Are there really beliefs? Or are we learning (from neuroscience and psychology, presumably) that, strictly speaking, beliefs are figments of our imagination, items in a superseded ontology? Philosophers generally regard such ontological questions as admitting just two possible answers: either beliefs exist or they do not. There is no such state as quasi existence; there are no stable doctrines of semirealism. Beliefs must either be vindicated along with the viruses or banished along with the banshees. A bracing conviction prevails, then, to the effect that when it comes to beliefs (and other mental items) one must be either a realist or an eliminative materialist
Should we be [realists about abstract objects]? I do not intend to pursue this question, for I suspect that Dretske is-and we should be- more interested in the scientific path to realism: centers of gravity are real because they are (somehow) good abstract objects.
When are the elements of a pattern real and not merely apparent? Answering this question will help us resolve the misconceptions that have led to the proliferation of "ontological positions" about beliefs, the different grades or kinds of realism. I shall concentrate on five salient exemplars arrayed in the space of possibilities: Fodor's industrial-strength Realism (he writes it with a capital 'R'); Davidson's regular strength realism; my mild realism; Richard Rorty's milder-than-mild irrealism, according to which the pattern is only in the eyes of the beholders, and Paul Churchland's eliminative materialism, which denies the reality of beliefs altogether.