Philosophers since Descartes have questioned whether our experience reflects a reality outside of our minds. In this instalment of our idealism series, in partnership with the Essentia Foundation, Paul Franks argues that the basic insight of Kant’s approach – perspectivism – harmonizes far better with our ordinary experience of the world, and with Einstein’s relativistic physics, than Berkeley’s immaterialist view. For all I know on the basis of my current experience alone, I could be living in the matrix instead of inhabiting the mind-independent world. My experience could seem just as it seems right now, but it could be caused by something other than the mind-independent world in which I take myself to perceive and act. This familiar thought may be motivated by consideration of dreams, as it was for Descartes, or by more contemporary reflections on virtual reality. …
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