For centuries, the Western intellectual tradition has pursued a single, seductive dream: that the truth is out there, waiting to be discovered. But what if this quest has led humanity into great danger? In this provocative essay, philosopher Manuel Delaflor challenges the Enlightenment ideal of objective truth, arguing that our models don’t represent reality but rather that they create it. The result is a radical rethinking of knowledge, meaning, and what it means to know anything at all.

Just a few days ago, a colleague cornered me after a talk on the plausibility of artificial consciousness. “But, surely,” she said, “we can at least agree on what we mean by reality?” Her earnestness was touching. It reminded me of my younger self, back when I believed that philosophy’s great project, “making sense of it all,” was not only possible but inevitable. We just needed the right facts, better arguments, clearer thinking, more rigorous definitions.