Michael Mitchell: Archive

There's no escaping reliance on data from our senses. There's no escaping reliance on perception, which our brain does for us by integrating the data provided by our senses. These processes are automatic, and whether we understand them scientifically or not, it's what we're "given", what we start with as conceptual beings, our only means of directly experiencing the world, and therefore the base of all knowledge, where everything we believe has to be traced back to to be certain it corresponds with reality. If we think those abilities are invalid, then everything we know is invalid.

For instance, we can see through a microscope better than we can with our naked eyes, does that mean our eyes are wrong because they can't show us reality "as it is"? And if we can't rely on the perceptual level we're given, then how did we invent the microscope to see reality "as it is" even better? Without its aid, we wouldn't even know we weren't seeing reality "as it is" before. In other words, if sense-perception isn't valid, then how can we know our sense-perception isn't valid? How can science, the study of reality, lead us to conclude there is no reality? The answer to every contradiction of the self-evident is always dumbfuck philosophy, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

What does reality "as it is" mean? It means a stick doesn't really bend when you look at it through water. It means that regardless of how something appears to us, it exists separate from us, and that we cannot directly experience it's "true form". That's what most people mean by "objective reality".

For instance, if you go by your eyes only, you could think the stick is really bent when it's in water but not when it's out of water, that maybe the water physically alters its shape somehow. If you use your hands to feel it, though, you'll learn that it's distorted-looking shape is some kind of illusion, that it's not really bent but only appears that way to your eyes when you look at it through water. Light. Refraction. Problem solved.

If you give it more thought, however, you'll realize it merely appears straight when it's out of water, too. Oh, shit. Is everything you see merely appearances? How do you know reality itself, as you see it, isn't also an optical illusion? Because there's no "water" to alter reality itself, to distort the form of whatever you're experiencing. There's no extra factor affecting your experience of it that you're aware of. Problem solved.

This is where most people leave the issue, just accepting there are some things we can't know or don't need to, but it's not very satisfactory is it? It's even a little disturbing. Does the idea of reality we derived from incomplete sensory/perceptual experience and reason and even science really not match reality "as it is"? Can we never know the "true form" of what we experience in the world we live?