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Remembering the New Realists



In epistemology, the term "new realism" often refers to a school of thought that was prominent a century ago now. Here's a link to the new realist manifesto, published in 1912.

Who were they? Key figures in the movement included Edwin Holt and Ralph Barton Perry. Their thoughts owed a lot to William James' idea of "pure experience" and something to Bertrand Russell's notion of "neutral monism."

What was their distinctive view?

Recall, before we answer this, that two of the key epistemological questions in modern philosophy have been: do I know in a strong sense of the word "know" that there is an external world? and (if one answers that in the affirmative) how?

The new realists, simply by virtue of the fact that they were realists, answered the first of those questions with a Yes. The answer to the "how?" is that my sense perception constitutes direct information about the outside world. Sense perception sometimes provides misleading information because of its partiality, but it is always direct information.

New realists called themselves "new" or "neo" because of their view that older sorts of realism had proposed indirect or dualistic connections between external objects and my knowledge thereof. This older indirect realism leads into a number of difficulties, whence the new realists hoped to rescue us.
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