Simon Blackburn - Realism vs. Anti-realism

What are anti-realists and why do they deny objective reality? What we know of the world must come through our senses and be processed by our brains. Both can be unreliable; illusions can fool our senses and illness or injury can disrupt our brains. Therefore, can we ever be sure that anything outside ourselves is truly what it seems?



Simon Blackburn is a British academic philosopher known for his work in quasi-realism and his efforts to popularize philosophy. He obtained his doctorate in 1970 from Churchill College, Cambridge.


Closer to Truth, hosted by Robert Lawrence Kuhn, presents the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest questions. Discover fundamental issues of existence. Engage new and diverse ways of thinking. Appreciate intense debates. Share your own opinions. Seek your own answers.

[rationalityrules]

Man, Simon Blackburn is such an underestimated beast <3

[braden_m]

I do tend to follow the line of Mackie and cry error theory for all external objects (including moral ones, values, etc.), but I gotta say I have so much respect for Blackburn and his understanding of the subject, as well as his attempts to clarify and defend all sides. He’s just a damn good philosopher

[adobemastr]

Good audio, lighting, camera work, and subject matter. Thank you.

[jfnurod]

I have never encountered another human being who shares my same interests to the extent which you appear to....Thank you very much for the creation/production of this show.

[cloudoftime]

Subjectivism is not necessarily eliminativism. Ethical Subjectivism is a cognitivist position which simply restates the truth-apt aspect of moral propositions.

[Jinxed]

I don't see the problem. Every thought requires energy and a physical space to store it if it is to be remembered. There may not be a number 4 floating around outside ourselves, but there is an actual, physical number 4 in our brains that uses energy to exist. The same can be said of any word, idea, concept or fantasy. Thoughts are not energy-free and they're not stored in a non-physical realm.

[mikedziuba]

Being unsure, when you don't know, is the best position to have. Because being aware of your ignorance is what motivates you to search for new information and to learn.

It's a mistake to choose sides and become sure one or the other, when you don't have enough information and you don't know. Because the truth might be something entirely different from either one of those two sides.

[halnineooo]

If there were no life on planet earth nor anywhere else in the universe, would there be any thing in the universe that we could describe as good or evil? Moral or immoral? Brave or chicken? Is a black hole evil ? Is a meteorite brave?
Ethics and morals exist in the same way love or fear exist. They're meta phenomena of our electro-chemical brain activity.

[ianjohnson]

Numbers are "adjectives" to describe something. They are a part of "language" we use to describe things. Language is in of itself essentially entirely "adectives". Even if you are talking about a real Noun, the "talking about it" is meta, descriptive, like adjectives are, which are again meta.

[yinYangMountain]

When studying Realism and Anti-realism people often mention Descartes’ Evil Demon and the Matrix—both which assume a brain of some kind. In my opinion, better references would be: 1) the ending of The Mysterious Stranger —Mark Twain (1908-1916); 2) the implications in the movie The Thirteenth Floor (1999).

[IVANTHETERRIBLE]

Reality is a collective management of ideas, their control and organization, in relation to objects we perceive, and which is stimulated by the capacity and capability of the brain. The intellectual discourse between Robert and Simon, presented to YouTube viewers, is real, otherwise we all are unreal, nonexistent. No brain means no idea, so no objective or subjective reality, let alone numbers. Visual, auditory, olfactory and other senses of the humans are way different from those of nonhuman creatures, hence their perceptions. The urge and necessity for survival generate moral values that vary from ages to ages, people to people, and even person to person, and collective management, control and organization of moral ideas give rise to a particular set of values that are temporaneous.

[rayhan]

I think Jacob Bronowski hit the nail on its head, and today Deutsch has been a great proponent of realism.

You cannot derive an *ought* from an *is*, but you also cannot get an *is* without an *ought*

In order to uncover truths about the physical world, a scientist must have certain attitudes and behaviours that are moral. Namely, values like: logical consistency, tolerance, openness to new evidence, explanatory elegance, preservation of reasonable dissent and honesty.

Although facts and values operate in two different logical domains, they are fundamentally linked by *explanation* ... Hence why factual scenarios regarding a magic trick being performed has all sorts of implications on one's moral analysis (i.e. if you think the magician actually defied physics, then this will impact how you view the magician amongst other human beings)

[HigherPlanes]

Reality is most itself in the absence of language, but can only be communicated through language. -TM

[simianbarcode]

Morality/ethics can simply be defined by our relations with other conscious creatures. There doesn't need to be an "absolute". As long as we are trying to cause minimal harm and maximize wellbeing, using both rationality and empathy as our guides, there's no need for either dogmatic commandments or purely mathematical codes of conduct.

Why do so many people speak as if the extremely broad scope of "science" can't be ethical? Be rational and empathetic, and these other questions will sort themselves out as we keep using the scientific method to better understand whatever this "reality" stuff really is.

[kallianpublico]

Reality in the face of erroneous judgements is reality out of ignorance. Reality in the face of correct judgement is reality unchanging.

[jeffneptune]

Kant basically got it right. So called "things in themselves" or the noumena, we can never know with certainty. We are trapped by our mental apparatus that organizes the phenomena and can never escape it. However, Kant did believe there was something "out there" causing the phenomena so he wasn't an idealist. In a way, he saved science from skepticism and religion from science, a nice trick but science can never unveil ultimate truths about existence.

[caseydahl]

so are these interviews like the "uncut" versions from the larger collections of interviews episodes that this channel does? I noticed sometimes there things that should've been edited out (redoing lines, getting interrupted by background noise, etc.) that are still left in

[natewikman]

It's not even about skepticism to a large extent. Anti-realists generally claim that things that are socially constructed constitute more of what we view as "real", a lot of what we value and see in the world has no real reference. You can think of things like bravery, or justice; these are concepts that motivate how we live but you can't find them with a microscope, they're constructs. Similarly, in terms of sexuality- if we accept the premise that gender is socially constructed then this means when you say "I'm attracted to women", you're not actually attracted to anything that has physical reference, you're not actually attracted to something inherent in the person. You're projecting your fantasy and construct of what "woman" is to you, which you've absorbed via enculturation since birth, and placing it onto them. That would be a psychoanalytic antirealist position, that what you desire isn't actually about the object, it's about your projection onto it.

[neffetSnnamremmiZ]

There is existence independently from us, but this independence only in dependence from us.

Physics can never answer such question, yes, but has to ask it! It's like we are feeling along the border between realism and antirealism. We learned most about quantum world through these experiments which want to answer these questions, but we can never answer these questions..

[ndenman]

What is the power and capacity of Human sensory perception and the Intellect? What if our sensory perception is 'High Fidelity' to the external world? What if our Intellect is built to understand this reality? What if Humans are 'plugged into nature' in deep and profound ways? What if Human Intellect can reach out and touch the universe? What if the Intellect is transcendent (of the subject)? What if the Subjective is already an element of the Objective? What if we are not trapped in our own subjective immanence? Modernity presupposes too much about Human Nature. In my opinion, this is what happens when you don't have a proper metaphysics to ground the basic concepts, like the Philosophy of Being. Note: Arguing against Platonic universals is strange. Moderate Realism (Aristotle) has had more influence, especially through Thomism and Scholasticism in general.