American Philosophy

Ralph Barton Perry

What was Ralph Barton Perry’s realism?

Perry wrote The New Realism: Cooperative Studies in Philosophy (1912) with five others: Edwin B. Holt, Walter T. Marvin, William Pepperell Montague, Walter Boughton Pitkin, and Edward Gleason Spaulding. They were in revolt against both idealism and dualism, holding that what we perceive and remember are what they appear to be, as we are conscious of them. Their conclusions were similar to those of G.E. Moore’s (1873–1958) common sense attack on idealism.