Reality as a myth
Contents
Stories
"Reality" is a myth
From the traditional culture, we've inherited a myth incomparably more subversive than the myth of creation. This myth serves as the foundation stone on which the edifice of our culture is being erected.
"Correspondence with reality" cannot be verified
See the argument by Einstein and Infeld, from "The Evolution of Physics", which we summarized here.
"Correspondence with reality" is a product of illusion
How, then, do we judge whether our ideas or models "correspond to reality"? In "Remarks on Bertrand Russell's Theory of Knowledge", Einstein pointed out that our favored approaches are results of illusions.
"It was an illusion which any one can easily understand if, for a moment, he dismisses what he has learned from later philosophy, and from natural science (...). Someone, indeed, might even raise the question whether, without something of this illusion, anything really great can be achieved in the realm of philosophical thought—but we do not wish to ask that question."
"This illusion dominates the daily life of men and animals; it is also the point of departure in all of the sciences, especially of the natural sciences."
Let us ask:
If "correspondence with reality" is a property that cannot be verified, which is itself prone to lead us to illusions—can we really use it to distinguish truth from illusion (which is, allegedly, the value proposition of the academic approach to knowledge)?