Irrealism is a philosophical term which seems to have been coined in the
1980s (origin is
Nelson Goodman[?]) to refer to the belief that the debate between
realism and
anti-realism was based on poor assumptions. In practice many irrealists were sympathetic to the critique on realism, but were also critical of the
idealist,
relativist[?] or
reductionist[?] tendencies of the anti-realists.