Metaphysical Realism

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Ernst von Glasersfeld:

"“It is impossible to find a philosopher before Kant (and after the pre-Socratics) who was not a metaphysical realist, at least about what he took to be basic or unreducible assertions.” Putnam explains that statement by saying that, during those 2,000 years, philosophers certainly disagreed in their views about what really exists, but their conception of truth was always the same, in that it was tied to the notion of objective validity. A metaphysical realist, thus, is one who insists that we may call something “true” only if it corresponds to an independent, “objective” reality. On the whole, even after Kant, the situation did not change. There were some who tried to take his Critique of Pure Reason seriously, but the pressure of philosophical tradition was overwhelming. In spite of Kant’s thesis that our mind does not derive laws from nature, but imposes them on it, most scientists today still consider themselves “discoverers” who unveil nature’s secrets and slowly but steadily expand the range of human knowledge; and countless philosophers have dedicated themselves to the task of ascribing to that laboriously acquired knowledge the unquestionable certainty which the rest of the world expects of genuine truth. Now as ever, there reigns the conviction that knowledge is knowledge only if it reflects the world as it is."

(https://antimatters2.files.wordpress.com/2018/04/2-3-02-radical_constructivism.pdf)