I) "Realism with a wink" might best describe how even sympathetic interpreters of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason have viewed Kant's assertion that the broad transcendental idealist framework yields realism at the empirical level. There remains the common belief that Kamian appearances are mind dependent in a way that effectively excludes empirical realism from being accepted as a genuine form of realism. The word "appearance" (Erscheinung) itself is usually enough to scare off even the most well-intentioned realist. Add to this the idea that space and time are mere forms of intuition, and the (apparently) constructivist character of Kant's account of synthesis, and the door seems firmly closed to any realism.
