How Do We Know Anything?
When one really thinks about it, the only thing we can be sure of is the existence of our minds. Whatever one believes is all perceived through senses, emotions, and thoughts such as sight or past experiences/knowledge. In actuality, anything we perceive cannot be believed as fact. On one end of the spectrum, extremists known as solipsists would argue that nothing exists but their minds, they make up the entirety of their reality and nobody else even exists. The floor beneath our feet does not exist and neither do our peers. If you try to argue that this life you lead is real because you can see the world, or through science, or that it is a dream that even if so, would still be perceived as a reality. Your senses have to be filtered through your mind, but to do that your mind has to tell you about the external world- which is what is being called into question- so trying to prove that your senses are reliable will leave to arguing in circles. Science again has this same issue- if one cannot establish the reliability of the senses in relation to an external w...
What you can see could be wrong. Even if you can smell, see the color of things, touch it you can’t be
What is sense perception? Everything we perceive in our senses can be misleading and an illusion. In the article “Perception and Reality” by Keith Wilson (see Article 1), the author goes over some of the aspects of how our perception deceives us to believe in things that aren’t there to begin with. For example are colors real? Well that is relevantly dependent on what is considered real, because real again is a perception of a single individual collecting information and making “sense” out of it. A color being real or not is dependent on how we see it through our eyes, we can 't say that my blue is the same as your blue. We can 't know for sure if what we are seeing for ourselves, is the same as what the person that views that same thing sees
Searching for the ultimate truth of oneself is difficult. In the film I Heart Huckabees, existentialism plays a major role in searching for the ultimate truth of oneself. Existentialism is a philosophical point of view that stresses the individual's unique position as a self-determining agent (Cherry). It also emphasizes the importance of free will, freedom of choice, the unique experiences of each individual, and the responsibilities of one's choices and what one make of oneself (Rooney). During the movie, the existential detective, Barnard Jaffe explains to Albert Markovski that dismantle is "to help shut down your everyday perceptions and give up your usual identity that you think separates you from everything. This room, this street, this town, this country, this economy, this history, this planet. Your body, Your senses, your job. Everything that you identify With." The characters from I Heart Huckabees attempt to dismantle themselves by understanding and realizing their problems to get to their essential identities. People have different ways of understanding their essential identities in the movie; Albert Markovski understands the interconnection between himself and the world, Brad Stand realizes his insecurity, and Dawn Campbell understands that appearance is not everything.
Our senses can sometimes be deceiving, and Descartes immediately comes to the conclusions that our senses cannot be a claim for knowledge. We have no proof that what we experience with our senses is true. Descartes says that we cannot truly...
Descartes argument is quite an interesting one. Descartes takes a good endeavor to make sense of something that is quite supernatural, that even scientists today have trouble giving a 100 percent true explanation. At the roots of what Descartes is attempting to put forward, it does seem logical and simple. At the beginning of the very first meditation, Descartes states that he has lost his trust in his senses because they can be easily deceived (Descartes, 18). While dreaming sometimes it feels very real, just as it does while awake in reality....
normally convinced that what we see and feel is truely there. If this is a
Cartesian Skepticism, created by René Descartes, is the process of doubting ones’ beliefs of what they happen to consider as true in the hopes of uncovering the absolute truths in life. This methodology is used to distinguish between what is the truth and what is false, with anything that cannot be considered an absolute truth being considered a reasonable doubt. Anything which then becomes categorized as a reasonable doubt is perceived as false. As Descartes goes through this process, he then realizes that the one thing that can be considered an absolutely truth is his and every other individual’s existence. Along with the ideology of Cartesian skepticism, through the thinking process, we are capable of the ability to doubt that which is surrounding them. This ability to think logically and doubt is what leads us to the confirmation of our existence.
In “Bad Dreams, Evil Demons, and the Experience Machine: Philosophy and the Matrix”, Christopher Grau explains Rene Descartes argument in Meditation. What one may interpret as reality may not be more than a figment of one’s imagination. One argument that Grau points out in Descartes essay is how one knows that what one think is an everyday experience awake is not all a part of a hallucination. He uses the example of dreams to draw a conclusion about is claim based on experiences one would experience with dreaming. He asserts that there are times when one wake up from a dream that seems to be “vivid and realistic” however soon finds that it was not. The experience of reality in the dream was all a part of the mind. If dreams seem to be reality and one would not have any concept that one is dreaming how does one know that one is not dreaming now? Descartes point is that one cannot justify reality in the sense that one could be dreaming right at this moment and not know therefore one cannot trust the brain as an indicator of what is reality.
Can one perceive or confirm the existence of an idea that is external to him, an idea such as God? In order to determine the answer we must start by understanding the ways in which we can conclude an objects’ existence. Descartes explains three ways in which a person might come to such a conclusion – the first, through nature; the second, through feeling a value that is independent of the will of the object; and the third, the objective reality of an idea, or the “cause and effect profile.'; The third point is the one that we will primarily spend our time with.
According to Descartes, “because our senses sometimes deceive us, I wanted to suppose that nothing was exactly as they led us to imagine (Descartes 18).” In order to extinguish his uncertainty and find incontrovertible truth, he chooses to “raze everything to the ground and begin again from the original foundations (Descartes 59).” This foundation, which Descartes is certain to be the absolute truth, is “I think, therefore I am (Descartes 18).” Descartes argues that truth and proof of reality lies in the human mind, rather than the senses. In other words, he claims that the existence of material objects are not based on the senses because of human imperfection. In fact, he argues that humans, similarly to Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, are incapable of sensing the true essence or existence of material objects. However, what makes an object real is human thought and the idea of that object, thus paving the way for Descartes’ proof of God’s existence. Because the senses are easily deceived and because Descartes understands that the senses can be deceived, Descartes is aware of his own imperfection. He
Skepticism is the view that there is no way to prove that objects exist outside of us. Skeptics hold that we can not distinguish between dreams and reality, and therefore what we take to be true can very well be creations of our minds while we are nothing more than a simple piece of matter, such as a brain sitting in a vat that is connected to a machine that simulates a perfect representation of reality for the “brain” to live in.1 In the excerpt “Proof of an External World” from his essay of the same name, G.E. Moore responds to the skeptic’s argument by attempting to prove the existence of external objects. There are four parts to this paper. Firstly, I will explain Moore’s overall argumentative strategy and how he considers his proof to be rigorous and legitimate. Then, I will present Moore’s proof of the existence of an external world. Thirdly, I will discuss the responses that skeptics may have to Moore’s argument and how Moore defends his proof against the these responses. Finally, I will give my opinion on how efficiently Moore defends his claims against the skeptics’ responses.
...ideas of sense reinforce that belief. However, if we could truly realise our being as the Absolute then the objective world would cease to appear real.
How can we be sure that our perceptions of reality are consistent with the reality in which we exist? Is there a way to validate these perceptions? Could it be possible that we are undermined in our search for truth, if we do not accept that it will exist in a reality outside that which we perceive directly? These questions arise from the debate as to whether the reality we experience is absolute or is in-fact a virtual- reality rendering as described above by Deutsch. In the following paragraphs I will attempt to provide a definition of virtual reality that includes the experiences we have through our every-day lives, and thus, provide a platform for an argument that questions the basic assumptions made by theorists and scientists and alike, in the quest for ultimate knowledge of truth or existence.
Conversely, upon investigating the artwork’s factual information such as the painting’s context, the artist’s background, the genre and the school or movement associated with the painting, it is possible to obtain knowledge that combines objective information and subjective opinion, confirming that some degree of objectivity, albeit with our ‘cultural imprint’, is possible as an art observer.
Descartes’ first foundational argument asserts that one can have knowledge of one’s own existence. The claim is essential to many arguments that follow because it survives his “Deceiver Hypothesis.” This hypothesis states that “there may be a powerful deceiver of supreme power who is deliberately and constantly deceiving me” (Med III, p. 17). This demonstrates that we cannot know, or be sure of, anything based on sensory experience alone. However, Descartes supports the idea that some things can be known entirely outside of sensory experience; through the use of logic and re...