Abstract

There is an important family of philosophical positions which deserve the name “realism”, and there is a natural diagnosis of what all these positions share in common. There is also an important family of philosophical positions which deserve the name “antirealism”, and there is a natural diagnosis of what all these positions share in common. These two families are feuding, but the nature of the conflict between them is far from clear. When we extract the definition which realists would give for their position, and the definition antirealists would give for their position, we find that the antirealists do not see themselves as denying quite the same thing that the realists see themselves as asserting. I will begin by discussing the self-definition of some realists.