| Reality Check |
| What is "real" --only the things we can perceive with our senses (taste, touch, hear, see or smell), or is there more than that?� Is anything really real at all? |
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| Have you ever sat down and asked yourself this question? Not recently? How about when you were a kid, maybe when you were in Kindergarten or first grade? I think almost every one of us has been faced with this question, as a matter of fact, especially in early childhood when a youngster begins to learn the difference between "pretend" and "real" or "not pretend". However, that is just one "face" this question wears. This question has appeared in many, many forms throughout the ages. In fact, give yourself a pat on the back. You are now investigating one of the very root questions of all philosophy, one of the most basic questions there is. This question is so importatnt that it is the foundation of a particular type of philosophy called ontology. Ontology = "the study of being" or "the study of what is". Most people divide the world into "things" or "objects" (physical things, solid stuff like tables and chairs and people) and "ideas". So to these people "things" cannot have the same properties as "ideas" and vice-versa--in other words, things and ideas are completely different from one another and cannot be alike. It will be very handy for you to know that any belief that divides the world into two mutually exclusive categories (groups of things that cannot be alike at all) is called a dualism. As you can see, this way of thinking about "things" and "ideas" is a dualism. People make up a lot of these dualisms--that's how our minds want to work. We divide the world up, just naturally. And the moment we divide up the world into two completely different sets of things (like things and ideas, men and women, us and them) we automatically want to delcare that one of the two sets is better. We just do. That's how our minds want to work. So there are some people who say that "things" (made up of good ol' solid matter) are more real. That is probably what most people would say, just instinctively. After all, every single moment you see around you all sorts of physical objects. They seem so...solid. Don't they? Of course they do. It's a human's natural response. That is why some people believe that physical things are more real. Most of these people also hold another beleif that is very closely related to the one just mentioned: they believe that if you want to find truth, you have to find it by looking at the physical world first, and always make sure everything is backed up by physical evidence (this view is called empiricism) The physical world is the "real world" and truth starts and ends in this world (according to these people). The extreme of the beleif that the physical world is the real world is materialism, the belief that the physical world is the only real world. They believe that everything is just matter (solid stuff) that's moving around and itneracting, and that's it, absolutely end of story. Does that seem shocking? It certainly rejects any form of religious belief which says that there is a God, or a Heaven, or spirits or a soul that will live on after the body perishes. This view, as extreme as it is, is held by a significant number of scientists and other thinkers. But if this does not suit, perhaps we can try the opposite approach, which is sometimes called idealism. Maybe the world of "ideas" or the inner world of the mind is more real than the physical world. Maybe "ideas" are better than "things". Sometimes this is a codeworld people use when they beleive that the world if "ideas" is more important than the physical world. People who believe that the world of the mind is more real often cite several important facts. First, everything we see, we see it with our minds, because that is how we comprehend things. Do you remember how we said above that physical objects surround us constantly? Well, we are also constantly surrounded by our own consciousness, our own thougts. Aren't those closer to us than the physical world? In a way, yes. This is why some thinkers (such as Descartes) beleive that the mental world is truly the more real. Plato was another very famous idealist. He believed that the physical world we live in is a sort of bad carbon copy of a world of ideal things, perfect things. A chair is a chair and not, say, a table because it is a copy of a sort of ideal chair, which represents everything a chair is supposed to be. Plato called these ideal images of which everything else is a mere copy "the Forms". There were also Forms for Goodness and Justice and Beauty. The extreme case of idealism is the very opposite of materialism, which might be called nihilism--a beleif that the physical world does not exist, only the mind exists. But even if they do not go to the extreme, thinkers who favor the world of ideas tend to beleive that real truth is verified by logic, or by how acceptable a potentially true statement is to the mind (how much it "seems true"). Some of these philosophies have turned out better than others, but they have been given the general name rationalism. The problem here is that some of these philosohers get their heads stuck in the clouds, and this tends to give philosophy a bad name. So where does this leave us? With lots of unhappy people. Empiricism is very limited (especially in its extreme form) but rationalism is too subjective. Subjective means that it boils down to a matter of personal preference of opinion. That is a bad thing--a big no-no in the world of philosophy, especially in an age that values the scientific way of thinking. The reason for that is that individual people can (and often do) make mistakes. You have a better chance of getting the right answer if there are a bunch of people working together--the "two heads are better than one" phenomenon. Empiricism can get around that problem. Rationalism seems to be too unrestricted, too wild, but unfortunately empiricism goes too far in the other direction. It is too restricted and it fails to take into account the way the mind always alters what it percieves. Rationalism doesn't have to worry about that. Kant was the first major figure to point out that both ways of thinking have thier problems, and to suggest that the solution was to try and combine both ways of thinking, keeping their strengths but minimizing their weaknesses. He made a very bold attempt to do just that, and he succeeded to an astotnishing degree. He did so well, in fact, that people were complaining about him for the next hundred years. Now, here's a little side-note for you: Kant is terribly hard to understand when to try to read what he wrote. Some people poke fun at philosophy by saying that the more "mysterious" and incomprehensible a piece of philosophy is (ie, the more it sounds like insane gibberish) the better a piece of philosophy it must be. Much the same is said about poetry. In both cases, of course, it is wrong. To a certain degree it is true that truly great philosophy will be so new, so unlike anything that has come before, or so revolutionary that it will take a while for people to understand it and adjust to it. I also believe that the real truth is like a paradox, a sort of unsolvable riddle, and that it defies our attempts to put it into words and trap it with logic. In a way, philosophers beat themselves at their own game--the closer they come to truth, the harder it is to put it down on paper so that others can understand it. But that doesn't mean that the truth shouldn't make sense. It should still match our experiences and be approachable. The philosopher Alfred North Whitehead was very strict on this point. Once you get past any confusing words, once you sit down and very thoroughly, patiently try to understand what point a philosopher is trying to make and how he is doing it, it should connect with you. Once you dig down to the real meaning of what is being said, it should be meaningful enough that you can grasp intuitively (with your feelings, even if not with words or reason/logic) what the author is saying. Okay, back to reality. (no pun intended, honest.) While Kant and others have tried to solve the problem of the dualism between ideas and things, that dualism is firmly ingrained in human psychology. It is a basic part of how we think, which has come down to us from the Greeks (like Plato) and probably from even before that. It has even translated into different religious ideas. For example, ultraconservative Christianity tends to see "the world" as its enemy. This includes the sociopolitical world, but it also includes the physical world (hence, they hate ideas like evolution and women are not seen as fit to be spiritual leaders). What matters to them is God and the afterlife--things which are completely above, after, and distant from this world in their view. People are supposed to be always focused on what is beyond and not of this world. The opposite of this, materialism, is the traditional stance of atheists. To these folks, all that exists is this physical world, so there is no point at all in "wasting time" trying to deal with a world beyond. Everything, they say, all of it, is all right here. The ancient Hebrews are a different story alltogether. As far as they were concerned, God made the physical world and it was good-- things were to be loved, used, celebrated and enjoyed. A person's job is to live this life to the fullest (not immorally, of course, but life was meant to be lived and enjoyed). As far as they were concerned, there was more than enough that needed to be done with this lfie, and the afterlife would take care of itself without us having to get all worked up about it. In fact, these Hebrews did not think dualistically. The body (physical being) and spirit (nonphysical being) were completely intertwined and they depended on one another. God was greater than the world and so was (in some ways ) above the world, but He was also immanent, to be found within the world. The Ultimate is neither quite here nor there, but both here and there. The Hebrews have, in a way, done far better on the spiritual front of the battle to find something to replace dualism than even Kant did on the secular front. All of this, of course, is only the very briefest sketch of what has been said about this quesitons and some other, related questions. I'm quite sure that there is a great deal more which could be said (some of which may be added at a later date) but I will leave this as is for now. As for myself, I am always very suspicious of dualisms, so I think Kant and those who came after him, and the ancient Hebrews, were all on the right track. But this is merely my own opinion, so I encourage you all to investigate these things for yourself and let me know: what do you think? |
| Some Interesting Books to Read: This Hebrew Lord--Rev. John Shelby Spong (about the Hebrew worldview) When Science Meets Religion The Bible Tells Them So (about Fundamentalism and its worldview) Creationism on Trial (some sections may add to the above readings) |