Yesterday I re-posted (with a few small edits) a Substack post from last September about my basic metaphysical stance: physicalism and realism. I’d posted here about the latter back in 2018 [see Realism], but the more recent Substack post reflects eight more years of thought on the matter.
My view has evolved some without really changing. I’m still committed to physicalism and realism. Nothing I’ve learned or heard argued has persuaded me towards idealism or anti-realism.
In this re-post I’m focusing on a couple of philosophical topics that have gotten a little under my skin:
The Colorful View from Nowhere
At risk of losing subscribers, possibly even friends, I confess that in the last decade or so I have lost much of my former reverence for philosophy. Or rather, to be blunt, for philosophers. My issue isn’t with philosophical analysis — aka critical and logical thinking — but with the human tendency to build cloud castles.
We live in an era of increasing detachment from physical reality. My response to this has been essentially positivist — “show me the money.” String theory, supersymmetry, eternalism, panpsychism? Show me some physical evidence. These benighted days, I have ever less tolerance for speculation and theory.
Some human endeavors are concrete and measurable. If we build a bridge or a rocket, we have clear objective ways to judge its quality. Other human endeavors are abstract and difficult to measure. Artists, managers, psychiatrists, spiritual leaders, … and philosophers have in common that their work is judged, at least in part, subjectively.
Which I think has two effects. Firstly, it makes being very good at such work more of a challenge than building something according to time-tested knowledge (if not an actual blueprint). Even inventors have the physics textbook to guide them. It’s harder to be a good artist, manager, … or philosopher. Secondly, it makes these fields subject to bullshit artists capable of convincing people their work is good.
And not just bullshit artists — people knowingly involved in a con — but in this era of increasing detachment from physical reality, those who build castles on the clouds of their own physically unfounded beliefs. Ideas with no evidential support, only (at best) an argument.
One thing we know about humans is that they are utterly brilliant at logically justifying what they’ve already decided to believe.
[To see this at its worst delve into the racist and enslaver apologia of the past. Or “Christian” writings about witchcraft. Or any Trump supporter.]
Two Things
In this post I want to push back on two things I’ve heard modern philosophers say that I find illogical and perhaps a result of mental tunnel vision:
- “There’s no such thing as color.” or “Color exists only in our minds.”
- “There is no ‘View from Nowhere’.”
I think the first is much like the question about a tree falling in the forest — the answer is trivial once we define “sound”.
I think the second reflects a metaphysical view that I not only don’t share but find difficult to even comprehend.
Color and Color Perception
We perceive color because our eyes receive certain wavelengths of electromagnetic energy (aka “light”). Alternately, we can refer to photons with certain energies. Both descriptions work, though neither quite describe the full situation.
Importantly, note that any number of instruments can detect EM energy (aka light aka photons). This is a persistent, lawful, universal aspect of our apparent reality. Light, in fact, is the main way we can know the reality in which we exist. Light carries information.
Does a falling tree in the forest make a sound?
Depends on how we define a sound. If a sound means mechanical vibrations in a certain frequency range — vibrations that potentially are experienced as sound by a variety of life forms and instruments — then yes, absolutely, no question, a falling tree makes a sound.
If sound means only what is experienced by sentient (not necessarily sapient) beings, then such a being is obviously necessary for there to be “sound”. The question then becomes, do deer and bears count? How about squirrels? Insects? They react to sound, so… they must count, right? What about plant life or bacteria? It would seem here the answer is yes merely in virtue of the constant presence of microbial life.
I think defining sound as a phenomenon makes a simple and reasonable definition a lot more complicated than it needs to be.
[Defining sound as physical vibration requires some consideration for electrical and magnetic representations of sound. They’re an interesting bridge because we can perceive them visually, but they must be converted to physical vibration (speakers, headphones) for us to hear them.]
Likewise, color
If we define color as the wavelength of light — or the energy of photons — then color is an objective property of light. As with sound, various living organisms and instruments can detect and differentiate the wavelengths of light.
[Mantis shrimp have much better color perception than we do.]
With the interesting exception of video screens, just about everything we see is due to reflected light — light that has bounced off whatever it is we’re seeing. So, the color of that light is due to [A] the color(s) of the light(s) shining on the object we’re seeing, and [B] the physical properties of that object.
[An older exception is when we look directly at a light-producing object such as a candle flame or lightbulb. Then we’re experiencing photons without them having reflected off an object and are seeing whatever wavelengths the light source produces.]
If red light shines on an object that only reflects blue wavelengths, the object looks black because it doesn’t reflect any red wavelengths. If red light shines on an object that reflects all colors the object looks red because the light source contains only red wavelengths. (In blue light, it would look blue, and only in white light would it look white.)
In this view color is an objective property due to light and the reflective properties of materials. Objective in that all living things or instruments capable of detecting and differentiating photons will agree on the phenomenon.
[“Agree” within the context of their respective ability to detect and differentiate. As a simple example, a color-blind person might disagree two color patches are different (when in fact they reflect different wavelengths), but they would agree the patches exist and have color. A black-and-white camera would agree the patches exist but could only compare their respective luminance values.]
As with sound, if color is (rather circularly, in my opinion) defined as what a sentient being experiences, then it’s obviously subjective. (But what about plants? They’re sensitive to color. So are some chemicals, such as those used to make film for color photography.)
I just don’t see value in defining light (or sound) subjectively. Given that immaterial things respond to it, defining it subjectively even seems factually incorrect. Every description would necessarily vary. Humans generally make terrible eyewitnesses.
The View from Nowhere
The other thing philosophers say that annoys me involves the concept of “the view from nowhere” — that it’s incoherent because it doesn’t exist.
What actually seems contested here is the very notion of an objective view. And from what I can tell, by extension, also the notion of objective reality.
A realist point of view holds that reality is “out there”, that we are merely brief passengers through it. The world existed before us; it exists after us. In particular, our minds do not determine external reality, only our perceived reality.
Consider the Grand Canyon. It can be viewed from many angles, from the air, from either rim, or from within the canyon. Consider all the people who have seen it from myriad vantage points. Not to mention all the photos, films, and videos.
Combine and synthesize all those real views with the infinite number of possible views which exist as potential viewpoints even when no one is there to take in that view at the moment. This is the “view from nowhere” — in fact, a view from anywhere.
It’s akin to having a 3D computer model of a scene where you can put the “camera” anywhere to render the scene from that point of view. That 3D model is, in a sense, the “view from nowhere” (or better stated, the “view from anywhere”).
To me the notion means nothing more than that reality is objective and “out there” and we can potentially see it from any point of view.
Idealism
These notions about color perception or subjectivity seem to come from an idealist point of view. Under physicalism, both are trivially resolved: color is an objective measurable property; reality has an objective basis. QED.
Under physicalism, the persistence and lawfulness of the reality we experience are inherent properties of physical reality, but they are hard to explain under idealism. If reality is due to our minds, given the variety of minds, how can reality be — without exception — persistent and lawful? The notorious (and accurate) perceptions about “designed by a committee” should make any collective mental creation of ours shifting and chaotic.
And how did it exist before us (or after us)? Idealists sometimes float “the mind of God” as the mentality that holds it all together, but that is a religious belief. I’ve even heard the pretzel notion of a mind of God, but not actually God.
[Whatever that means.]
There is the transcendental idealism due to Immanuel Kant, but that refers to his (at the time revolutionary but now taken for granted) idea that the only reality we can know is the model we create in our mind based on nerve signals, the structure of our evolved brains, logic, and past experience. But Kant was a realist — he believed in noumena as the basis for the phenomena we experience.
[What Kant really meant is a much-contested favorite debate topic among philosophers, and here you get my take on it. Your milage may vary.]
Idealism holds that mind and ideas are primary and physical reality secondary. I find that too contradictory to my experience and training in physics — to the physical evidence — to consider it a sensible, or even coherent, metaphysics.
To be blunt, I also find it arrogant (or at the least, Ptolemaic). The idea that a human mind is primary to this incredible and broad physical universe strikes me as presumptuous and small-minded in the extreme.
And very human.
Lack of Physics Training
I believe a key problem is that philosophers analyzing physical phenomena need to have at least some training in physics. Lack of physical understanding at the time is why Hume was wrong about causality and Berkeley about matter. Kant had access to better science, but even he was wrong about geometry.
Human minds are largely unchanged in 10,000 years, and what the great thinkers thought about the human condition is as relevant today as it ever was. But, as evidenced by our technology, our understanding of physical reality has grown enormously in that time. So, analysis of physical reality — time, space, matter — must keep up with our current scientific views.
[I think a problem with some modern philosophers considering the physical aspects of reality is an over-reverence for the ancients. What they had to say about human thought is relevant, but often what they had to say about physical reality isn’t anymore.]
Our analysis depends on our knowledge as well as logic. The infamous “garbage in, garbage out”. No matter how smart we are, if science says there are four elements, earth, water, air, fire, our analysis of physical reality is necessarily incomplete. Perhaps even later shown incorrect.
I think that, without some physics training, modern philosophers can’t hope to discern what might be flawed in the reasoning of the ancient and older philosophers. Or in their own reasoning.
For good or ill we live in a scientific and technological world. I think our philosophy must reflect that.
§ §
Stay physical, my friends! Go forth and spread beauty and light.
∇
Logos con carne 
April 8th, 2026 at 11:07 am
Hello Wyrd. Nicely written. First, I suggest that you link this to your Substack page to get a wider audience and perhaps more discussion. Second I take issue with your suggestion that the claim of the impossibility of a so-called view from nowhere seems to thereby contest the “very notion of an objective view.” It could be part of such a claim. But—and here is my point—it does not necessarily follow. In spite of Thomas Nagel’s valiant attempt (In A View From Nowhere) that such a perspective might in some form be achievable, I agree that such a view is quite impossible. We are all, as some philosophers say, “situated.” We observe reality from a particular perspective. We have background assumptions. That does not mean we cannot claim objectivity in our understanding of reality. It seems to me that you are arguing for this very point—yes? Well then, I respectfully suggest that you can do all that without taking on the needless task of claiming that the combination and synthesizing of views from various perspectives amounts to or is equal to a view from nowhere. Respectfully, it doesn’t.
April 8th, 2026 at 1:08 pm
Hi Matti. Thank you!
There is a link to the Substack version at the very beginning; the text “from February 2026” is that link. (I go back and forth between explicit links versus making the text a link. I decided some time ago to forego mentioning that some images are clickable for a larger version — figuring people know that now — but I don’t have a sense for how important explicit links might be [e.g. see this post].)
When I was going over the post on one of the final edit passes, your objection occurred to me, too. Denying the “view from nowhere” doesn’t necessarily imply denying an objective view. I decided to leave it because the post is mainly an objection to the idealist viewpoint, and denying the “view from nowhere” is often a part of the idealist argument. (I am to some extent reacting to posts I’ve read in the last year or so.)
And, yes, I’m absolutely arguing for an objective view of reality. This post is a sequel of sorts to yesterday’s post, Physicalism and Realism, which expresses my metaphysical stance.
The Grand Canyon metaphor was meant as a parallel to the contingent convergent consensus of science. I think that over much time and many minds, all our situated views start to converge on an objective view that averages over all the specific subjective views. I think philosophers sometimes miss this aspect of our progress and approach philosophical analysis from the perspective of one mind starting from scratch. But our understanding rests on many shoulders, and this is what I was trying to get at.
FWIW, as an aside, we have the technology to take as input many images and videos of something like the Grand Canyon and from those viewpoints synthesize an accurate 3D model that can be rendered from any angle just as you can use a drone-mounted camera to view the Grand Canyon from any desired angle. I first saw this done for the Obama Inauguration using online photos people had taken and posted. It was crude then, but the technology has seriously evolved. The latest implementation of it is Gaussian splatting. Not a view from nowhere, but from anywhere! 😊
April 8th, 2026 at 2:30 pm
I was sure that I understood you correctly. Thank you for clarifying. I do think that Thomas Nagel’s concept of the view from nowhere has a specific meaning—a view apart from or detached from any perspective and I dissent from it. I also admit that I struggled, several times, to make sense of Nagel’s arguments. He attempts to do what you argue for, balance our inescapable subjective perspective with the need for objectivity. I may be nit-picking with Nagel (and you) but I’m quite content knowing that I cannot escape my subjective prison while also being content with my belief that I’ve achieved some level of objectivity in the more important aspects of our human condition. I may just be itching for a discussion of this because I’ve been working for some time on a future post about the objectivity of ethics. I like your metaphor. For me, I like referring to an old atlas that I loved when I was a child. It had maps of the Earth that, for example, displayed world religions in bright colors, then the various world climates, language groups, political lines, etc. All of the maps showed the Earth from various perspectives, all were objective, yet none nor even all of them together could show it fully. That level of objectivity is, as Hilary Putnam argues, the God’s eye perspective—not accessible for us. Thanks, you encouraged me to work some more on my own project!
April 8th, 2026 at 3:38 pm
I do agree with the notion that “nothing is theory-free”, and I also agree that for any individual the best they can hope for is, as you say, “some level of objectivity”, hopefully in places that matter. (My views on food, music, and media, on the other hand, are almost entirely subjective. 😄)
I will also agree that, with regard to the whole body of science, the best we can hope for is to converge on truths with evidential support and no falsification. And such truths are always contingent on what lies around the next corner. So much as I usually like Nagel, I’ve never believed we can, even in principle, learn all the facts about reality, and so we can never have a perfect view. Gödel showed we can never prove all mathematical truths; Heisenberg showed we can never have perfect knowledge of reality; event horizons block our view of extremely high-energy sectors; Turing showed we can never understand all computer algorithms. We can never be God in this reality.
To be clear, when I say “converge” I mean asymptotically — chasing something we can ever quite land on. In some sectors of science, the convergence has become almost vanishing small, but in others (quantum mechanics is a good example), we’re pretty clueless and may even have gotten it completely wrong.
I look forward to your post about objectivity in ethics. Sounds like a heavy lift!
I like the Old Atlas metaphor. A literal stack of different viewpoints! I inherited a love of maps from my dad, so I know full well that love of them. (I’m one of those who vastly prefer a map to written directions.)