¶ … anti-Realists reject ambivalence?

Anti-realists deny the existence of so-called objective reality, and stress that human beings should be agnostic about their own existence. In other words, anti-realist philosophers, closely associated with the deconstructionist view of human consciousness believe that there are no such things as universal truths outside of the realm of human perception. Anti-realists, otherwise known as intuitionists are therefore unlike realists such as the Platonists, who believe in first principles or objective forms that exist whether or not human beings perceive the existence of these forms, and who stress that scientific theories are true (such as gravity) whether human beings emotionally accept these truths for various reasons, religious and otherwise. ("Anti-Realists," Absolute Astronomy, 2005)

Thus, anti-realists deny the existence of a solid, objective reality that exists outside of subjective perception, whether in science or in life. The notion of ambivalence, or of taking an objective and detached view and receiving contradictory data from a scientific observation about an as-yet indiscernible truth, is impossible to an anti-realist. An anti-realist believes that there is always an inherently subjective 'I' viewing all data one accrues with one's senses, and one never merely takes in one's environment in a detached fashion, either as a philosopher or one who engages in scientific experimentation. All scientific so-called laws are merely postulates, hypotheses, or speculation.

A rationalist might state that data from an experiment is contradictory, and thus ambivalent, but always with a sense that the truth can be found upon further inquiry, even if the human mind cannot immediately perceive such a truth. An anti-realist would simply state that the very notion of objective truth is mistaken. Data is inherently subjective, and thus the fact that data seems ambivalent or contradictory merely highlights the dependence of data on filtering human perception -- in essence, ambivalence or contradictions is a natural state, only human constructions of thought attempt to render some sets of seemingly non-contradictory.

Works Cited

"Anti-Realism." Absolute Astronomy. 2005. http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/encyclopedia/a/an/anti-realism.htm