Moral realism

a view of a reality ontologically independent of conception, perception, etc. Objects have certain properties regardless of any thought to the contrary.

• Critical realism - a view that certain types of sense data accurately represent a mind-independent reality while other types do not. A key example is the primary/secondary quality distinction.

• Modal realism - the view most notably put forth by David Lewis that possible worlds are as real as the actual world.

• Moral realism - the philosophical view that there are objective moral values. Moral realists argue that moral judgments describe moral facts. This combines a cognitivist view about moral judgments (they are belief-like mental states that describe the state of the world), a view about the existence of moral facts (they do in fact exist), and a view about the nature of moral facts (they are objective: independent of our cognizing them, or our stance towards them). It contrasts with expressivist or non-cognitivist theories of moral judgment, error theories of moral judgments, fictionalist theories of moral judgment, and constructivist or relativist theories of the nature of moral facts.

• Naive realism - direct realism, or common sense realism the common view of the world including the claims that it is as it is perceived, that objects have the properties attributed to them, and that they maintain these properties when not being perceived.

• Platonic realism - A belief in the existence of universals as articulated by Plato. Platonic realism is often called Plato's theory of Forms.