[asking]

How come when I look up "realism" at Wikipedia, there are THIS many kinds?
And that's just under the subhead "Philosophy."

Philosophy
Aesthetic Realism, a philosophy founded by the American poet and critic Eli Siegel
Australian realism or Australian materialism, a 20th Century school of philosophy in Australia
Christian Realism, a philosophy advocated by Reinhold Niebuhr
Constructive realism, a philosophy of science
Cornell realism, a view in meta-ethics associated with the work of Richard Boyd and others
Critical realism, a philosophy of perception concerned with the accuracy of human sense-data
Direct realism, a theory of perception
Entity realism, a philosophical position within scientific realism
Epistemological realism, a subcategory of objectivism
Hyper-realism or Hyperreality, the inability of consciousness to distinguish reality from fantasy
Mathematical realism, a branch of philosophy of mathematics
Moderate realism, a position holding that there is no realm where universals exist
Modal realism, a philosophy propounded by David Lewis, that possible worlds are as real as the actual world
Moral realism, the view in philosophy that there are objective moral values
Mystical realism, a philosophy concerning the nature of the divine, advanced by Nikolai Berdyaev
Naïve realism, a common sense theory of perception
New realism (philosophy), a school of early 20th-century epistemology rejecting epistemological dualism
Organic realism or the Philosophy of Organism, the metaphysics of Alfred North Whitehead, now known as process philosophy
Philosophical realism, the belief that reality exists independently of observers
Platonic realism, a philosophy articulated by Plato, positing the existence of universals
Quasi-realism, an expressivist meta-ethical theory which asserts that though our moral claims are projectivist we understand them in realist terms
Representative realism, the view that we cannot perceive the external world directly
Scientific realism, the view that the world described by science is the real world
Transcendental realism, a concept implying that individuals have a perfect understanding of the limitations of their own minds
Truth-value link realism, a metaphysical concept explaining how to understand parts of the world that are apparently cognitively inaccessible

Also, when a philosopher says that an abstraction "exists," what does that mean?

[tonyrey]

It's not surprising that there are so many varieties of realism because reality is the most fundamental and all-embracing term we use. Even illusions are a part of reality! They don't exist in the ordinary sense of the word but they can't be ignored because they affect people's lives.

We can also approach reality from so many different angles: ontological, epistemological, physical, spiritual, psychological, social, political, aesthetic, mathematical, economic... with so many possible permutations and combinations, e.g. dialectical materialism (Marxism) - in which metaphysics and economics are intimately linked. Probably there are almost as many types of realism as there are philosophers because no two individuals interpret reality in exactly the same way!

[asking]

Well, okay. If we don't give priority to any of these, then it seems like we need to choose a few standards. I think people who use "real" in anything but a strictly vernacular sense should specify which real they mean. Otherwise, how can any discussion mean the same thing to all parties?

[tonyrey]

Well, okay. If we don't give priority to any of these, then it seems like we need to choose a few standards. I think people who use "real" in anything but a strictly vernacular sense should specify which real they mean. Otherwise, how can any discussion mean the same thing to all parties?

Although philosophers are often too fond of jargon there has to be some way of identifying their views but I agree with you that it is very confusing. The remaining problem is that "real" is also applied to intangibles as well as material objects. We wouldn't say that love or similarity are unreal, would we? :)

[Akoue]

There are several reasons for the variety of realisms you list. The short answer is that there are lots of different problems with respect to which people have staked out lots of different positions over the years. Realism in, say, the philosophy of science is a different animal from realism in meta-ethics. There are, in other words, as many realisms as there are theoretical domains.

You, for instance, are a realist about species: You hold the view that species, and not just individuals, are entities. They really exist. While you are a realist about species, you could very well be an anti-realist about, say, mathematical objects. In other words, your commitment to species-realism (there we go, we've just added another realism to the list) doesn't commit you to the existence of mathematical objects. Similarly, you might be an anti-realist about meta-ethics, holding that moral properties don't exist but are, let's suppose, just conventional assignments of value to behaviors that conduce to the functioning of the community.

The label "realism" is sometimes used as an honorific of sorts: If someone is said to be an anti-realist, this is sometimes a subtle condemnation. There is, in other words, a sort of presumption among some that realism is better than its contraries. We find this even in everyday usage, where it is said to be a good thing to be "realistic" and a bad thing to be "unrealistic".

And there are people who are realists more or less across the board. Your list mentions Cornell realism: The Cornell realists tend to be realists about science, meta-ethics, metaphysics (they believe that possible worlds exist, for example). And Richard Boyd is a Marxist--or at least he was--and so he is an historical materialist as well.

You, asking, are not a realist about the mind. But you may be a realist about a good many other things. It is this, more than anything, that accounts for the variety of realisms.

I hope this helps.

[asking]

Yes and no.

I see that "real" can be applied differently to different things and that therefore a person can be a realist about one thing but not another and that there could develop different schools of thought concerning what is real.

But the word "real"itself is what concerns me, not realism per se. I should have said this before. I did not ask my question correctly.

I am trying to see where "real' fits in with "actual" and "exists" and so on.
Are you contending that each of these schools of philosophy uses the word to mean something different? That is, they are not just applying it to different things differently, but instead understand " and so on.
Are you contending that each of these schools of philosophy uses the word to mean something different? That is, they are not just applying it to different things differently, but instead understand " differently from one another.

For example, when I say species are real, I mean that in the same way that I mean that a stone is real. It is actual, physical, and interacts with its environment in predictable ways. A species is not merely a class of objects, such as "grains of sand." In contrast, a beach is real or actual in my understanding.

So for me, " differently from one another.

For example, when I say species are real, I mean that in the same way that I mean that a stone is real. It is actual, physical, and interacts with its environment in predictable ways. A species is not merely a class of objects, such as " and "actual" In contrast, a beach is real or actual in my understanding.

So for me, "actual." and "real." are synonymous, at least as I understand you to mean "love" is used in as many ways as any word I can think of--essentialist, transitive, intransitive, etc. So I don't think that's a fruitful area in which to understand real. I want to work with words whose meaning is limited and unambiguous. That is I want to control the number of variables in the discussion.

Would it be fair to say that--broadly speaking--" (That's my problem; I'm not sure if we mean the same things.)

Tony says that abstractions can be real. I agreed, but now that I'm thinking harder, I think I was sucked in by the romantic notion of love being " merely means possible, while "actual" Of course, feelings of love are a normal expression of being human and those reactions are definitely real. But the word "exist" fit in?

[tonyrey]

I need more time to answer your question more fully but for the moment I would like to comment on the reality of intangibles. We can hardly doubt that similarity exists between certain things. We don't imagine it nor is it arbitrary. In nature certain shapes and patterns constantly recur, but we don't see the similarity: we deduce it. Nor is it just a concept. It is a relation (that exists) between objects which may be different in many other respects.

Similarly, the truth exists and is real rather than a figment of our imagination or a human convention. It is the correspondence between a belief or statement and an event or situation. For example, "I am sitting on a chair" is a true description of my position.

The truth is composed of facts which may have existed long before human beings existed, e.g. the Big Bang occurred about 13.7 million years ago. So they exist independently regardless of whether we are aware of them. Not only that. Once a fact always a fact! They are immutable, eternal and indestructible. Nothing will ever change the moment and location of the Big Bang...

The reality of intangibles may be easier to grasp when we remember physical reality may be reduced to a set of mathematical equations. So it is a mistake to think the prime reality is physical. We begin with our thoughts and end with our thoughts... Truth is stranger than fiction and reality is far richer than we imagine! There is good reason to believe the most important things in life are invisible...