Showing papers on "Realism published in 2015"

The Realistic Spirit

Abstract: The aim of this chapter is to begin the task of characterising the realistic spirit. This is not a trivial undertaking; Ramsey uses the expression only once, in ‘General Propositions and Causality’ (GP&C), one of the last papers that he wrote. Nonetheless, we may find thoughts expressed in other late papers which will assist in the elucidation of the view. Note first that when a philosopher nowadays uses the word ‘realistic’, she can expect her audience to make a series of wholly predictable associations. The expression is nowadays connected with the general thesis of realism, an umbrella term under which any number of local theories shelter. When Ramsey uses the term ‘realistic’, he does so in explicit opposition to many (though not necessarily all) theses that might be labelled realist. That is how I shall use the word also. Variable hypotheticals have formal analogies to other propositions which make us take them sometimes as facts about universals, sometimes as infinite conjunctions. The analogies are misleading, difficult though they are to escape, and emotionally satisfactory as they prove to different types of mind. But these forms of ‘realism’ must be rejected by the realistic spirit. (GP&C, p. 252)

Revitalizing Criminological Theory:: Towards a new Ultra-Realism

Abstract: This book provides a short, comprehensive and accessible introduction to Ultra-Realism: a unique and radical school of criminological thought that has been developed by the authors over a number of years. After first outlining existing schools of thought, their major intellectual flaws and their underlying politics in a condensed guide that will be invaluable to all undergraduate and postgraduate students, Hall and Winlow introduce a number of important new concepts to criminology and suggest a new philosophical foundation, theoretical framework and research programme. These developments will enhance the discipline’s ability to explain human motivations, construct insightful representations of reality and answer the fundamental question of why some human beings risk inflicting harm on others to further their own interests or achieve various ends. Combining new philosophical and psychosocial approaches with a clear understanding of the shape of contemporary global crime, this book presents an intellectual alternative to the currently dominant paradigms of conservatism, neoclassicism and left-liberalism. In using an advanced conception of "harm", Hall and Winlow provide original explanations of criminal motivations and make the first steps towards a paradigm shift that will help criminology to illuminate the reality of our times. This book is essential reading for academics and students engaged in the study of criminology, sociology, criminological theory, social theory, the philosophy of social sciences and the history of crime.

Debunking evolutionary debunking of ethical realism

Abstract: What implications, if any, does evolutionary biology have for metaethics? Many believe that our evolutionary background supports a deflationary metaethics, providing a basis at least for debunking ethical realism. Some arguments for this conclusion appeal to claims about the etiology of the mental capacities we employ in ethical judgment, while others appeal to the etiology of the content of our moral beliefs. In both cases the debunkers’ claim is that the causal roles played by evolutionary factors raise deep epistemic problems for realism: if ethical truths are objective or independent of our evaluative attitudes, as realists maintain, then we lose our justification for our ethical beliefs once we become aware of the evolutionary shaping of our ethical capacities or beliefs, which would not have disposed us reliably to track independent ethical truths; realism, they claim, thus saddles us with ethical skepticism. I distinguish and spell out various evolutionary debunking arguments along these lines and argue that they all fail: the capacity etiology argument fails to raise any special or serious problem for realism, and the content etiology arguments all rely on strong explanatory claims about our moral beliefs that are simply not supported by the science unless it is supplemented by philosophical claims that just beg the question against realism from the start. While the various debunking arguments do bring out some interesting commitments of ethical realism, and even raise some good challenges as realists develop positive moral epistemologies, they fall far short of their debunking ambitions.

Evolutionary Debunking of Moral Realism

Abstract: Evolutionary debunking arguments move from a premise about the influence of evolutionary forces on our moral beliefs to a skeptical conclusion about those beliefs My primary aim is to clarify this empirically grounded epistemological challenge I begin by distinguishing among importantly different sorts of epistemological attacks I then demonstrate that instances of each appear in the literature under the ‘evolutionary debunking’ title Distinguishing them clears up some confusions and helps us better understand the structure and potential of evolutionary debunking arguments

Being Realistic and Demanding the Impossible

Abstract: Characterising realism by contrasting it with moralism leaves open several questions to do with realism’s practical import. If political judgment is not to be derived — exclusively or at all — from pre-political moral commitments, what scope is there for genuinely normative political thinking? And even if there is some scope for political normativity, does realism’s reliance on interpretations of political practices condemn it to some form of status quo bias? In this paper I address those questions. My main aim is to assuage some worries about realism’s alleged conservative tendencies. I argue that there is an important sense in which realists can support radical and even unachievable political change — one can be realistic and demand the impossible, as the soixante- huitard slogan goes. To see how that may be the case one needs to characterise realism by contrasting it with both non-ideal theory and utopianism. In a nutshell, realism differs from non- ideal theory because it need not be concerned with feasibility constraints, and it differs from utopianism because it eschews detailed blueprints of the perfect polity.

Can Social Realism do Social Justice? Debating the Warrants for Curriculum Knowledge Selection

Abstract: Social realism (SR), as a movement that argues for ‘bringing knowledge back in’ to curriculum (Young 2008a), is significant globally, especially in South Africa. This article examines arguments from SR proponents that curriculum selection should privilege specialised disciplinary knowledge – as ‘powerful knowledge’ – over ‘everyday knowledge’, and how this is warranted through Durkheim's distinction between ‘sacred’ and ‘profane’ social bases for knowledge. The article asks how adequately curriculum based on SR warrants can do social justice. This inquiry stages debates between SR and three alternative approaches. The first is standpoint theories that knowledge – including that of scientific disciplines – is always positional and ‘partially objective’. The next is Vygotskian arguments for curriculum that, dialectically, joins systematising powers of scientific knowledge with rich funds of knowledge from learners’ everyday life-worlds. Third, SR's philosophical framing is contrasted with Nancy Fras...

The uncritical realism of realist evaluation

Abstract: This article is a response to Ray Pawson’s critique of critical realism, the philosophy of science elaborated by Roy Bhaskar. I argue with Pawson’s interpretation of critical realism’s positions on both natural and social science and his charges concerning its totalizing ontology, its arrogant epistemology and its naive methodology. The differences between critical realism and realist evaluation are not as significant as Pawson contends. The main differences between the two realisms lie in their approaches to the relationship between social structures and human agency, and between facts and values. I argue that evaluation scientists need to clearly distinguish structure and agency. They should also make their values explicit. The uncritical approach of realist evaluation, combined with its underplaying of the importance of agency, leaves it open to implication in the abuses of bureaucratic instrumentalism.

Playing Kant at the Court of King Arthur

Abstract: This article contrasts the sense in which those whom Bernard Williams called ‘political realists’ and John Rawls are committed to the idea that political philosophy has to be distinctively political. Distinguishing the realist critique of political moralism from debates over ideal and non-ideal theory, it is argued that Rawls is more realist than many realists realise, and that realists can learn more about how to make a distinctively political vision of how our life together should be organised from his theorising, although it also points to a worrying tendency among Rawlsians to reach for inappropriately moralised arguments. G. A. Cohen's advocacy of socialism and the second season of HBO's The Wire are used as examples to illustrate these points.

The Real Value of Equality

Abstract: This article investigates how political theorists and philosophers should understand egalitarian political demands in light of the increasingly important realist critique of much of contemporary political theory and philosophy. It suggests, first, that what Martin O’Neill has called non-intrinsic egalitarianism is, in one form at least, a potentially realistic egalitarian political project and, second, that realists may be compelled to impose an egalitarian threshold on state claims to legitimacy under certain circumstances. Non-intrinsic egalitarianism can meet realism’s methodological requirements because it does not have to assume an unavailable moral consensus since it can focus on widely acknowledged bads rather than contentious claims about the good. Further, an appropriately formulated non-intrinsic egalitarianism may be a minimum requirement of an appropriately realistic claim by a political order to authoritatively structure some of its members’ lives. Without at least a threshold set of egalitar...

Integrating critical realist and feminist methodologies: ethical and analytical dilemmas

Abstract: This paper reflects on research carried out with a group of women receiving intensive family support aimed at addressing the cause of their family’s ‘anti-social behaviour’. The methodological approach to the research was underpinned by the philosophical principles of critical realism. It was also informed by the ethical and political concerns of feminist scholarship. The paper reports on the potential points of tension that arise between feminism and critical realism in empirical research. In particular, attention is centred on the process of trying to marry approaches which stress the central role of participants’ knowledge, particularly those who are ‘labelled’ and whose voices are not readily heard, with the principle that some accounts of ‘reality’ are better than others.

Truth and Disclosure in Qualitative Research: Implications of Hermeneutic Realism

Abstract: The purpose of this essay is to describe hermeneutic realism as an overarching philosophical commitment for qualitative research and to present its principal implications Hermeneutic realism, based on the work of Martin Heidegger and other hermeneutic philosophers, emphasizes an expressivist ontology and meaningful human participation, or what might be termed concernful involvement Concernful involvement allows for the disclosure of truth about aspects of the world, but truth, from this perspective, must be understood as unfolding, multifaceted, and inexhaustible Hermeneutic realism, as a philosophical basis for qualitative research, offers four general implications concerning: inquiry as a revelatory event, disclosure as significant insight, experience as concernful involvement, and the centrality of temporal-narrative themes These general implications are connected with specific research practices concerning qualitative researchers’ purposes, roles, framing assumptions, and data collection and analy

Justification and Explanation in Mathematics and Morality

Abstract: What is the epistemological relevance of this contrast, if genuine? In this chapter, I argue that ethicists and philosophers of mathematics have misunderstood it. They have confused what I will call the justificatory challenge for realism about an area, D—the challenge to justify our D-beliefs—with the reliability challenge for D-realism—the challenge to explain the reliability of our D-beliefs. Harman’s contrast is relevant to the first, but not, evidently, to the second. One upshot of the discussion is that genealogical debunking arguments are fallacious. Another is that indispensability considerations cannot answer the Benacerraf–Field challenge for mathematical realism.

Realism and the relativity of judgement

Abstract: E.H. Carr contrasts ‘realism’ with ‘utopianism’ in his major work in theorising international relations, but he ought to have contrasted it with ‘moralism’, which is a complex set of attitudes that give unwarranted priority to moral considerations in explaining and justifying human action. ‘Moralism’ is a flawed approach to politics. One should distinguish it from ‘utopianism’, which is made up of different strands, not all of which are equally problematic. One strand which has been historically important was centred around an attempt to describe and realise a perfect unchanging society, and Carr seems to have this in mind primarily when he speaks ‘utopianism’. However, there has been another strand which has focused on the social construction of ‘impossibility’ in politics, and our potential ability to undo that construction. Such utopianism is compatible with realism.

Political Norms and Moral Values

Abstract: Is genuinely normative political theory necessarily informed by distinctively moral values? Eva Erman and Niklas Moller (2015) answer that question affirmatively, and highlight its centrality in the debate on the prospects of political realism, which explicitly eschews pre-political moral foundations. In this comment we defend the emerging realist current. After briefly presenting Erman and Moller’s position, we (i) observe that freedom and equality are not obviously moral values in the way they assume, and (ii) argue that a non-moral distinction between politics and sheer domination can give us a distinctively political normativity. The two points are related but freestanding.

How Realism Waltzed Off: Liberalism and Decisionmaking in Kenneth Waltz's Neorealism

Abstract: Neorealism is one of the most influential theories of international relations, and its first theorist, Kenneth Waltz, a giant of the discipline. But why did Waltz move from a rather traditional form of classical realist political theory in the 1950s to neorealism in the 1970s? A possible answer is that Waltz's Theory of International Politics was his attempt to reconceive classical realism in a liberal form. Classical realism paid a great deal of attention to decisionmaking and statesmanship, and concomitantly asserted a nostalgic, anti-liberal political ideology. Neorealism, by contrast, dismissed the issue of foreign policymaking and decisionmaking. This shift reflected Waltz's desire to reconcile his acceptance of classical realism's tenets with his political commitment to liberalism. To do so, Waltz incorporated cybernetics and systems theory into Theory of International Politics, which allowed him to develop a theory of international relations no longer burdened with the problem of decisionmaking.

Critical Realism in Social Work Research: Examining Participation of People with Intellectual Disability

Abstract: Critical realism has not been taken up readily within social work research and this may be due to the difficulty of the language and lack of practice examples of its applicability. This paper outlines the basic precepts of critical realism, the implications of these for methodology, and then offers a practical example of its application to social work research in the area of intellectual disability using some of the techniques of more familiar qualitative research methodologies. In response to the increased influence of poststructuralist ideas within social work along with the somewhat contradictory call for evidence-based practice, this paper suggests critical realism as a way of developing empirically based knowledge about the effects of interventions while at the same time accounting for the complexity involved in social work practice.

The ‘two marxisms’ revisited: Humanism, structuralism and realism in marxist social theory

Abstract: The ontological and analytical status of Marxian social theory has been a matter of fierce controversy since Marx’s death, both within and without Marxist circles. A particular source of contention has been over whether Marxism should be construed as an objective science of the capitalist mode of production or as an ethico-philosophical critique of bourgeois society. This is paralleled by the dispute over whether Marxism ought to be considered a humanism (or critical theory of human agency) or a structuralism (or science of social systems). This article addresses both sides of this debate. The argument is that, rather than Marx’s own social thought being split into incompatible poles, giving rise to ‘two Marxisms’, it forms a coherent unity. Marx’s social theory is neither humanist philosophy, nor structural science, but is in fact realist science, which synthesizes these apparent antinomies, and thereby transcends both.

The Tyranny of Realism: Historical accuracy and politics of representation in Assassin’s Creed III

Abstract: Like other games in its series, Assassin’s Creed III (AC3) is heavily invested in a wellresearched, nuanced representation of historical conflicts. Yet as with any historical text, designers must be selective in their storytelling. Through their choices, we can better understand who might be the expected audience for this “speculative fiction.” This article addresses AC3’s tensions around realism. In it, the author addresses the politics of representation in how players are asked to identify with particular characters (constructed identification), how the game was produced (constructed authenticity), and the version of history portrayed in the game (constructed history). The author argues that the game’s ludic and narrative possibilities limit its ability to critique colonial powers during the American Revolution. The article concludes by looking at what counterhistorical approach to AC3’s story might entail. Throughout, the author discusses how the game’s expected audience, that is Ubisoft’s construction of the intended player, is reflected in each of these decisions and limits the emancipatory possibilities of AC3.

Pessimistic Inductions: Four Varieties

Abstract: The pessimistic induction (PI) plays an important role in the contemporary realism/anti-realism debate in philosophy of science. But there is some disagreement about the structure and aim of the argument. And a number of scholars have noted that there is more than one type of PI in the philosophical literature. I review four different versions of the PI. I aim to show that PIs have been appealed to by philosophers of science for a variety of reasons. Even some realists have appealed to a PI. My goal is to advance our understanding of (1) what the various PIs can teach us about science and (2) the threat posed by PIs to scientific realism.

Ways of knowing: realism, non-realism, nominalism and a typology revisited with a counter perspective for nursing science.

Abstract: In this paper, we reconsider the context of Barbara Carper's alternative ways of knowing, a prominent discourse in modern nursing theory in North America. We explore this relative to the concepts of realism, non-realism and nominalism, and investigate the philosophical divisions behind the original typology, particularly in relationship to modern scientific enquiry. We examine forms of knowledge relative to realist and nominalist positions and make an argument ad absurdum against relativistic interpretations of knowledge using the example of Borge's Chinese Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge. We propose a contentious postpositivist practical classification for nursing knowledge that demonstrates and supports the idea that knowledge has both individual and subjective components. This classification supports the practical application of nursing knowledge within the paradigm of realist postpositivist science.

A philosophy of practice for systemic psychotherapy: the case for critical realism

Abstract: An argument is made for Bhaskar's critical realism as a more coherent, accountable and enabling philosophy of practice for systemic psychotherapy than the kinds of strong constructionism and pragmatism that are currently powerful in our field. Constructionism is positioned, not as an opponent to realism in the usual way, but – in a moderate version – as a necessary partner to give realism its critical edge. The dimensions of critical realism are sketched and its potential for the coherent support of practice is illustrated with an analysis of a moment of therapeutic change. Practitioner points Critical realism supports the understanding of multiply interacting causal tendencies, from genetics to discourse, providing a new platform for eclecticism and integration and a renewed, though cautious, relationship with science. The growing split between structuralism and poststructuralism is closed by critical realism, giving the potential for systemic family therapy to become a unified field. The covert use of realism by clinicians is made accountable by critical realism.

State Art or Sites of Resistance: Socialist Realism in Romania: 1945-1989

Abstract: During the Revolution of December 1989, the dictator Ceausescu and his wife Elena were ousted from power and executed by firing squad. Fifteen years later, the “Ceausescu Palace” (1983), for which twenty percent of Bucharest had been torn down during construction, opened as the first National Museum of Contemporary Art and the first democratic Parliament. My dissertation problematizes this allegedly smooth transformation of an authoritarian symbol to a metaphor of freedom. Is such a transformation at all possible; in what ways and to what extent does re-using a building re-use its ideology? This research takes the overlapping functional programs (palace, “house of the people,” house for art, house for legislation) of the building as its point of departure. It focuses on the collection of Socialist Realist paintings located in the Museum and explores the implementation of Soviet Socialist Realism in Romania. In the five chapters that make up the dissertation, I explore artistic agency during the dictatorship of Nicolae Ceausescu in Romania and examine Socialist Realist paintings as tactics used by artists simultaneously to survive in and to alter the system. My project challenges established arguments in art history claiming that artists working under oppressive regimes lack individual agency. Instead, I argue that Socialist Realist paintings served the state as didactic art but also countervailed state power by serving as surreptitious coded sites of resistance. The interdisciplinary debate that most informs this dissertation comes from Postcolonial Studies, Critical Theory, Political Science, and Women’s Studies. Because of this overlap, the Socialist Realist painting per se acts as an intersection between discourses about art and power, culture and politics, space and memory. Therefore, I argue, the painting is not just the product of the general totalitarian art canon, but also a collection of particular aesthetical choices. Historian Boris Groys considers interest in Socialist Realism to have been dominated by a single question: “Are we dealing with art here?” My dissertation argues that indeed we are dealing with art here precisely by examining its here-ness in the newly born democratic Romania. The Romanian moment of Socialist Realism requires us to consider a simultaneous double-consciousness: first, we must attend to the particularities of its restricted aesthetic; second, we must become aware of the possibilities not available for artists, but imagined or known about, that existed outside the boundaries of those restrictions. To meet this complex moment, my research, both, focuses on circumstantial details and points to a broader theoretical framework. Rather than narrowly labeling the art commissioned by the regime and the artists, I focus on the aesthetic, social, iconographical, and stylistic choices these artists made when faced with the implementation of Soviet Socialist Realism in Romania. I look at how they painted the canonical political portrait.

Portrait of the realist as a historian: On anti-whiggism in the history of international relations:

Abstract: In recent years, a revisionist history of international relations theory has generated a complex and nuanced picture of classical realism. In doing so, it has also contributed, more often than not,...

Causal Realism and the Limits of Empiricism: Some Unexpected Insights from Hegel

Abstract: The term ‘realism’ and its contrasting terms have various related senses, although often they occlude as much as they illuminate, especially if ontological and epistemological issues and their tenable combinations are insufficiently clarified. For example, in 1807 the infamous ‘idealist’ Hegel argued cogently that any tenable philosophical theory of knowledge must take the natural and social sciences into very close consideration, which he himself did. Here I argue that Hegel ably and insightfully defends Newton’s causal realism about gravitational force, in part by exposing a fatal equivocation in the traditional concept of substance, by criticizing some still-standard empiricist misconceptions of force, by emphasizing the role of explanatory integration in Newtonian mechanics, and by using his powerful semantics of singular, specifically cognitive reference to justify fallibilism regarding empirical justification, together with the semantic core of Newton’s Rule Four of (experimental) Philosophy—in a wa...

From ‘doing history’ to thinking historically: Historical consciousness across History and International Relations

Abstract: Although most attempts to foster interdisciplinary dialogue are located outside mainstream International Relations (IR), this article seeks to problematize how the two dominant paradigms of IR theory, realism and liberalism, think historically. The argument proceeds by examining how the disciplines consider what historical knowledge is useful for, that is, how they think historically or are historically conscious. This constitutes a shift away from the dominant dialogue over how to ‘do history’ in IR. Historical consciousness is defined as the understanding of the temporality of historical experience or how past, present and future are thought to be connected. The analysis is set up to explore the extent to which both disciplines share a similar historical consciousness beyond merely treating history as instructive. To do so the article first examines the canon of European historiography to identify three genres of historical consciousness: history as teacher, history as narrative, history as representation. This survey of pre-positivist historiography serves to show the complexity of historical reflection within that discipline, something against which variance within IR theory can also be compared. Disciplinary comparison reveals that three genres of historical consciousness are present in liberalism and realism: lessons of history, revenge of history, and among progressive realists a speculative escape from history genre. Whereas lessons of history spans both ‘isms’ in IR, realism is shown to have a more complex understanding of temporality, thereby providing another conceptual starting point for distinguishing between these two ‘traditions’. Moreover, these differences between genres of historical consciousness used within realism capture the split between realists that lies not in the origin of anarchy itself but in how realists think historically. What emerges, therefore, by comparing how disciplines think historically rather than ‘do’ History, is the equally purposive or even political use of the historical knowledge they produce

Reviving the Rhetoric of Realism: Politics and Responsibility in Grand Strategy

Abstract: In both disciplinary history and contemporary methodology, realism is conventionally cast as the antithesis of rhetoric. Born in reaction against the empty liberal rhetoric of interwar liberalism a...

An Outline of an Argument for Robust Metanormative Realism

Abstract: Robust Metanormative Realism is the view, somewhat roughly, that there are non-natural, irreducibly normative truths, perfectly universal and objective ones, that when successful in our normative inquiries we discover rather than create or construct. Normative truths include – but are not limited to – the truths of morality, so Robust Metanormative Realism is the natural generalization of Robust Metaethical Realism. Robust Realism – in either its metaethical or more general metanormative form – is out of philosophical fashion today, and is being often criticized, but more often ridiculed or ignored, by supporters of such -isms as Noncognitivism, Ethical Naturalism (either in its old-fashioned, a priori, version, or in its more recent, a posteriori, not-reductive-in-a-strict-sense-of-this-term, version), Dispositionalism, Constructivism, Relativism, Subjectivism, and Error Theories of different shapes and forms (this list of the non-robust-realist metanormative options is neither exhaustive nor exclusive). In this paper I embark on the project of defending Robust Meta-normative Realism.Rather than engaging in a detailed examination of common objections to Robust Realism – a project others have been working on, and one that I too embark on elsewhere – in this paper I develop a positive argument for Robust Realism. In the literature criticizing such realism, it is often noted that no positive arguments have been offered for the view, and even supporters of this view often acknowledge as much, and proceed to focus on criticizing other views, and on rejecting objections to their own. There is, of course, nothing wrong with such projects. But it would be especially exciting and useful if a positive argument for Robust Realism could be constructed. Hence the importance of my work (if it succeeds). My argument proceeds by analogy with indispensability arguments in the philosophy of mathematics, and – more generally – inferences to the best explanation. I argue that irreducibly normative truths are indispensable, though not explanatorily indispensable. Rather, they are deliberatively indispensable. And I argue that deliberative indispensability is just as respectable as explanatory indispensability, and that the former – just like the latter – can rationally ground ontological commitment. In some more detail: Just as the fact that our best (explanatory) scientific theories quantify – for instance – over electrons gives us sufficient reason to believe that electrons exist, so to the fact that our best ways of deliberating – of asking ourselves what to do – are committed to the truth of some normative claims (robustly-realistically understood) gives us sufficient reason to believe that there are such normative truths.I begin by presenting what I call “Harman’s Challenge”, according to which moral facts are explanatorily redundant, and we therefore have no reason to believe they exist. I distinguish two strategies of responding: Claiming that moral truths are after all explanatorily indispensable, or rejecting the explanatory requirement altogether. I give my reasons for being suspicious of the former, and focus on the latter. The way to reject the explanatory requirement but nevertheless avoid ontological profligacy is by insisting that normative facts – if we are to have a reason to believe in them – must be indispensable in some other, non-explanatory, way. I then present an account of indispensability and a phenomenological account of deliberation. The conjunction of the two entails that deliberative indispensability is just as respectable (in the relevant sense) as explanatory indispensability, and so that arguments from deliberative indispensability can ground ontological commitment if arguments from explanatory indispensability can.The indispensability premise itself – that irreducibly normative truths are deliberatively indispensable – follows from the phenomenological account of deliberation offered, together with a rejection of alternative metanormative views as unable to accommodate deliberation.

The Contributions of Perceived Graphic and Enactive Realism to Enjoyment and Engagement in Active Video Games

Abstract: How perceived realism in a video game contributes to game enjoyment and engagement is a theoretically important and practically significant question. The conceptualization and operationalization of perceived realism in previous video game studies vary greatly, particularly regarding the dimensions of perceived graphic realism and perceived external realism. The authors argue that it is important to examine perceived enactive realism, particularly for interactive and participatory media such as video games. This study examines the contribution of two types of perceived realism-perceived graphic realism and perceived enactive realism-to enjoyment and engagement as manifested by the level of physical movement intensity in an active video game playing context. It was found that perceived enactive realism was a significant predictor of enjoyment and engagement in playing active video games. However, perceived graphic realism was not found to be a significant predictor of enjoyment or engagement. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.