Metaphysical Realism: An Overwhelmingly Dominant Philosophy that Makes No Sense at All
The overwhelmingly dominant trend in philosophy among academics is that of metaphysical realism. This trend is incredibly pervasive and permeates everything, its affects repeatedly show up in discussions regarding philosophy, physics, mind, so on and so forth. Yet, despite this philosophy being overwhelmingly dominant and accepted almost reflectively by the majority of people, it does not hold up to basic scrutiny.
Introduction
What is Metaphysical Realism?
The term “metaphysical” means a lot of different things in different contexts. Sometimes, it is used so broadly it just means philosophy in general, but often in the philosophical literature, it is also used as a term of criticism. To deride something as “metaphysical” is to state that it makes unnecessary assumptions that go beyond what we can actually observe.
If you drop a ball, it falls to the ground. You can map this motion to mathematical equations and thus formulate a theory of how it works. Someone could later then assert that maybe objects fall to the ground because angels push upon spacetime to curve it precisely in the same way predicted by Einstein’s equations, and then those philosophy might get lost in a debate over the nature of these angels. Why are these invisible angels a necessary construct at all? They are not necessary to predict what we will observe. We can discard them and the predictive power of the theory remains unchanged.
It is in a sense like this that you often see philosophers deride others in the literature as being “too metaphysical.” Something that is metaphysical is an a priori assumption, meaning it is not based on anything we observe, but an assumption made at the beginning of a philosophy in order to establish one’s initial foothold in interpreting reality. Everything beyond metaphysics is a posteriori, meaning, it is derived solely from observation itself and is not assumed.
I know if I drop a ball, it will fall to the ground, and its motion can be predicted ahead of time using the equations of general relativity. This is not an assumption but a conclusion derived from observing reality and trying to build a predictive model of it. To posit an additional set of invisible angels which just so happen to curve spacetime in the way general relativity predicts, this would not be something derived from observation but would be an additional assumption that could not be justified by anything we actually observe.
Of course, not all metaphysical assumptions are this absurd, it may or may not even be possible to do philosophy without some initial assumptions. However, any time an assumption is put forward that cannot be tied directly back to observation, we should scrutinize it heavily. These are the most likely areas where what we believe might be wrong.
The term realism on its own just refers to the belief that there exists a reality independent of the mind. How can realism be metaphysical? Reality seems like it is the direct opposite of metaphysics. Presumably, if we want to verify whether or not an idea is correct, where would we go to check if not leaving abstract thought and engaging with reality through observation and scientific inquiry? Indeed, that’s how it seems like it should go, but the entirety of western philosophy has flipped this entire relation on its head.
Metaphysical realism argues that the reality we study and observe in the material sciences, and that we are immersed in every day as part of our lived experience, is all an illusion created by mammalian brains. The fact it is claimed to be purely a creation of the mammalian brain is then used to call it “consciousness” or “subjective.” Beyond this veil of “consciousness” and “subjectivity,” there is said to be a true reality which is not anything like we have ever observed, and is indeed presumed to be fundamentally unobservable.
This philosophy has existed long before Kant, but Kant was one of the earlier authors to try and clearly formulate it. Kant expresses this ideas as a split between two mirror worlds, one being the world of phenomena containing the everything we observe in our lived experience, and the other being noumena, which is the world outside of all possibility to ever experience. These worlds are assumed to, indeed, mirror one another one-for-one, so if we see a cat (meaning, it is within the phenomena), then there must also be an invisible cat part of the noumena which is the cause of why we see a cat.
Of course, not everyone is a Kantian, but the overwhelming majority of people still adopt this identical split if not in different language. The term “phenomena” literally means the “appearance of reality” as opposed to “reality itself,” implying it is in some way separate from “true” reality. This is the exact same thinking employed whenever someone uses terms like “subjective experience” or “conscious experience.” The implication is that what we observe (what is experience if not an observation?) is not reality as it really is, by some subjective illusion created by the conscious mind.
If you cannot observe something, then how can you even establish that it is real in the first place? Metaphysical realists thus have to presume there exists this invisible reality outside of everything we can possibly observe as an a priori assumption.
Most Alternatives are Worse
Any time we have an a priori assumption, we can always ask the question of whether or not we can do without it. Indeed, it is very common in western philosophy to ask if we can do without this notion of an invisible reality beyond what we can ever observe. Part of this also stems from the mind-body problem and the hard problem of consciousness. If this metaphysical reality is entirely invisible, then how can it possibly “give rise to” the visibility of our lived experiences? The question seems unanswerable, yet, most proposed alternatives are far worse than metaphysical realism itself.
The issue is that most philosophers operate in a false dichotomy: there is either metaphysical realism, or we should reject reality. Hardly anyone ever raises the question that maybe the formulation of what reality entails in the metaphysical realist worldview might just be an improper way to formulate our notion of reality. Most alternatives thus end up devolving into complete mysticism, not trying to clarify our notions of reality, but instead trying to use it to justify some sort of religious or spiritual worldview.
The entire philosophy of idealism stems from accepting the metaphysical realist premise that the reality we observe and are immersed in every day is not objective reality independent of the mind, but is itself a product of the mind, and thus calls it “consciousness.” However, idealists then reject the belief that there is anything beyond this “consciousness,” and thus come to the conclusion that everything is “mind and its contents.”
Yet, the question I end up positing to idealists is the same question I end up positing to metaphysical realists: why do you believe that the reality we observe and are immersed in every day is a product of the mind? I have never seen a good answer to this question. Let’s go through some of the common arguments and show why I find them to be so profoundly unconvincing.
The Arguments for Metaphysical Realism
The Active Brain
A very common argument in favor of metaphysical realism is that the brain is an active process that works to shape sensory inputs so that what we see is just as much a product of the brain as the actual sensory inputs themselves. If, supposedly, the brain plays a role in shaping what we see, then supposedly we do not see “true reality” as it really is.
This argument does not work for a rather simple reason. Imagine giving a painter access to all the paints he could ever desire and as much time as he desires, and his task is merely to paint a picture of a diamond. Is it possible for this person to paint such an immaculate painting that it ceases to be a painting of a diamond and becomes a physical diamond? Of course not, it is ridiculous. No matter how cleverly the painter arranges the colors in his painting, he could never paint a picture that transcends being a painting itself. No arrangement of the medium can transcend the medium itself.
From the premises of metaphysical realism, the brain is a real object, and is also an active object that is constantly in motion changing and rearranging its internal structure. It therefore follows from the premises of metaphysical realism that, indeed, the brain is playing a role in shaping and crafting the reality that is observed in each of our individual points of view. However, the metaphysical realist then presumes that the brain’s rearranging of reality can somehow transcend reality. It is unclear how this follows from their premises. If the brain is indeed a real object that is shaping reality, then any rearrangement of reality would still be real by definition.
It is just a complete non-sequitur to conclude that because the brain plays a role in shaping our experiences, that our experiences are not real. The logical conclusion would be the very opposite of our experiences being an illusion. They would indeed real. What we experience is reality as it really is from our point-of-view, as it has really been shaped by the brain, and as the brain has really been shaped by its environment, and as that environment has really been shaped by its environment, so on and so forth. In other words, it is reality from a particular point-of-view as it has really been shaped by reality as a whole.
Optical Illusions
Another common argument is that of optical illusions. It is often claimed that these prove we do not “see” reality “as it really is,” but see a false illusion. A famous example of this is the Müller-Lyer illusion whereby participants are shown lines of the same length with arrows facing in and with arrows facing out, and despite being the same length, many will falsely claim the lines with arrows facing in are longer. Another famous example is placing a stick in a glass of water. The refraction from the light is said to cause the stick to “look bent.”
The issue with the argument from optical illusions is that they conflate interpretation with experience. If experience is reality as it really is, then by definition it is not an “interpretation.” Interpretations are formed by minds to describe and categorize reality. We can see things without categorizing them. Consider, for example, a film. You watch the film and see every aspect of it, but some aspects you may not pay much attention to. If someone asks you the color of the shirt of a background character, clearly you saw that character as you watched the film, but you did not pay it much attention. Arguably, the majority of our experiences we do not pay much attention to and do not attempt to interpret them.
All optical illusions demonstrate is that we have a tendency, under certain circumstances, to interpret reality incorrectly. This does not prove we do not see reality as it really is, only that we may misinterpret that reality on a surface-level analysis. Take the optical illusion with a stick in a glass of water. It is sometimes stated that we “see a bent stick.” Do we? We only interpret the stick to be bent if we are not used to refraction. If we are used to refraction, then we can interpret it correctly: what we see is a non-bent stick in a glass of water with half of its light being refracted. That’s just what a non-bent stick in a glass of water looks like.
It is the same with the Müller-Lyer illusion. We really are shown two different things, two lines in two different contexts (one with an arrow pointing in and one with an arrow pointing out), but we misinterpret what is actually different about them. This is, again, not evidence that we do not perceive reality as it really exists, but only evidence that we may interpret reality incorrectly with a surface-level analysis.
The only reason we even know optical illusions exist at all is because we can make a separate set of observations that justify a different interpretation which shows our previous interpretation to be false. Demonstrating an optical illusion is indeed an illusion is still something that occurs in experience. For example, if we want to prove the two lines are indeed the same length, we can put up a ruler to them and measure it. We still have to observe and see this measurement with the ruler in order to conclude there is an illusion.
If our experience is an illusion, then this measurement with the ruler must also be an illusion, so you could not even use it to establish that the interpretation that the lines are different lengths mistakenly made by the participants really even is a mistake. Indeed, it makes no logical sense at all to even single out illusions like the Müller-Lyer illusion as somehow interesting or special if you believe experience itself is an illusion. Everything would be an illusion, so you would have no grounding for truth at all to label one set of visual experiences an “optical illusion” as opposed to another.
An argument in support of the facticity of perception is the fact that it is essentially unrevisable, a feature which surfaces in what are traditionally labelled — perhaps wrongly — ‘perceptual illusions.’ I may know that the stick in the water is not broken, but I still see it as I see it — ‘as if it were broken,’ as philosophers traditionally have said — or, more correctly, as an unbroken stick submerged in water. So-called perceptual illusions are perceptions just like any other. They belong to the reality of perception and, as such, to reality simpliciter. The stick’s appearance when submerged in water is in some sense part of the reality of the stick: a stick is a thing that, when plunged into water, looks that way. This aspect of the stick is no more unnatural or unreal than how it appears outside of water in broad daylight. When we deal with a piece of reality as something that can be perceived, we deal with it as something that can take on certain appearances in certain circumstance
…The problem, therefore, does not concern what we see: we really do see different things. The problem concerns the judgment we make to the effect that what we see are two ‘unequal’ lines. But, in fact, this is not what we see: we simply see two lines in different contexts; we see different sensible Gestalts. Now, what does it mean to say that we cannot see that the lines ‘are unequal’? Merleau-Ponty’s explanation of why this is impossible causes difficulties. He maintains that “we must recognize the indeterminate as a positive phenomenon,” by which he means to affirm that what we perceive is positively indeterminate (by the standard, that is, of so-called ‘objective thought’). Personally, I am unsure whether this kind of assertion makes sense. I would like to say that what we see is, in itself, neither determinate nor indeterminate. It just is what it is. Certainly, it is not determinate so long as we do not apply a standard to it.
— Jocelyn Benoist, “Toward a Contextual Realism”
Dreams
It is often stated that our dreams “are not real” while our waking world is “true reality.” If you believe this, then clearly, our mind has the ability to create “false” realities that are not themselves real, and thus this is used as a justification to argue that all our experiences are an illusion. Being awake is said to be like another kind of dream, but just one that is more stable because some metaphysical reality beyond what we can experience forces stability upon it.
The problem with arguments relating to dreams, however, is that dreams are clearly real. Let me ask you a question, if your friend went up to you and told you about the horrible nightmare they had last night and how much it was bothering them, would your response be, “shut up you liar, you didn’t dream that, because dreams aren’t real!” Of course not, that would be absolutely ridiculous. Your friend really dreamed that. Dreaming is something humans really do.
The argument from dreams, again, confuses experience with interpretation. The people who make this argument presume that if you were to state dreams are real, then you must interpret all the objects within your dreams as the same category of objects as those outside of your dreams. If I observe a tree in my dream world, and a tree in the waking world, then I must conclude those are the same kind of tree.
Yet, this is fallacious. I can recognize that the dream tree and the waking tree are not the same objects while still recognize that they both are indeed real. I really did have a dream with trees in it. That is something that really happened. No, that does not mean I have to claim those trees in my dreams are the same as the trees I experience when I am awake.
If we experience reality directly as it really is, then, indeed, we have to conclude dreams are real. But why is this a problem? The reason we have a word for “dreams” is because it is something shared, we can talk about dreams because we have all had them at some point. It is clearly something humans really do. Denying that humans actually have dreams at night would in fact be the more bizarre and extraordinary claim.
[D]oes this mean that experience itself contains something that is false, a lie? Mach and the empiriocritics answer ‘no’: experience always is experience, and, as such, presents no delusion of any kind. The point is only in the interpretation, the understanding of the interconnectedness of experience. What I see in a dream is also reality — but a psychical and not a physical reality. The point of criticism is to reveal what kind of interconnectedness of elements is involved, objective or subjective. Someone who takes forms in a dream to be physical complexes is deluded; someone who sees it simply as a dream is not. The same principle also applies to incidental or conventional illusions and to traditional religious beliefs. A mirage is a physical complex, but only of a purely optical character, like depictions obtained from mirrors and lenses. If someone takes a mirage as pure hallucination, as the result of a morbid condition of the brain, then that person is mistaken. But someone who consciously associated the elements of form and colour observed in a mirage with elements of hardness, flavour, etc., would also be mistaken. A woods goblin — as a product of popular creativity, as an expression of emotion evoked in an uncultured person in a forest environment — is real, but not real as a particular zoological species. The criticism of experience does not need to throw out anything from the content of experience; it must simply present it in its actual and precise interconnectedness.
— Alexander Bogdanov, “The Philosophy of Living Experience”
Simulations / Brain in a Vat
The simulation and a brain in a vat argument is similar to that of the dreams argument. It argues that the entire reality we are immersed in every day cannot be “real” because we could easily wake up one morning finding that we are just plugged into a simulation the whole time and thus everything we perceived was false.
The answer to this is the same as the answer to the dream argument. The simulation is still real. In the Matrix, for example, people really are hooked up to a simulation, the simulation is being run on real machines, and they really are having their nervous system stimulated by these machines. The people in the Matrix are experiencing something real, something that is really happening to them.
It can only be said not to be “real” in the sense of Plato’s cave. Observers stuck in the simulation, or stuck in Plato’s cave, have a limited perspective that would make them interpret reality in a limited sense. They would see reality as merely the life inside of the simulation, or the life inside of the cave, and not realize there is more to it than what they see in their limited perspective.
Their interpretation of reality would be limited, but this does not demonstrate in any way that they are not experiencing reality exactly as it is. Their limited point-of-view is really limited. They are really in a cave. They are really in a simulation. All points-of-view, in reality, are limited. There is no “cosmic perspective” that possesses all information simultaneously from all points-of-view as such a thing is not even compatible with the modern physical sciences.
Point-of-View Dependence
Sometimes, when people think of “objective reality” they envision some sort of cosmic point-of-view, some cosmic frame of reference, that has the ability to shift its perspective anywhere it wishes in the world and see everything from any angle instantly and simultaneously. If objective reality really constitutes some sort of cosmic super-perspective, then an individual perspective, a single point-of-view from a single reference frame, cannot be objective reality, as objective reality would not depend upon a single point-of-view but would in a sense incorporate and thus be independent of any singular point-of-view.
In Thomas Nagel’s famous essay “What is it like to be a bat?” Nagel argues that objective reality must be independent of point-of-view. We clearly experience the world from a particular point-of-view. For example, a bat has a unique point-of-view which we can never experience, we cannot know “what it is like to be a bat.” Experience is incredibly point-of-view dependent. Thus, Nagel concludes that experience cannot be objective reality as it really is. It must be a subjective creation of the mammalian brain, and thus coins the term “subjective experience” to describe the reality we observe.
If physicalism is to be defended, the phenomenological features must themselves be given a physical account. But when we examine their subjective character it: seems that such a result is impossible. The reason is that every subjective phenomenon is essentially connected with a single point of view, and it seems inevitable that an objective, physical theory will abandon that point of view.
— Thomas Nagel, “What is it like to be a Bat?”
The problem with this argument, however, is that this conception of objective reality as point-of-view independent is not compatible with the modern sciences. It is only compatible with a Newtonian worldview where space, time, and the variable properties of particles are absolute. Yet, in general relativity and relational quantum mechanics, none of these things are absolute. They all depend upon a chosen coordinate system, a chosen reference frame, a chosen point-of-view.
If you try to imagine reality as a cosmic observer that can see all points-of-view simulatenously, you quickly run into contradictions with our modern understanding of nature. For example, information cannot travel faster than light, so how could any cosmic perspective have access to information in two frames of reference so spatially separated that light has not yet had time to traverse the gap yet?
Indeed, simultaneity is itself relative. If you state that a cosmic observer can see the information from both points-of-view at the same time, then an observer in another frame of reference will disagree that it is being seen at the same time. You cannot establish an absolute moment of “now” in general relativity.
The point-of-view dependence of reality gets even deeper when we consider relational quantum mechanics, whereby all variable properties of particles, like position, momentum, spin, polarization, etc, all depend upon a chosen coordinate system, a reference frame, a point-of-view, etc. The physicist Carlo Rovelli has written in a paper titled Relational EPR that a lot of the confusion around quantum mechanics stems from people implicitly trying to restore an absolute reference frame without even realizing this is what they’re doing, a sort of cosmic “super-observer” that can reconcile all frames of reference simultaneously. This leads to contradictions and falsely causes people to come to believe in things like “spooky action at a distance,” which disappear if you abandon that assumption.
Reality just really is just relative all the way down. There is no “absolute” reality. Everything only exists relative to everything else, and thus to describe reality at all, one has to begin with a chosen coordinate system, a chosen point-of-view in which everything else is being described relative to. That is not a product of “consciousness” as Nagel claims, but is merely how reality really is. There is no point-of-view independent reality.
“What it is like to be” something is not “consciousness,” but just reality. To be real is to be. It is merely reality — being — as it really exists from a particular point-of-view. Indeed, we cannot know what it is like to be a bat, because there are real differences between reality from our point-of-view and reality from the bat’s point-of-view. However, there is nothing at all special about bats here.
I cannot know what it is like to be you, either, as there are real differences between myself and yourself. To make my reality from my point-of-view the same as your reality from your point-of-view would entail the dissolution of all the distinctions between myself and yourself, and thus myself would cease to be. This is merely a linguistic problem: what constitutes myself being a separate distinct object with its own separate and distinct being requires that there are distinctions between us, and these distinctions require that reality as it exists from our unique points-of-view must indeed be different between one another. We cannot know what it is like to be a rock, either. We only experience reality from our unique frame of reference, but there is no absolute reality independent of any reference frame.
If experience merely is reality as it actually is from a particular point-of-view, then asking for an “account” of it is a meaningless request. The physical sciences can build models to predict reality, but it cannot account for reality. Any attempt to account for reality could just be met with, “well, what accounts for that?” It is merely a rephrasing of the age-old question “why is there something rather than nothing?” It’s not an answerable question. We just have to deal with reality as it is.
But the rethinking of the world suggested by quantum physics, it seems to me, changes the terms of the question. If the world consists of relations, then no description is from outside it. The descriptions of the world are, in the ultimate analysis, all from inside. They are all in the first person. Our perspective on the world, our point of view, being situated inside the world, is not special: it rests on the same logic on which quantum physics, hence all of physics, is based. If we imagine the totality of things, we are imagining being outside the universe, looking at it from out there. But there is no “outside” to the totality of things. The external point of view is a point of view that does not exist. Every description of the world is from inside it. The externally observed world does not exist; what exists are only internal perspectives on the world which are partial and reflect one another. The world is this reciprocal reflection of perspectives.
…Thomas Nagel, in a celebrated article, asked the question, “What is it
like to be a bat?” He argued that this question is meaningful but escapes
natural science. The mistake, here, is to assume that physics is the
description of things in the third person. On the contrary, the relational
perspective shows that physics is always a first-person description of
reality, from one perspective.— Carlo Rovelli, “Helgoland: Making Sense of the Quantum Revolution”
Philosophical Zombies
This argument was put forward in a book by David Chalmers called The Conscious Mind where he posits that it is possible to conceive of two people who are physically identical in all possible respects, yet one possesses an additional property of “consciousness” and the other does not.
Everything we can conceive of is a remix of things we have observed before. I can conceive of a pink elephant even though I have never seen pink things before because I have seen pinkness and elephantness before. Now, if you ask me to conceive of an elephant of a color I have never seen before, where would I even begin?
A person who is blind since birth cannot conceive of sight at all. They cannot even see in their dreams. We can only conceive of things we have observed before. This is why the p-zombie argument makes zero sense, it tells us there can be two versions of David Chalmers where they are observably identical in all possible ways but one is different, one is a zombie, the other is not.
You just objectively cannot even conceive of that, if you think you can you are playing mental tricks on yourself. If you can conceive of it then there would be something observably different about them. Indeed, I believe most people who are convinced by this philosophical zombie argument are indeed playing mental tricks on themselves. They may, for example, shift their own point-of-view in their imagination behind the eyes of someone else, and then state they are conceiving of them as being “conscious,” and then shift their own point-of-view outside of them as a third-person perspective, and then conclude they are conceiving of them being a “zombie.”
This is indeed a mental trick as imagining your point-of-view being shifted around has no relevance to the question of consciousness or whether or not something has so-called “subjective experience.” I could also imagine my own point-of-view being shifted to that of a rock, like a GoPro strapped to the rock looking out on the world. Does that demonstrate I am conceiving of the rock as a conscious being? Of course not.
Indeed, if we interpret what Chalmers means by “consciousness” as merely perception form a particular point-of-view, then this contradicts with Nagel’s argument that it is even possible to know “what it is like to be” something from another point-of-view. Chalmers cites Nagel directly in his paper “Facing up to the Problem of Consciousness” where he introduces the so-called “hard problem,” and thus Chalmers directly contradicts himself if he claims he can conceive of the “inner experience” of another being.
When you imagine shifting your own point-of-view around, you are imagining yourself shifting your point-of-view around. It is not equivalent to actually occupying that fragment of reality from someone else’s frame of reference. You could make a lot of things similar between your point-of-view and someone else’s. For example, I could stand in the same location moving at the same speed that someone else had done before, but many things will still be different.
An obvious one: the nose I see in front of my face will not be the same. However, there will be much more subtle differences as well, since our entire life histories will be different, so our brains will not be the same, and thus we will experience what it is like to be someone standing there differently. I could never make my experience identical to another person’s unless everything about us was identical, meaning that we would no longer be separate people, and thus, logically, it is not possible for one person to actually occupy the identical fragment of reality as another.
The philosophical zombie argument simply does not work because you cannot even conceive of any difference between a zombie and a non-zombie. It is not merely that there cannot physically be two identical people where one is conscious and one is not, but you cannot even conceive of such a thing. For Chalmers, it is necessary that you can conceive of it because the physical sciences are driven by observation, and thus it is necessary for there to be a conceivable difference between these two people but not an observable (and thus physical) difference in order to justify consciousness being separate from objective reality. However, if you can’t conceive of what Chalmers is even talking about, then you cannot draw these kinds of conclusions from it.
Disabilities and the Usage of Tools
People with disabilities sometimes perceive the world differently. For example, a person might be color blind and cannot see the full range of colors the rest of us do, or may be fully blind and see no colors at all. Some may even be deaf, some cannot smell, some have heightened hearing and some heightened smell. Some can even see additional wavelengths of light that other people cannot see.
The argument is often made that because people may see reality differently, then, therefore, what we experience cannot be reality as it really is. Yet, this argument makes very little sense as disabilities are also real. A person who has no eyes really has no eyes, and so we would expect reality from their frame of reference to be one that does not contain any information we could associate with sight.
It would, in fact, be an argument against experience being reality as it really is if a person who had no eyes could still see. If we experience reality as it really is from our point-of-view, then we would expect real changes in that reality to be equivalent to real changes in our experiences. We would expect a person losing their eyes to no longer be able to see.
It’s a rather bizarre argument as usually people argue the opposite, they try to use examples of how we can apparently experience things beyond our physical sensory organs as proof consciousness is immaterial. Things like extrasensory perception (ESP) or out-of-body experiences (OBEs) for example. Yet, this argument tries to flip it on its head and argues that us perceiving exactly what we would expect that we could perceive based on our real physiology is somehow evidence what we perceive is not real. It is just a non-sequitur.
This is effectively the same argument Donald Hoffman makes. He claims that evolution does not favor infinite complexity to our sensory perceptions and our cognitive abilities because increasing them indefinitely eventually become detrimental to evolutionary fitness. It is only beneficial to develop them up to a point. He then concludes that because we have real limitations to our cognitive abilities and sensory organs, we must not experience reality as it really is.
One example he gives is our inability to directly observe wavelengths in the ultraviolet. Yet, again, these are real limitations. We really cannot see wavelengths of light in the ultraviolet with the naked eye. That information just isn’t available. Those light waves do not interact with the cones in our eyes and thus do not produce correlations between themselves and the electrical signals our brain.
That is just how reality really is from our point-of-view. It would be evidence against experience being reality as it really is if we could see wavelengths in the ultraviolet with the naked eye without having the cones for it in our eyes.
Indeed, identifying certain objects sometimes cannot be done with our base biological sensory organs but requires additional tools. Yet, what is so special about our biological sensory organs over man-made mechanical tools? They are all just objects for converting information from one form to another. It is bizarre to claim that we cannot perceive ultraviolet radiation at all because we cannot perceive it with the naked eye, as if the naked eye is somehow special because it is physically attached to our cranium. If you chemically bonded a sensor which could detect ultraviolet radiation to someone’s forehead, does that person perceiving ultraviolet radiation with that sensor somehow become “special” as well?
As will be discussed in the following sections, all abstract categories, such as red, blue, green, ultraviolet, rocks, trees, cats, Higgs bosons, etc, are all socially constructed norms used to identify and judge experiences to be something. Sometimes, it does require mechanical man-made tools in order to have the experience in order to identify that set of experiences to be something. At no point are we leaving experience just because we are using additional tools beyond our base sensory organs.
Hoffman also repeats the conflation between experience and interpretation and repeatedly gives examples of how his Fitness-Beats-Truth Theorem demonstrates we do not see reality as it really is. He does this by giving examples of how organisms interpret reality incorrectly, such as one example he provides is male beetles that falsely believed discarded bottles were female beetles. Yet, this is a failure of interpretation, it is a non-sequitur from this to conclude that the male beetles do not perceive reality as it really is. It is only evidence they interpret it incorrectly.
Matter is Invisible
Another common argument is that apparently matter is invisible and if reality is made of matter, then therefore reality must be invisible, and that visibility (experience) must be a product of the mammalian brain.
The issue with this argument is that matter is not invisible. Indeed, the fundamental particles in the Standard Model are defined precisely in terms of their observables. That is, their properties that can be observed, such as position, momentum, spin, charge, etc. How did we discover the Higgs boson if it’s apparently impossible to observe? Clearly, the physicists at the Large Hadron Collider must have observed something in order to conclude that they experimentally observed a Higgs boson.
The confusion over this issue stems from what Wittgenstein referred to as concept blindness. If you are not aware of a particular concept, you may not identify it when presented with it. For example, a person who has never seen a Dharma wheel before and enters someone’s home with those as patterns in the carpets, this person may fail to identify — or even notice at all — the pattern in the carpets.
A person who has no education on the physical sciences may be presented with all the measurements from the Large Hadron Collider but simply have no idea how to identify the Higgs boson within it. They lack the concept, and so to them it seems abstract and invisible, but a person with the expertise could indeed make observations and identify the Higgs boson within them.
Not all concepts are so surface-level that we can easily identify them without any background. You can teach a preschooler to identify the concept of “red,” but teaching a preschooler to identify a Higgs boson is basically impossible. This leads to a false belief that particles somehow are invisible and there is nothing to observe only because the general public does not have a conception of what an observation of them even entails.
The material sciences are driven by observation. Observation is, again, just another word for experience. The material sciences never leave experiential reality and talk about something invisible. This is just a myth perpetuated by mystics. Observation is not only at the heart of, but is the very driving force, of the scientific method.
Qualia
Reality is too complex to deal with all at once, so we break it up into chunks that are easier to talk about: dogs, cats, birds, trees, etc. These are known as abstract categories. Some of these abstract categories are rather complex, such as the notion of a Higgs boson, but others are rather trivial, such as the color red.
All abstract categories are socially constructed. In preschool you are shown different colors and told what constitutes red, what constitutes blue, etc. We may each occupy a different reference frame, a different “fragment” of reality, but we come to consensus on what constitutes certain abstract categories by being taught in institutions to associate certain experiences from our own perspectives all with the same word.
This is not just true of objects of qualia, but all objects. Dogs, trees, birds, cats, rocks, atoms, so on and so forth. As far as nature is concerned, reality just is. It is not constituted by objects. Objects are things humans socially construct as a way to speak about the world with other humans. Wittgenstein had put forward a simple rule-following problem to show that treating objects as something that reside in a person’s brain, such as, that the concept of “blue” exists in my head, leads to philosophical problems.
Consider a person on a deserted island who is inventing language for the first time. They decide to come up with a symbol for “red.” They can’t define this symbol with other symbols because other symbols don’t exist yet. So, how can they even define what constitutes “red”? One possibility is with a basket of items that are said to constitute redness. Maybe they fill that basket with red apples, red roses, and some red grass, and then label the basket with the symbol for red.
The next day, they wake up and forgot what they meant by “red,” so they look at the basket to try and remember. They see apples, roses, and grass, and they conclude that redness must refer to vegetation. Of course, that wasn’t their original intention, but the term “vegetation” fits the basket just as well as “red.” Unless you have an infinite amount of examples within your basket, then there will always be some ambiguity where a different label than what you originally intended could apply to the basket.
Indeed, even if the person didn’t forget their original intentions, if they could never be sure of their original intention just by looking at the basket, then how could they know? They would always just have to take it on faith that they did not forget their original intention. They could have forgotten and would just not realize it. If someone from the outside came to their island long after they passed away and tried to derive the meaning of the symbol from their basket, they too would run into this ambiguity and could not be sure what it actually meant.
The only reason we don’t run into this problem in our day-to-day lives is precisely because we don’t live on a deserted island. We live in a social community with social institutions that reinforce the same usage and correct others that deviate. If you call something “red” that is clearly not red by the social intention of this word, people would be quick to correct you for it. The symbols we use for objects get their stable meanings from a social context and it is incorrect to think of them as floating around in your head.
People often single out qualia as if it is some sort of special category of object. Cats are something external, but “redness” is often treated as something internal, as if redness is floating around in your head, but cats are not. I have never seen a convincing justification as to why any category of object should receive special treatment. Why demarcate between redness and catness? They are both socially constructed labels used to identify aspects in the reality we experience.
Indeed, they can both be experienced directly. Qualia is sometimes treated as if it can be experienced “more” than other objects, yet, I hardly even know what this means or how you can possibly quantify how “much” something can be experienced. Yes, there are experiences associated with redness that causes me to identify that aspect of reality as “red,” but there are also experiences associated with a cat that causes me to identify that aspect of reality as a “cat.” I can experience rocks, trees, birds, etc. There are a set of experiences associated with identification of a fundamental particle, as they are literally defined in terms of their observables.
Qualia is not some special category separate from all other categories of objects. At best, the only thing you could say that is unique about it is that it is some of the most surface-level categories. It requires very little mental effort to learn the differences between experiences that should be judged to be “red” and “blue.” It requires a little bit more mental effort to learn the differences between experiences that should be judged to be “cats” and “dogs.” It requires a great deal more mental effort to learn the differences between experiences that should be judged to be different fundamental particles.
The fact that we can more easily comprehend certain categories of objects over others is indeed an interesting question, but not a fundamental one, as it purely deals with function. Even metaphysical realists like David Chalmers admit function is entirely part of the so-called “easy problem.” It is a function of the human brain to identify objects. Indeed, even AI these days can identify objects. We can look at the internal function, the code and the hardware, and very easily understand why the AI — or even a biological organism — may have an easier time identifying certain categories of objects over others.
The breaking up of reality into chunks, into objects, is a function that intelligent beings carry out, but the natural world is not made of objects. Reality is exactly what we perceive it to be, prior to formulating any conceptions about it.
Indeed, to some extent, it has always been both necessary and proper for man, in his thinking, to divide things up, and to separate them, so as to reduce his problems to manageable proportions; for evidently, if in our practical technical work we tried to deal with the whole of reality all at once, we would be swamped…However, when this mode of thought is applied more broadly…then man ceases to regard the resulting divisions as merely useful or convenient and begins to see and experience himself and his world as actually constituted of separately existent fragments…fragmentation is continually being brought about by the almost universal habit of taking the content of our thought for ‘a description of the world as it is’. Or we could say that, in this habit, our thought is regarded as in direct correspondence with objective reality. Since our thought is pervaded with differences and distinctions, it follows that such a habit leads us to look on these as real divisions, so that the world is then seen and experienced as actually broken up into fragments.
— David Bohm, “Wholeness and the Implicate Order”
Quantity and Qualities
A common tactic of metaphysical realists and idealists is to demarcate between qualitative things and quantitative relations between things as if they occupy two separate “realms” of existence. It is then claimed that the realm of quantities is entirely invisible and metaphysical and thus should be discarded. Only qualities are said to be visible and self-evident while apparently quantities are entirely invisible.
Yet, this argument is just silly as there can simply be no qualities without quantities. If all qualitative objects occupied the same quantitative position, they could not be separate discrete objects at all. If all qualitative colors had the same quantitative color value, then there could be no discrete colors at all. If all sounds had the same quantitative volume, then there could be no qualitative separation between loudness or quietness. Quantities are the relationships between things that are necessary to separate them out and make them discrete qualitative things in the first place.
Take a look at the room around you. Do you see completely random rainbow static in your vision everywhere you look, or do you see orderly and stable patterns which you can clearly identify objects within your vision? “Quantities” are just relationship between things, they are what describe the pattern we observe. To state they cannot be observed is equivalent to stating there are no patterns or relationships between the things we observe. You cannot have things without relations between things. If everything is quantitatively identical, then it would be qualitatively identical as well, and thus there would be no identifiable objects at all.
Here’s a simple thought experiment. I hold up three fingers and ask you, “what do you see?” The correct answer is, of course, “I see three fingers,” but if you somehow think quantities cannot be perceived, then how can you say “I see three fingers” at all? How can you conclude there is “threeness” based on what you observe if you cannot perceive quantities? If you just said “I see fingers,” this still implicitly entails quantity. Why do you see “fingers” and not merely “a finger”? Clearly, if I held up three fingers on one hand, and a single finger on another, you could quantitatively identify the counts associated with each finger. It is rather obvious in our day-to-day lives that we can very much see quantities, and it is some bizarre notion philosophers cooked up in their ivory towers that somehow quantities are invisible to us.
Qualities and quantities do not occupy separate realms of existence. They are, in fact, defined in relationship to one another. You cannot have discretely separate qualitative things without quantitative relations between things in order to separate them out from one another. You also cannot have quantitative relations between things without there being qualitatively discrete things in the first place. These are not separate realms of existence, but they have mutual dependence upon each other for their very existence as part of a single realm, as they are defined in relationship to one another.
Cartesian Theater
Consider a person in a submarine which cannot see the world outside the submarine except upon their radars. The radars produce for them a kind of representation of the outside world. A popular worldview is to liken experience to a person sitting in a theater watching a film of the “outside world.” This is known as the Cartesian theater.
However, this worldview is rather problematic. If experience is akin to a person in a theater watching a film of the outside world, then what is the experience of that person watching the film? Would, inside there head, there also be a person watching a film? What about the experience of that person? Would that person’s experience also be of a person watching a film? And what about that person?
You end up with an infinite regress. It’s not a coherent worldview. Experience is not like a person watching a film. This infinite regress stems from treating experience as the appearance of reality. Philosophers sometimes refer to experience as “phenomenological,” or use the frame “phenomenal experience.” The term “phenomenal” here literally means the appearance of reality as opposed to reality itself, and is precisely the same usage that Kant had used the term.
The infinite regress disappears if we reject that experience is indeed the appearance of reality. Rather, experience just is reality. It is not the “appearance of” reality, the “reflection of” reality, the “representation of” reality, the “illusion of” reality. It just is reality exactly as it is.
‘Phenomenal,’ etymologically and philosophically, means appearing. Why should we describe experience as ‘appearing’? As, that is, appearing to someone, to a subject, as is logically required by the syntax of the verb? This turn of phrase, familiar though it may be within a certain philosophical tradition, nonetheless sounds strange. According to the regular syntax of ‘experience,’ our ‘experiences’ do not ‘appear’ to us. We have them, in a way that requires the progressive form: ‘I am having an experience.’ A kind of direct transitivity seems to be involved: an internal accusative. As a matter of fact, experience just is its ‘being had.’ Doesn’t talk of experience ‘appearing’ — or to put it in technical terms, its ‘phenomenality’ — already create a gap between an experience and its being had that cannot exist? I would be inclined to say that an experience does not appear; it just is what it is.
— Jocelyn Benoist, “Toward a Contextual Realism”
Conclusion
The main conclusion to draw from all of this is that no philosopher has convincingly established that we do not perceive reality as it really is, that is to say, they have not convincingly justified metaphysical realism. If you accept metaphysical realism, you run into different philosophical problems, like the mind-body problem and the “hard problem of consciousness.” Many philosophers then try to “solve” these problems by introducing new ideas like dualism, idealism, panpsychism, illusionism, so on and so forth. But none of these “solutions” are even necessary if you have not established metaphysical realism in the first place, as there is simply no “problem” to be “solved” at all.
