Editing Reality (section)

===Anti-realism===
One can also speak of ''anti''-realism about the same objects. ''Anti-realism'' is the latest in a long series of terms for views opposed to realism. Perhaps the first was [[idealism (philosophy)|idealism]], so called because reality was said to be in the mind, or a product of our ''ideas''. [[Berkeleyan idealism]] is the view, propounded by the Irish [[empiricism|empiricist]] [[George Berkeley]], that the objects of perception are actually ideas in the mind. In this view, one might be tempted to say that reality is a "mental construct"; this is not quite accurate, however, since, in Berkeley's view, perceptual ideas are created and coordinated by God. By the 20th century, views similar to Berkeley's were called [[phenomenalism]]. Phenomenalism differs from Berkeleyan idealism primarily in that Berkeley believed that minds, or souls, are not merely ideas nor made up of ideas, whereas varieties of phenomenalism, such as that advocated by [[Bertrand Russell|Russell]], tended to go farther to say that the mind itself is merely a collection of perceptions, memories, etc., and that there is no mind or soul over and above such [[mental event]]s. Finally, anti-realism became a fashionable term for ''any'' view which held that the existence of some object depends upon the mind or cultural artifacts. The view that the so-called external world is really merely a social, or cultural, artifact, called [[social constructionism]], is one variety of anti-realism. [[Cultural relativism]] is the view that [[social issues]] such as morality are not absolute, but at least partially [[cultural artifact]].