It's been a while since I managed to get my nose back into Nigel Warburtons book, all about The basics of philosophy.
I had a spare quiet sunny afternoon (or at least I think I did ) so I made a cuppa, and sat down to go through the next chapter, one I have been looking forward to for some time.
Appearance, Reality and Perception.
How do we know something is real? How do we know it is not? How do we know what reality IS?
How do we know things? How do we know we know?
I know it's Saturday afternoon, and I'm sat at my desk and typing this article. I also know that if I move my chair will squeak.
I know it's Saturday because I checked the calendar. I know I'm sat here because my brain tells me through all my senses that I'm doing so, and I know that my chair will squeak because I've experienced it doing so and remember that fact.
Or do I? what I actually have in all three cases are perceptions. How many times have you thought it was Saturday only to realise it wasn't.. and you've looked at the information wrongly? My brain could well be dreaming that I'm sat here.. and thus my perceptions of my activity is skewed. Plus, we all "know" memory isn't infallible...
So is "reality" simply a set of electrical signals, current or historical, interpreted by the brain?
Philosophers frame these arguments under a number of headings.
Common sense realism
In essence the simplest and most often seen "lay persons" interpretation of perception. Things exist and we see them as they are, as a result of their existence. An objects existence does not depend on its being observed, thus if a tree falls in the woods and no one observes it fall, then the tree both exists and falls.
Representative realism
This is an extension of the common sense position whereby it takes into account the idea that what we "see" is merely a representation of the object, not the object itself. For example a stick in water that appears bent but isn't, or a hot road appearing to shimmer when in fact it isn't moving. This also takes into account differences in the viewers. For example if two people observe a dress, one person may see a blue dress, but the other being colour blind, may not. Thus "blue" isn't a mechanism or quality of the dress, but rather of the mechanism of its perception.
Idealism
This is again an extension of relative realism. Since all we "know" is based on internal representation of the outside world, one cannot prove the existence of the outside world since all proof would be via the means of our own sense, and thus merely representative. This theory also leads to the idea that physical things only exist when being perceived. So our tree would not only fail to fall if no one were to see it, but would also fail to exist.
Phenomenalism
John Stuart Mill was a phenomenalist. This is again an extension of the idealism theory, yet it argues that unobserved objects can exist since it is "possible" to observe them. Although it accounts for the existance of unobserved objects in this way it still postulates that all experiences of our external world is indirect, via internal representations.
Causal realism
This would be one that the scientific amongst you would probably like the most since it takes the view that the purpose of perception is to navigate our external world therefore our external world must exist. (A philosophical argument for "evolution" or the "design argument" perhaps?) Our external environment has certain qualities that over time we as beings have become attuned to recognising and navigating through and around. It does reduce all perception to merely information gathering, but it remains at time of writing the most satisfactory account of perception. It differs from the common sense argument above in that it allows for those errors or shifts in perception and doesn't assume that what is being perceived is actually always "truth" in the same way.
Head hurting yet? or do you just think it is?
So, what we really have here is a chicken and egg scenario. Every one of us can only perceive our external environment through our senses. They are the means by which we determine the world around us, and we can never view the world but through them. (Think of it as akin to being locked in a cinema, with the screen and speakers the only window the outside world)
Do we know what we don't know yet?
Hundreds of years ago, due to lack of astrological knowledge, people would perhaps take things at "face value" The moon for instance, getting bigger through the seasons or when near the horizon, would probably be believed to actually "be" bigger, since there was no knowledge base to refute that argument and people could see that it certainly "looked bigger"
Here we have the paradox. It is only through what we "know" that we can question the "unknown". We now "know" about the moon, its orbit and the reasons why it appears larger or smaller. We "know" it doesn't actually change its physical size. But that knowledge has been acquired through the use of human senses and thus is open to interpretation. With that comes the realisation that those interpretations may be inaccurate.
If you've ever seen the film inception, you'll get the idea of a dream within a dream, or perhaps the matrix where humans are all living in a VR world of computer generation. Those might be extreme version of the hypothesis that everything we perceive might not actually be as it is. But they are perfect illustrations of that concept.
Of course if you'll indulge me in a little conjecture here in stretching things beyond the bounds of pure theory, if one brings in another human quality - "emotion"- things can change once more. Why? well much like the colour blind example above it has more to do with the observer than the observed. How we perceive things is one question, how we interpret that perception is another, but they are of course linked
It's why certain songs will raise a smile or a tear, and certain words mean many many different things to different people.
The songs don't change, but our perceptions of them and the meaning ascribed to them does. So, since everything we observe changes us, does that mean we can never observe the same thing twice in exactly the same way? Since we are never the same having observed it the first time?
Yeah, sure you're welcome, that conundrumn might keep ya awake at night.. assuming you're actually not already asleep that is..
But the point of that segway into emotion is to highlight that were there only a screen and the outside world "not real", then one would be heading toward solipsism, or a view that only one's own mind exists and is real. In which case why do we have emotion? Emotion exists to enable us to interact with others, ergo it's an evolutionary mechanism the existence of which proves the existence of others.
Any how verbose verbiage and vexatious vagaries of language aside, that's it in a nutshell. Reality is something we only ever perceive and thus we cannot be sure it is reality at all since the scientific method would be to observe it via two independent routes, which of course we cannot do.
What we can do however is to observe two or three variation of phenomena to prove or disprove theories around reality and our world at large.
But that I'll leave for the next chapter in Nigel's book, which happily enough is all about Science...
Sweet dreams!
Sarah
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