Realism and Anti-Realism

Has anyone ever pointed out to you that you can't really know if the world actually exists?

Or, as Chad Vader so aptly phrases this philosophical and metaphysical query: "Is this real life?"

Figure 1: Chad Vader, philosopher extraordinaire

Consider the following possibility: An evil demon has captured your mind, and has decided to have some fun with you. It creates the elaborate illusion of a universe; including everything that you hear, see, feel, taste, smell, and interact with in any way. Then, it feeds this illusion straight into your mind. The implication is that nothing in this world really exists! (even your body) How could you prove this proposition false? Unless the demon were to tell you what is up, any evidence you could possibly gather would only part of the illusion. In fact, even if some evil demon were to pop out of space-time and tell you that everything is an illusion, that could just be part of some greater illusion.

There is no way to prove that this is not the case.

Anti-realism is the philosophical position that one cannot know that the world, other minds, sensory information, etc. are actually real (there are actually many different types of anti-realism, but I'm going to narrow my scope to just one common form). Some anti-realists will even go so far as to say that all of these things don't exist. I personally think the former position is much more reasonable than the latter. A helpful analogy comes from the Matrix movies, in which the human race is trapped inside of a virtual reality created by machines. One of the differences, however, is that there are no red or blue pills (and even if there were, escaping the Matrix could just be part of the virtual reality).

Figure 2: Morpheus, the coolest character from The Matrix trilogy

This ideology is in stark contrast to realism, the philosophical belief that things actually do exist. According to realism, the world is actually real. The world exists, senses are basically reliable, other people exist (and so do their minds), etc. Another tenant of realism is that the world exists whether or not there are minds to observe the world. So in response to the question "if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?" a realist would say "yes. It makes a sound."

Consider the following statement: "I went to the store, bought some green chile, said hi to my friend, and went home."

A realist would say that I, the store, the green chile, my friend, and my home are all actually there.
An anti realist (within our limited scope) would say that we have no way of knowing 100% whether or not any of the things listed are actually there.
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Now, the fun part.

To my despair (http://www.nooooooooooooooo.com/), anti-realism is the more accurate accurate way of thinking because it cannot be proven false. It is true that we cannot know whether or not everything is just an elaborate illusion. However, anti-realism has no practical application. Doubting the existence of, say, a cheeseburger and one's hunger, will pretty much never keep someone from eating the cheeseburger (I would eat two). In fact, anyone who doubted the existence of food and one's own body/physical needs would die of starvation before long. Perhaps they would even go so far as to stop breathing- the air isn't there after all! In addition, it is impossible to acquire any sort of information about what is causing the illusion, and therefore to make any distinction between what is and isn't real because any information we can possibly acquire is part of the illusion.

This is why everyone alive today is practically a realist, even though none of us can logically prove it's accuracy.
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Conclusion:
Does anyone else feel like we are in a fairly disparate situation? On the one hand, we can't really know if anything exists at all, and believing such changes nothing about the way we act (other than to give us a headache from thinking about it). On the other hand, believing that things really do exist allows one to live a practical life, but it is not an ideology that can be known for sure.

Fortunately, there is a way to escape from this annoying loop of insanity!

Model-Dependent Realism.

I used to be a realist out of practical necessity, while acknowledging that I could not know whether or not what I believed was actually true. Now I am a Model-Dependent Realist, which makes a heck of a lot more sense, can be demonstrated to be accurate, and allows me to eat cheeseburgers without questioning their existence.

Just what, you ask, is Model-Dependent Realism? If my internet connection exists later today or tomorrow (which it might not- no seriously I might not have an internet connection later today and tomorrow. Stop it. You know what I mean.) I will do a post on it!