Antirealism

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The philosophical position that certain entities or phenomena do not exist independently of human perception, language, or thought
2. A philosophical stance asserting that reality is shaped by human perception and does not exist outside of our interpretations and conceptual frameworks
3. The belief that existing objects or truths rely on human cognition and social constructs rather than having an independent existence

Etymology: Antirealism is a compound built from two pieces that have very different histories. The "anti-" comes from Ancient Greek "anti", meaning "against" or "opposite to", which passed into English as a prefix. The "realism" beneath it has a more winding route: it descends from Latin "res", "thing", through the Late Latin adjective "realis", which passed through Old French "reel" into Middle English as "real". English then added "-ism", from Greek "-ismos", to turn the adjective into a doctrine. So the whole word is a philosophical label applied in opposition to realism. Realism holds that a world exists independently of anyone's minds, while antirealism denies that, insisting that what counts as real is bound up with perception, thought or our means of knowing it. The word's meaning is thus defined entirely by what it opposes, which is typical of many modern "-ism" terms in philosophy.

Synonyms: idealism

Antonyms: realism