Thank you very much!
Good question! The basis for assuming reality exists is somewhat tenuous, as our experience: (1) at times shows us in control of our experience, and (2) at other times not in control of our experience. So it’s hard to tell if we make the world, or the world makes us, or both.
I’ve always liked George Berkeley’s idea that God creates our conscious experience directly. Why would God bother to create a reality, when he can just create our perceptions?
Science explains (1) and (2) above by claiming there is in fact some “reality.” It supports that claim by pointing to the technology we create. It’s hard to believe science creates things by simply manipulating consciousness itself. It seems there must be some kind of “clay” out of which it makes its “sculptures” which we then perceive and/or experience.
However, science also claims we are biological creatures inhabiting the world, physical reality. We can choose to go along with this idea or not. We could say “the world” is nothing but consciousness somehow existing on its own (solipsism or panpsychism?) or we could go with Berkeley’s idea.
If we are biological creatures, then reality is experienced through what comes in through our senses, which is then processed by our mind, which is then “perceived” by our consciousness. In other words, when we point at “the world” we are not pointing at the world, but at an “image” of the world, an image that an unconscious part of our minds creates for the conscious part of our minds. We know we interpret the world, and we know what our interpretation is, but that’s all we know.
Berkeley would say we know what God gives us, and we know God has given us agency, but that’s all we know. To me, that’s ultimately as good an explanation as science’s. The crucial point imho is we have no indication about “reality” either way. The “signs” we are trying to read are inscrutable, indeterminative. The foundation of human experience is simply a mystery. All we can definitively say about the world is we are in it.
Personally, I feel like a child in a sandbox along with other children. I try to be nice to the other children and try to have fun building whatever beautiful or interesting or beneficial sandcastles I can, with them or on my own. If the adults ever show up, I’ll assess the situation and figure out how to respond to them once they’ve appeared.
