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Would the universe still exist if there were no conscious beings to observe it?

 

This would not be true even in a subjective idealism like that of Berkeley because even if there is no matter and the esse of the world is its percipi, it is not the percipi of common human beings but of God. So, if the question pertains only to human beings the answer is yes, the world can exist even if no one is watching.

But perhaps the question goes deeper. It concerns the objectivity or the reality of the universe. It is believed that there can be no genuine objectivity if it is relative to the subject. Consider Kant’s thing-in-itself; we arrive at the latter by subtracting everything subjective. The purely objective is then something unthinkable because if I could think it, it would be subjective. But if it is unthinkable, it is also unknowable. Many scientists think that physics informs us about the Kantian thing-in-itself, but if Kant is right, the thing-in-itself is outside the reach of science because it cannot be reached at all. It is so objective that it is as good as nothing. Its existence and non-existence are, as it were, of no concern. On the other hand, the subjective has been freed from any constraints of reality. Now the subject becomes the arbiter of truth and falsehood. It is true because I think so; it is moral because I consider it to be so. The subject has become unbridled because any objective constraint is a limit to its freedom. Nor is anything objective in place to constrain the subjective because it has been put out of reach of the latter.

I think pure subjectivity and pure objectivity are abstractions; the truth is the unity of the subject-object. So the material universe can exist without conscious observers, but it is not purely objective in the sense of being outside the reach of subjectivity altogether. Subject and Object are united in a third - the highest unity we consider to be God, outside which there is nothing, and so neither pole of opposites should be given greater prominence over the other.

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