In Defense of Subjective Reality

 

Mrs. iWe lives in a much more colorful world than I do. She sees thousands of shades of every color, filled with rich chromatic consonance and dissonance – whereas I, as a normal male with normal eyeballs, am clearly impoverished by comparison. I would go so far as to say that our relative color sensitivity gives her life meaning (such as through her museum-quality quilts) that I can only understand by feeling the joy that quilting brings her.

Pick any two people, and you will find different realities. Twins raised in the same home can have wildly divergent ideas about the nature of their home or their parents’ marriage. 2+2 might equal 4 in arithmetic, but humans are rationalizing animals, and we have no problem making all of our perceptions match what we have decided is our own reality.

I think this is not a bug – it is one of life’s features. And it is one that is divinely approved! The Torah tells us what happened in Egypt and the wilderness – and then the final book, Deuteronomy, is Moshe’s summation of those events. His summation is not merely Cliff’s Notes, and his words do not, in all cases, leave the reader with an identical impression about what happened.

The lesson is simple enough: G-d approves of different versions of reality. The Jewish people heard things one way at Sinai – and then, years later, they heard a different version from Moshe’s perspective. Both are interesting and useful and valid (think of different aspects of the same elephant).

As you may know, I consider the idea of an Objective Reality to be part of Plato’s religious faith, since it is impervious to empirical data: it cannot be proven or disproven.

The Torah endorses, by contrast, each person’s own thoughts and perceptions and sense of what is “real.” To the extent that two or more people agree, then shared perceptions are useful. But the fact that different people have different perceptions is a celebration that each person has value, and, to at least some extent, is capable of creating, in their minds, their own reality.

 

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  1. Doug Watt Member
    Doug Watt
    @DougWatt

    The danger comes when human beings turn unexamined ideas into actions. Every generation believes that their ideas are somehow new, and have never been tried before. They have some new knowledge, and it must be tried to save the world. As Lord Acton stated; “There is nothing more irritating than the discovery of the pedigree of ideas.”

    Nietzsche‘s nihilistic thoughts, and the existentialists that followed him had it’s origins in the poetry of Theognis, a sixth century BC Greek poet, who in turn built upon other thinkers in his time.

    Best of all for mortal beings is never to have been born at all
    Nor ever to have set eyes on the bright light of the sun
    But, since he is born, a man should make utmost haste through the gates of Death
    And then repose, the earth piled into a mound round himself.

    • #31
  2. iWe Coolidge
    iWe
    @iWe

    Doug Watt (View Comment):
    Every generation believes that their ideas are somehow new, and have never been tried before. They have some new knowledge, and it must be tried to save the world. As Lord Acton stated; “There is nothing more irritating than the discovery of the pedigree of ideas.”

    That is one reason why I really enjoy my analyses of the Torah. The pedigree of Torah knowledge is highly literate and extremely well documented. And yet it is possible to have entirely new understandings.

    Your new ideas might not be new. I know mine are. 

    • #32
  3. iWe Coolidge
    iWe
    @iWe

    Henry Racette (View Comment):
    but I think anyone who concludes that there isn’t an underlying objective reality — unless that conclusion is reached for essentially religious/metaphysical reasons — is being silly.

    I disagree, of course.

    There is no way to prove that an objective reality exists – since it must exist independent of our perceptions, and our perceptions are the only way in which we can gather data. 

    So Objective Reality is a tenet of faith.But not one in the Torah.

    I prefer to consciously choose my religion, rather than have it handed to me by Plato.

    • #33
  4. Barfly Member
    Barfly
    @Barfly

    iWe (View Comment):

    Michael Brehm (View Comment):
    There is too much objective reality for any one person to behold at once,

    That is the joke by itself: beholding something changes it, so any so-called objective reality has to be independent of perception!

    By definition what we see is not precisely what is there.

    That’s silly. Beholding something does not change it. Looking will certainly change your perception of it. I suppose the second sentence is vaguely truthlike, but then you had to add the “by definition” thing.

    • #34
  5. Barfly Member
    Barfly
    @Barfly

    Michael Brehm (View Comment):
    There is too much objective reality for any one person to behold at once, so we must all constantly compare notes on our own subjective realities to get an idea of what we’re experiencing.

    Interesting observation of similar phenomena at different scales. In the eye’s retina, the area capable of detailed edge detection is tiny – the size of your thumbnail held at arm’s length. The detailed visual world in one’s mind is the result of the eye’s seemingly random movement over the field of view that continually refreshes the mind’s image. Neurons in the integrative regions “constantly compare … their own” most recently modeled states to generate the visual world we experience.

    • #35
  6. Henry Racette Member
    Henry Racette
    @HenryRacette

    iWe (View Comment):

    Henry Racette (View Comment):
    but I think anyone who concludes that there isn’t an underlying objective reality — unless that conclusion is reached for essentially religious/metaphysical reasons — is being silly.

    I disagree, of course.

    There is no way to prove that an objective reality exists – since it must exist independent of our perceptions, and our perceptions are the only way in which we can gather data.

    So Objective Reality is a tenet of faith.But not one in the Torah.

    I prefer to consciously choose my religion, rather than have it handed to me by Plato.

    iWe — but do you mind if I call you I? — I’m an unlettered man, wholly unqualified to offer deep thoughts on deep issues. But spouting shallow thoughts on what I suspect only appear to be deep issues? Yeah, I’ll totally go there.

    The very phase subjective reality presupposes that there is something there to be looked at and (mis)perceived. Otherwise, there is nothing to distinguish subjective reality from fantasy. That something is just plain old reality. You can tack “objective” in front of it if you want, but it hardly seems necessary: reality is the thing that we perceive, however imperfectly, with our flawed senses.

    It’s entirely conceivable, of course, that we all live in some vast simulation (which itself is a simulation within a simulation within… well, turtles all the way down, as Professor Hawking comically observed). So I have to agree with you that we can’t prove anything: we can’t even prove that we exist, much less objective reality — and so the word “prove” becomes meaningless, a null concept (along with every other word and meaning, frankly).

    But even that doesn’t argue against there being, ultimately, a reality — even if we have no perception of it at all, even if all we see (or think we see) is a simulation of a simulation of a simulation, etc.

    Again, it all seems rather silly. Everything in our experience points to a world that exists independently of our perception, a something that we perceive imperfectly but with a signature repeatability and consistency, a world that exists as much on the far side of Pluto as in our own back yards.

    Dismissing that seems, to me, to make a mockery of the idea of thought. And at some point, and fairly quickly, one needs to either become a tenured professor of philosophy, or shake it off and get back to the business of living.

    • #36
  7. Henry Racette Member
    Henry Racette
    @HenryRacette

    Barfly (View Comment):

    iWe (View Comment):

    Michael Brehm (View Comment):
    There is too much objective reality for any one person to behold at once,

    That is the joke by itself: beholding something changes it, so any so-called objective reality has to be independent of perception!

    By definition what we see is not precisely what is there.

    That’s silly. Beholding something does not change it. Looking will certainly change your perception of it. I suppose the second sentence is vaguely truthlike, but then you had to add the “by definition” thing.

    He’s getting all Heisenberg on you, Bar.

     

    • #37
  8. Shawn Buell (Majestyk) Member
    Shawn Buell (Majestyk)
    @Majestyk

    iWe (View Comment):
    There is no way to prove that an objective reality exists – since it must exist independent of our perceptions, and our perceptions are the only way in which we can gather data.

    Now do morality.  Are you going to argue that while reality is subjective, morality (a metaphenomenon of reality) is therefore objective?  Please: you don’t get to have it both ways.

    This is the thing about objective reality: it’s the stuff that remains whether or not you believe in it.  You’re essentially arguing here that facts don’t exist… but that moral facts must.

    That is… incoherent.  To say the least.

    Now: a better, more defensible position is to point out that perception about what constitutes reality is variable between individuals.

    But what about if we were to introduce some sort of neutral observer – an electronic eyeball which could report some manner of facts independent of the inherent biases tied in to a direct observation?  What could emerge from this is more or less a set of facts, with the normal provisos about “error” and “accuracy” that are part and parcel of our observation of apparent reality.  There could be very little argument about this manner of reporting, which implies that reality does take some absolute form at a level which may be divorced from our ability to perceive it… but taking the most extreme form of the “perceptions differ” argument seems indefensible for a variety of reasons.  Otherwise, stuff in the real world wouldn’t work at all.

    Conceding that you don’t understand it is not the same as saying that reality doesn’t exist.

    • #38
  9. Barfly Member
    Barfly
    @Barfly

    Henry Racette (View Comment):

    Barfly (View Comment):

    iWe (View Comment):

    Michael Brehm (View Comment):
    There is too much objective reality for any one person to behold at once,

    That is the joke by itself: beholding something changes it, so any so-called objective reality has to be independent of perception!

    By definition what we see is not precisely what is there.

    That’s silly. Beholding something does not change it. Looking will certainly change your perception of it. I suppose the second sentence is vaguely truthlike, but then you had to add the “by definition” thing.

    He’s getting all Heisenberg on you, Bar.

     

    Yeah, the misconception that the “uncertainty principle” is a statement about the act of measurement is so commonplace as to be Bohring. 

    • #39
  10. Henry Racette Member
    Henry Racette
    @HenryRacette

    Shawn Buell (Majestyk) (View Comment):
    But what about if we were to introduce some sort of neutral observer

    Put differently: the fact that the bathroom scale is off by a bit doesn’t mean my weight isn’t real.

    • #40
  11. Henry Racette Member
    Henry Racette
    @HenryRacette

    Barfly (View Comment):

    Henry Racette (View Comment):

    Barfly (View Comment):

    iWe (View Comment):

    Michael Brehm (View Comment):
    There is too much objective reality for any one person to behold at once,

    That is the joke by itself: beholding something changes it, so any so-called objective reality has to be independent of perception!

    By definition what we see is not precisely what is there.

    That’s silly. Beholding something does not change it. Looking will certainly change your perception of it. I suppose the second sentence is vaguely truthlike, but then you had to add the “by definition” thing.

    He’s getting all Heisenberg on you, Bar.

     

    Yeah, the misconception that the “uncertainty principle” is a statement about the act of measurement is so commonplace as to be Bohring.

    And Barfly Niels it.

    (Sorry.)

    • #41
  12. Shawn Buell (Majestyk) Member
    Shawn Buell (Majestyk)
    @Majestyk

    Henry Racette (View Comment):

    Shawn Buell (Majestyk) (View Comment):
    But what about if we were to introduce some sort of neutral observer

    Put differently: the fact that the bathroom scale is off by a bit doesn’t mean my weight isn’t real.

    It’s telling me I’m fat! That’s just the scale’s reality.  Not mine.

    • #42
  13. MarciN Member
    MarciN
    @MarciN

    I’m completely confident that the original post has the Torah right, :-), but I’m not sure it’s completely accurate about Socrates. :-)

    I read an outstanding and fascinating book years ago (1999) by Elisa New. She is an English professor at Harvard and the wife of Larry Summers.  The book was called The Line’s Eye: Poetic Experience, American Sight. Some of the book concerns the history of education.

    She started where all treatises on education must start: with the Greeks and Socrates. She wrote that most people don’t know what the point of contention was between Socrates and the Greek elders he lived among. It was that they wanted to go to a completely written education format and experience for students. Socrates said that if society pursued that, working completely in writing instead of relying at least some of the time on oral argument, we would, paraphrasing from memory what she wrote, be missing half the message.

    Oral testimony or oral teaching is more comprehensive and far faster in some ways because it involves all of our perceptions, which are governed by our senses.

    Our hearing or reading a variety of perspectives on any single issue or assertion is critical to our ascertaining the truth. And that’s exactly what Socrates taught.

    • #43
  14. iWe Coolidge
    iWe
    @iWe

    Barfly (View Comment):
    That’s silly. Beholding something does not change it.

    Sure it does.

    See the double slit experiments.

    See this, and the famous Weizmann experiment.

    https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1998/02/980227055013.htm

    REHOVOT, Israel, February 26, 1998–One of the most bizarre premises of quantum theory, which has long fascinated philosophers and physicists alike, states that by the very act of watching, the observer affects the observed reality.

    In a study reported in the February 26 issue of Nature (Vol. 391, pp. 871-874), researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science have now conducted a highly controlled experiment demonstrating how a beam of electrons is affected by the act of being observed. The experiment revealed that the greater the amount of “watching,” the greater the observer’s influence on what actually takes place.

    The research team headed by Prof. Mordehai Heiblum, included Ph.D. student Eyal Buks, Dr. Ralph Schuster, Dr. Diana Mahalu and Dr. Vladimir Umansky. The scientists, members of the Condensed Matter Physics Department, work at the Institute’s Joseph H. and Belle R. Braun Center for Submicron Research.

    When a quantum “observer” is watching Quantum mechanics states that particles can also behave as waves. This can be true for electrons at the submicron level, i.e., at distances measuring less than one micron, or one thousandth of a millimeter. When behaving as waves, they can simultaneously pass through several openings in a barrier and then meet again at the other side of the barrier. This “meeting” is known as interference.

    • #44
  15. iWe Coolidge
    iWe
    @iWe

     

    Shawn Buell (Majestyk) (View Comment):
    Conceding that you don’t understand it is not the same as saying that reality doesn’t exist.

    Would you agree if we changed “Reality” to “God”?

     

     

    • #45
  16. iWe Coolidge
    iWe
    @iWe

    Shawn Buell (Majestyk) (View Comment):
    Shawn Buell (Majestyk)

    iWe (View Comment):
    There is no way to prove that an objective reality exists – since it must exist independent of our perceptions, and our perceptions are the only way in which we can gather data.

    Now do morality. Are you going to argue that while reality is subjective, morality (a metaphenomenon of reality) is therefore objective? Please: you don’t get to have it both ways.

    I think you might have confused me with some other religious person (it is a bit like race blindness: from the outside, all religious people think alike).

    I have no problem whatsoever with morality being wiggly and not absolute.  Every single moral principle has edges where there is no clarity at all. 

    • #46
  17. Susan Quinn Contributor
    Susan Quinn
    @SusanQuinn

    So I’m trying to get clarity on whether there are some themes here (or not), notwithstanding the referenced principles. Are the key questions: is there an objective reality outside of our perceptions, or one that we can or cannot see? If we cannot see objective reality (because our very view of it will influence what it is), how can we be sure it exists? And it sounds like @iwe is saying if we can’t prove it exists, or see it, how can we be certain that it exists at all? BTW @majestyk, I don’t think there is an objective morality, but I think there is a morality–maybe a Western morality?–that we can agree on. That’s more a shared morality than an objective one.

    • #47
  18. Barfly Member
    Barfly
    @Barfly

    iWe (View Comment):

    Barfly (View Comment):
    That’s silly. Beholding something does not change it.

    Sure it does.

    See the double slit experiments.

    See this, and the famous Weizmann experiment.

    https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1998/02/980227055013.htm

    REHOVOT, Israel, February 26, 1998–One of the most bizarre premises of quantum theory, which has long fascinated philosophers and physicists alike, states that by the very act of watching, the observer affects the observed reality.

    In a study reported in the February 26 issue of Nature (Vol. 391, pp. 871-874), researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science have now conducted a highly controlled experiment demonstrating how a beam of electrons is affected by the act of being observed. The experiment revealed that the greater the amount of “watching,” the greater the observer’s influence on what actually takes place.

    The research team headed by Prof. Mordehai Heiblum, included Ph.D. student Eyal Buks, Dr. Ralph Schuster, Dr. Diana Mahalu and Dr. Vladimir Umansky. The scientists, members of the Condensed Matter Physics Department, work at the Institute’s Joseph H. and Belle R. Braun Center for Submicron Research.

    When a quantum “observer” is watching Quantum mechanics states that particles can also behave as waves. This can be true for electrons at the submicron level, i.e., at distances measuring less than one micron, or one thousandth of a millimeter. When behaving as waves, they can simultaneously pass through several openings in a barrier and then meet again at the other side of the barrier. This “meeting” is known as interference.

    Your misinterpretation of our observations of the world’s fundamental behavior (double slit experiment, delayed choice, et c.) misleads you. Granted, popular press copy like that you quote encourages the error.

    The double slit experiment is significant because its outcome is found to differ when there are multiple paths available to the particle versus just one available path. In both cases the test particle does not undergo any interaction with any other particle except at the end of its path, where the measurement is taken – yet that measurement differs simply due to the potential for the one particle to have taken this or that path. (That’s a sloppy description, but better than the one from Science Daily.)

    The misunderstanding comes in the description of a variation of that experiment. If we allow the test particle to interact with another particle along one of the available paths, then the result changes. Well, duh. I hope that’s not surprising in itself. The error is to mischaracterize that new interaction as “observation”. The new interaction is most emphatically not “observation” in the sense you mean. The change in outcome when we add an interaction with a single photon is no more significant than that we observe when we close off that path entirely.

    [to be continued]

    • #48
  19. Shawn Buell (Majestyk) Member
    Shawn Buell (Majestyk)
    @Majestyk

    iWe (View Comment):
    I have no problem whatsoever with morality being wiggly and not absolute. Every single moral principle has edges where there is no clarity at all. 

    I feel like that’s not really an answer.  Are there moral facts or is morality either subjective or (heaven forfend) relative?

    For my part, I would assert that there are moral facts but that they are contingent upon our nature and emergent through the process of building society rather than being either eternal or cosmic.  What we consider right human conduct (morality) might not be applicable among a society of sentient lobsters.

    • #49
  20. Barfly Member
    Barfly
    @Barfly

    [continued from #48]

    The popular science press finds it compelling to conflate human observation with quantum interaction. Their motivation, at its base, is to justify the idea that man constructs the world. That’s not surprising – they’re journalists, most of whom embrace the fall. 

    Reality at human scale emerges from interactions at smaller scales. At those scales, reality has been shown to be nonlocal, but all that really means is that our idea of “local”, that works at our scale, has no relevance at sufficiently small scales. That’s only surprising if you think things can be subdivided forever without changing their nature. We dispensed with that idea for good around the start of the 20th century.

    • #50
  21. Shawn Buell (Majestyk) Member
    Shawn Buell (Majestyk)
    @Majestyk

    Susan Quinn (View Comment):
    Are the key questions: is there an objective reality outside of our perceptions, or one that we can or cannot see? If we cannot see objective reality (because our very view of it will influence what it is), how can we be sure it exists? And it sounds like @iwe is saying if we can’t prove it exists, or see it, how can we be certain that it exists at all? BTW @majestyk, I don’t think there is an objective morality, but I think there is a morality–maybe a Western morality?–that we can agree on.

    The question at the root seems to be “if we can’t detect objective reality, does it exist?”  The question is silly, I think for a variety of reasons starting with a similar objection: “if a tree falls in the forest and nobody is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”

    The problem being that what is proposed by the question is absurd – why is “sound” (or what we perceive as sound, or pressure waves traveling through a medium) contingent upon having an observer to exist?  In all of human history we’ve never experienced a situation where a tree falling in the forest doesn’t cause the vibrations which we find to be characteristic of making sound waves.  Does that imply that it could never happen?  Of course not – but much like the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics we rely upon the null hypothesis being true unless data arrives which overturns it.

    The fundamental reality at the root of all this relies upon a set of facts which are independent of observation (i.e., “reality”) and simply don’t care about who’s around to see them or whether they’re described correctly in a secondhand fashion or not.

    We’ve discovered that human beings tend to make very bad witnesses;  our perceptions are colored and biased in a variety of ways which are made invisible to us.  That doesn’t mean that reality either doesn’t exist or is somehow changed by our (mis)perception of it.

    A good example of why this is true is the use of quasar light emitted billions of years ago to demonstrate quantum entanglement independent of the so-called “freedom of choice loophole.”

    • #51
  22. iWe Coolidge
    iWe
    @iWe

    MarciN (View Comment):
    And the variety of perspectives on any single thing is critical to our ascertaining truth. And that’s exactly what Socrates always taught.

    I quibble. Socrates/Plato was a know-it-all. The Socratic Method is not an dialogue: it was one person schooling the other.

    Most traditions have wisdom handed down by the wise. The Jewish tradition is that arguments are the best way to figure things out – and that the argument/process is often much more important and valuable than the answer/product.

    • #52
  23. iWe Coolidge
    iWe
    @iWe

    Shawn Buell (Majestyk) (View Comment):
    For my part, I would assert that there are moral facts but that they are contingent upon our nature and emergent through the process of building society rather than being either eternal or cosmic. What we consider right human conduct (morality) might not be applicable among a society of sentient lobsters.

    So that is an argument as to the source of a moral code. On the particulars, the Torah commands us to make moral decisions based on our own judgement – so enforcing morality in Judaism is indeed subjective, with the text as a touchstone.

     

    • #53
  24. Arahant Member
    Arahant
    @Arahant

    Shawn Buell (Majestyk) (View Comment):
    But what about if we were to introduce some sort of neutral observer

    I suspect @neutralobserver would be bored (and Bohred) by this thread.

    • #54
  25. Slow on the uptake Coolidge
    Slow on the uptake
    @Chuckles

    Somebody has to quote it:

    We are entitled to our own opinions – but not to our own facts.

    That’s just my opinion, of course.

    • #55
  26. Barfly Member
    Barfly
    @Barfly

    Slow on the uptake (View Comment):

    Somebody has to quote it:

    We are entitled to our own opinions – but not to our own facts.

    That’s just my opinion, of course.

    It’s a very nice way of phrasing the distinction.

    • #56
  27. Saint Augustine Member
    Saint Augustine
    @SaintAugustine

    Henry Racette (View Comment):

    Saint Augustine (View Comment):
    And yet Henry R. specifically says that what he is doing is believing in an underlying objective reality.

    I accept it as axiomatic, because any alternative would seem to include contradictions. I know smart people think long and hard about this stuff, but I think anyone who concludes that there isn’t an underlying objective reality — unless that conclusion is reached for essentially religious/metaphysical reasons — is being silly.

    Right on.

    • #57
  28. Saint Augustine Member
    Saint Augustine
    @SaintAugustine

    Barfly (View Comment):

    iWe (View Comment):

    Michael Brehm (View Comment):
    There is too much objective reality for any one person to behold at once,

    That is the joke by itself: beholding something changes it, so any so-called objective reality has to be independent of perception!

    By definition what we see is not precisely what is there.

    That’s silly. Beholding something does not change it. Looking will certainly change your perception of it. I suppose the second sentence is vaguely truthlike, but then you had to add the “by definition” thing.

    Usually not in any big way, but it’s hard if not impossible to behold anything (at least anything physical) without affecting it. If it’s true of electrons, then it’s true of mountains that have electrons in them.  [Correction: See # 73, below!]

    If we’ve simply been misled about those electrons–as suggested by #s 48 and 50–then . . . never mind!

    • #58
  29. Saint Augustine Member
    Saint Augustine
    @SaintAugustine

    iWe (# 33):

    I prefer to consciously choose my religion, rather than have it handed to me by Plato.

    Is there anyone–any human being now living anywhere in this world–with whom you think you’re disagreeing on this point?

    • #59
  30. Saint Augustine Member
    Saint Augustine
    @SaintAugustine

    iWe (View Comment):

    MarciN (View Comment):
    And the variety of perspectives on any single thing is critical to our ascertaining truth. And that’s exactly what Socrates always taught.

    I quibble. Socrates/Plato was a know-it-all. The Socratic Method is not an dialogue: it was one person schooling the other.

    You quibble with little knowledge of Socrates or Plato–and with the false dichotomy fallacy.

    A useful dialogue necessarily involves one person schooling another–when one person is much mistaken.

    Recognizing the importance of a variety of perspectives is entirely consistent with one person schooling another.  Perspective is important, and we need to know more than one of them, but they sure ain’t all equal; that’s a central point of Plato’s Symposium, and indeed of the whole tradition of philosophical ascent.

    • #60
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