spt realism

7/29/2019 spt realism

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REALISM.

FROM ANCIENT TOCONTEMPORARY

Arcilla Hall, BUCSSPJanuary 11, 2013; 8:00-11am


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WHAT IS REALISM?


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Theory that things exist

objectively, not dependent

on our minds


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The realists


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Founded the Lyceum in Athens 334

BCE, became the rival school of PlatosAcademy.

Wrote 27 Dialogues, for which he was

renowned in antiquity

ARISTOTLE (384 322 B.C)

Aristotle (Greek: ,Aristotels) (384 BC322 BC)Greek philosopher

a student of Plato and teacher ofAlexander the Great.wrote on many subjects, includingphysics, metaphysics, poetry,theater, music, logic, rhetoric, politics,

government, ethics, biology andzoology.


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Senses are source of knowledge.

Man forms universals, or categories, from many

perceptions of like objects

Accepting Nature as a self-evident reality.

The different levels of life:

1. Plant life the lowest level at which is found

only the nutritive faculty, the power of receiving

nourishment.

2. Animal life has nutritive faculty and has

faculty of perception desiring faculty and powerof locomotion.

3. Human life has faculty of thinkinga thinking

animal and true function is to live rationally.

Aristotles Realism

Four Causes

1. Material cause - that which composes a

thing

2. Formal cause -the form or the model of

things

3. Efficient cause - the source from which

movement or rest comes

4. Final cause - the end and goal of a thing


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SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS (1225 1274 A.D)

Born in 1225 at Aquino, ItalyReferred to as Thomas because

his last name Aquinas refers to

where he was born

Priest of the Roman Catholic

Church in the Dominican Order from

Italy

Influential philosopher and

theologian in the tradition of

scholasticism, known as Doctor

Angelicus and Doctor Communis

(One of the 33 Doctors of theChurch)

Died in 1274 in Italy


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Saint Thomas Realism

"Nihil est in intellectu quod non fuerit prius in sensu.

Nothing is in the intellect that was not first in the senses.

Sense is the beginning for all of mans naturalknowledge, he believed that knowledge begins

with sense perception. Therefore, knowledge was

a certain kind of being, a modification or vital action

of the knowing subject.


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Knowledge can grow beyond the sensory

world when reason is applied to sensory

experience.

Two types of knowledge:1. Sense knowledge (sense-memory, sense-

consciousness, instinct and imagination)

2. Intellectual knowledge (abstract and

general)

Saint Thomas Realism


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JOHN LOCKE (1632 1704)

John Locke (29 August 1632 28

October 1704) was an Englishman ofPuritan

His father, a lawyer and member of

the Parliamentary army which opposed

Charles I, has reflected in Lockes

educational principle.

Aid by scholarships, he was educated

at Westminster School and ChristChurch College, Oxford.

Some of his books: Some thoughts

Concerning Education (which provides

Lockes educational principle); and

Essay Concerning Human

Understanding where he focused hisgeneral philosophy.

The first philosopher to define the self

through a continuity

of "consciousness". He also postulated

that the mind was a "blank slate" or

"tabula rasa"


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John Lockes Realism

we gain knowledge by experience

There are no innate ideas in the mind. All

of our knowledge comes to us by way of

experience. The mind is for the most part

passive in experiencing the natural world.

Experience is the source of all knowledge;

sensation and reason are the 2 avenues

through which this knowledge comes to us.

The external world makes its impression

upon our minds by somehow setting

impulses in

motion which reach our minds through the

gateway of the senses.


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John Lockes Realism

Knowledge

Our experiences provided us with what

he termed simple and complex

Considered that there are 3 main types of

knowledge:

1. Intuitive- most certain and most obvious

2. Demonstrative when we put simple

ideas together to create complex ones

3. Sensitive The most uncertain becauseit relies on evidence of the senses


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John Lockes Realism

Two types of ideas:

1.Simple ideas (easy

sensations)2.Complex ideas

(grouping of simple

ideas)

There different kind of qualities or perceptions whichcome to mind by way of sensation:

- Primary: essential characters to the very nature of object

i.e. height and weight

(undeniable truths). Primary qualities exist in the external

world just as we experience them.

- Secondary: rely on subjective or personal judgments

(color, taste and some tactile

sensations e.g. hardness, softness, temperature, texture

& pain). Secondary qualities are different in our

experience from what they are in their potential

forms in the object; they are yet caused in us by the

external world.

- Tertiary: these are the powers somehow resident inobject enabling them to make

changes in other objects (e.g. power of fire to produce a

new color or consistency in

wax or clay)

These 3 qualities are produced inour minds in the same way, but they

are not all in the external world just

as we experience them in our minds.

The process of motion caused by

the object which stimulates theappropriate senses,

sends impulses along the nerve

pathways, eventually reaches the

brain, and produced

the mental result we experience.


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John Lockes Realism


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Realism in Contemporary times

THE NEOREALISTS

New realism was a philosophy expounded in

the early 20th century by a group of six US

based

scholars, namely Edwin Bissell Holt (Harvard

University), Walter Taylor Marvin (Rutgers

College),

William Pepperell Montague (Columbia

University), Ralph Barton Perry (Harvard),

Boughton Pitkin (Columbia) and EdwardGleason Spaulding (Princeton University).

These men published their manifesto

entitled The New Realism in 1912.


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The central feature of the new realism was a rejection of the

epistemological dualism of John

Locke and the older forms of realism. The group maintained that

when one is conscious of, or

knows, an object, it is an error to say that there are two distinctfacts -- knowledge of the object in

a mind, and an extra-mental object in itself.

They rebut the idealist principle that the knowledge produces

changes in the object known, and toinsist that the knowing experience is a simple relation of knower

and object in which the object is

directly presented to consciousness.

Neorealists Realism


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THE CRITICAL REALISTS

Critical realism refers to several schools of thought.

These include the American critical realists (Roy

Wood Sellars, George Santayana, and Arthur

Lovejoy) and a broader movement including

Bertrand Russell and C. D. Broad. The Canadian

Jesuit Bernard Lonergan developed acomprehensive critical realist philosophy and this

understanding of critical realism dominates

North America's Catholic Universities. In the UK,

critical realism generally refers to a philosophical

approach to the social and natural world - Roy

Bhaskar's work is particularly wellassociated with this approach. The term is also

used by several people in the science-religion

interface community.


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The critical realist rejected the neorealist position that objects aredirectly presented to consciousness. Their correction was that the

objects are not presented; they are represented.

The object which I experience in consciousness is numerically

distinct from the physical existence out there which causes the

object which I experience in consciousness. For one thing, it was

believed by these men that knowledge must be representative inorder to explain the errors of perception, for example. The position

is none the less realistic for its rejection of the presentative theory

of knowledge of neorealism.

The physical existents out there in the physical world not in

consciousness are yet real in themselves. They stand on their ownfeet; they depend on no mind for their existence, nor are theychanged in any way by entering into knowledge.

Critical Realists Realism

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