Reality is a term of value, not a ‘pre-existent’ that we uncover. Accordingly, we are better off to talk about respectable rules of action that we weave together with others into a justificatory web.

We engage inquiry and justification in order to ‘get on’, not to uncover Truth. Truth as the aim of inquiry implies a spooky ‘universal’ reason. In addition, even if there were an ‘always already there’ we can have no access to it.

All our awareness is under language descriptions that serve social needs. This makes the ‘nature’ or ‘reality’ of things a presumptive designation of something that remains unknowable as ‘a thing in itself’. Accordingly, it does not pay to be a scientific realist about anything since all we ever contact is ‘constructed’ (socially woven) webs of relations.

Summing up, things can not be unconditional because language makes them relational. Consequently, even ethical codes adjust to circumstance.

In the immortal words of Adam Savage, of Mythbusters fame:

"I reject your reality, and substitute my own!"

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Government's proper role should be that of an impartial referee, maintaining a fair and competitive playing field, with basic, tough regulations so capitalism can work best. Sure, everyone loves to hate the refs, but an NFL game would be a disaster if the players themselves were in charge of self-regulation.

One can go with their own reality, of course, but any functional reality would have to be a cooperative enterprise. Would it not?

I think you might be confusing objective reality with subjective reality.

As per the title of your post i would say that objective reality is the sum of all the little unavoidable facts about the physical world that we have uncovered and have yet to uncover (and some we will never uncover).

But your line of argument in the OP appears to be more concerned with the definition of reality as we perceive it in the domesticated human mind (as opposed to the mind of a bear, an orangutan, an amazonian tribesman, etc...)

The answer according to me is: Reality is to humans whatever we say it is - but it has a profound, revolutionary, and evolutionary impact on our lives, our cultures, and our fate.


Andrew

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“...corporations and those who run them cannot stop exploiting resources and amassing wealth until they have... .I cannot finish this sentence, because the truth is that can never stop; like cancer, they can only continue to expand until they kill the host.”

-- Derrick Jensen

When we say we are 'uncovering' 'facts', are we actually describing things as they really are? How would we know?

Can we (as Plato said), 'Cut nature at its joints'?

Is there a way to divide up the so-called causal connections we construct in some way that allows us to compare their relative amount of subjectivity and objectivity?

For me, all we need to 'know' is whether some competing description might be more useful for some of our purposes.

Of course we can't float free of environmental constraints--the things we experience as physical actualities.

There is an old book called "Language in Thought and Action" that you may like. It is about language being the lens through which we view the world, such that everything we know is skewed to various degrees. I tend to agree with your points, if I'm reading you right. We can't truly know an "objective" reality because everything we know is built around human perception and language. This does raise troubling questions of ethics, as you point out.

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No man is an island...
Each man's death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in Mankind.
And therefore, never send to know
For whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.
—John Donne

I’ve heard that physicists (the quintessential scientists) are in the top 10 %, IQ-wise. Yet, they continue to talk as though they are uncovering a reality ‘out there’, oblivious to things like the ‘linguistic turn’ of philosophy.

There was a time, in the last half of the 20th century, when scientists were challenged on this—the Foucault, Derrida Period. People in the Humanities (no resemblance to this division of the forum) took great pleasure in seeing the ‘great knowers’ taken down a notch.

Then there was the Alan Sokal spoof of postmodernism, etc, where scientists defended their scientific reality.

Now, scientists can again pick two data points out of a million, go on TV and say, ‘See, this resonance IS the top quark!.’

Don’t they concern themselves with such ‘big questions’ as ‘what is knowledge”, or do they need their ‘reality crutch’, to keep their inquiries going?

Do scientists uncover truths about nature or socially construct interpretations of experience according to rather arbitrary, agreed-upon standards such as effectiveness?

Isaac Newton’s mathematical laws of motion and gravitation were so explanatory, predictive, and simply expressible they were, at the time, accepted as true representations of reality. Even ladies at court could understand and discuss them.

Newton defined space and time as ‘things’ with eternal, uniform natures. These concepts, however, were inventions. They were neither inductively (ala Bacon) nor deductively (ala Descartes) derivable from experience. So, did they give us knowledge of reality?

Newtonian mechanics worked, but it wasn’t even unique. Hertz developed a mechanics based on forces ‘caused’ by invisible masses that was logically and empirically indistinguishable from Newton’s.

The point is, scientific knowledge is subjective because dependent on freely chosen assumptions. Once Newton made his assumptions about (constructions of) space and time, deduction could take over and predictive planetary rules of motion followed. But, did Newtonian mechanics yield objective reality? No, said Einstein!

If Newtonian physics did mirror reality, we are determined—have no free will. One could (in principle) put all the positions and velocities of all ‘matter’ into a computer and, like clockwork, determine all future (and past) states of being. Ugh!--Not good for the Humanities.

Maybe we can escape determinism by going after the idea of matter on which Newtonian science builds. Isn’t the role of matter a metaphysical principle, not a fact of experience? Matter is said to cause sense experience, but is it matter that we experience or only its effects? We only assume the cause is matter. Might as well call it God?

Is physics all about matter? Or, does it have an anthropomorphic quality? After all, maybe physics is all about explanation, prediction and control, not about reality at all? Maybe physics is about modeling—made up stuff—good if it works?

It seems we can have theories with logically necessary consequences from premises that reveal no truths about the world at all—don’t go to reality, but work.

Evolution and the 2nd law of thermo only describe patterns of relationships, rather than things and their properties. As such, they are independent of mechanisms. They are, in other words, interpretations of experience, not descriptions of reality. Are such models finally all we have?

Of course, our models can’t, like dreams, float free of what we experience as physical ‘actualities’.

Objective reality is just that.
Subjective reality is what has a zillion flavors.

For example.
Newtonian physics is a pretty good description of objective reality, as we experience it, so it's still around, although it breaks down at the extremes, we don't live at the extremes.
So our experience is pretty much Newtonian.

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“ The subjects of every state ought to contribute towards the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities; that is, in proportion to the revenue which they respectively enjoy under the protection of the state.”

Adam Smith , The Wealth of Nations 1776

"We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics"
FDR's second Inaugural Address

The bold face is mine. I 'bolded' to show just how vacuous your reply is. You offer nothing constructive about what 'objective realilty' is.

Did you read the thread? How do you respond to the issuses raised?

Even global positioning requires relativistic correction, but I generally agee that Newtonian mechanics works. That is not what is at issue.

Actually, I believe it is your post that does this.

And thus, reality is always human-centered.

So where is this mysterious 'objective reality' that you refer to?

So you are saying that "objective reality" is just a "pretty good description" of what is important to humans, as we experience it?

That is the very definition of subjective reality.

And just to put it in Newtonian terms...

Newton's theory of gravity was believed to be a 100% perfect representation of 'objective reality' - right up until Einstein came along and showed that it was only 99.999% accurate.

Now Einstein's theory is considered 100% perfect representation of 'objective reality' - and will remain so until someone else comes along and shows that it is actually only 99.999999999999999% accurate.

Thus, this 'objective reality' is entirely human subjective.

Thanks for cleaning up the thread.

And, Goober--you no longer have free will. Too bad!