The Evolutionary Argument Against Reality

To deal with such paradoxes we shall adopt an approach that we call model-dependent realism. It is based on the idea that our brains interpret the input from our sensory organs by making a model of the world. When such a model is successful at explaining events, we tend to attribute to it, and to the elements and concepts that constitute it, the qu

We realists take the view that reality is out there: objective, physical and independent of what we believe about it. But we never experience that reality directly. Every last scrap of our external experience is of virtual reality. And every last scrap of our knowledge – including our knowledge of the non-physical worlds of logic, mathematics and p

Bohr believed that whenever we encountered a paradox, it was a sign that we were hitting on something true and real. This was because of the fundamental disconnect between reality and the mind—a disjuncture that the bizarre quantum world made abundantly clear: