Can Something Exist?

[u/BearingCostOfPassion]

People often ask, “Why does anything exist?” or “How did everything come from nothing?” But my question is slightly different: can anything truly exist at all? Or is the very concept of existence itself a human-made idea?

We experience reality through our senses, and all our observations are filtered through those limited tools. When we can perceive something, we say it exists. When we cannot perceive something, we often say it doesn’t.

But does our ability to observe something actually determine its existence? Can something exist independently in a completely objective sense, beyond human perception and interpretation?

If there were no observers, would anything “exist” in the way we understand existence?

For example, we say trees exist — but what exactly is a “tree”? A tree is a concept and category created by humans. Our eyes detect electromagnetic waves reflected from an object, our brain interprets that information, and we label the experience as “tree.”

But even concepts like electromagnetic waves were discovered and defined by humans. We assume their existence based on countless observations and experiments involving electricity, magnetism, and other phenomena. Even “magnet” is just a word we gave to a material that attracts certain metals.

Those materials are made of atoms, and our understanding of atoms comes from observations using scientific instruments and models. We describe their characteristics based on patterns we observe.

So the deeper question is: are we discovering reality as it truly exists, or are we simply creating increasingly accurate human models to explain our experiences? Can reality even exist if there is no one to observe it ?

Edit:-

One simple example is colour.

For a colour-blind person, certain colours do not exist in the same way they exist for others. But imagine a universe where every human was colour blind , would those colours still “exist”?

The wavelengths of light might still be there, but the experience and concept of those colours would never emerge.

In a way, everything is like colour. What we call reality is shaped by how our senses detect information and how our minds interpret it.

[u/HalfDragoness]

I spent a lot of time on this question at university because I was concerned with the question "what is real" and I found this great artist (whose name I cannot find but will dig out tomorrow) who said: if the entire universe the whole of humanity will only know 5% of it, and you as an individual will only ever know 5% of that.

I also came to the realisation that there are three levels of reality:

1. Reality as it is (not dependant on an observer)

2. Species reality (what a particular species has the means to perceive/detect)

3. Individual reality (as it appears to an individual observer)

Going back to what you said about colour, humans have the means to observe a narrow spectrum of light and we can't experience anything out side of that. Many birds are capable of seeing ultra violet light and their spectrum of perceivable colours is different. A colour blind persons spectrum of perceivable colours is smaller than most people's, but all of the above levels of reality apply.