# If objective reality exists, can we know or trust we know it **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [June 24, 2011, 5:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-objective-reality-exists-can-we-know-or-trust-we-know-it/586732 "2011-06-24T17:38:20Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2011, 3:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-objective-reality-exists-can-we-know-or-trust-we-know-it/586732/41 "2011-06-25T03:04:40Z")
> [@kanicbird](#): > > You have people who are partly color blind, as in unable to distinguish between 2 different colors, which does seem to support that we may perceive colors differently but we are taught a standard. Good grief–you even quoted the parenthetical comment about exceptions that don’t pertain. So what that there are color blind people? There are also blind people, and dead people, and people who don’t speak English, and people who are ornery cusses who won’t pick a blue flower even if I say pretty please. The point is that, if I ask for a blue flower and someone brings me a blue flower, the explanations are limited: 1. The whole scenario is a product of my solipsistic mind; none of it exists outside my head. 2. Some crazy and unexplained groupthink is constantly manufacturing the universe anew based on some sort of consensus, or majority rule, or mental equivalent of armwrestling (not sure how this would work). 3. What a coincidence! 4. I’m incredibly gullible and will consider anything they brought me to be a blue flower, even if they perceive it as a quarterpounder with ice cream. 5. There is some objective reality, and not only can I and the other person access it (using somewhat flawed senses), but we can also communicate about it (using somewhat flawed language). You seem to think #2 is the likeliest. Other than its grooviness, I can’t see anything to recommend it. I think #5 is the likeliest. > [@](#): > > My contention is that there is subjective and objective realities that run concurrently (along with perceived reality). Group influence of any kind usually goes to hide the subjective reality for a person. So a staged event is starting with a contaminated sample so I reject your methodology, what is your objection to mine of using a natural setting, which BTW is exactly where these are known to occur? When we are talking about different realities for different people, purity of the sample would seem to be important - would not you agree? Should we try to get a reality without a person’s influence as a starting point? My objection is that your objection is ridiculous, but whatever. Find us something we can look at that’s not staged, by your definition, and let’s discuss it. I can’t believe you think that if we looked at, say, a picture of something I was sure was a cat, other people would see it as a pyramid or as a tuna fish or as a nipple. ---
**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2011, 7:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-objective-reality-exists-can-we-know-or-trust-we-know-it/586732/42 "2011-06-25T07:27:45Z")
> [@kanicbird](#): > > But sometimes this is a subjective call. Yes, but the subjectivity involved can be quantified and controlled for, at least ideally. > [@](#): > > How does the above deal with the malleability of the human mind to accept a common view of reality? In the limit (of infinite data), it eliminates it; over the short times and relatively small quantities of data that can be gathered in actuality, it minimizes it. > [@kanicbird](#): > > In practice we see the above all the time, go see a movie with some friends, one asks the other what did you think of the movie, the second one says well what did you think. Finally a third says it sucks monkey balls and the other 2 agree. That 3rd person has defined the subjective reality for the other 2. That you like or dislike a movie is not an objective fact of reality, it’s merely an opinion (that you have that opinion is then a fact, but a fact subject to change, which is nothing astonishing – that my wall is white is a fact, but I can paint it black without anything mysterious needing to happen); the fact is that all three saw the same movie, as evidenced by their discussing it. > [@kanicbird](#): > > I would much rather have this test done in a natural, non-viewing of a recorded setting, though the session could be recorded for later review. As it stands it really does not contradict subjective+objective reality. But only because you define your concept of ‘subjective reality’ in such a way that it can’t be contradicted – it is completely extraneous to any discussion of the world, an additional layer that can be added – or not, as by the flipside of that view, there is also nothing that can support its existence (all you can garner support for is that there are conflicting narratives about reality, which nobody contests, but this is easily accommodated by allowing for an imperfect perception and memory of ‘objective reality’). > [@DSeid](#): > > Again, I accept axiomatically that an objective reality exists, but the fact that many of us share a similar experience in our minds does not prove it. We could all just be having similar enough hallucinations or delusions. But the reasonable hypothesis then is that there is an objective reality, as the coincidence of all these hallucinations is unlikely beyond belief; and if there is something that causes these hallucinations to be similar, well then there’s your objective reality. As for solipsist brain-in-a-vat explanations, where everything, including other people’s experiences (or reports thereof) are hallucinated, and therefore, I am all there is (which still includes an objective reality – me), and which allegedly can’t be discounted, I think that there’s a bit of smoke and mirrors involved there – namely the insinuation that whatever creates the illusion of an external reality, whatever comes up with all those magnificent images, simulates all the reactions of the environment to my actions, or, in general, provides stimuli and accommodates responses to them, can meaningfully be said to be (part of) _me_. But I am what _I_ am – my thoughts, feelings, perceptions, etc.; the things that I am aware of; my consciousness – all those things that I have _direct access_ to. I have no direct access to whatever it is that comes up with the image of the outside world. True, both I and the outside-world-generator may be part of one structure – say, a brain in a vat, or a universe --, but that doesn’t make us the same thing. And since there then is me and something else, I can direct the scientific mode of inquiry towards that something else – which would then have me conclude that the most parsimonious, and most likely, explanation for the appearance of an outside world is the existence of an outside world (anything else would posit all of the experiences generated by an outside world, plus something to generate these experiences). One can always come up with wild alternative explanations – this is actually a mathematical, or perhaps information-theoretical, statement: for any given set of data, infinitely many explanations – polynomials having the data points as zeroes, programs producing the data as output – exist. But there is only one way to consistently and non-arbitrarily pick one of these explanations, one way that ensures predictivity and testability, which is dictated by parsimony. Very strictly speaking, talk about explanations violating this is not meaningful – predictions produced that way are arbitrary (you could, with equal justification, always predict the opposite just as well), and since there are no conditions for the failure of such a hypothesis (any observation can be accommodated), there is nothing that can be said about its correctness. So you could as well just make shit up. Pointing out that there are other possible explanations that also might be right, that things could be different and we just don’t know, is thus really missing the point – those ‘explanations’ are really not explanations at all. This is of course an idealized picture that can’t be exactly realized in the real world (this is actually again an information theoretical statement – the problem of finding the shortest program generating some dataset is not computably solvable). But it is uniquely self-correcting – among all possible modes of inquiry, it is the only one which we know takes us only ever closer to a correct description, at least in the long term. ---
**Author:** ![Alka\_Seltzer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c89c15/32.png) [@Alka\_Seltzer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alka_Seltzer)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2011, 1:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-objective-reality-exists-can-we-know-or-trust-we-know-it/586732/43 "2011-06-25T13:46:23Z")
> [@kanicbird](#): > > On related threads I brought up subjective vs objective reality. I feel there is ample evidence that if objective reality exists, we are incapable of discerning it. If reality itself was subjective, events would diverge, and quickly become unreconcilable. To take a simple example, imagine 6 friends playing pass-the-parcel, with a prize of a cowboy hat. Only a single person can win. You seem to be imagining a reality where, at a reunion, it’s possible for more than one person to turn up wearing the same hat. Due to [butterfly effect](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_effect), much smaller changes than this will lead to versions of reality that radically differ. We just don’t observe this chaos in the real world. In practical terms, there is nothing to be gained by imagining objective reality does not exist, unless perhaps someone want to use it as an idea for a novel. I believe that we experience a very small subset of objective reality through the unreliable and incomplete filter of our senses. It’s impossible to prove this, for all I know my life is the bad dream of a giant octopoid being who ate some bad shellfish. Or perhaps quantum physics is an artifact of us running in an imperfect computer simulation. But again, these ideas completely fail the practicality test. ---
**Author:** ![sqweels](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f19dbf/32.png) [@sqweels](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sqweels)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2011, 1:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-objective-reality-exists-can-we-know-or-trust-we-know-it/586732/44 "2011-06-26T01:42:43Z")
> [@DrFidelius](#): > > I don’t know if “objective reality” exists, but it makes my life easier and more predictable if I act as if it does. “Reality” might change tomorrow, the dragon eggs may hatch, the sky may peel back like a sheet of aluminum foil, I may actually find enough money in my pockets to buy what I want. if that happens I will try to adjust but until then I will act as if ordinary “reality” is enough to explain my daily experiences. But the dragon eggs either already exist, or already do not exist. Objective reality includes the answer to the question, “do dragon eggs exist?”. We don’t know with _absolute_ certainty which of the 2 possible answers is the objective reality, but it’s _very highly probable_ that it’s no. Some things are a bit iffy, but plenty of things are highly probably true. We need to avoid losing sight of the implications of a _preponderance_ of evidence and not abuse the uncertainty principle in an effort to establish a false equivalency. Or rather, a highly probably false equivalency. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![sqweels](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f19dbf/32.png) [@sqweels](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sqweels)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2011, 2:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-objective-reality-exists-can-we-know-or-trust-we-know-it/586732/45 "2011-06-26T02:05:23Z")
**Kanicbird** , is there any underlying meaning to all this? Are there certain objective realities that you and your subjective reality would dispute with regards to any relevant issue, perhaps? ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2011, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-objective-reality-exists-can-we-know-or-trust-we-know-it/586732/46 "2011-06-27T19:49:44Z")
> [@kanicbird](#): > > You have people who are partly color blind, as in unable to distinguish between 2 different colors, which does seem to support that we may perceive colors differently but we are taught a standard. Doesn’t matter. Whatever you “perceive”, color is a function of wavelengths of light and is independently measurable using things like “math” and “science”. But I still won’t sleep on an airplane because I’m worried about being “incepted”. > [@kanicbird](#): > > And things like this happen all the time, a person (boss/spouse) requests you get a object, you get a object that fits the description but they blow up because it doesn’t for them. And then you’ll see me slap them across the mouth for blowing up at me. Perceive THAT bitch! ---
**Author:** ![Asympotically\_fat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e47c2d/32.png) [@Asympotically\_fat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Asympotically_fat)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2011, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-objective-reality-exists-can-we-know-or-trust-we-know-it/586732/47 "2011-06-27T20:46:36Z")
As much as I like empiricism, I think very often people fail to critique it and examine it’s flaws. One of the great things about empiricism is that it accepts it’s own flaws. How would we objectively evalute the worthiness of empiricism? Would we test it empirically? ---
**Author:** ![Cheshire\_Human](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/5f8ce5/32.png) [@Cheshire\_Human](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cheshire_Human)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2011, 1:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-objective-reality-exists-can-we-know-or-trust-we-know-it/586732/48 "2011-06-28T01:30:45Z")
I believe the problem, here, is that the OP is using a definition of “Subjective Reality” that departs from the (trivial) definition of “That portion of ‘objective reality’ which we, individually, perceive, remember, and comprehend”, but has not given us _his_ idiosyncratic definition of. So, **kanicbird** , how about telling us _your_ definition, so we know what the hell we’re talking about? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-objective-reality-exists-can-we-know-or-trust-we-know-it/586732.md?page=2)