Abstract

Realism/antirealism issues are considered in light of a pragmatist dual-process active-externalist theory of experience. This theory posits two kinds of experience such that mentality (as a capacity for thinking, hypothesizing, theorizing, reasoning, deliberating) constitutes one of the two kinds of experience. The formal correspondence of theory with facts is characterized in terms of a functional correspondence between these two kinds of experience. Realist and constructivist aspects of this view are then discussed. Active externalism guarantees a kind of ecological realism that allows the theory to avoid radical constructivism or irrealism.