REALISM AND ITS IMPLICATIONS: Real/Reality/Realism: The beginning student will do well to get clearly in mind the meaning of such terms as real, reality, and realism. The real is the actual, or the existing. The term refers to things or events belonging to the order of nature or existing in their own right, as opposed to the imaginary, the artificial, the fictitious. Real refers to "what is." Reality is the state or quality of being real or actually existent, in contrast to what is mere appearance. In a popular sense, realism may mean devotion to fact and details as opposed to the imaginary. In philosophy, however, the word is used in a more technical sense. WHAT IS REALISM? Realism, in a philosophical sense, is the doctrine that the objects of our senses are real in their own right in that they exist independent of their being known or related to mind. Realism ' is the disposition to think and to act in the light of things as they ' are; it is a preoccupation with fact or reality; it emphasizes the objective and the scientific as opposed to the subjective and the speculative. For the realist the universe is so inexorably "out there" that the only thing we can do is to make the best terms possible with it. The realist attempts to come to terms with the universe, not to interpret the world in terms of his experience or in spiritual terms. A contemporary British realist, Professor John MacMurray, says: "We cannot get away from the primary fact that there is a distinction between things and ideas. For ordinary common sense an idea is the idea of something, a thought in our minds which [represents the things that it is the idea of. In that case the thing is ' !the reality while the idea is merely 'how the thing appears to us.' Our thought must, therefore, adapt itself to things if it is to be proper thought, that is to say, if our idea is to be true. If the idea does not correspond with the thing of which it is the idea, then the idea is false and useless. The thing will not accommodate itself to our idea of it. We have to change our ideas and keep on changing them till we get them right. Now, such a commonsense way of thinking is essentially realist, and it is realist because it makes the 'thing' and not the 'idea' the measure of validity, the centre of significance. It makes the thing real and the idea the true or false appearance of the thing." In discussing how anyone could arrive at a conclusion other than that held by the realist. Professor MacMurray says that the philosopher's business is with ideas, therefore he tends to place emphasis upon the world of ideas or thought. Since thought tends to be more important to him, he naturally though mistakenly comes to think that ideas are more basic in their nature than are things. Thus he finds it comparatively easy to affirm that reality is of the nature of thought or idea. If a man elevates the life of mind, or reflective thinking, as something higher or nobler than practical activity or than his interest in things, he tends to imply that the idea is more important than the thing of which it is the idea. In the theoretical field as distinct from the field of activity, a man tests his ideas by thinking, so that his knowledge of the world is the world as he knows it. If he confines himself to thought, then thought seems to be the only significant thing. In the opinion of Professor MacMurray, the realistic view is the common-sense view and the only one which will stand up amidst the practical activities of life. Another realist. Professor A. N. Whitehead, sets forth his reasons for believing that the things we experience are to be distinguished clearly from our knowledge of them.^ In defending the objectivist position of realism, which, he says, is adapted to the requirements of science as well as to the concrete experiences of mankind. Professor Whitehead makes three affirmations. First, "we are within a world of colors, sounds, and other sense objects." The world is not within us, nor does it depend upon our sense perception. Second, historical knowledge discloses long ages in the past when no living beings existed on earth and when important changes or happenings were taking place. Third, one's activity seems to transcend the self and to find and to seek ends in the known world. Things pave the way for our awareness. A "common world of thought" seems to imply and to require a "common world of sense." Many philosophers, past and present, and notably the idealists and the pragmatists, have claimed that an object known or experienced is different from the object before it entered such relationships. Since we can never know an object except as it is known or experienced by us, the object's being known or experienced forms an integral part of the object known. Thus knowledge and experience tend to modify or to constitute the object to some extent. The realist holds that such reasoning is fallacious. C. E. M. Joad makes the following claims: "(1) The entities (objects, facts, &c.) under study in logic,! mathematics, and the physical sciences are not mental in any proper or usual meaning of the word 'mental.' (2) The being and nature of these entities are in no sense conditioned by their being known. Hence (3) Things may continue to exist unaltered when they are not known, or pass into and out of knowledge without prejudice to their reality. (4) Knowledge is a peculiar type of relation which may subsist between a mind and any entity.” From these propositions there follow the general Realist conclusions: (1) that the nature of things is not to be sought primarily in the nature of knowledge; (2) that, accordingly, the nature of things is what it is independently of our knowing it; and that it is therefore not mental." Now that we have heard from various realists, it might be interesting to hear from an idealist as to what realism is. In essential agreement with the above statements, W. E. Hocking says: "Realism as a general temper of mind is a disposition to keep ourselves and our preferences out of our judgment of things, letting the objects speak for themselves. If we can say of idealism that it has a tendency to read the mind into nature, realism is in this respect its precise opposite. In the interest of allowing every object its full distinctive flavor, realism is inclined to de- personalize or de-mentalize the world, to see things starkly and factually in a spirit which it conceives to be at once more objective and more scientific than that of idealism." Apart from these common basic affirmations, realism is a movement in philosophy that it is difficult to present in any comprehensive way in a single chapter, since it includes many different trends or types. It is not a single body of systematic doctrine. At least three tendencies are evident in modern realism. There is, first, a tendency toward materialism in some of its modern forms. For example, mechanistic naturalism is a realism as well as a materialism. Matter alone, or energy, or mechanistic processes are the real elements. This approach has been discussed elsewhere and is not considered again in this chapter. Second, there is a tendency toward idealism. The ground of existence or the reality that is beyond us may be thought of as akin to mind or spirit in nature, or as an organic whole. In his Personal Realism, James B. Pratt represents such a tendency. This form of realism may be hard to distinguish from some types of objective idealism. Third, there are the many realists who claim that reality is neither physical nor mental but some underlying neutral substance (neutral monism) ; and there are the realists who insist that reality is pluralistic, consisting of many entities of which mind and matter may be only two. SOME MAJOR TYPES OF REALISM: NAΪVE AND REPRESENTATIVE REALISM: There are some basic beliefs like; 1. The external world exists. 2. It exists independent of us. 3. It can be known through senses. 4. Knowledge of the externally existing world acquired through senses (sense organs) is a justified knowledge. 5. Physical object is the cause of our perception. The first four beliefs are held by the naïve realists, while the last belief is held by the representative realist. Naïve means a lay man, a common man, a man in the street or an average man. Naïve realism is a lay or common man’s approach towards the external world. According to common man, seeing is believing, i.e., whatever appears before our senses is reality. Reality exists the way it appears. There is no difference between appearance and reality. Representative realism is comparatively a more philosophical approach towards the outer world. The philosophy of John Locke is a good example of representative realism. According to Locke, the physical object is nothing but a combination of qualities. He has divided these qualities into two categories, i.e., (i) primary qualities and (ii) secondary qualities. Primary qualities are objective and belongs to the physical object (material world). Examples of these qualities are extension, motion, figure, shape. Secondary qualities are subjective and belongs to the perceiver. Examples of secondary qualities are color, taste, smell etc. According to John Locke, we do not perceive the physical object, rather we perceive the qualities of the physical object only. What is the actual nature of the physical object, we know not. This is the philosophy of representative realism. DOGMATIC REALISM: A philosophical position which says that reality exists independent of us in such a manner that it can be known. For example Plato’s philosophy of world of forms or ideas. IGNOSTIC REALISM: A philosophical position which says that reality exists independent of us in such a manner that it cannot be known. For example Kant’s philosophy of things in themselves. THE NEW REALISM OF E. G. SPAULDING While there is no one complete system of doctrine that is typical of all the new realists, certain individual realists have given us rather complete statements of their philosophical position. Representative of new realism is The New Rationalism by E. G. Spaulding. 1. Philosophical Realism: The position of the author is termed by him "philosophical realism." The universe, he says, is what it is, no matter what men think about it. The world is objectively there, and the only thing men can do is to analyze it and to make the best terms possible with it. Realism proceeds in harmony with the development of modern science and is a metaphysics that denies the universality of causation as well as of substance. In place of causation and substance, realism emphasizes relations. It proceeds by induction and holds to the "consistency of relatedness and independence." This system permits the validity of analysis, as against the causation philosophies represented by phenomenalism and the substance or monistic philosophies represented by objective idealism. Terms, relations, laws, principles, regularities, order, classes, and series are discovered, not invented. The "knowing process neither causally affects, modifies, or creates that which is known." We begin with the world of our experience, which is inexorably there, and we endeavor by analysis or by human reason and investigation to find out just what kind of world it is in which we live. 2. Ontological Pluralism: Ultimate reality, we are told, is an irreducible pluralism. There is not one quality or substance, either mind or matter, nor some unknown underlying entity of which all other entities are manifestations. A pluralism of such a nature is the only theory of being which stands the test of empirical investigation. Both primary and secondary qualities are located in the objective world. Entities which are correlated with a specific part of space and time are called physical entities; those 2. with a specific time alone are called mental existents. Entities that are not spatially and temporally particularized but are discovered to be facts are called subsistents. In the realm of subsistents we have universals and ideals, such as justice, numbers, and the ideal system of mechanics. Such values as justice, goodness, truth, and beauty, although never completely attained, are nevertheless realities. 3. Creative Synthesis: In the physical world, as elsewhere, it is an empirical fact that, as a result of the "non-additive organization" of parts, wholes are formed which are "qualitatively different from the characteristics of the parts." For example, in water the relation between hydrogen and oxygen is not additive; it is organizing, so that the characteristics of water are not the same as those of its chemical components. This process of the formation of entirely new qualities through the organization of parts into wholes is called creative synthesis. Consciousness, to take another example, is a new level or a new dimension that arises in the process of creative synthesis. Granted that the "conditions for consciousness" are both spatial and physical, "consciousness itself need not be either spatial or physical" in order to be correlated with spatial and physical things. Consciousness is non-spatial and extra- physical and is not the kind of entity that we can shut within a body or a brain. It is not first in our bodies, brains, or cortexes, then to be extended to a distant object, since it is a "new" dimension that arises as the "result of the organization of 'elements' of which distant object and body are each members." Man as a human organism exhibits the same principle of creative synthesis. Though he is infinitely complex, he may function as a unit or as a part of a larger whole. One whole of which man is a part is society. Morality is a characteristic which appears in human society with the recognition of personality. There arises, further, the "cognitive consciousness of respect, of reverence, of rights, and of 'ought.' " When this appears, we have the "moral consciousness of society" which is "conditioned by the existence of society, self-regulating and thus free." It does not arise in the individual alone, but it is binding upon him as a member of the group. A new quality is a law unto itself and needs to be described in new terms. Freedom is one such new quality. 4. Values: Values or worths both exist and subsist, and they I are real parts of the objective world. They are external and I independent of their being perceived, conceived, and appreciated, as well as independent of the physiological organism. Ideals are real, and values like justice, truth, goodness, and beauty are "eternal verities," not subject to the misfortunes that distort the particular time-and-space-conditioned products of the natural process. These things are quite outside time and space and are "not subject to the stress and strain of this slowly evolving earth and this starry universe." 5. Teleology: There is a "teleology in the existential process of the universe." Scientific evidence points to a process in which stars, planets, earth, plants, and animals participate. There are certain things which do not evolve, such as time, space, numbers, and logical principles. Whether or not the process is evolution, it is at any rate change, and the "process 'goes' one way" and one way only. That is, it has direction. We can identify this "empirically established direction" with teleology. "For if we identify change with evolution, we can show empirically that all evolution is marked by the production of something new. New wholes, and among these, values arise that did not exist before; progress and betterment take place in just this sense." Evolution is creative, and there is newness and an ascent that gives rise to "new" entities, some of which are values. This interpretation of the universe does not deny agency or power; in fact, it affirms that there is "an efficient agent or power to produce all values"; there is a "power that 'makes for' values, and leads' to them or that produces them." 6. The Idea of God and Religion: God is seen as the Being who cares for that which is good and who works for the attainment of that which is good. We are told that for realism, "God is the totality of values, both existent and subsistent, and of those agencies and efficiencies with which these values are identical. He is also at once the multiplicity of these entities and the unity of their organization in that they are related. This means that God is justice and truth and beauty, both as these are 'above' our world and as they are in it, and that He is thus both transcendent and immanent. Accordingly, if God is personality. He is also more than personality even as the moral situation among men is more than personality. He is love and affection and goodness, respect and reverence, as these exist among and in men, but He is these also as they subsist by themselves, and act efficiently upon men. In brief, God is Value, the active, 'living' principle of the conservation of values and of their efficiency." Purpose is both transcendent, or above the world, and immanent, or in the world. It is transcendent to the extent of time and space. It is immanent to the extent that there is no "existential agent" that is external to the great creative evolutionary process as a whole. In this sense, God may be said to be both immanent and transcendent in the world. In a sense He is supernatural, since He is above or beyond the world of existents. But God does not contradict nature since God and nature are in a different universe or realm of discourse. God is in the world to the extent that particular existences or situations conform to these ideals. Although there are values in the universe, not all is value. There are two other realms beside the realm of values: first, a realm of non-value entities which include "numbers, space and time, electrons, atoms, masses, molecules, and the like" (Spaulding gives considerable attention to this realm) ; second, a realm of falsity and error, of evil and ugliness, that is directly opposed to the good, the true, and the beautiful. While philosophical literature abounds with attempts to argue evil out of existence, Spaulding believes that the attempts have failed. The realistic approach is the only one consistent and fair to the facts. Men fight evil because evil is evil and not just for the sake of the fight. Men wish to defeat and to eliminate evil and to replace it with the good. This is a solution of the problem of evil that supports a theistic rather than a pantheistic conception of God. God, who represents or is the sum total of all goodness and all values, fights not only beside men but in and through them, working for the development of value and for the good, the true, and the beautiful. The religious consciousness is the persistent conviction in the lives of men that there are these two powers, one good and the other evil, and that they both have an influence in the realm of human motives and acts. "Respect and reverence and love for values and worths and for all that either is these or that 'makes for' them form part of the religious consciousness. But another part also is the hatred and detestation of all that is evil and ugly and false, and the desire and will to fight these." CRITICAL REALISM: While agreeing with the new realists that the existence of objects is independent of knowledge, they criticize them for making the relationship so immediate or direct. Just as the new realism was an attack upon idealism, critical realism was a criticism of both idealism and the new realism. For the critical realist the awareness or perception of objects is not so direct and immediate as the new realists claimed. The outer object is not actually present in consciousness. Only the sense data (the mental image, the sensa, or the datum) are present in experience. They reflect the nature of the external object as well as the nature of the perceiving mind. Except by inference we cannot go beyond or get behind the sense data. We have, then: (i) the perceiving mind, the knower, or the conscious organism; (2) the outer object, the given, or the stark reality with its primary qualities; (3) the sense data, which connect the perceiving mind and the outer object. The critical realist thinks that the sense data give us a fairly direct contact with objects. They reveal in large part what objects are, and they indicate to us the nature of the external world. Furthermore, this approach, according to critical realists enables us to understand and to explain illusions, hallucinations, and errors of various kinds.