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”?
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.
You seem to mistake epistemology and metaphysics. The Cogito argument is an epistemological claim about what can be known to be true. I do not believe that I am a Boltzmann brain or that we would be in the matrix. I only brought these ideas up as alternatives which can not be debunked with absolute certainty in the epistemological sense of the word. In case you’re unfamiliar, that’s the branch of philosophy which deals with the nature of knowledge and information. I already told you what I believe in terms of metaphysics: Materialism all the way.
We’re in !philosophy@lemmy.ml, entertaining ideas is what philosophy is all about. “It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it” and so on…
And about on the subject of certainty: Are you not certain that 1+1=2?
I reject metaphysics as well, I’m a dialectical materialist. Perhaps I am misunderstanding what you’re referring to, then, but my point on dialectical materialism and how it corresponds to knowledge is that what we know is informed by our sense organs, and we reach further and further towards an objective truth without ever exhausting it. The universe is not static, but ever-changing, and progresses through constant contradiction. 1+1=2 is in the realm of logic.