0
The material world may not be real
There are certain questions to which philosophy cannot give conclusive answers. Among these questions are the question of the existence of the physical world and the problem of the justification of induction. As one looks at blue light, the blueness one perceives is in the mind, yet the physical object, the light of frequency ‘blue’, belongs to the domain of the physical world and has physical properties, such as having a certain frequency and being located in time and space as well as being determinate, public, and persistent in nature. While objects which are perceived by the mind, the blueness of the light, have the properties of sense data, they are indeterminate, private, and instantaneous, and belong to the domain of the mind.
If two things have different properties and belong to domains of a different nature, they are distinct. Therefore sense data (blueness) and physical objects (light of frequency blue) are distinct. Any attempt to verify the existence of public and persistent objects by the testimony of other conscious agents who perceive the physical objects would be circular because it would presuppose that those conscious agents exist in the first place and aren’t merely the result of sense data alone. Therefore there can be no non question begging deductive argument for the existence of blue light by the mere sensation of blueness that one sees when looking at blue light.
No contradiction arises from the supposition that sense data are as they are yet physical objects, like light of frequency blue, do not underlie them, and sense data are perceived in such a way as to create the illusion that they are coming from an external world while in reality they could merely be correlated with collections of sense data induced in the mind. The mind being a pattern seeking entity infers to the best possible explanation for the determinate, public and persistent apparent nature of physical objects, namely that they exist. The belief that the material world exists harmonizes our experience of sense data and is an instinctive belief that cannot be definitively demonstrated by any deductive argument. There is a genuine limitation in the ability of philosophy to give an answer to the question of the existence of the material world. It is naïve to suppose philosophy could give us a definitive answer.
Bookmarks