But it’s a total misnomer to call the anti-realist sophistry ‘epistemology!’ Almost every reputable philosopher who works specifically in that field accepts that in order to know something, that thing has to be true (which presupposes realism).
Yeah you’re right! That quote is directed entirely at anti-humanist realist epistemologies, the more complicated, yet insidious, realisms that Levi is arguing against. Here he is on anti-realism:
While the anti-realist generally does not deny that a world independent of subject, mind and culture exists -i.e., he’s not a Berkeleyian subjective idealist or a Hegelian absolute idealist - the anti-realist nonetheless argues that because representation falls entirely within the domain of the subject and culture we are unable to determine whether representations are merely our constructions, such that they do not reflect reality as it is at all, or whether these representations are true representations of reality as it is and would be regardless of whether it were represented. However, while the anti-realist argument generally bases itself on the indeterminability of whether representation is construction or a true representation of reality, it often slips into the thesis that representation is a construction and that reality is very likely entirely different from how we represent it. For the anti-realist, truth thus becomes inter-subjective agreement, consensus, or shared representation, rather than a correspondence between representation and reality. Indeed, the very concept of reality is transformed into reality for-us or the manner in which we experience and represent the world.
