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”?
We get closer and closer to understanding reality as it exists the more we engage with it.
Ok a counterexample then: How do you know that the scientific method isn’t iterating towards the rules that govern the simulation we might technically be in, instead of actual reality? How do you know that you aren’t actually a Boltzmann brain blinking into existence for a brief instant with the memories of your life thus far and the experience of this moment here? You do not, because you can not know this. That’s the whole point of the Cogito argument. All you can actually know for certain is that you exist. We make assumptions about the world around us because they seem to work fine, and without them we wouldn’t be where we are now, but absolute certainty is reserved for that one statement only: I think, therefore I am.
And one more thing about iteration: Any iterative process only seeks towards some local maximum, which may or may not be the global maximum. This depends entirely on the starting parameters. If you think that you’ll reach the highest mountain of enlightenment by just constantly heading uphill, you may instead end up at the top of some smaller hill next to it.
You have it reversed, as an idealist. The real materialist statement is you are, therefore you think. We are a part of material reality, not independent from it as such.
I never said that I was an idealist. I believe an objective and purely physical world exists. Everything points in this direction and Occam’s razor is harsh on the alternatives. But I do not claim to know this for certain. That’s all that I have been saying here.
You may not describe yourself as such, but “I think, therefore I am” is idealist. Materialists flipped this to “I am, therefore I think.”
The Cogito argument by itself doesn’t take sides on what’s real. It only talks about what can be known with certainty to be true. It’s an epistemological claim, not a metaphysical one! Well, apart from stating the obvious that one does indeed exist.
Thinking doesn’t make me exist. I am perfectly capable of existing without thinking. But the fact that I can ponder the question “what is real?” means that something (me) must be real to present the question. It’s a rational proof about reality, the only one that can be made. Everything else relies on empiricism.
Descartes himself was a dualist. He believed in the material and objective reality, just with some souls and stuff sprinkled in, ghosts in the machine and so on. (This is why the original, now out of fashion version of the argument also claimed to prove at least a god"
You can exist without thinking, but you don’t exist because you think. Existence is a prerequisite to thought, matter drives ideas.
I’m sorry but did you even read my comment?
Edit: Or the one before it. I already said that I believe in the existence of an objective and purely material world.
I did read them, but when you entertain ideas like the Boltzmann brain, living in a grand simulation, etc. this is entering the realm of idealism. The idea of “certainty” is false to begin with, and used to justify idealist arguments that serve as fantastical explanations for the real, similar to religion.