We often talk as though we are in direct contact with reality - as though our eyes show us the world, and our minds read off the facts. But between whatever reality fundamentally is and the experience you're having right now, there are a surprising number of layers. At each layer, two types of error happen: information gets left out, and bias creeps in. By the time experience reaches you, there's the potential for a great deal of both to have accumulated.
Put another way, rather than p...
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subjective experience
Philosophical questions that arise when we compare reality to our subjective experience of it
A surprisingly large number of unsettled questions in philosophy arise from the difficulty of meshing:
A. our theoretical understanding of what things are "really" like (physics, atoms, etc.)
with
B. our direct, first-hand experiences as humans.
Examples:
(1) Ethics - most people experience a visceral feeling that some things are inherently and universally morally wrong (e.g., murdering children). Yet it's unclear what, in the universe of atoms (or in physics), could make (o...
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