Is Reality Really Real?

Human beings act. Moreover, they act with remarkable success much of the time in big and small ways. Think of the inventions and discoveries ranging from life-easing to life-saving technologies. That seems to suggest two alternative stories. First, that reality is just a figment of our individual, tribal, or universal imaginations. Or second, that reality is real, objective, out there -- and that we rational animals can know it if we exert the effort.

I submit the first story is completely implausible, not to mention self-contradictory. That leaves the second one standing.

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