The metaphysical status of reality: between mind-independent existence and conscious construction.

The working question behind this site is whether reality is there regardless of any observer, or whether what we call "reality" is, at least in part, structured by the fact that something is conscious of it. This isn't a new question — it's the line running from Kant's distinction between the thing-in-itself and appearance, through the realism/idealism debates it provoked, into contemporary arguments about whether perception reveals a mind-independent world or partly constructs the one we take ourselves to be perceiving. The papers here work that question from specific angles rather than trying to settle it in general: personal identity and free will are both, underneath, questions about how much of what looks like a fixed fact about a person is actually observer-dependent.

Each paper is built the same way: one claim, stated once, defended against the strongest objection available, in dialogue with the actual literature rather than in isolation from it. Nothing here is meant to stand as a finished position — it's meant to be read the way a philosophy paper is read, by someone looking for where it breaks.

Sorted by whether the paper argues about what exists (Metaphysics) or about what can be known of it (Epistemology) — both in service of the same underlying question above.

For comments on any working paper above — agreement is not required, disagreement is preferred if it's specific.