The Case Against Reality
Chris Ashley,
The Atlantic,
Apr 26, 2016
I've always felt the case against realism is pretty definitive, so this article doesn't surprise me. And I love this analogy: "You could not form a true description of the innards of the computer if your entire view of reality was confined to the desktop. And yet the desktop is useful. That blue rectangular icon guides my behavior, and it hides a complex reality that I don't need to know." It's not that our perceptions are not useful; of course they are. But it is an error to take them literally. Some people may then ask, well what happens to science. This is the thing: this is what science tells us. As Donald Hoffman says, "I am postulating conscious experiences as ontological primitives, the most basic ingredients of the world."
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