Realism and Antirealism

Abstract

Realism with regard to a class of things or sentences is a doctrine that has two components, an existence component and a mind independence component. This means that there are two basic forms of antirealism: those that deny the existence component and those that deny the mind independence component. Antirealists can be reductionists or eliminativists, and they are often motivated by some form of error theory. Antirealism with regard to some area of discourse can also take the form of denying that sentences of the discourse are descriptive. © 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.