How to deal with non-realism?

loup-vaillant

From Being a Realist (even if you believe in God):

theists and untheists can and should meet half way and at least agree on the logical necessity of being a realist.

My mother, who doesn't call herself a theist (I think she's agnostic), doesn't even accept realism. She doesn't even agree with this:

There is something. All that there is, we generally call "reality". Note that by this definition, reality is unique. The corollary is, we all live in the same reality. We do not percieve it in the same way, but our perceptions and reality itself aren't the same thing.

Every description of reality that matches it is true. Every description of reality that doesn't match it is false. In this sense, truth is unique and universal.

(We can nuance the truth/falsehood dichotomy with probability distributions. Some probability distributions are closer to reality than others, and so on.)

That's little more than tautologies here. Yet it elicited an impression of being forced to believe. I know because she told me about the totalitarian dangers from such narrow thinking.

I'm happy to have finally found the root cause of our ongoing disagreement, but now, how can I deal with that? It looks pretty hopeless, but just in case, does someone have a suggestion, or should I just leave it at that? (My ego doesn't like it, but giving up is an option.)

Now I'm relieved to know that in near mode, she's a complete realist. This craziness only shows up in far mode.

From Being a Realist (even if you believe in God):

theists and untheists can and should meet half way and at least agree on the logical necessity of being a realist.

My mother, who doesn't call herself a theist (I think she's agnostic), doesn't even accept realism. She doesn't even agree with this:

There is something. All that there is, we generally call "reality". Note that by this definition, reality is unique. The corollary is, we all live in the same reality. We do not percieve it in the same way, but our perceptions and reality itself aren't the same thing.

Every description of reality that matches it is true. Every description of reality that doesn't match it is false. In this sense, truth is unique and universal.

(We can nuance the truth/falsehood dichotomy with probability distributions. Some probability distributions are closer to reality than others, and so on.)

That's little more than tautologies here. Yet it elicited an impression of being forced to believe. I know because she told me about the totalitarian dangers from such narrow thinking.

Now I'm relieved to know that in near mode, she's a complete realist. This craziness only shows up in far mode.

but they didn't act like they were uncertain.

Aren't you confusing moral realism with moral certainty?

Being uncertain about the truth-value a moral proposition is quite compatible with moral realism.

Being uncertain about the truth-value a moral proposition is quite compatible with moral realism.

And only compatible with non-relativistic moral cognitivism. If moral propositions can't be false, there's nothing to be uncertain about. If a moral truth just amounts to my belief or my society's belief, and I know what that belief is (which I do), then again uncertainty is out of place.

0TimS14y

If one has moral certainty and a moral anti-realist position, one is deeply confused. As far as I see, moral certainty requires a commitment to moral realism. More generally, the parent to my comment asserted moral anti-realism was an intellectual precursor to totalitarianism. Because I'm not aware of any totalitarian regime that wasn't a moral certainty regime (and therefore a moral realist regime), I am confused how a contrary philosophical position can be seen as a ideological precursor to totalitarianism.

16

How to deal with non-realism?

16

16

16

How to deal with non-realism?

16

16