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Topic: Realism and its Critics Questions circling around issues of “realism” have been prominent in contemporary philosophy. Some philosophers argue for or against realism across the board. Here the fundamental issue is often taken to be semantic: can truth be radically evidence-transcendent, so that a proposition must be true or false even if we will never have evidence one way or another? But there are also more local questions. Do scientific theories that postulate unobservables aim to state literal truths about such theoretical entities (as scientific realists claim), or are they better understood as devices for linking and systematizing observational evidence (as instrumentalists or constructive empiricists argue)? Are there mind-independent moral or aesthetic facts (as moral and aesthetic realists suppose), or are moral and aesthetic judgments better understood in some other way, for example as fundamentally “expressive” rather than “descriptive”. Many philosophers continue to hold that such questions raise deep metaphysical issues. But this view has been challenged by metaphysical quietists, who argue that the whole issue of realism versus non- or anti-realism is best avoided. So should we be realists, either in general or selectively? Or is quietism the better option? What is realism anyway? The aim of this seminar is to explore influential arguments that arise in the attempt to answer such questions.