Holy Cyclops

On the Darwin Awards Forums (at http://forum.darwinawards.com ), I’m taking part in a few threads in which the question of whether there is such a thing as an objectively existing reality, and the question of whether or not we can know anything about it if it does exist, have arisen.  To my astonishment, about half of the authors in those threads are, or say they are, subjectivists:  They do not accept that there is an objectively existing reality.

To be fair, it seems that some of them take the quite natural position that we cannot know, with certainty, that there is an objectively existing reality external to ourselves, and that even if there is, we cannot know, with certainty, what it is like.  We could be brains in vats, being stimulated by some mad scientist; we could be hallucinating.  We have no way to know, with certainty; moreover, we have no way of assigning a probability to the existence of an objective reality:  How, after all, does one assign a probability to the alternative possibility of our hallucinating all of reality?  Most of the DAF’s subjectivists seem to think that as a practical matter, we operate as though there were an objectively existing reality, and simply refuse to say that we absolutely know there is.  

But for some reason, the word “objective” makes them quail.  When I say that I make the assumption that there is an objectively existing reality, they immediately react as though I were wrong to do so.  The word “objective” seems to make them think that I have in mind not only that there is an objectively existing reality but also that I have complete and certain knowledge of it—which, of course, is not at all what I have in mind.  I only have in mind that there are apples and tables and chairs whose existence does not depend on my perceiving them or thinking about them, and that will go on existing if I turn my back or walk away or go to sleep or die, and that other people can also perceive.  Our subjectivists say that I’m assuming too much—that I have no basis for assuming that there is an objectively existing reality.  But if there were no objectively existing reality, how could one explain the patterns and regularities of our sensory qualia?  How could one explain intersubjectivity—as the telepathic sharing of a mental world?  How could one explain the possibility of error in empirical claims?  How could one explain the usefulness of our mental maps if there were no territory being mapped—if there were no correspondence between the structure of a person’s mental map and the structure of the territory?  An objectively existing reality looks like a good bet to me. 

When did “objective” become a bad word?  When did subjectivism take such hold?  I’m baffled.

Scientists, when faced with physical phenomena to explain, come up with plausible-sounding explanations. Often, however, those plausible-sounding explanations fail to stand up under further experimental testing, and they are then consigned to the dustbin of history. Nature says, “Nice try, but sorry, no; that’s not how things are.”  Science demands that our ideas conform to the way the world is, or forever remain merely fictional constructions of the human mind.

Metaphysicians, when faced with what they think of as metaphysical problems, come up with plausible-sounding explanations, too. However, since there is no testing of those explanations against nature, they cannot be consigned to the dustbin of history  (as long as they are not clearly internally contradictory—and I mean clearly). Proponents of plausible-sounding but false metaphysical theories may go on supporting them forever, as there is no experimental test by which to judge them. I take this to be good reason to be skeptical of metaphysical theories in general.  Any number of theories of the nature of reality can be constructed, and many have been; and, naturally, some metaphysical theory might be correct.  But as long as we cannot have evidentiary reason to prefer one to all the rest, and cannot thereby distinguish among their respective merits as descriptions of reality, we should probably withhold our belief in any of them.  (This includes accounts of various sorts of deity or afterlife.)  We should not expect our untested and usually untestable metaphysical theories, sans  evidence, to be any more reliable than our scientific theories before they’ve been tested; if most of the latter turn out to be false, surely so must most of the former.