What is and what may be: Observations of fact and the true nature of being

Theatre, television, paintings, literature deal in illusion but can be real in the sense that they nurture and enlarge us, help to make sense of experience. They are false, they fail as art. Theatre and everyday life overlap — although the murderer in the play is not prosecuted. Electrons, energy, valency, spin are real in so far as the scientific structure they form part of explains what we experience. Phlogiston no longer makes sense, so it has lost its claim to reality, as a banknote which goes out of circulation becomes a piece of paper.

Promises, agreements, treaties are real only so long as they can be trusted. Some plans and commitments are called unreal because we know they will come to nothing. To take the big question: We cannot prove the existence of the electron or alpha particles or even such matters as market forces, compassion or philosophy.

But we see their effects, and assuming they are real makes sense of great swathes of our experience.

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Our reflections on this lead us to wonder if we can know of the world beyond our perceptions — the underlying cause of our consciousness of appearances. Is reality mental — mind; or is it physical — matter and energy? If mind, is there a deeper consciousness underlying appearances that unites us all and is the source of our conscious thoughts? If matter, can we understand how the play of material objects and forces can give rise to conscious life?

If reality is mental, we might best connect with it by skillful introspection; by a pure, deep, and penetrating way of thought that would see past appearances and show reality directly to the mind. Alternatively we might passively receive, by a process of revelation, a mental image of reality. In revelation, the cosmic mind could speak directly to us, in apparitions or visions. If ultimate reality is instead composed of matter and energy, the method recommended is more empirical; that is, more reliant on the senses. In science, these statements of laws and proposed facts are subject to criticism and testing by observation and experiment.

Revelation resists and endures, because science gives scant comfort to the desire for unification with cosmic reality. But science is relentless, and facts, ultimately, are irresistible. In discussing the nature of reality, we must distinguish between physical reality and immaterial non-physical reality. Physical reality is that which is constrained by physics or physical laws. Perhaps the best person to relegate this part of the discussion to would be a physicist, since a physicist is probably more qualified in discussing physical reality then an armchair philosopher such as myself.

Are concepts such as these just the content of our brains and products of our reasoning and emotions? If so, then it is probable these concepts are just subjective and thus non-absolute, since the contents of our beliefs is contingent and always changing.

Why can’t the world’s greatest minds solve the mystery of consciousness?

Conversely, if there is a separate and distinct non-subjective immaterial reality , and the aforementioned concepts of character, the Good, and morals etc exist as aspects of this reality, then the existence of objective, absolute concepts is possible maybe even necessary , since the nature of reality is not contingent, dependent on subjective opinion. On the other hand, some questions now arise: And is there a distinct nature for logic and mathematics, or for the connections that exists between these realities.

These are questions for the philosopher and physicist to ponder, and perhaps answer, together. I recently uncovered the nature of reality from a man on a flaming pie, who handed me a herbal cigarette. I now know that previously I was a body in a vat being poked by a malignant demon.

I was only an ape then, but after millions of years I evolved so that I could have the brain power to lasso the demon with my electrode and thus escape. I was chased by a large white balloon, but made my getaway from the Island. Since then, I have set up my own very successful religion in the U. The nature of a reality, or of Reality, is a description or explanation of that reality, or of Reality. The nature of reality for the stone is not available to any person, since stones do not speak or understand a language any person can understand.

One way people interact with what becomes is by way of their senses. Another way is by reasoning and feeling, or perhaps by way of intuitions or revelations. An hypothesis which can entertain people is that together all the realities — for stones, for people, for whatever — form a single Reality. One can then ask whether or not all these realities, the parts of Reality, have something in common. One answer is that they have in common interacting with what becomes.

One can ask further, what is the nature of what becomes? An answer is that what becomes is realities , ie, what becomes consists of interactions with what becomes. That is, the parts of Reality, the realities, interact with each other. Thus Reality is the interaction of realities with each other.

A more difficult task would be to explain how one particular reality interacts with another reality, and with all the realities it interacts with. One can then contemplate how all the realities can or might or do or did or will interact with each other. This is how one can contemplate the nature of Reality. One thing that everyone agrees on — idealists, materialists, dualists — is that there is sense to our question.

Another thing all these views share is that we all share the same reality. For example, for Berkeley the nature of my reality and your reality is the same — it is all constructed out of mind-dependent ideas. We should be wary of the idea that the nature of reality is relative to what someone believes. Suppose I believe that the Earth is flat and you believe it is round.

Therefore, the line goes, we have two different realities. This cannot be right, for we are talking about referring to the same thing. We just differ in our beliefs about it. We can only hope to understand questions about its nature once we admit this. Of course, this rules out solipsism, the view that reality — all of it — is a function of my private experiences. This view is deeply mistaken, for the beliefs and other mental states the solipsist takes to be the sole furniture of his world depend on there being a shared environment.

As Wittgenstein, Davidson, and Strawson have all stressed, the development of language and of thought cannot occur in isolation. With two, at least, in reality, we see that the nature of reality cannot just be how the world seems to any one individual. While this is not a full answer to our question, it is a fact we cannot ignore.

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At the very least, we can now say something of what the nature of reality is not. Reality is the independent nature and existence of everything knowable, whether it is knowable by logical inference, empirical observation, or some other form of experience. Furthermore, Thomas Aquinas pointed out that our perceptions of the world around us cannot be knowledge , since perceptions can logically contradict each other. Therefore, genuine knowledge of reality would have to be direct knowledge of the object itself.

At best, perceptions are not that which we know; rather, perceptions are that by which we know. While much of reality is a shared conceptualization, a great deal of it is personal to the individual, for reality is how we describe the world: Therefore the foundation of our reality is our language use. We must resist the tendency to think of reality as a fixed state of affairs that language merely identifies or labels. Reality is the product of language. Peter Winch states it clearly: The concepts we have settle for us the form of the experience we have of the world.

What we know of the world we can only know through language, and as our language is subject to change, so too is our reality. The world will not change in the sense that physical objects may come into existence as a result of language use, but our comprehension of our impressions of the world our experiences often change as a result of language. When Harvey discovered that blood circulates he did not discover red and white corpuscles or plasma. But though corpuscles and plasma existed as part of the perceived world they were not realized.

They held no place as conceptual elements of reality. Realization is an act of discovery governed by language use. In this sense, cultural differences in language use often create cultural differences in realities. New Guinea tribesmen who have only two basic colour words light and dark have a different apprehension of reality to us.

They live in the same world we do and they are capable of receiving the same impressions, but their reality is different from Europeans as their language use obliges them to divide the world into different categories. How does reality appear to us? Our perception of reality is a generation of sensations caused by our minds, and the sense that they make of the inputs to the brain, be they aural, visual, tactile, taste or smell.

These sensations, particularly the visual, will give us a sense of our surroundings and their dimensions. It is very easy to distort this perception, and this can be done through mind-altering drugs or through the loss of one of the senses. People who have never seen can have their own sense of reality, which may be vastly different to that of a sighted person. However, as we are made of essentially the same genetic material and receive essentially the same sensory inputs, this seems unlikely. The former, called basic beliefs, are able to confer justification on other, non-basic beliefs, without themselves having their justification conferred upon them by other beliefs.

As such, there is an asymmetrical relationship between basic and non-basic beliefs. Such a view of the structure of justified belief is known as "foundationalism. Accordingly, it follows that at least some beliefs namely basic beliefs are justified in some way other than by way of a relation to other beliefs. Basic beliefs must be self-justified, or must derive their justification from some non-doxastic source such as sensory inputs; the exact source of the justification of basic beliefs needs to be explained by any complete foundationalist account of justification.

Internalists might be dissatisfied with foundationalism, since it allows for the possibility of beliefs that are justified without being based upon other beliefs. Since it was our solution to the regress problem that led us to foundationalism, and since none of the alternatives seem palatable, we might look for a flaw in the problem itself. Note that the problem is based on a pivotal but hitherto unstated assumption: That is, the statement of the regress problem assumes that the basing relation parallels a logical argument, with one belief being based on one or more other beliefs in an asymmetrical fashion.

So, an internalist who finds foundationalism to be problematic might deny this assumption, maintaining instead that justification is the result of a holistic relationship among beliefs. That is, one might maintain that beliefs derive their justification by inclusion in a set of beliefs which cohere with one another as a whole; a proponent of such a view is called a coherentist.

A coherentist, then, sees justification as a relation of mutual support among many beliefs, rather than a series of asymmetrical beliefs. A belief derives its justification, according to coherentism , not by being based on one or more other beliefs, but by virtue of its membership in a set of beliefs that all fit together in the right way. The coherentist needs to specify what constitutes coherence, of course.

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It must be something more than logical consistency, since two unrelated beliefs may be consistent. Rather, there must be some positive support relationship — for instance, some sort of explanatory relationship — between the members of a coherent set in order for the beliefs to be individually justified. Coherentism is vulnerable to the "isolation objection".

It seems possible for a set of beliefs to be coherent, but for all of those beliefs to be isolated from reality. Consider, for instance, a work of fiction. All of the statements in the work of fiction might form a coherent set, but presumably believing all and only the statements in a work of fiction will not render one justified. Indeed, any form of internalism seems vulnerable to this objection, and thus a complete internalist account of justification must address it.

Recall that justification requires a match between one's mind and the world, and an inordinate emphasis on the relations between the beliefs in one's mind seems to ignore the question of whether those beliefs match up with the way things actually are. Accordingly, one might think that focusing solely on factors internal to the believer's mind will inevitably lead to a mistaken account of justification.

The alternative, then, is that at least some factors external to the believer's mind determine whether or not she is justified. A proponent of such a view is called an externalist. According to externalism, the only way to avoid the isolation objection and ensure that knowledge does not include luck is to consider some factors other than the individual's other beliefs. Which factors, then, should be considered? The most prominent version of externalism, called reliabilism , suggests that we consider the source of a belief.

Beliefs can be formed as a result of many different sources, such as sense experience, reason, testimony, memory. More precisely, we might specify which sense was used, who provided the testimony, what sort of reasoning is used, or how recent the relevant memory is.

For every belief, we can indicate the cognitive process that led to its formation.

In its simplest and most straightforward form, reliabilism maintains that whether or not a belief is justified depends upon whether that process is a reliable source of true beliefs. Since we are seeking a match between our mind and the world, justified beliefs are those which result from processes which regularly achieve such a match. So, for example, using vision to determine the color of an object which is well-lit and relatively near is a reliable belief-forming process for a person with normal vision, but not for a color-blind person.

Forming beliefs on the basis of the testimony of an expert is likely to yield true beliefs, but forming beliefs on the basis of the testimony of compulsive liars is not. In general, if a belief is the result of a cognitive process which reliably most of the time — we still want to leave room for human fallibility leads to true beliefs, then that belief is justified. The foregoing suggests one immediate challenge for reliabilism. The formation of a belief is a one-time event, but the reliability of the process depends upon the long-term performance of that process.

This can include counterfactual as well as actual events. And this requires that we specify which process is being used, so that we can evaluate its performance in other instances. However, cognitive processes can be described in more or less general terms: The "generality problem" notes that some of these descriptions might specify a reliable process but others might specify an unreliable process, so that we cannot know whether a belief is justified or unjustified unless we know the appropriate level of generality to use in describing the process.

Even if the generality problem can be solved, another problem remains for externalism. Keith Lehrer presents this problem by way of his example of Mr. Truetemp has, unbeknownst to him, had a tempucomp — a device which accurately reads the temperature and causes a spontaneous belief about that temperature — implanted in his brain. As a result, he has many true beliefs about the temperature, but he does not know why he has them or what their source is. Lehrer argues that, although Truetemp's belief-forming process is reliable, his ignorance of the tempucomp renders his temperature-beliefs unjustified, and thus that a reliable cognitive process cannot yield justification unless the believer is aware of the fact that the process is reliable.

In other words, the mere fact that the process is reliable does not suffice, Lehrer concludes, to justify any beliefs which are formed via that process. Given the above characterization of knowledge, there are many ways that one might come to know something. Knowledge of empirical facts about the physical world will necessarily involve perception , in other words, the use of the senses.

Science, with its collection of data and conducting of experiments, is the paradigm of empirical knowledge. However, much of our more mundane knowledge comes from the senses, as we look, listen, smell, touch, and taste the various objects in our environments. But all knowledge requires some amount of reasoning. Data collected by scientists must be analyzed before knowledge is yielded, and we draw inferences based on what our senses tell us. And knowledge of abstract or non-empirical facts will exclusively rely upon reasoning.

In particular, intuition is often believed to be a sort of direct access to knowledge of the a priori. Once knowledge is obtained, it can be sustained and passed on to others. Memory allows us to know something that we knew in the past, even, perhaps, if we no longer remember the original justification.

Knowledge can also be transmitted from one individual to another via testimony; that is, my justification for a particular belief could amount to the fact that some trusted source has told me that it is true. In addition to the nature of knowledge, epistemologists concern themselves with the question of the extent of human knowledge: Whatever turns out to be the correct account of the nature of knowledge, there remains the matter of whether we actually have any knowledge.

It has been suggested that we do not, or cannot, know anything, or at least that we do not know as much as we think we do. Such a view is called skepticism. We can distinguish between a number of different varieties of skepticism. First, one might be a skeptic only with regard to certain domains, such as mathematics, morality, or the external world this is the most well-known variety of skepticism.

Such a skeptic is a local skeptic, as contrasted with a global skeptic, who maintains that we cannot know anything at all.

Empirical evidence

Also, since knowledge requires that our beliefs be both true and justified, a skeptic might maintain that none of our beliefs are true or that none of them are justified the latter is much more common than the former. While it is quite easy to challenge any claim to knowledge by glibly asking, "How do you know? Like any philosophical stance, skepticism must be supported by an argument. Many arguments have been offered in defense of skepticism, and many responses to those arguments have been offered in return.

Here, we shall consider two of the most prominent arguments in support of skepticism about the external world. The argument notes that some of our perceptions are inaccurate. Our senses can trick us; we sometimes mistake a dream for a waking experience, and it is possible that an evil demon is systematically deceiving us. The modern version of the evil demon scenario is that you are a brain-in-a-vat , because scientists have removed your brain from your skull, connected it to a sophisticated computer, and immersed it in a vat of preservative fluid.

The computer produces what seem to be genuine sense experiences, and also responds to your brain's output to make it seem that you are able to move about in your environment as you did when your brain was still in your body. While this scenario may seem far-fetched, we must admit that it is at least possible.

As a result, some of our beliefs will be false. In order to be justified in believing what we do, we must have some way to distinguish between those beliefs which are true or, at least, are likely to be true and those which are not. But just as there are no signs that will allow us to distinguish between waking and dreaming, there are no signs that will allow us to distinguish between beliefs that are accurate and beliefs which are the result of the machinations of an evil demon.

This indistinguishability between trustworthy and untrustworthy belief, the argument goes, renders all of our beliefs unjustified, and thus we cannot know anything. A satisfactory response to this argument, then, must show either that we are indeed able to distinguish between true and false beliefs, or that we need not be able to make such a distinction. According to the indistinguishability skeptic, my senses can tell me how things appear , but not how they actually are.

We need to use reason to construct an argument that leads us from beliefs about how things appear to justified beliefs about how they are. But even if we are able to trust our perceptions, so that we know that they are accurate, David Hume argues that the specter of skepticism remains. Note that we only perceive a very small part of the universe at any given moment, although we think that we have knowledge of the world beyond that which we are currently perceiving.

It follows, then, that the senses alone cannot account for this knowledge, and that reason must supplement the senses in some way in order to account for any such knowledge. However, Hume argues, reason is incapable of providing justification for any belief about the external world beyond the scope of our current sense perceptions. Let us consider two such possible arguments and Hume's critique of them. We typically believe that the external world is, for the most part, stable. For instance, I believe that my car is parked where I left it this morning, even though I am not currently looking at it.

If I were to go peek out the window right now and see my car, I might form the belief that my car has been in the same space all day. What is the basis for this belief? If asked to make my reasoning explicit, I might proceed as follows:. I have had two sense-experiences of my car: The two sense-experiences were more or less identical. Therefore, it is likely that the objects that caused them are identical. Therefore, a single object — my car — has been in that parking space all day.

Similar reasoning would undergird all of our beliefs about the persistence of the external world and all of the objects we perceive. But are these beliefs justified? Hume thinks not, since the above argument and all arguments like it contains an equivocation. In particular, the first occurrence of "identical" refers to qualitative identity.

The two sense-experiences are not one and the same, but are distinct; when we say that they are identical we mean that one is similar to the other in all of its qualities or properties. But the second occurrence of "identical" refers to numerical identity. When we say that the objects that caused the two sense-experiences are identical, we mean that there is one object, rather than two, that is responsible for both of them. This equivocation, Hume argues, renders the argument fallacious; accordingly, we need another argument to support our belief that objects persist even when we are not observing them.

Suppose that a satisfactory argument could be found in support of our beliefs in the persistence of physical objects. This would provide us with knowledge that the objects that we have observed have persisted even when we were not observing them. But in addition to believing that these objects have persisted up until now, we believe that they will persist in the future; we also believe that objects we have never observed similarly have persisted and will persist. In other words, we expect the future to be roughly like the past, and the parts of the universe that we have not observed to be roughly like the parts that we have observed.

For example, I believe that my car will persist into the future. My car has always persisted in the past. Nature is roughly uniform across time and space and thus the future will be roughly like the past. Therefore, my car will persist in the future. Similar reasoning would undergird all of our beliefs about the future and about the unobserved. Are such beliefs justified? Again, Hume thinks not, since the above argument, and all arguments like it, contain an unsupported premise, namely the second premise, which might be called the Principle of the Uniformity of Nature PUN.

Why should we believe this principle to be true? Hume insists that we provide some reason in support of this belief. Because the above argument is an inductive rather than a deductive argument, the problem of showing that it is a good argument is typically referred to as the "problem of induction. Such an argument would proceed as follows:.

PUN has always been true in the past. Therefore, PUN will be true in the future. This argument, however, is circular; its second premise is PUN itself! Accordingly, we need another argument to support our belief that PUN is true, and thus to justify our inductive arguments about the future and the unobserved. The study of knowledge is one of the most fundamental aspects of philosophical inquiry. Any claim to knowledge must be evaluated to determine whether or not it indeed constitutes knowledge.

Such an evaluation essentially requires an understanding of what knowledge is and how much knowledge is possible. Epistemology Epistemology is the study of knowledge. The Nature of Propositional Knowledge Having narrowed our focus to propositional knowledge, we must ask ourselves what, exactly, constitutes knowledge. Belief Let us begin with the observation that knowledge is a mental state; that is, knowledge exists in one's mind, and unthinking things cannot know anything.

Truth Knowledge, then, requires belief. Justification Knowledge, then, requires factual belief. The Gettier Problem For some time, the justified true belief JTB account was widely agreed to capture the nature of knowledge. The No-False-Belief Condition We might think that there is a simple and straightforward solution to the Gettier problem. The No-Defeaters Condition However, the no-false-belief condition does not seem to be completely misguided; perhaps we can add some other condition to justification and truth to yield a correct characterization of knowledge.

Causal Accounts of Knowledge Rather than modifying the JTB account of knowledge by adding a fourth condition, some epistemologists see the Gettier problem as reason to seek a substantially different alternative.

The Nature of Justification One reason that the Gettier problem is so problematic is that neither Gettier nor anyone who preceded him has offered a sufficiently clear and accurate analysis of justification. Internalism Belief is a mental state, and belief-formation is a mental process. This raises the "regress problem," which begins from observing that there are only four possibilities as to the structure of one's justified beliefs: The series of justified beliefs, each based upon the other, continues infinitely. The series of justified beliefs begins with an unjustified belief.

The series of justified beliefs begins with a belief which is justified, but not by virtue of being based on another justified belief. Foundationalism Let us, then, consider each of the four possibilities mentioned above. Coherentism Internalists might be dissatisfied with foundationalism, since it allows for the possibility of beliefs that are justified without being based upon other beliefs.

Externalism Accordingly, one might think that focusing solely on factors internal to the believer's mind will inevitably lead to a mistaken account of justification. The Extent of Human Knowledge a. Sources of Knowledge Given the above characterization of knowledge, there are many ways that one might come to know something. Skepticism In addition to the nature of knowledge, epistemologists concern themselves with the question of the extent of human knowledge: Humean Skepticism According to the indistinguishability skeptic, my senses can tell me how things appear , but not how they actually are.

Qualitative Identity We typically believe that the external world is, for the most part, stable. If asked to make my reasoning explicit, I might proceed as follows: Hume's Skepticism about Induction Suppose that a satisfactory argument could be found in support of our beliefs in the persistence of physical objects. Such an argument would proceed as follows: Conclusion The study of knowledge is one of the most fundamental aspects of philosophical inquiry.

Essays in the Theory of Knowledge. Belief, Truth, and Knowledge. A defense of reliabilism. The Structure of Empirical Knowledge.

Empirical evidence - Wikipedia

A defense of coherentism. Theory of Knowledge , 2nd edition. Theory of Knowledge , 3rd edition. Chisholm was one of the first authors to provide a systematic analysis of knowledge. His account of justification is foundationalist. Meditations on First Philosophy. Reprinted in The Philosophical Writings of Descartes 3 volumes. Cottingham, Stoothoff and Murdoch, trans. Descartes presents an infallibilist version of foundationalism, and attempts to refute skepticism.

Dancy, Jonathan and Ernest Sosa eds. A Companion to Epistemology. DeRose Keith and Ted Warfield eds. Feldman, Richard and Earl Conee, The authors present and defend an internalist account of justification according to which a belief is justified or unjustified in virtue of the believer's evidence.

In which the Gettier problem is introduced. Perhaps the most important defense of reliabilism. Classical and Contemporary Sources 3rd ed.