Many people here seem to share an implicit assumption:
that there exists an objective reality independent of observation, and that this reality is fundamentally stable and absolute.
I’m not trying to deny that assumption.
But I’d like to ask something more specific:
If reality is truly independent and absolute,
how do we account for the fact that every access to it is mediated through a subject?
In other words,
is what we call “objective reality” something that exists prior to all observation,
or is it something that only becomes coherent through the intersection of perspectives?
Not asking for agreement—just curious how far this assumption can be pushed before it starts to shift.
If all we ever have is access through observation,
what would it even mean for a reality to exist completely independent of any subject?
I largely agree with your position that finding an objective reality in a strict sense is difficult.
If anything, I think your argument about the lack of an “ideal definition” (like in the case of games) already points to something deeper: that every access to what we call “reality” is structurally mediated by a subject.
Where I would slightly extend your point is this:
it’s not just that we fail to reach an objective reality, but that the very framework we use already assumes a separation between observer and observed.
And that assumption itself might be the root of the problem.
In that sense, I also agree that most attempts to preserve “objective reality” end up relying on some form of dualism — even if implicitly.
From my perspective, this isn’t just a philosophical issue.
It may actually be connected to why modern physics has struggled for over a century to reconcile relativity and quantum theory.
Relativity treats the observer as a coordinate frame within a continuous structure, while quantum theory assigns a more active role to observation in determining states.
Both start from a separation, but develop it in incompatible ways.
So the difficulty might not lie in the theories themselves, but in the underlying assumption that observer and reality can be cleanly separated in the first place.
If you’re interested, there is a paper that approaches this issue from the level of the structure of observation itself, including some experimental work. I would be very interested to hear your thoughts if you have the time to read it at your own pace.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/398757987_The_Removal_of_God_from_Knowledge_How_the_Exclusion_of_Absolute_Subjectivity_Shaped_Modern_Science_and_Its_Limits