ABSTRACT

Philosophy.—The realist position consists in contending, relative to a given discourse domain, that the entities associated with that domain are real. Accordingly, commonsense realism maintains that tables and chairs are real, and scientific realism, that electrons or genes are real. Psychological realism argues that the entities upon which psychological discourse bears, such as pain and beliefs, are real (→BELIEF). In particular, this implies that their existence and their properties are objective, that is, they are independent of the epistemic attitudes and affirmations one forms about them (→EPISTEMIC). To the extent that a thing is real, knowledge of it must be the product of a discovery rather than an invention. In particular, this implies that it is possible to be unaware of something even though it is real, and that one can be mistaken about it: the knowledge acquisition process may encounter obstacles.