The use of "any" is quite intentional. It's not necessary to move pas tthat to "all".

Right. 'All' would be a nonsense way of saying things.

An alternative would be to consider the universe from any point of view. — Banno

Any point of view is still a point of view.

Any point of view is still a point of view. — Wayfarer

It's qualified, the access implies subjugation of the effect.

Which would suppose I guess that at the beginning - the singularity - there was observance. A single entity that is aware of its own singularity. Seems pretty theistic to me. — Benj96

I don't think it has to be. It simply recognises that whatever we say, think or know of reality, is always informed by a point of view, but that this is not disclosed or obvious. We naively assume that we see what is truly present, which would remain were nobody here to observe it - tree falls in forest - but we don't recognise the role the mind has in even constituting that scene apparently devoid of observers. We don't see it, because it constitutes the act of knowing.

This doesn't deny the empirical reality of the vast universe outside human purview, but it recognises the role of the mind in what is presumed empirical, as per Kant.

This becomes irrelevant:

To truly imagine a universe with no observer, then you must imagine it from no point of view. Nothing within it is nearer or further, older or newer, closer or further away. Of course, if you realise what that means, then you will realise its impossibility. — Wayfarer

By considering the world from any point of view, the perspective of any individual observer is incorporated, not dismissed. "I see blue" becomes "Banno sees blue".

We naively assume that we see what is truly present... — Wayfarer

...and an infant learns that other folk see things differently, and learns to take this into account. They learn to place themselves in the position of an other - another.

It takes philosophical conniving to convince folk otherwise. And even more to point out the error.

By considering the world from any point of view, the perspective of any individual observer is incorporated, not dismissed. — Banno

Inter-subjective validation. The ‘view from nowhere’. It’s still a view.

Inter-subjective validation. The ‘view from nowhere’. It’s still a view. — Wayfarer

Well, not quite. It's not inter-subjecitve - a useless phrase; if a statement is true from any point of view, then any particular perspective is irrelevant.

The trick is to construct such statements. It requires an extensive, very social process. In some cases it is called "science".

And of course there is always the issue that there might be perspectives that have not been taken into account - the problem of induction. SO the process is open-ended.

But it works; as you can see by the existence of the device on which you are reading this.

But it works; as you can see by the existence of the device on which you are reading this. — Banno

The fact that technology works is not relevant to the question at issue. Technology has very little to say about such questions although it obviously provides the medium across which it can be debated.

The fact that technology works is not relevant to the question at issue. — Wayfarer

Of course it can't be, because if it were your position might be untenable...

We have a shared conversation which sets out how things are, allowing us to manipulate the world.

Inter-subjective validation. The ‘view from nowhere’. It’s still a view. — Wayfarer

Right. It's aggregated, obtainable. There isn't going to be a case where an anti-omni observation is selectable. So, we describe a sense different than simply a single individual, but not without the unknown error of being one. Pragmatic objectivity.

The aim is to remove, or at the least minimise, the biases caused by taking a limited perspective.

↪Cheshire The aim is to remove, or at the least minimise, the biases caused by taking a limited perspective. — Banno

The other poster seems to think the function of being any perspective is enough to restrict an objective observation. Seems narrow.

I don't think that "reality" is nothing more than the name that observer gives to the "environment" he can perceive.

:100:

The aim is to remove, or at the least minimise, the biases caused by taking a limited perspective. — Banno

:up:

mean that if “life” is in fact a false distinction from other inanimate chemistry and simply a very complex physical process that gives the impression of “self reference” or emergence of ego, then it stands to reason that awareness is just a product of chemical/energetic reactions. And if that is the case then perhaps all chemical interactions in the universe are to some degree observing the other ones. This is along the lines of Panpsychism where awareness is a fundamental property like space, time, matter etc — Benj96

It's very good that you brought up the element of "chemical reactions". However, I don''t see that you mention the brain at all, which functions basically on them, but instead you attribute them to awareness (as a possibility). I don't know, are you attempting to identify brain with awareness? Anyway, I have already explained their differences. Yet, here's a little more about them:

We --the scientists, actually-- know really a lot about the brain, its structure and its functions. How much, in contrast, we know about awareness? For one thing, Science talks very little, if not at all, about it. All that is known about awarencess comes from Philosophy. So, these two elements seem to belong to two different fields of knowledge.

About Panpsychism: Although I have not studied it, but since you brought it up, it speaks about the mind, not about awareness. (Panpsychism, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/panpsychism/). And I undestand that it represents an effort to "reconcile", if I may say," physicalism with dualism.
Anyway, I don't belong to any "-ism", but if I had to choose a "camp", this would certainly be "dualism", because the distinction between mind and body is very clear to me.

“To others I am a part of their objective observable universe just as a chair or the sky is. I am outside of them. They cannot prove that I’m aware and alive like they feel themselves to be”

This is a very puzzling thing to say, “They cannot prove that I’m aware and alive like they feel themselves to be” So, base on what is said here, one understands what it means to be “aware and alive” is something that is private and inaccessible to anybody. But if this is the case, anyone partaking in this conversation has no idea what anyone is talking about when we say “aware and alive like they feel”.

We share one world, we react similarly to one world, and we talk about one world.

The fact that technology works is not relevant to the question at issue. Technology has very little to say about such questions although it obviously provides the medium across which it can be debated. — Wayfarer

By the same reason how does one say what is relevant? The default assumption that any observation imposes information that renders the observation invalid is circular and can't be supported by the very foundation which supposes it. Would the world look different in infrared? Sure. Would it change, no.

It’s difficult to imagine anything in reality being significant or measurable without some aware entity to go “oooh!”. But if we go by evidence, life wasn’t always around and therefore there must be a cold dead universe that existed before it could be appreciated. — Benj96

I didn't contribute to this discussion when it first started. I wasn't sure if it would go anywhere interesting, but it did. Not much got covered in any depth, but it has covered a lot of ground and asked some interesting questions.

Some of the posts here have hovered around the metaphysical concept of reality as described in Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching. The Tao is the name for the unnameable ground of all being. Lao Tzu was fully aware of the irony. I guess that makes it "reality" as we are discussing it. It is similar to @Wayfarer's universe with no point of view. I'm sure he is aware of that.

In the Tao Te Ching, the Tao is identified with "non-being." The universe where we live on a daily basis is identified with "being," or "the 10,000 things," as Taoists sometimes call it. Being develops out of non-being by the act of naming, which, to me, seems very much like observing, measuring, etc, which are acts of consciousness. Some people do not agree with my interpretation.

As I noted at the beginning, the Tao is a metaphysical concept. There are many out there. I find this one particularly useful.

By the same reason how does one say what is relevant? The default assumption that any observation imposes information that renders the observation invalid is circular and can't be supported by the very foundation which supposes it. Would the world look different in infrared? Sure. Would it change, no. — Cheshire

I'm not claiming that observation is rendered invalid by the requirement that there be an observer. What I'm saying is that the observer brings an indispensable foundation to whatever understanding you have of the Universe, including the idea of 'an empty universe'. The mind provides the order within which any such concept is meaningful. And the reason that is significant is because it undermines the tendency to treat the human as an object, a strong tendency in 20th century thought, the oft-expressed sentiment that humanity is a 'mere blip in a vast sea of time', which, while an objectively valid judgement, also neglects the fact that it is still a judgement, and one which, to our knowledge, only humans are capable of making. This neglect is a product of what has been called 'the blind spot of science', about which see these sources -

The Blind Spot of Science is the Neglect of Lived Experience, Aeon Magazine
The Blind Spot, William Byers
It is Never Known but is the Knower (Consciousness and the Blind Spot of Science), Michel Bitbol.

From the Aeon essay:

When we look at the objects of scientific knowledge, we don’t tend to see the experiences that underpin them. We do not see how experience makes their presence to us possible. Because we lose sight of the necessity of experience, we erect a false idol of science as something that bestows absolute knowledge of reality, independent of how it shows up and how we interact with it.

What I'm saying is that the observer brings an indispensable foundation to whatever understanding you have of the Universe, including the idea of 'an empty universe'. — Wayfarer

But understanding is something different than the actual happening. If archeologists or geologists tell what must once have happened the conclusion is of course an act of understanding. But how does that the affect the volcano? For itself the volcano does not depend on someone calling it "volcano".

From the Blind Spot Aeon Magazine:

So the belief that scientific models correspond to how things truly are doesn’t follow from the scientific method. Instead, it comes from an ancient impulse – one often found in monotheistic religions – to know the world as it is in itself, as God does. The contention that science reveals a perfectly objective ‘reality’ is more theological than scientific.

The essay is interesting and certainly undermines scientism. But perhaps a straw man of science as it is increasingly understood these days (eg, Susan Haack). Scientists increasingly don't think of science as 'absolute truth' but tentative models based on the best available information. And yes, it is humans doing the naming and having the phenomenal experience that constitutes what we ambitiously call realty. I think the thesis is that this is the best we can do for now rather than this is truth.

To give another example: Whenever you do something on the internet you leave digital traces. It does not require anyone to actually view the logs for the traces to be there.

I'm not claiming that observation is rendered invalid by the requirement that there be an observer. — Wayfarer

I'm going to hold you to it.

...the oft-expressed sentiment that humanity is a 'mere blip in a vast sea of time', which, while an objectively valid judgement... — Wayfarer

Doing good here..

...neglects the fact that it is still a judgement, and one which, to our knowledge, only humans are capable of making. — Wayfarer

If it is objectively valid, then the objection is that this "neglect" reduces the quality below some standard while being technically within another one.

The article even finds the need to use the term "perfectly" in order to maintain what appears to be a slight of hand. Maybe, I'm misunderstanding or the logic holds better than it appears to? If being a product of human judgement sets us apart from discovering truth then so be it. But, if it doesn't; then where is the concern? We are often wrong and this is probably why; seems to corroborate the experience better than imagining a defect; just because.

For itself the volcano does not depend on someone calling it "volcano". — Heiko

Are you familiar with Kant's controversial expression, the 'thing in itself' (ding an sich)? That observation is relevant here. Kant's philosophy is that we know things - volcanoes included - as they appear to us, not as they are in themselves. So Kant differentiates between the reality of appearances, and reality as it is in itself. As I said, this distinction of Kant's is controversial, but it is directly relevant to the specific question asked in the OP.

For a very brief recap of Kant's relevance, see The Continuing Relevance Of Immanuel Kant

It does not require anyone to actually view the logs for the traces to be there. — Heiko

Does a tree fall in a forest where there is nobody there to see it?

Scientists increasingly don't think of science as 'absolute truth' but tentative models based on the best available information. — Tom Storm

If they don't, it's at least in part due to the influence of philosophers of science - Kuhn, Feyerband, Polanyi. I find little awareness of it in the pronouncements of popular scientific intellectuals - Steve Pinker, Neil De Grasse Tyson, Carl Sagan, Lawrence Krauss - many more could be named, all of whom convey exactly the kind of attitude that is the subject of this critique.

And furthermore, the question at issue is not a scientific, but a philosophical one - a question about the influence of science on philosophy, or how philosophy is conceived in a scientific culture. You see already in this thread how widely assumed it is that what is real, is completely separate from us, and it's hard to understand how it could be otherwise. But that, I contend, is characteristic of modern liberalism. It's woven into our worldview. But it has deep implications, and that's what I'm calling out.

If being a product of human judgement sets us apart from discovering truth then so be it. — Cheshire

You realise how big a statement you're making there?

If being a product of human judgement sets us apart from discovering truth then so be it. — Cheshire

You realise how big a statement you're making there? — Wayfarer

Yes, I would tend to object to it. But, either truth is obtainable or it isn't. The process of seeing what holds and fails from different points of view implies we aren't limited to our own. The matter that its always a human point of view implies there are unknowns. I think it's reasonable to assume there will be unknowns and not always as a result of second order neglect, but human error in general. Is it problematic?

I think it's reasonable to assume there will be unknowns and not always as a result of second order neglect, but human error in general. Is it problematic? — Cheshire

This is obviously a big question and we’re wading into deep waters here, but consider the origins of Western philosophy, specifically the questions raised about epistemology, how we know what we know, or what we think we know. That is the problematic! The debates in physics about the interpretations of quantum mechanics are an aspect of that. Look at the arguments on the forum about ‘brain in a vat’, global scepticism, parallel worlds and so on. So the question of the reality of what we know is obviously central.

My aim here is to argue that the widespread and taken-for-granted intuition of the separately-existing world is really an inevitable consequence of the modern ‘post-Enlightenment’ worldview. Hence the expression, ‘Cartesian anxiety’:

Cartesian anxiety refers to the notion that, since René Descartes posited his influential form of body-mind dualism, Western civilization has suffered from a longing for ontological certainty, or feeling that scientific methods, and especially the study of the world as a thing separate from ourselves, should be able to lead us to a firm and unchanging knowledge of ourselves and the world around us. The term is named after Descartes because of his well-known emphasis on "mind" as different from "body", "self" as different from "other".

Richard J. Bernstein coined the term in his 1983 book Beyond Objectivism and Relativism: Science, Hermeneutics, and Praxis.

It’s also a chapter title in the book, The Embodied Mind, Thomson, Varela and Rosch - the same Thomson who co-authored the Aeon article.

So Kant differentiates between the reality of appearances, and reality as it is in itself. — Wayfarer

I would rather say he points out the necessity of the idea "thing in itself". This has nothing to do with reality. It is a model of dialectics. Hegel pointed that out in saying the "thing in itself" is not a mysterious unknown but nothing more than a abstraction. "Empty existence".

Does a tree fall in a forest where there is nobody there to see it? — Wayfarer

If it has been standing there before it must have fallen. In general, the tree might have a story to tell.
If I take your argumentative pattern and applied it, you would have a hard time convincing yourself of your own arguments as these words I type do not mean anything. It is just you.

Kant's philosophy has the same problem. He starts from a quite biased point of view, borrows common patterns of understanding and comes to conclusions that would have made those very conclusions impossible if applied in the first place. This, indeed, showcases a problem. But not primarily a problem with the understanding of reality, but in the attempt of coming up with a universal, isolated model of the mind.
Nobody needs to mathematically prove an "objective reality". People on philosophy-forums who, by their own term, cannot recognize themselves in a mirror disqualify themselves in a purely performative manner. Reality has always been a thing to deal with in practice.

My aim here is to argue that the widespread and taken-for-granted intuition of the separately-existing world is really an inevitable consequence of the modern ‘post-Enlightenment’ worldview. Hence the expression, ‘Cartesian anxiety’: — Wayfarer

I don't have any trouble with that idea. There is no perfect source of knowledge and maybe without religion framing the world in extremes we wouldn't have made the assumption initially. So, we're in agreement, but perhaps for different reasons. If the current view is wrong then what is the correction?

This is obviously a big question and we’re wading into deep waters here, but consider the origins of Western philosophy, specifically the questions raised about epistemology, how we know what we know, or what we think we know. That is the problematic! — Wayfarer

It's just incorrect to expect truth to manifest itself upon our notice of a thing. As soon as we don't expect to be right all the time there's no issue in my view. How do you reconcile these errors?

It's fine to be in opposition to some perceived standard, but usually it implies another one. Which is what I'm interested in; they're wrong, no problem, what is right?