Ep 105: David Deutsch’s “The Fabric of Reality” Chapter 4 “Criteria for Reality” Part 1

In this podcast we cover realism: the common sense claim that there exists an external reality beyond our own minds that we can come to understand through the tools of science and reason more broadly. We compare this to some of the popular rivals that have cropped up over the years out of academic philosophy including, chiefly, solipsism: the claim that "it's all a dream". We explain how we cannot logically disprove solipsism and we can mount no scientific argument, or bring forth evidence, to show solipsism is false. However we can do something more powerful: we can refute it by philosophical argument. This episode is chiefly about what is real, what exists and how we know.

Om Podcasten

This is a podcast primarily about the work of philosopher and physicist David Deutsch and related matters (such as Popperian epistemology). I read from and comment upon the books ”The Beginning of Infinity” & ”The Fabric of Reality” (both by Deutsch), ”The Science of Can & Can’t” (by Deutsch’s collegue Marletto) and ”Rationality” by Pinker (so far). In addition I make stand alone episodes about topics like resources, environmentalism, economics, science, philosophy, epistemology (especially explanations) and reason broadly.