Showing papers on "Realism published in 2011"

Taking Morality Seriously: A Defense Of Robust Realism

Abstract: 1. The View, The Motivation, The Book 2. The Argument from the Moral Implications of Objectivity (or Lack Thereof) 3. The Argument from the Deliberative Indispensability of Irreducibly Normative Truths 4. And Now, Robust Metaethical Realism 5. Doing with Less 6. Metaphysics 7. Epistemology 8. Disagreement 9. Motivation 10. Tallying Plausibility Points Bibliography Index

Interpretation and Social Knowledge: On the Use of Theory in the Human Sciences

Abstract: For the past fifty years anxiety over the problem of naturalism has driven debates in social theory. One side pursues the idea of social science as another kind of natural science, while the other radically rejects the possibility of objective and explanatory knowledge. All of the various developments in social scientific theory since then have reflected this dichotomy between naturalism and post-modernism. "Interpretation and Social Knowledge" suggests a third way, reframing this debate and offering a synthetic vision that sets out a new understanding of sociological interpretation. Analyzing the work of writers such as Theda Skocpol, Clifford Geertz, Leela Gandhi, Roy Bhaskar, Foucault, and Habermas, Isaac Ariail Reed delineates three epistemic modes of social research: realism, normativism, and interpretivism. Reed argues that the last mode provides a way forward for an anti-naturalist sociology that overcomes the opposition between interpretation and explanation and uses theory to build concrete, historically specific causal explanations of social phenomena. Both an examination of and a theoretical meditation on how social investigators do their work, "Interpretation and Social Knowledge" is an ingenious and fruitful exploration of what makes the human sciences uniquely capable of revealing and explaining our world.

Whatever happened to curriculum theory? Critical realism and curriculum change

Abstract: In the face of what has been characterised by some as a ‘crisis’ in curriculum – an apparent decline of some aspects of curriculum studies combined with the emergence of new types of national curricula which downgrade knowledge – some writers have been arguing for the use of realist theory to address these issues. This article offers a contribution to this debate, drawing upon critical realism, and especially upon the social theory of Margaret Archer. The article first outlines the supposed crisis in curriculum, before providing an overview of some of the key tenets of critical realism. It concludes by speculating on how critical realism may offer new ways of thinking to inform policy and practice in a key curricular problematic. This is the issue of curriculum change.

The Realist Case for Global Reform

Abstract: Preface vi Acknowledgments x Introduction: Meet the Progressive Realists 1 1 Why (Almost) Everything You Learned About Realism is Wrong 15 2 Realists Against the Nation State 39 3 Realist Global Reformism 67 4 What Cosmopolitans Can Learn from Progressive Realism 98 5 What Other Global Reformers Can Learn from Progressive Realism 126 6 Who s Afraid of the World State? 149 Conclusion: A Niebuhrian President? 169 Notes 174 References 191 Index 209

Ambivalent Sovereignty: Inquiries into the Dual Foundation of Political Realism's Subject

Abstract: Ambivalent Sovereignty inquires into the subject of political realism. This subject, sovereign authority, appears to have a dual foundation. It apears divided against itself, but how can realism nonetheless observe legitimate modes of sovereignty emerge? Against the liberal idea that a “synthesis” of both material-coercive and ideal-persuasive powers should be accomplished, within the world of international relations, realism gives meaning to a structural type of state power that is also constitutionally emerging and legitimately dividing itself—against itself. Machiavelli but particularly also other realists such as Hannah Arendt, Max Weber, and Aristotle are being reinterpreted to demonstrate why each state’s ultimate authority may symbiotically emerge from its self-divisions, rather than from one synthetic unity. Whereas liberal theorists, from Montesquieu to John Rawls and Alexander Wendt, err too far in assuming the presence of the state’s monistic authority, the realist theorists further advance an answer to how sovereign states may begin to both recognize and include only the most-legitimate manifestations of their common dualist authority. Ambivalent Sovereignty is relevant in this sense as it transcends-and-yet-includes these common dualities: freedom/necessity; emergence/causation; self-organization/power structures.

Development of International Relations theory in China: progress through debates

Abstract: The development of International Relations theory (IRT) in China has been framed by three debates since 1979. The first was about China’s opening up to the outside world. It started with the question of whether the world was characterized by ‘war and revolution’ or ‘peace and development’ between orthodox and reformist scholars and continued to focus on China’s interest between orthodox scholars and the newly rising Chinese realists. It resulted in a wide acceptance of the reformist argument that peace and development characterized our era and of the realist view that China was a normal nation-state and should have its own legitimate national interest. The second started in the early 1990s and centered on the better way of realizing China’s national interest. It was between Chinese realists and liberals. While the former emphasized national power, the latter proposed the alternative approach of international institutions. The third debate was on China’s peaceful rise. It evolved at the turn of the century, when all the three major American IRTs, realism, liberalism, and constructivism, had been

The invention of international relations theory : realism, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the 1954 Conference on Theory

Abstract: Acknowledgments Introduction: One Discipline, Many Histories, by Nicolas Guilhot 1. Morality, Policy, and Theory: Reflections on the 1954 Conference, by Robert Jervis 2. Tensions Within Realism: 1954 and After, by Jack Snyder 3. The Rockefeller Foundation Conference and the Long Road to a Theory of International Politics, by Brian C. Schmidt 4. The Speech Act of Realism: The Move That Made IR, by Ole Waever 5. The Realist Gambit: Postwar American Political Science and the Birth of IR Theory, by Nicolas Guilhot 6. Kennan: Realism as Desire, by Anders Stephanson 7. American Hegemony, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Rise of Academic International Relations in the United States, by Inderjeet Parmar 8. Realism and Neoliberalism: From Reactionary Modernism to Postwar Conservatism, by Philip Mirowski Appendix 1. Conference on International Politics, May 7-8, 1954 Appendix 2. The Theoretical and Practical Importance of a Theory of International Relations, by Hans J. Morgenthau Appendix 3. The Moral Issue in International Relations, by Reinhold Niebuhr Appendix 4. International Relations Theory and Areas of Choice in Foreign Policy, by William T. R. Fox Appendix 5. The Implications of Theory for Practice in the Conduct of Foreign Affairs, by Paul Nitze Appendix 6. Theory of International Politics: Its Merits and Advancement, by Arnold Wolfers List of Contributors Index

Realism and the Common Security and Defence Policy

Abstract: The European Union has ventured into the business of power politics with its common security and defence policy (CSDP). Realism can explain both why the EU is being pulled into this business and why it is failing to be powerful. Although realism has much to offer, it is not the dominant approach to the study of the EU and its foreign affairs because the EU is commonly perceived as capable of transcending power politics as we used to know it. The first purpose of this article is therefore to question the stereotyping of realism as a framework that only applies to great power confrontations. The second is to introduce the complexity of realist thought because realism is a house divided. The analysis first examines structural realism, then the classical realist tradition. The third and final purpose of the article is to evaluate the contributions these approaches can make to the study of the CSDP. The most powerful realist interpretation of the CSDP is found to be the classical one, according to which the CSDP is partly a response to international power trends but notably also the institutionalization of the weakness of European nation-states. The article defines this perspective in relation to contending realist and constructivist perspectives. It highlights classical realism as a dynamic framework of interpretation that does not provide an image of a CSDP end-state, but rather a framework for understanding an evolving reality and for speaking truth to power.

Against quietist normative realism

Abstract: Recently, some philosophers have suggested that a form of robust realism about ethics, or normativity more generally, does not face a significant explanatory burden in metaphysics. I call this view metaphysically quietist normative realism. This paper argues that while this view can appear to constitute an attractive alternative to more traditional forms of normative realism, it cannot deliver on this promise. I examine Scanlon’s attempt to defend such a quietist realism, and argue that rather than silencing metaphysical questions about normative reasons, his defense at best succeeds only in shifting the focus of metaphysical enquiry. I then set aside the details of Scanlon’s view, and argue on general grounds that that the quietist realist cannot finesse a crucial metanormative task: to explain the contrast between the correct normative system and alternative putatively normative standards.

Darwin and moral realism: Survival of the iffiest

Abstract: This paper defends moral realism against Sharon Street’s “Darwinian Dilemma for Realist Theories of Value” (this journal, 2006). I argue by separation of cases: From the assumption that a certain normative claim is true, I argue that the first horn of the dilemma is tenable for realists. Then, from the assumption that the same normative claim is false, I argue that the second horn is tenable. Either way, then, the Darwinian dilemma does not add anything to realists’ epistemic worries.

Political Philosophy versus History?: The new realism : from modus vivendi to justice

Abstract: Introduction Political theorists periodically go public to fault their subdiscipline for its flaws. As the chapters of this volume demonstrate, the critique is often that political theory is too ahistorical, abstract and removed from the political realities theory is supposed to help us understand. Caught up in canonical texts, gripped by ideal questions never asked by real politicians, like ‘what is justice?’ or ‘which is the best regime?’ or ‘how are subjects formed?’, political theory is said to list too far to one side, becoming all theory, no politics. On the other hand, when political theorists correct the imbalance and turn to complex historical case studies or the practicalities of daily life, they are accused of abandoning the big questions and grand narratives that dignify their mode of inquiry and distinguish it from mere journalism. Both timeless and timebound, it sometimes seems that political theory can do no right.

Scientific Realism : A Critical Reappraisal

Abstract: One / Problems of Scientific Realism.- 1. Scientific Realism.- 2. The Problematic Character of Scientific Realism: Current Science Does Not Do the Job.- 3. Future Science Does Not Do the Job.- Two / Scientific Progress as Nonconvergent.- 1. The Exploration Model and Its Implications.- 2. Theorizing as Inductive Projection.- 3. Scientific Revolutions as Potentially Unending.- 4. Is Later Lesser?.- Three / Ideal-Science Realism.- 1. Reality is Adequately Described Only by Ideal Science, Which is Something We Do Not Have.- 2. Scientific Truth as an Idealization.- 3. Ideal-State Realism as the Only Viable Option.- Four / Against Instrumentalism: Realism and the Task of Science.- 1. Against Instrumentalism: The Descriptive Purport of Science.- 2. Realism and the Aim of Science.- 3. The Pursuit of Truth.- 4. Anti-realism and "Rigorous Empiricism".- 5. The Price of Abandoning Realism.- Five / Schoolbook Science as a Basis for Realism.- 1. The Security/Definiteness Trade-off and the Contrast between Science and Common Sense.- 2. Schoolbook Science and "Soft" Knowledge.- 3. Schoolbook Science as a Basis for Realism.- Six / Disconnecting their Applicative Success from the Truth of Scientific Theories.- 1. Is Successful Applicability an Index of Truth?.- 2. Truth is NOT the Best Explanation of Success in Prediction and Explanation.- 3. Pragmatic Ambiguity.- 4. The Lesson.- Seven / The Anthropomorphic Character of Human Science.- 1. Scientific Relativism.- 2. The Problem of Extraterrestrial Science.- 3. The Potential Diversity of "Science".- 4. The One-World, One-Science Argument.- 5. The Anthropomorphic Character of Human Science.- 6. Relativistic Intimations.- Eight / Evolution's Role in the Success of Science.- 1. The Problem of Mind/Reality Coordination.- 2. The Cognitive Accessibility of Nature.- 3. A Closer Look at the Problem.- 4. "Our" Side.- 5. Nature's Side.- 6. Synthesis.- 7. Implications.- Nine / The Roots of Objectivity.- 1. The Cognitive Inexhaustibility of Things.- 2. The Cognitive Opacity of Real Things.- 3. The Corrigibility of Conceptions.- 4. Perspectives on Realism.- Ten / Metaphysical Realism and the Pragmatic Basis of Objectivity.- 1. The Existential Component of Realism.- 2. Realism in its Regulative/Pragmatic Aspect.- 3. Objectivity as a Requisite of Communication and Inquiry.- 4. The Utilitarian Imperative.- 5. Retrojustification: The Wisdom of Hindsight.- Eleven / Intimations of Idealism.- 1. The Idealistic Aspect of Metaphysical Realism.- 2. The Idealistic Aspect of Epistemological Realism.- 3. Conceptual Idealism.- 4. Is Man the Measure?.- 5. Conclusion.- Notes.- Index of Names.- Index of Subjects.

Grundlagen Der Ethik

Abstract: Focusing on the central problems of ethics, the author develops his own position on the central topics of "realism, experience of values, justification and value ethics versus duty ethics".

The Lost Age of Reason: Philosophy in Early Modern India 1450-1700

Abstract: The Lost Age of Reason deals with a fascinating and rich episode in the history of philosophy, one from which those who are interested in the nature of modernity and its global origins have a great deal to learn. Early modernity in India consists in the formation of a new philosophical self, one which makes it possible meaningfully to conceive of oneself as engaging the ancient and the alien in conversation. The ancient texts are now not thought of as authorities to which one must defer, but regarded as the source of insight in the company of which one pursues the quest for truth. This new attitude implies a change in the conception of one's duties towards the past. After reconstructing the historical intellectual context in detail, and developing a suitable methodological framework, Ganeri reviews work on the concept of knowledge, the nature of evidence, the self, the nature of the categories, mathematics, realism, and a new language for philosophy. A study of early modern philosophy in India has much to teach us today - about the nature of modernity as such, about the reform of educational institutions and its relationship to creative research, and about cosmopolitan identities in circumstances of globalisation.

Realism and the spirit of 1919: Halford Mackinder, geopolitics and the reality of the League of Nations

Abstract: Recent analyses of interwar International Relations (IR) have argued that there was no realist-idealist debate, and that there is no evidence of a distinct idealist paradigm. Less work has been done on realism in the interwar period. This article analyses the thought of one particular early 20th-century realist: Halford J. Mackinder. A product of the development of political geography, and a major influence on American strategic studies, Mackinder is best known for his Heartland thesis, which has been interpreted as environmental determinism. Yet, Mackinder's realism is a complex mix of geopolitical analysis and the influence of ideas on human action. His concepts of organizer and idealist foreign policy ideal types pre-date Carr's realist-utopian distinction by two decades, while his interpretation of the realities of international politics is at odds with Morgenthau's realism. A closer analysis of Mackinder's realism (1) underscores the links between geopolitics and realist strategic studies; (2) demonstrates the diversity of realist approaches in interwar IR; and (3) shows that it was possible to be a realist and also support the League of Nations. There are limits to Mackinder's usefulness to 21st-century IR, but an understanding of his brand of realism is necessary for a fuller understanding of the development of realism as a 20th-century school of thought.

World Cinema and the Ethics of Realism

Abstract: This is a sweeping study of world cinema, illustrating how its creative peaks stem from the urge to reveal otherwise hidden political and social dimensions of reality. "World Cinema and the Ethics of Realism" is a highly original study. It breaks away from the binary divisions which underpin most of film theory, and challenges traditional views of cinematic realism, drawing instead on the filmmaker's commitment to truth and to film's material bond with the real. Nagib conducts comparative case studies drawn from a wide range of realist trends, including the Japanese New Wave, the nouvelle vague, the Cinema Novo, the New German Cinema, the Inuit Indigenous Cinema, the Taiwan New Cinema and the New Brazilian Cinema. She reveals that these creative peaks are animated by the desire to reveal concealed or unknown political, social, psychological or mystical dimensions of reality - as observed in the various cycles of new waves and new cinemas across film history and geography. "World Cinema and the Ethics of Realism" is groundbreaking scholarship that surveys and defines World Cinema not as the opposite of Hollywood, but in positive terms; and draws upon the work of Badiou and Ranciere to take film theory in a bold new direction.

Underdetermination, realism and empirical equivalence

Abstract: Are theories ‘underdetermined by the evidence’ in any way that should worry the scientific realist? I argue that no convincing reason has been given for thinking so. A crucial distinction is drawn between data equivalence and empirical equivalence. Duhem showed that it is always possible to produce a data equivalent rival to any accepted scientific theory. But there is no reason to regard such a rival as equally well empirically supported and hence no threat to realism. Two theories are empirically equivalent if they share all consequences expressed in purely observational vocabulary. This is a much stronger requirement than has hitherto been recognised—two such ‘rival’ theories must in fact agree on many claims that are clearly theoretical in nature. Given this, it is unclear how much of an impact on realism a demonstration that there is always an empirically equivalent ‘rival’ to any accepted theory would have—even if such a demonstration could be produced. Certainly in the case of the version of realism that I defend—structural realism—such a demonstration would have precisely no impact: two empirically equivalent theories are, according to structural realism, cognitively indistinguishable.

Rethinking Japanese Public Opinion and Security: From Pacifism to Realism?

Abstract: In this book, Paul Midford engages claims that since 9/11 Japanese public opinion has turned sharply away from pacifism and toward supporting normalization of Japan's military power, in which Japanese troops would fight alongside their American counterparts in various conflicts worldwide. Midford argues that Japanese public opinion has never embraced pacifism. It has, instead, contained significant elements of realism, in that it has acknowledged the utility of military power for defending national territory and independence, but has seen offensive military power as ineffective for promoting other goals - such as suppressing terrorist networks and WMD proliferation, or promoting democracy overseas. Over several decades, these realist attitudes have become more evident as the Japanese state has gradually convinced its public that Tokyo and its military can be trusted with territorial defense, and even with noncombat humanitarian and reconstruction missions overseas. On this basis, says Midford, we should re-conceptualize Japanese public opinion as attitudinal defensive realism.

Living with the abstract: realism and models

Abstract: A natural way to think of models is as abstract entities. If theories employ models to represent the world, theories traffic in abstract entities much more widely than is often assumed. This kind of thought seems to create a problem for a scientific realist approach to theories. Scientific realists claim theories should be understood literally. Do they then imply (and are they committed to) the reality of abstract entities? Or are theories simply—and incurably—false (if there are no abstract entities)? Or has the very idea of literal understanding to be abandoned? Is then fictionalism towards scientific theories inevitable? This paper argues that scientific realism can happily co-exist with models qua abstracta.

Bakhtin’s realism and embodiment: Towards a revision of the dialogical self

Abstract: How can we understand socially constituted selfhood? H. Hermans has addressed this question with the notion of the Dialogical Self that he draws from the philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin. We focus on Ba...

What (Good) is Historical Epistemology? Editors’ Introduction

Abstract: We provide an overview of three ways in which the expression “Historical epistemology” (HE) is often understood: (1) HE as a study of the history of higher-order epistemic concepts such as objectivity, observation, experimentation, or probability; (2) HE as a study of the historical trajectories of the objects of research, such as the electron, DNA, or phlogiston; (3) HE as the long-term study of scientific developments. After laying out various ways in which these agendas touch on current debates within both epistemology and philosophy of science (e.g., skepticism, realism, rationality of scientific change), we conclude by highlighting three topics as especially worthy of further philosophical investigation. The first concerns the methods, aims and systematic ambitions of the history of epistemology. The second concerns the ways in versions of HE can be connected to versions of naturalized and social epistemologies. The third concerns the philosophy of history, and in particular the level of analysis at which a historical analysis should aim.

Knowing Books: The Consciousness of Mediation in Eighteenth-Century Britain

Abstract: The eighteenth century has long been associated with realism and objective description, modes of representation that deemphasize writing. But in the middle decades of the century, Christina Lupton observes, authors described with surprising candor the material and economic facets of their own texts' production. In Knowing Books Lupton examines a variety of eighteenth-century sources, including sermons, graffiti, philosophical texts, and magazines, which illustrate the range and character of mid-century experiments with words announcing their status as physical objects. Books that "know" their own presence on the page and in the reader's hand become, in Lupton's account, tantalizing objects whose entertainment value competes with that of realist narrative. Knowing Books introduces these mid-eighteenth-century works as part of a long history of self-conscious texts being greeted as fashionable objects. Poststructuralist and Marxist approaches to literature celebrate the consciousness of writing and economic production as belonging to revolutionary understandings of the world, but authors of the period under Lupton's gaze expose the facts of mediation without being revolutionary. On the contrary, their explication of economic and material processes shores up their claim to material autonomy and economic success. Lupton uses media theory and close reading to suggest the desire of eighteenth-century readers to attribute sentience to technologies and objects that entertain them. Rather than a historical study of print technology, Knowing Books offers a humanist interpretation of the will to cede agency to media. This horizon of theoretical engagement makes Knowing Books at once an account of the least studied decades of the eighteenth century and a work of relevance for those interested in new attitudes toward media in the twenty-first.

Urban Realism and the Cosmopolitan Imagination in the Nineteenth Century: Visible City, Invisible World

Abstract: Introduction: cosmopolitan realism Part I. The Emergence of Cosmopolitan Realism: 1. The palace and the periodical: the Great Exhibition, Cosmopolis, and the discourse of cosmopolitanism 2. The sketch and the panorama: Wordsworth, Dickens, and the emergence of cosmopolitan realism Part II. Cosmopolitan Realism at the Fin de Siecle and Beyond: 3. Realist details and romance plots: James, Doyle, and the aesthetics of fin-de-siecle cosmopolitanism 4. Ethnography and allegory: socialist internationalism and realist Utopia in News from Nowhere and In Darkest England 5. The moment and the end of time: Conrad, Woolf and the temporal sublime Conclusion: 'a city visible but unseen': cosmopolitan realism and the invisible metropolis.

A Critical Realist Orientation to Learner Needs.

Abstract: The objective of this essay is to propose critical realism as a philosophical middle way between two sets of ontological, epistemological, and methodological assumptions regarding learner needs. Key concepts of critical realism, a tradition in the philosophy of science, are introduced and applied toward an analysis of learner needs, resulting in novel ontological and epistemological assertions about learner needs. Retroduction is offered as a methodology for interrogating needs as a function of broad and complex social processes.

The Lost Age of Reason

Abstract: This book deals with a fascinating and rich episode in the history of philosophy, one from which those who are interested in the nature of modernity and its global origins have a great deal to learn. Early modernity in India consists in the formation of a new philosophical self, one which makes it possible to meaningfully conceive of oneself as engaging the ancient and the alien in conversation. The ancient texts are now not thought of as authorities to which one must defer, but regarded as the source of insight in the company of which one pursues the quest for truth. This new attitude implies a change in the conception of one's duties towards the past. After reconstructing the historical intellectual context in detail, and developing a suitable methodological framework, the author reviews work on the concept of knowledge, the nature of evidence, the self, the nature of the categories, mathematics, realism, and a new language for philosophy. A study of early modern philosophy in India has much to teach us today — about the nature of modernity as such, about the reform of educational institutions and its relationship to creative research, and about cosmopolitan identities in circumstances of globalisation.

Politics and the Order of Love: An Augustinian Ethic of Democratic Citizenship

Abstract: Politics and the Order of Love: An Augustinian Ethic of Democratic Citizenship. By Eric Gregory. Chicago, III: University of Chicago Press, 2008. xv + 417 pp. $30.00 (paper). In this book Eric Gregory lays out his argument for Augustinian liberalism. By "Augustinian liberalism" he means an approach to the political realm that is at once charitable (that is, grounded in the conviction that forgiveness, mercy, and reconciliation will ultimately win the day) and egalitarian (that is, grounded in the conviction that every human being is of equal worth). On the face of it, charity and equality go together, and Gregory argues that it is Augustine who taught us how to take this for granted. Yet it is not, in fact, so obvious how it is that care for the powerless or the embrace of the enemy squares with refusing to prefer some people over others, On the one hand, love does cause us to make distinctions among people (for example, a preferential option for the poor). On the other hand, strict equality may have cruel consequences in the distribution of goods, if equal worth means nothing more than an equal shot. Augustine's answer is that, while some people require more help and attention of us than others, we are all in the same boat as regards our need for redemption. So we should approach one another in political society as equally sinful but differently in need of care. This conclusion is where Gregorys exploration of Augustinian liberalism takes us. For Gregory, this liberalism is not based on any optimism about human nature. In this regard it retains strong ties to Reinhold Niebuhr s realism. At the same time, it does not shrink from a clear emphasis on care (with a strong infusion of recent Christian feminist reflection on the relative value of care and justice). In striking a balance between political realism and compassionate care, Gregory is staking out a space for Christian communities of faith in the public square. Because we know ourselves to be redeemed sinners who are dealing with redeemed sinners, we can properly engage the world as political insiders, fully cognizant of the dynamics of greed and selfinterest that inform the public realm. We do this while pressing hard for policies that ensure basic human goods for all (shelter, health care, education, and employment) by providing those goods for people who have no other advocate. For Gregory, this delicate balance between realism and generosity of spirit replicates in the political sphere what the gospel demands of the Christian community, both internally and in its dealings with the world. Gregory credits Augustine both with bringing this correlation to language and establishing it as a central topic of Christian theology. …

Perception, causation, and objectivity

Abstract: To be a 'commonsense realist' is to hold that perceptual experience is (in general) an immediate awareness of mind-independent objects, and a source of direct knowledge of what such objects are like. Over the past few centuries this view has faced formidable challenges from epistemology, metaphysics, and, more recently, cognitive science. However, in recent years there has been renewed interest in it, due to new work on perceptual consciousness, objectivity, and causal understanding. This volume collects nineteen original essays by leading philosophers and psychologists on these topics. Questions addressed include: What are the commitments of commonsense realism? Does it entail any particular view of the nature of perceptual experience, or any particular view of the epistemology of perceptual knowledge? Should we think of commonsense realism as a view held by some philosophers, or is there a sense in which we are pre-theoretically committed to commonsense realism in virtue of the experience we enjoy or the concepts we use or the explanations we give? Is commonsense realism defensible, and if so how, in the face of the formidable criticism it faces? Specific issues addressed in the philosophical essays include the status of causal requirements on perception, the causal role of perceptual experience, and the relation between objective perception and causal thinking. The scientific essays present a range of perspectives on the development, phylogenetic and ontogenetic, of the human adult conception of perception.