussions, but against his one-sided identification of this focal point of the theory of truth. Furthermore, the possible follow-up objection that the pair of terms realism and anti-realism is then too broad to do meaningful philosophical work is refuted (3.1.2). Finally, I discuss a consequence of the commitment to an ontological-epistemological core of the debates (3.1.3): If I am correct in articulating the realism problem in this way, can we not identify two aspects within the ontological definition of realism, an axis of existence and an axis of independence? This reflective stage in the first subchapter makes it possible to introduce a fundamental differentiation in the debate about realism: In the second subchapter (3.2), I distinguish between objective realism and - at first purely negatively - new realism. The former, objective realism, consists roughly in an ontological-epistemological realism that focuses on three core characteristics of the real: the existence of an entity in the single real external world, the knowability of the entity and the independence of the external world from subjects (3.2.1). Objective realism thus delineates fundamental areas of reality that exist genuinely from those that are merely subjectdependent. According to objective realism, the genuinely existing part of reality can be characterised as coherent and uniquely real. I then counter the possible objection that I am only giving the well-known and well-researched metaphysical realism a new facade with my concept of objective realism. By analysing Hartry Fields arguments against Hilary Putnam’s conception of metaphysical realism, I refute this doubt (3.2.2). A look at the consequences resulting from three basic tenets of objective realism (3.2.3) shows that objective realism tends towards the thesis of a fixed structure of the external world and suggests naturalism. The chapter concludes with a distinction of new realism that differentiates it from objective realism on the one hand and from anti-realism on the other (3.2.4). Both anti-realism and new realism oppose objective realism without calling it that but draw opposite conclusions from this opposition.