Modern Academic Philosophy and Realism

[wri...@writemaster.com]

Hello all. Some twenty years ago I took a handful of philosophy
classes as an undergraduate. More recently I studied philosphy while
working towards an MA in the liberal arts at St. John's College. So,
I have some knowledge of philosophy, but I don't claim to be an
authority. I'm especially weak in modern philosophy.

I am hoping someone can resolve a debate I was having with a current
graduate student in philosophy. We were discussing Ayn Rand (please,
don't throw fruit in my direction), and I expressed my understanding
that most modern philosophers do not subscribe to her brand of
realism. (Rand says: 1. The objective world is out there, external
to us, independent of our perception, extended in space and persistent
in time, with inherent cause and effect properties; 2. Our senses
perceive that external world with sufficient accuracy, and using our
reason we can understand that external, objective world. We don't
create reality with our senses or our thoughts, but we understand
reality and can modify it with our thoughts and actions.)

My sense is that most modern philosophers, people teaching at the top
Universities, would consider Rand a "naive realist." Rather, they are
still struggling with modern variations on Kant's formulation that, in
a sense, what we perceive is our own mind; and perhaps, only
distantly, filtered through our perceptions, is a real world that we
cannot truly grasp. For example, if I understand correctly,
phenomenology still has a major hold on academia, and that
philosophical school struggles with how we extract a sense of
"wholeness", or "the objectness of things", from the mere phenomena we
experience.

Now, I may have all of this totally wrong. So, PLEASE feel free to
enlighten me about where (the majority of) modern academics stand on
philosophical realism. (And correct my view of phenomenology if I
have that wrong.)

Thanks,
Steve
writer@REMOVE_THIS_SPAM_PROTECTIONwritemaster.com