 Seven years earlier, in a review of a new edition of the writings of Berkeley, Peirce had described this way of thinking as the ‘realist conception of reality’ (EP1:88–9), in contrast with a ‘nominalist conception of reality’ which many early modern philosophers took for granted. Nominalists assume that the real can only be the antecedent cause of singular sensations which provide our evidence for beliefs about the external world. This naturally leads to a certain (age-old) solipsistic skepticism concerning whether a person can gain knowledge that transcends their own perceptions and epistemic perspective. Peirce’s pragmatist clarification of truth offers an alternative conceptualization of ‘being constrained by reality’, in terms of consequent convergence of opinion, through the process of inquiry, rather than as an antecedent cause of sensations.