Okay, this is going to be a long comment.
I want to say a bit more about this; it's been bugging me:
Because you don't believe in any objective reality? Or one that is knowable? There is a difference.
And I'm not sure whether I believe in an objective reality or not; and if so, it definitely isn't knowable. But I'm skeptical because of the math in quantum physics, which isn't consistent. Heisenberg's uncertainty principle looks like an epistemological problem, but there are some who suggest that the inconsistent math reflects a gap, or lack, in reality itself.
I didn't do a good job of really exploring the issue here. We seem to be presented with three possibilities:
a) there is no objective reality
b) there is an objective reality, but it's unknowable (the question begged is: to whom?)
c) there is an objective reality, and it can be known (again, by whom?)
It's important to realize that the first choice, typically associated with what many like to call "postmodern" philosophies, isn't simply posited as an axiom or presupposition. The apparent rejection of objective reality by certain strands of modern thought is a consequence of certain logical acrobatics, and issues of logic grounded in material fact that don't seem to coincide.
The most obvious examples of this claim come from poststructuralist thinkers (Jacques Derrida, Judith Butler, Jean Baudrillard, etc.), many of whom stress the importance of material bodies as signifiers, and thus always-already caught up in a symbolic structure where the stand for something, thus no longer immediate, but mediating a relationship. This isn't a presupposition, but a conclusion of the way words, bodies, objects, etc. are treated in society.
Since appeals to objective reality are often made to justify our scientific methodologies, our empirical studies, and our efforts to more accurately depict reality, then we must assume that reality is knowable at some level - we, unfortunately, just haven't made the leap yet. But we should continue to pursue our findings and our experiments, since this will inevitably lead our approximations closer and closer to objective reality.
I'm of the opinion that this approach and argument is laden with shortsighted flaws, mainly ones that emerge from the paradoxes that arise from the notion of objective reality.
The most recent move in this discussion (that I've read) has not been made by a poststructuralist, but by Žižek, who draws explicitly on the "bodies" of quantum physics (mathematics, particles, atoms, etc.):
The eternal naïve-realist question "How does objective reality look without me, independently of me?" is a pseudo-problem, since it relies on a violent abstraction from the very reality it attempts to grasp: "objective reality" as a mathematicized set of relations is "for us" the result of a long process of conceptual abstraction. This does not devalue the result, making it simply dependent on our "subjective standpoint," but it does involve a paradox: "objective reality" (the way we construct it through science) is a Real which cannot be experienced as a reality. In its effort to grasp reality "independently of me," mathematicized science erases "me" from reality, ignoring (not the transcendental way I constitute reality, but) the way I am part of this reality.
Our appeals to objective reality thus contain an implicit paradox. They cannot simultaneously account for the ability of reality to subsist without subjective perception, and the existence of the subject within reality itself (as a part of "objective" reality). Furthermore, in this scenario we must admit that reality cannot exist without subjects to perceive it, since the reality that exists
with subjects would not be the same reality as that
without subjects.
Now, we might insist that subjects can still exist within reality, but we're simply unable to perceive objective reality as a whole. This doesn't mean that objective reality doesn't exist, it simply doesn't exist
for us. This is a very good and convincing rejoinder.
The problem arises when we attempt to make measurements and experiments that propose to approximate the objectivity of reality. If we admit that reality doesn't exist for us, and that claiming it does results in paradox, then we must prostrate ourselves before the depressing fact that our experiments can never accurately capture reality and represent it back to us. In fact, they can't even get
close. This was Niels Bohr's famous claim about Heisenberg's principle:
While Heisenberg's point is that we cannot establish the simultaneous position and momentum of a particle because the very act of measurement intervenes in the measured constellation and disturbs its coordinates, Bohr's point is a much stronger one concerning the very nature of reality itself - particles in themselves do not have a determinate position and momentum, thus we should abandon the standard notion of "objective reality" populated by things equipped with a fully determined set of properties.
For Bohr, the intervention of atomistic subjects not only prohibits the possibility of an objective understanding of reality; it precludes the possibility of reality existing objectively. The existence of subjects who participate in the act of measuring, calculating, hypothesizing, etc. means that objective reality must account for their measurements, calculations, and hypotheses. But if the point is that reality exists objectively, without those interventions, then we encounter the paradox, which can be put in the following positive way:
A universe may be possible with no subjects to observe it; but our universe cannot exist without subjects to observe it. Or, put differently:
Our objective reality must include our efforts to perceive it. If it subsisted without our efforts, it would not be the same reality.
In Žižek's conclusion:
Therein, perhaps, lies the ultimate philosophical consequence of quantum physics: that what is most brilliant and daring experiments demonstrate is not that the description of reality it offers is incomplete, but that reality itself is ontologically "incomplete," indeterminate - the lack that we take as an effect of our limited knowledge of reality is part of reality itself.
There is, of course, an obverse to this possibility. Perhaps objective reality does exist, and does subsist without our perception of it.
In that case, I would put forth the argument that subjects, in fact, do not exist.
