How do you determine objective reality?

Question

But just how far can the senses be trusted?

Answer 1

"You" can no longer exist to observe reality.

Answer 2

Find the uncaused cause.

Answer 3

Labeling is dangerous

Answer 4

All we have is our senses, which is why objective reality is a moving target, so to speak.  At one time the objective reality was that the world was flat.  But with new evidence and observation, we found that to be wrong.  There are always new paradigms of physics and reality, just keep an open mind.... science is always self correcting.  A delusional world view is not based on repetitive observation while Objective Reality is.

Answer 5

"Objective reality" is redundant.  There is only one reality.  What is, is, or as Aristotle said, A = A.  The way you know it is through the evidence of your senses.  I'm assuming you are talking about a person who is mentally competent.  The (false) alternative would be subjective reality, but that is something perceived by a mind that is mentally disturbed, either medically or drug-induced.  

Answer 6

In truth, you can never determine objective reality fully.  Even quantitative measurements of physical phenomena by sensitive instruments must be interpreted, i.e. the associative cortex of an individual human being must be used.  That is no longer an objective reality.  I have no doubt that an objective phenomenological world exists external to our senses, but when consciousness is invoked we are blocked forever from it.  Paradoxically, this is also the only way we can ever hope to know it, so all understanding of the world of phenomena is necessarily subjective.

Answer 7

Objective reality! Let's see, (1) we only have what we think, and (2) what we sense, and (3) what is coherent--makes sense within a wider context, and (4) what is aesthetically pleasing--beautiful, so what satisfies all these conditions is the most objective; that is, until something more objective comes along.

Answer 8

Reality, broadly considered, has the following four constituents:

1)Everything that has ever appeared to anyone – whether the appearing has been long-lasting or fleeting, consequential or not – a wood stove keeping you warm or purple spots before your eyes indicating illness. Everything that has ever appeared to anyone has this much reality – it really has appeared! So we start with that. This is the "cogito" part of a famous formula.

2)Also, there are potential appearances. The noise the tree makes in the uninhabited forest. Of course, somebody might have been there. Somebody might be there the next time a tree falls. We ought to have a conception of reality broad enough to include such unrealized possibilities.

3)Invisible cosmic machinery. We postulate that various things must be happening or have happened in order to make sense of that which appears to us. After all, appearances are strikingly law-like and predictable. The sun appears to rise in the east every morning. We postulate the laws of gravity and inertia that make sense of this, and this machinery too is real.

4)Those to whom things appear. Conscious minds. Us. This is the "Sum" part of the formula.

So reality, I imagine you might say, has all of those constituents. But it is often used in a narrower sense, focused especially upon (3). This is what we mean when we say, “I’m not interested in the appearances, only in the underlying realities.” Some appearances are privileged because they fit nicely with one another into a coherent whole, and with the underlying cosmic machinery we postulate. Other appearances, like the strange sights I dreamy last night, or the purple spots that swim briefly before my eyes when I suffer from a fever, don’t have that privilege, and are “merely” appearances, nothing more.

We might also consider the English language term “realty” or “real estate.” Land and the buildings permanently affixed to it are more real than other forms of property, by common consent as suggested in the language used to describe them. Why is that?