agreed with Levi on this

This is from another of his responses to glen’s comment on the “Flat Ontology” post (check below for the link).

“I think one of the key points here– and I’m in a rush so I can’t develop it as much as I would like –is that OOP is not a representational realism. That is, it is not the epistemological thesis that objects themselves are like we experience them. Rather, the human-world relation is one way in which two different objects grasp one another. The manner in which a dog encounters a tree or water encounters wood is entirely different and has its own structure of translation. In other words, it seems to me that both my position and Graham’s is already making the point you’re making.”

I’m often surprised at how quickly people assume that realism = a correspondence theory of truth.

Then there is a completely twisted use of the term, as when people call Berkeley, freakin’ Berkeley, a “direct realist.” Why? Precisely because he’s not a realist, and therefore what you see is what you get, so you’ve got as much reality already as it’s possible to have as soon as you open your eyes.

But granted, realism has so many different meanings that I’ve backed away from the term a bit. Even more confusing is that political realism, a.k.a. Realpolitik, isn’t a metaphysical realism at all, since it scoffs at the hypocrisy of holding that there are any values other than those of immanent power.