Realism

[James Heartfield]

In message <5.0.0.25.2.20010929114255.042c8b70 at mail.gte.net>, kelley
<kwalker2 at gte.net> writes
>Objectivists:
>
>Ontology: "naive" realism
>
>--empirical facts exist independently of our consciousness of them
>--scientific concepts are said to be capable of copying or corresponding to 
>those factual realities.
>
>Naive realism provides a basis for a theory of scientific representation 
>and is often associated with British Empiricism.

'Naive'! How very naive to think that the world is more than one's own
perceptions of it.

Wouldn't the view that I make the world by seeing it better qualify for
the description, naive, like the 'magical thinking' in which Shaman's
imagine that their rituals determine the rising and setting of the sun.

In message <3BB5E7F7.82AF3D51 at ilstu.edu>, Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu>
writes
>For me, the fundamental sense of "realism" is that the Forms exist
>independently of and prior to the particulars which manifest, imitate,
>etc etc them.
>
>I.E., all realists are ultimately Platonists.

Talk about a straw man. Realism is the opposite of Platonism, which is
why it is called realism, not idealism.

Or, in the sentence above, 'reality' (not 'forms') exists independently
of and prior to our perception of it (as opposed to 'those particulars
which manifest them')
-- 
James Heartfield