CMV: Objective Reality is Unknowable, and All Knowledge is Ultimately a Form of Pragmatic Fiction

We like to think we understand reality, that science, logic, and reason bring us closer to some objective truth. But I believe all knowledge is, at best, a useful fiction—something that helps us navigate experience, not a genuine reflection of reality itself.

First, consider Kant’s distinction between the noumenal and phenomenal world. Everything we perceive—colours, sounds, time, space—is shaped by our cognitive faculties. We never access reality as it is (the noumenon), only as it appears to us (the phenomenon). If our perception is inherently filtered and structured by the mind, how can we claim to “know” objective reality?

Second, modern physics undermines our intuitive grasp of reality. Quantum mechanics suggests that reality is deeply observer-dependent—particles exist in superpositions until measured, and locality itself may be an illusion. If fundamental reality defies classical logic, can we trust human reason to map it accurately?

Third, all knowledge is theory-laden and contingent. Even mathematics, often considered the purest form of truth, relies on unprovable axioms (Gödel’s). Science doesn’t discover absolute truths; it builds models that are useful until they are replaced. Newtonian mechanics was “true” until Einsteinian relativity refined it, and even that may one day be overturned. This suggests that knowledge is not about “truth” in any ultimate sense, but about what works within a given framework.

This leads me to conclude: we do not “know” reality, we construct interpretations that are evolutionarily and pragmatically useful. Knowledge is a tool, not a mirror of the world. We mistake coherence for truth, but perhaps truth itself is an illusion—an adaptive fiction that allows us to function.

So, CMV: Reality as it truly is will always remain unknowable, and what we call “knowledge” is merely a pragmatic construct, not an objective truth.