True Reality: Myth, Metaphor or Oxymoron?
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Is it possible to ascertain the "true" nature of reality since the question of the types of substance involves that which is metaphysical?
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Solution Summary
According to Kant's Critique of Pure Reason we only have access to that which we can observe (phenomena), and there are (always) underlying causes of phenomena (noumena), which cannot be observed.This led scientists to understand that we can never prove the null hypothesis - an admission that no scientific observation, no matter how well controlled, can ever demonstrate that there are no unobserved factors that influence observed events. Realism is the idea that reality is fixed and objective, irrespective of human observation. Anti-realism is the view that matter is illusory, and that the term reality cannot be sensibly applied. (This includes the view that there is no objective reality.) However we should not apply strong scepticism, the self-contradictory position that "there is no truth." Many of us were taught to believe that we should learn the truth of historical knowledge; it turns out that this is the worst possible perspective on knowing. Unlike foundationalist truth, coherency is not absolute or eternal; it is tentative, fallible, and contingent upon a host of uncertain inferences.
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1. According to Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, the answer would be negative, because in theory we only have access to that which we can observe (phenomena), and there are (always) underlying causes of phenomena (noumena), which cannot be observed. While we can infer what the noumena might be like, we can't verify this because we have no access to that which we can't observe ... This led scientists to understand that we can never prove the null hypothesis - an admission that no scientific observation, no matter how well controlled, can ever demonstrate that there are no unobserved factors that influence observed events. Therefore no empirical inference can sensibly be regarded as necessarily and absolutely true.
2. According to Spinoza (Ethics), the material source of physical and spiritual phenomena is a singular (unobservable and therefore unknowable) reality, namely "Deus siva Natura" (God or Nature). This attempt to reconcile monism and dualism was politically unpopular in the eighteenth century (since it violated Judeo-Christian dualism), but nobody has produced a better metaphysics.
3. Realism is the idea that reality is fixed ...
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