In the previous posts, I asked whether questions or observations can create reality, or whether they instead form an intersection where reality appears.
I now want to sharpen the issue.
Many discussions seem to assume that there is a fully formed, objective structure of reality “out there,” and observation merely reveals it.
But what if objectivity itself is not prior to observation, and instead emerges through repeated, shared intersections of perspectives?
In that case, observation would not be a causal force, nor a passive recording device, but a stabilizing process.
My question is simple but uncomfortable:
Can we meaningfully talk about a “purely objective structure” without already presupposing a standpoint from which it is identified as such?
I’m curious where others locate objectivity: before observation, after it, or nowhere at all.
If objectivity requires the removal of all standpoints, who or what is left to recognize it as “objective”?
I don’t think we can know whether a real world actually exists, or whether out senses and memory are lying to us. However, only if we suppose that our senses and memory are not lying to us, can we make meaningful predictions about the consequences of our actions, and only then can we act intentionally.
I very much agree with this. Reality could be anything but we have to engage with it based on what our senses percieve.
That’s a very clear way of putting it, and I find your position quite persuasive. We may not be able to know whether the external world truly exists, but by assuming that our senses and memories are not fundamentally deceiving us, we can make meaningful predictions about the consequences of our actions, and only then does intentional action become possible. I agree with that.
What I find myself wondering, though, is where the validity of that assumption itself is stabilized.
If our judgments about whether predictions succeed or fail already take place within some framework of expectations, then it seems that we are not directly confirming the world “as it is,” but rather checking whether our interaction with the world is cohering well enough to support action.
In that sense, I’m less interested in the binary question of whether reality exists or not, and more interested in the conditions under which prediction, action, and revision form a stable loop.
From your perspective, where do you think that stability ultimately resides? In the world itself, in our cognitive capacities, or in the relation between the two?
This is a popular understanding, but the science suggests a different process.
The brain filters sensory data based on utility, which is itself defined by the mind’s internal model. This results in a curated reality that omits any information the model deems irrelevant to its current goals.
We often begin to act before the conscious mind is even aware of the impulse. In this framework, the mind functions as a narrator—backfilling intent after the fact to maintain the illusion of a cohesive story. This model is not static; it updates when the curated data produces a ‘prediction error’ too large for the narrator to ignore. A moment of narrative break down result in a recalibration. However, when the data is filtered and the intent is retroactive, then ‘meaningful predictions’ are primarily a mechanism for the mind to validate the model it has already constructed.
I think you may have misunderstood what I was saying. The idea of scientific testing, and the brain, only exists within the framework where I assume the world has coherence and the sensory experiences I remember having are not just random fabrications. I didn’t mean to say everything I exploring or remember experiencing must be completely true, just it must have rules I can learn that let me predict it, otherwise if it truly is random, the effect of my actions would also be random, and I wouldn’t be able to make any intentional actions.