In the previous posts, I asked whether questions or observations can create reality, or whether they instead form an intersection where reality appears.
I now want to sharpen the issue.
Many discussions seem to assume that there is a fully formed, objective structure of reality “out there,” and observation merely reveals it.
But what if objectivity itself is not prior to observation, and instead emerges through repeated, shared intersections of perspectives?
In that case, observation would not be a causal force, nor a passive recording device, but a stabilizing process.
My question is simple but uncomfortable:
Can we meaningfully talk about a “purely objective structure” without already presupposing a standpoint from which it is identified as such?
I’m curious where others locate objectivity: before observation, after it, or nowhere at all.
If objectivity requires the removal of all standpoints, who or what is left to recognize it as “objective”?
There is a Real beyond our perceived reality, which is independent from observation, but doesn’t seep through the observation. Anything that reaches the conscious mind stops being objective. The Real is experienced only when our reality is shattered by an intervention of the Real. In scientific terms, the internal consistence of an epistemology doesn’t bring you close to the truth, but it just makes itself more resistant to the Real. Eventually the whole paradigm is shattered by something that cannot be encompassed in the epistemology and you can assume what was left outside is the Real intervening. Once the epistemology is consolidated, the bounds of what you can know are already set and are not objective, but depending on the epistemology itself, which is always partial.
I largely agree with you that there may be a Real that exceeds perception and resists epistemological capture.
Where my thinking differs slightly is this: even the moment of “intervention,” “shattering,” or resistance is only intelligible as such if there is already a way in which reality can appear as one.
In other words, I’m not denying the Real beyond experience. I’m questioning the condition under which something can appear as the Real at all.
That condition, as I see it, cannot be reduced to epistemology, but neither can it be eliminated as irrelevant. It points instead to a form of subjectivity that functions not as representation, but as the ground of coherence.
This way of thinking was prompted by encountering a paper that approaches these issues experimentally rather than purely philosophically, and since then my thinking has been moving in this direction.
ah no yeah, I agree, you can only experience the reflection. The Real punches you in the face but you don’t feel the punch, you just wake up on the floor without recollection of what happened.
That resonates with me. At the same time, I’ve come across a scientific paper that suggests a slightly different possibility: that under certain conditions, reality may not only intervene into us, but emerge with us — not as direct access to the Real, but as a form of co-emergence involving meaning, observation, and agency.
Some recent experimental work even frames this emergence in terms that border on the theological — not God as an object of belief, but as a name for the condition under which co-emergence becomes possible.
this feels a lot like a rediscovery of constructivism?
I see why it might sound that way. But I’m not treating subjectivity as something that constructs reality. I’m thinking of it as a condition under which reality can appear and stabilize at all — which is why classical constructivism feels insufficient to me.
If you’d like, I’d be happy to send a brief summary of the original paper that led me in this direction. I’d be very interested to hear how you read it.
can’t promise I will have time to read it, but feel free
Thank you for your reply. In that case, I’ll share the original paper I was referring to.
I know you’re likely busy, so below is a brief summary of the paper for context.
↓↓↓ This paper does not adopt the common constructivist view that reality is constituted or produced by the subject’s acts of meaning-making. Rather, it asks a more fundamental question: under what structural conditions can something appear as “reality” at all and stabilize as an observable phenomenon. In this framework, subjectivity is not treated as a psychological state, a representational layer, or a source of cognitive distortion, but is redefined as a generative condition that makes coherence itself possible.
The central claim of the paper is not that observation or consciousness “creates” reality, but that observable physical phenomena emerge only when specific conditions are satisfied. These conditions are described as an intersection between a nonlocal, timeless “absolute subjectivity” and a relative subject embedded in spacetime. Reality appears as a meaningful event only when this intersection is established.
Within this framework, the Real is neither denied nor directly accessed. It is understood as something that always exceeds representation, yet becomes manifest only through particular coherence processes. In this sense, the paper avoids both naïve realism, which presupposes a fully observer-independent objective world, and pure constructivism, which reduces reality to subjective construction.
Empirically, the paper examines nonlocal correlations between EEG signals and quantum measurement sequences, arguing that these phenomena cannot be adequately explained by standard causal or correlational models. Instead, they appear only under specific structural conditions. To avoid an infinite regress of “who observes the observer,” the paper proposes an emergent third observer arising from the intersection itself.
In this way, subjectivity is not positioned in opposition to objectivity, but functions as the ground that makes objectivity possible. Reality is not reducible to either pole of the subject–object divide; rather, it emerges as a coherent whole only through the structural conditions that precede that division.
The material world exists, and our perceptions, through continual perceptions, get closer to the truth and deeper understanding. We are the material world made self-aware, not outside of it.
I understand your position, and it makes sense to me. That there is a material world, and that our cognition gradually approaches a more accurate understanding of it.
What I find myself hesitating over, though, is this point: from where do we judge that our understanding is actually “getting closer” to the truth?
If we are always already within a self-recognized material world, what functions as the external reference that allows us to say that one stage of cognition is more accurate than another?
I’m not trying to deny the existence of the world. I’m wondering whether there is a distinction between a world that exists and a world that becomes stable as a world for us.
It seems to me that some relational process might sit between those two. I’m curious how you see this.
What I find myself hesitating over, though, is this point: from where do we judge that our understanding is actually “getting closer” to the truth?
By our observations of the world, we form new understanding of the world, and test this through practice. Practice affirms or modifies existing understanding when the resuots conform or don’t to what we expect to happen.
Thank you for this — I think this is a very clear and thoughtful explanation. I strongly agree that through practice and experimentation, expectations can be challenged and our understanding revised.
What I find myself still wondering about is one step prior to that process: how certain differences come to be recognized as “discrepancies” in the first place, and which discrepancies count as meaningful enough to require revision.
Experimental results, after all, always appear as “results” within some theoretical or conceptual horizon of expectation. In that sense, practice does not seem to confront the world in a raw, unmediated way, but rather unfolds within a relation where the world and our understanding meet.
So my interest is not in denying that understanding can move closer to truth, but in asking where the reference points and stabilizing conditions for that movement reside. It seems to me that they may not be located solely within individual subjects, but in a more relational domain.
Practice can certainly lead to revision, but what do you see as grounding the claim that one revision is “more accurate” than another?
Objective results gathered from experimentation inform us. I’m not speaking of vulgar empiricism, but instead dialectical materialism.
The issue, then, is not whether material reality pushes back — I think it clearly does — but whether objectivity should be understood as something that exists fully formed prior to practice, or rather as something that emerges and stabilizes through practice itself.
What led me to take this question seriously was reading a paper that attempts to support precisely this kind of view not at the level of philosophy alone, but through scientific experimentation.
The way it approaches the relationship between observers and physical systems — not in terms of simple causation, but in terms of intersection and stabilization — had a strong impact on me.
To be honest, after reading that paper, I haven’t been able to let this question go. That’s why I keep returning to it here as well.
Reality, the material world, is constantly shifting and changing. It moves forward through contradiction, dialectically. It isn’t that practice creates reality, or affirms it, but instead that there is an all-encompassing system. Practice is material reality interacting with itself.
I understand the direction you’re pointing to, and I don’t feel that our positions are that far apart.
That said, there is one phrase I’d like to pause on: “an all-encompassing system.”
What exactly does that system refer to?
Because the moment we say that there is a system, we are no longer speaking only about material interactions as such, but about the conditions under which those interactions are intelligible as a whole.
This is the point that keeps catching my attention. If reality is nothing more than material reality interacting with itself, then where does the basis come from for those interactions to cohere as one system?
I’m not suggesting that practice stands outside reality. Rather, I’m asking whether the very coherence of an “all-encompassing system” already presupposes some point of unification that cannot be reduced to material interaction alone.
This is the question that keeps drawing me back to this issue.
We like to think so, but in the end I can’t be certain of anything but my own existence. And you of yours.
The problem with these kinds of idealist notions is that they lead to absurd conclusions about how the world works, and work against trying to actively understand the world. Materialism (and by extension dialectical materialism) are useful because they help us better comprehend how the universe developed, why, and where it’s going, by understanding our own place within that process.
I didn’t say that there is no objective reality. I only said that we can’t be certain of it. That’s just an uncertainty that one must live with.
We get closer and closer to understanding reality as it exists the more we engage with it.
Ok a counterexample then: How do you know that the scientific method isn’t iterating towards the rules that govern the simulation we might technically be in, instead of actual reality? How do you know that you aren’t actually a Boltzmann brain blinking into existence for a brief instant with the memories of your life thus far and the experience of this moment here? You do not, because you can not know this. That’s the whole point of the Cogito argument. All you can actually know for certain is that you exist. We make assumptions about the world around us because they seem to work fine, and without them we wouldn’t be where we are now, but absolute certainty is reserved for that one statement only: I think, therefore I am.
And one more thing about iteration: Any iterative process only seeks towards some local maximum, which may or may not be the global maximum. This depends entirely on the starting parameters. If you think that you’ll reach the highest mountain of enlightenment by just constantly heading uphill, you may instead end up at the top of some smaller hill next to it.
I don’t think we can know whether a real world actually exists, or whether out senses and memory are lying to us. However, only if we suppose that our senses and memory are not lying to us, can we make meaningful predictions about the consequences of our actions, and only then can we act intentionally.
I very much agree with this. Reality could be anything but we have to engage with it based on what our senses percieve.
That’s a very clear way of putting it, and I find your position quite persuasive. We may not be able to know whether the external world truly exists, but by assuming that our senses and memories are not fundamentally deceiving us, we can make meaningful predictions about the consequences of our actions, and only then does intentional action become possible. I agree with that.
What I find myself wondering, though, is where the validity of that assumption itself is stabilized.
If our judgments about whether predictions succeed or fail already take place within some framework of expectations, then it seems that we are not directly confirming the world “as it is,” but rather checking whether our interaction with the world is cohering well enough to support action.
In that sense, I’m less interested in the binary question of whether reality exists or not, and more interested in the conditions under which prediction, action, and revision form a stable loop.
From your perspective, where do you think that stability ultimately resides? In the world itself, in our cognitive capacities, or in the relation between the two?
This is a popular understanding, but the science suggests a different process.
The brain filters sensory data based on utility, which is itself defined by the mind’s internal model. This results in a curated reality that omits any information the model deems irrelevant to its current goals.
We often begin to act before the conscious mind is even aware of the impulse. In this framework, the mind functions as a narrator—backfilling intent after the fact to maintain the illusion of a cohesive story. This model is not static; it updates when the curated data produces a ‘prediction error’ too large for the narrator to ignore. A moment of narrative break down result in a recalibration. However, when the data is filtered and the intent is retroactive, then ‘meaningful predictions’ are primarily a mechanism for the mind to validate the model it has already constructed.
I think you may have misunderstood what I was saying. The idea of scientific testing, and the brain, only exists within the framework where I assume the world has coherence and the sensory experiences I remember having are not just random fabrications. I didn’t mean to say everything I exploring or remember experiencing must be completely true, just it must have rules I can learn that let me predict it, otherwise if it truly is random, the effect of my actions would also be random, and I wouldn’t be able to make any intentional actions.
