First line in the article "Objective reality exists." Does it? I'd say even that is a contentious statement in the realm of philosophy.
But regardless, if there is such a thing as objective reality, it is trivial to prove that our perception of the world is poor mimicry of the real thing, perhaps someone could make some allegory involving shadows on the wall of cave?
Objective reality exists because "I" exist. Something exists that is generating this feeling of I. And whatever that something is, would be what we are calling objective reality.
For example, I could be a brain in a vat, being fed sense signals through wires that is making me feel that I live on this blue green rocky planet revolving around a big ball of fire. If so, "I am a brain in a vat" is the objective reality, even though the "I" inside this simulated universe may never be able to perceive the true reality.
It's true that we can never be 100% sure that our sense signals are truly objective and not something emergent (spacetime of our universe) from a more fundamental reality (say, brain in a vat). Then what should we do? I believe the best thing we can do is to follow the data. As long as we continue to observe that our universe is consistently and precisely obeying the physical laws we have discovered, we can axiomatically assume that we do live in objective reality. As we dig deeper, we may make new observations indicating we exist in a Matrix after all. We'd then have to update our mental models accordingly.
> Large complex systems which suppose the existence of an objective reality work very well. Any attempt to throw out the idea of objective reality still has to explain why these things work
How does science depend on the idea of "objective reality"? Would physics not work if we said that it's merely a model, one way of looking at things and not the Truth?
5 comments
[ 2.2 ms ] story [ 20.7 ms ] threadFor example, I could be a brain in a vat, being fed sense signals through wires that is making me feel that I live on this blue green rocky planet revolving around a big ball of fire. If so, "I am a brain in a vat" is the objective reality, even though the "I" inside this simulated universe may never be able to perceive the true reality.
It's true that we can never be 100% sure that our sense signals are truly objective and not something emergent (spacetime of our universe) from a more fundamental reality (say, brain in a vat). Then what should we do? I believe the best thing we can do is to follow the data. As long as we continue to observe that our universe is consistently and precisely obeying the physical laws we have discovered, we can axiomatically assume that we do live in objective reality. As we dig deeper, we may make new observations indicating we exist in a Matrix after all. We'd then have to update our mental models accordingly.
How does science depend on the idea of "objective reality"? Would physics not work if we said that it's merely a model, one way of looking at things and not the Truth?