In this sense, realism and anti-realism encompass many domain-specific positions across diverse fields. Anti-realism rejects this view, arguing instead that there is no external world or that reality depends in certain respects on mental processes, subjective perspectives, or social conventions. Realism and anti-realism are families of views concerning the mind-independence of reality. Some interpretations of quantum mechanics hold that measurement outcomes are inherently probabilistic, thereby rejecting causal determinism, but this is not true for all interpretations.g According to this view, what happened in the past fixes what will happen in the future, including human behavior. Causal determinism is the view that every event is fully determined or necessitated by prior events.
Phenomenalism, a related view, reduces physical objects to collections of actual or possible sensory experiences. In this sense, reality does not depend on human knowledge or consciousness and exists apart from them, including the aspects that no one is aware of. In the broadest sense, realism is the view that the external world and its constituents exist as they do regardless of how people perceive or think about them. Unreal entities, by contrast, depend for their existence on thoughts and ideas; they would not arise or would vanish without the mental activity creating or sustaining them. For example, if a planet or a virus is real then it exists on its own and behaves according to its nature, even if people are unaware or hold false beliefs about it.
The term reality overlaps with various related concepts, such as being, existence, world, actuality, and truth. This view contrasts being real with being fake, like the distinction between a real duck and a fake one used as a decoy. In a broad sense, appearances are not limited to what people perceive but can also include memories, beliefs, and thoughts. Debates between realists and anti-realists span multiple domains, addressing the objective existence of universals, abstract objects, values, and unobservable entities posited by scientific theories. The concept of reality overlaps with notions such as being, existence, world, actuality, and truth.

• It is often contrasted with appearance, opposing what is with what seems to be, although the accuracy and fundamentality of this contrast are disputed.
• It holds that the debate is not based on a substantive disagreement but arises instead from conceptual confusions.
• Philosophers discuss various sources of knowledge as ways of how this cognitive contact is established, including perception, introspection, reason, memory, and testimony.
• It is often contrasted with essence, which denotes the nature or characteristic features of an entity.
• Realists hold that values are objective features of reality, meaning that there are mind-independent facts about whether something is good or bad, irrespective of subjective beliefs or personal preferences.

According to conventionalism, the truth of mathematical statements rests on linguistic conventions or definitions, rather than on their relation to language-independent reality. Anti-realism about abstract objects in mathematics takes various forms, including, but not limited to, fictionalism. Fictionalists argue that discourse about abstract objects concerns fictional entities within make-believe frameworks. Anti-realists hold that there are no abstract objects and offer alternative explanations.

External links

For example, the laws of thermodynamics describe how heat and other forms of energy behave, such as the idea that the total amount of energy is always conserved. Existence monism contrasts with existence pluralism, which aligns more closely with everyday experience by asserting that reality is made up of many objects. There are different ways to conceptualize the relation between fundamental and non-fundamental entities, including the ideas of ontological dependence, metaphysical grounding, reduction, supervenience, and emergence.

Viewpoints on reality

Another structural feature concerns the idea that some entities depend on, or are grounded in, other entities. Mereological universalism holds that any collection of entities constitutes a whole, even if the entities are otherwise unrelated. Various theories of the mereological principles underlying composition have been proposed. Various categories of being or constituents of reality are discussed in the academic discourse.

Values

Discussed in ancient Greek philosophy as the Eleatic principle, it states that to be real is to be able to produce changes and to be affected by them. Criteria of reality are proposed features or standards that distinguish real entities from unreal ones. In this sense, it is the state of being real or what all real entities have in common, separating them from unreal or illusory ones. In a slightly different sense, reality is not the totality itself but an aspect shared by all its constituents. Theories of the nature of reality have been discussed since antiquity and continue to shape contemporary inquiry, with influential early traditions originating in ancient Indian, Chinese, and Greek thought. Contemporary technology in the form of augmented and virtual reality can inform experience and raises questions about the ontological status of virtual objects.

• An event that has actually happened, or a thing which really exists is said to have “reality.” Something close to reality is realistic.
• Reason is the ability to draw logical inferences and arrive at truths independent of immediate sensory input.
• Similarly, virtual reality worlds may incorporate real-world objects into the simulation or be entirely virtual.l
• It is frequently possible to understand the essence of something without knowing whether it exists.
• Accordingly, worldviews address not only theoretical matters but also practical and evaluative outlooks about what matters and how one should act.
• Philosophers examine various limitations of knowledge or obstacles to the cognitive contact with reality.

It opposes the idea that world and mind are essentially correlated, emphasizing the mind-independent nature of reality beyond the way humans perceive and think about it. On this view, unobservable entities may be invoked in theory construction to aid prediction but should not be taken to exist. Scientific realism is the view that the best mister golden scientific theories provide an accurate description of a mind-independent world. Error theory asserts that all value statements are false because there are no values.i Another form of anti-realism maintains that value statements are neither true nor false but meaningless. According to subjectivism, values depend on the attitudes and preferences of individuals.
Some outlooks suggest that only the fundamental level is ultimately real, arguing that non-fundamental entities are in some sense eliminable since reality can be described without them. For example, one view suggests that macroscopic objects, such as a chair, depend on the microscopic objects that underlie them, such as elementary particles. The structure of reality concerns the fundamental patterns of being, describing how entities are organized and interact with each other.
A related topic concerns the possibility and limits of knowledge as a successful cognitive contact with reality. Anti-realism, by contrast, holds that certain aspects of reality depend on mental processes, subjective perspectives, or social conventions. Realism is the view that reality does not depend on human knowledge or consciousness and exists apart from them. An event that has actually happened, or a thing which really exists is said to have “reality.” Something close to reality is realistic.