Appearance and reality(Pictured:A portrait of René Descartes by Sébastien Bourdon)What’sreally out t

Appearance and reality(Pictured:A portrait of René Descartes by Sébastien Bourdon)What’sreally out there, in the external world? This question, in various forms, hasresurfaced in philosophy time and time again.Inour minds we are aware of things via sense data—their colours, their shapes,how they feel, and so forth. But do we know what’s really there? For our mindsmight tell an incorrect or partial story.Inthe 17th century a great debate emerged. Rationalists (Descartes, Spinoza,Leibniz) argued it was our capacity of reason that gave us knowledge of realityor a lack thereof. Empiricists (Locke, Berkeley, Hume) argued that knowledge wasgrounded in sensory experience. Who was right?Let’stake a look at some of the hottest takes.Thomas Hobbes (b. 1588): We represent objects in our minds. Their ‘appearances’are caused by physical processes which are not themselves perceived. Still, sinceHobbes thought objects, in origin, do exist, he was a realist.René Descartes (b. 1596): Like Hobbes, Descartes (pictured) rejected the view that mentalrepresentations share form with real objects. What we sense could be the tricksof an evil demon or a deceiving god. This made Descartes a sceptic who, nonetheless,argued that we do know we exist in virtue of ourcritical, doubtful minds: ‘Cogito, ergo sum’ (‘I think, therefore I am’).John Locke (b. 1632): Dispositions give us natural tendencies but the mind is ablank slate at birth. Experience grants the materials of knowledge through ‘ideasof sensation’ (similar to Hume’s impressions). However, it would beunintelligible to say we can secure knowledge about properties in objects: our minds only detect mind-dependent qualities (e.g. colour).Locke, therefore, was an ‘indirect realist’ since he thought we had secondaryaccess to the external world. ‘‘Tis evident, the Mind knows not Thingsimmediately, but only by the intervention of the Ideas it has of them’ (An Essay Concerning Human Understanding).George Berkeley (b. 1685): Berkeley believed in the power ofperception to understand the nature of reality. However, believing realism (director indirect) to be false, he claimed that all qualities are housed in the mind,whereby God is the only cause. Each of us is a perceiver or perceived: ‘esseest percipii (aut percipere)’ (‘to be is to be perceived (or to perceive)’) (Principles and Dialogues). Totruly understand the world, then, is to understand the mind of God, contrary tothe mechanical science of Newton et al. Thus Berkeley was an idealist,according to which a world existing unperceived is incomprehensible.Martin Heidegger (b. 1889): Fast-forward to the 20thcentury—Heidegger offered a phenomenological account of reality which is arguablyrealist. Heidegger claimed that only in phenomena do things really showthemselves. There are appearances, things that become known via other things(e.g. an infection through an itch). There are also seemings, things which are notas themselves thanks to private modifications of phenomena (e.g. a road lookinglonger than it is). But phenomena can also express ‘being-in-the-world’—or‘being-with-things’—via non-representational encounters with ‘innerworldly’things, founded in skilful engagements which aren’t necessarily mentallyexperienced. For example, this could be a practical relation with a hammer,whose being is manifested in my capacity for utilising it. Through phenomena wemaintain real relations with things which appear out of themselves.Where’syour vote going? -- source link

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