Is This Real? Two Remarks on the Realism of the Past

Abstract

Whether historiography can provide knowledge about a mind-independent past was debated from a variety of perspectives. I reexamine two known arguments for irrealism about the past – one from the past’s inaccessibility and non-manipulability, and the other from underdetermination of hypotheses about the past – and argue that the first is unsustainable, whereas the second has some justification, though a qualified and restricted one.