What is realism?

A realist believes that there is a mind- and language-independent world. More specifically, since a realist is usually a realist about something or other, a realist about this and that believes that this and that is independent of mind and language. What fills the place of “this and that” will normally be a certain subject matter, range of entities or realm; one is a realist about mathematics or about the past or about other minds, and so on. So if we're searching for a general understanding of realism we need two things. First we need a general characterization of the sorts of things one might be a realist about. And, second, we need an explanation of the notion of independence of mind and language since, as it stands, the notion has no very clear content.

Michael Dummett is justly famous in the contemporary philosophical world for having offered a characterization of realism which is both general and whose content is, or at least promises to be, clear. The general applicability of his account suggests a way of seeing diverse disputes as sharing elements of a certain form. It also helps us to pick out in diverse cases what is essential to the dispute about realism from incidental features of the particular dispute. As we shall see Dummett thinks that in many cases this suggests forms of anti-realism which are more plausible than their traditional forms.