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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

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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 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.
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