I recently watched a tv show that produced a line of questioning in my head on the virtue of reality. How do we define reality? What's the difference between reality and a world that is the perfect replication of reality? What would be the difference between the two worlds? Is it truly possible to know when we are living in reality? I guess I'm mostly asking if there is work form past philosophers that I could read on the subject?

How do we justify our knowledge of the external world? Knowledge of the external world seems to be fallible in any case if we put the threshold of success at the highest level, namely 100% certainty. But this still raises a question: if we want to avoid complete skepticism, how can we be certain that our knowledge is at least likely to be true? In order to create a probability about the validity of our knowledge of the external world we need to start from perception. The problem is that we can be certain of the existence of perception but not the source of it (the matrix/the real world), and that is essential for the knowledge of the external world. In order to calculate our probability we then need the number of possible events E and the one favourable event F we're looking for: E = 2 possible events are external source or non-external source (matrix, hallucination, dream etc.) F = 1 favourable event i.e. external source P(F) = F/E = 1/2 = 50% It seems to me that both possibilities are equally likely....

I have never had a successful romantic love experience. If I love someone, how am I supposed to know that I do?

Is disregarding normative claims (epistemic like "you ought to believe true things" or moral like "you ought to donate to Oxfam") with full knowledge and understanding of them irrational? Is rationality grounded in other way than that we just all seem to participate in "rationality project" from the get-go (question of "why be rational" seems to be self-defeating as we look for reasons to be rational..)?

Is there any way to escape an endless loop of "why"? Like when I was a kid I constantly asked my parents how something works and then it went to why something works. After they responded then it went to another why that went deeper and so on and so on. Similarily we can endlessly ask 'why' on matters like oughts of with what hand should I hold fork or on which hand should I wear a watch etc. So is there a way to escape it? Something like fact about ourselves comes to mind (i.e. because I want to do so) but that seems trivial or problematic in some areas (morality).

I still have problems understanding why external world skepticism is a thing in philosophy. I've heard so many hypotheses and they all seem to revolve around the idea that consciousness is a "simulatable". Here's what I don't understand: The keywords are: Consciousness: the state of being aware of and responsive to one's surroundings. Simulation: imitation of something else. Simulation, by definition, is the imitation of something else. The "something else" in this case is consciousness. If it's the imitation of consciousness then it cannot be the real one. How on earth can consciousness not be real? It seems to me that by simulation they are trying to say that there is "illusory simulated consciousness" and "real non-simulated consciousness". How on earth can consciousness be illusory/simulated? A lot of people then say: external world skepticism is skepticism about perception not consciousness. It seems to me that perception and consciousness are more or less the same thing. Consciousness is...

A typical response to global skepticism (skepticism which claims that we can know nothing), is that such a position is self-defeating. However, couldn't the global skeptic respond by stating that such an objection relies on the objector having knowledge of the truth of the law of non-contradiction, which the skeptic claims we don't know? Thus, the skeptic could argue that they know nothing can be known while having the privilege of also incoherently claiming that they still know certain things. Would it even be possible to even intelligibly respond to such a claim, since it seems when one begins to reject things like the laws of logic, then intelligible discourse becomes impossible and were left with assumptions?

I am just starting to study philosophy and I am not understanding the claim that all knowlege comes from science. Could you please give me some practical examples?

What is it to know what a thing is? Suppose I can identify a laurel tree by its smell, but not by the shape and colour of its leaves. Or the other way around. Do I know what a laurel tree is in each of these cases? Or suppose I am a scientist and can identify it by analysing its genome, but not by its smell nor by the shape and colour of the leaves... Suppose I know only or, on the contrary, do not know the uses people give to laurel leaves. How many properties of laurel must I know so that I can know what laurel is? I think I must know something, otherwise I wouldn't even know what the word"laurel" means. But what? It can't be just one small thing: I wouldn't say that I know what laurel is if I can identify it only by its smell.

I recently thought something unsettling about claims of objectivity. It is customary to think that for a view to be objective is for it to be true independent of human opinions. My question then is this: isn't it the case that any view we have, even if we take it to be objective, will still have to pass through the human lens so that there is no view that can be completely independent of human perspectives? Is this a good argument? As an objectivist, I find this argument hard to refute so any help from you would be much appreciated. Thanks!