ABSTRACT
The perspective on philosophical realism offered here is founded upon three central convictions: (i) that reality exists independently of representation, (ii) that reality and representation can “converge,” and (iii) that such convergence can never be unqualifi ed and so the “danger of divergence between thought and reality can never be averted” (Papineau, quoted
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in Trigg 67). The fi rst of these convictions is fundamental to any realist position, and, while anti-realists might argue that there is no “reality itself (whatever that might be) but [only] reality-as-we-picture-it” (Rescher 167), or that such a reality is “A world well lost” (Rorty, quoted by Putnam Human Face 262), realists believe that “The assumption of a mind-independent reality is essential to the whole of our standard conceptual scheme relating to inquiry and communication” (Rescher, in Trigg 202). The second and third of these convictions, taken together, also appear to imply a requisite degree of conceptual relativism. However, philosophical realist positions contend that, through the institution of various conceptual means, and by dint of viewing realism as a “regulative conception”: a realism “of intent,” rather than of “defi nitive truth,” correspondence between reality and representation can be theorized, and the compass of conceptual relativism constrained (Rescher, in Trigg 202).
