On Perception and What Is Perceived

Idealism, sometimes called "phenomenalism", is an argument that perceptions do not correspond to an unperceived "substance" or "material" world outside of themselves; but everything that exists is minds, and the perceptions of those minds, which are considered mental in nature. The idea that all that exists are perceptions and the minds that perceive them is at once one of the most absurd ideas there is in philosophy, and at the same time one of the hardest to refute. The idealist argument, in its most powerful form, does not positively prove that there are not material entities that are the causes of the mind's perceptions. Rather, it proposes that we cannot know of them, and concludes that since we can know nothing of their nature or even existence, it would be irrational to believe they exist. The arguments are various but usually run along these lines:

Suppose I am sitting at a desk with an eraser on it. A) I can know nothing of the eraser but through my perceptions of it, it being fundamentally an empirical object. B) If A is true, then knowledge of the eraser as it is outside of my perception is impossible. To say I know nothing of it but through perception, the idea that I can know of how it is in-itself, unperceived, is a contradiction--I know nothing of it but my perception, therefore as it is outside of my perception is impossible for me to assess. The frustrating but very valid conclusion to this is that, according to what I can ascertain, my perception of the eraser is all that there is to the eraser, at least insofar as I can know the eraser.

Certainly my perception of the eraser is different, in some respects, from the eraser in-itself. But once this distinction is drawn between my perception and the reality - once we assign them different natures and a different status of ontology - we end up at the end saying only the perception is knowable. Being an empirical object, whether we are rationalists or empiricists, all our knowledge of the eraser is brought to us by means of perception. As to what it is in a mode that is by definition outside of all perception, of course we will remain ignorant. Thus, once I draw that curtain between my perception of the eraser and the unperceived body that caused it, I am forced to the conclusion that of this "unperceived body", I know not a thing, not even of its existence.

Now, suppose I am thinking of my kitchen. I have just gone there for a glass of milk and returned. I consider that it is still there while I am not looking. But can I see it as it is "when I am not looking"? If I look, I am looking - so this is not my kitchen as it is when I am not looking. Frustratingly, I have to admit that "the kitchen as it is when I am not looking" is by its very definition unknowable to me. I only know the kitchen insofar as I see it. My kitchen, right now when I am not in it, is unperceived, and therefore unknown to me. It would make as much sense to say I know about how my kitchen is "when I am not looking" as it does to say I know there is a planet in our solar system that is undetectable, in either itself or the results of its presence, by any human sense or instrument. We know about empirical objects like planets only insofar as they or the results of their presence strike our senses; as far as things stand insofar as they do not strike our senses, and how things look insofar as we do not see them is by definition unknown. Thus we have arrived at the obviously absurd conclusion that my kitchen does not exist right now, since I am not looking at it; it would be irrational to believe in such an empirical entity when it obviously cannot be perceived.

Of course, this is not a positive proof that my kitchen does not exist when I am not perceiving it. The idea that "My kitchen does not exist when I am not perceiving it" is a proposition that remains undemonstrated, but is only arrived at by our failure to prove its contrary. I believe the consensus in philosophy has made an error in this regard, which can only be called a judgement call in assignment of burden of proof. We have supposed in philosophy that the burden of proof is on the one who asserts the kitchen exists when we are not seeing it. But that the kitchen does not exist when we are not seeing it has not been proved except by default; basically what the conclusion of the argument should be, is a state of suspended judgement, instead of the positive assertion that the kitchen does not exist. We can prove neither its existence nor its nonexistence; nor can we positively assert that all that exists are minds and their perceptions. This remains as undemonstrated as the proposition that the kitchen does in fact exist when I am not looking. It is perhaps a logical convention that the one who positively asserts the existence of a given body is the one who has the burden of proof; but if he fails, it is not quite anything more than a legalistic logical move for us to deny that body's existence, instead of a suspension of judgement on the matter. Does the burden of proof stand on the shoulders of the one who denies the sun's existence at midnight when it is invisible, or on the one who would assert it? I would say it is only a dogmatic logical legalism that can determine this question at all, based as it would be on simply conventional principles that have no bearing upon the nature of the sun itself, as it stands outside of any logical convention.

What the idealist asserts is more akin to a mental illness than to a philosophy; for though he seldom mentions it in the idealism arguments, other people, that is, other minds, are subject to the same denial of their existence as the eraser or my kitchen when I am not looking at them. Strictly speaking, the logical outcome of idealism is not that There is nothing but minds and their perceptions, but, There is nothing but my mind and its perceptions. We are left in a state of insanity, supposing we are the only creature there ever was, with nothing outside of us whose existence we can demonstrate - for perceptions of other people whom we speak with are in no way different from perceptions of tables and chairs. If the latter require a positive proof of their existence in-themselves, for us to avoid asserting they don't exist, so do other people. What the idealist usually says is that we see our own bodies, and perceive other bodies around us just like ours; so that we can conclude that there are minds like ours behind the sensations of those other bodies. But can we perceive the minds of others? Certainly not - we only perceive their bodies. And if we are denying the material substance at the root of the sight of those bodies; if we are calling all unperceived material and substance nonexistent, then we are denying that those other people exist at all. As for their minds, we never perceive them but through their bodies; and as for their bodies, that is what the idealist denies is actually there at all outside of our perception. Thus solipsism - the idea that there is but I in all the world, everything in it being my dream and hallucination - is the natural and probably inescapable consequent of idealism.

A little common sense can carry us a long way out of this problem; and though our system may remain, strictly speaking, undemonstrated, at least it will be more likely true than the madness which asserts I am the only being in the universe and everything is my dream. Ask yourself, for instance, what is more clear to you - that your friends exist outside of your perception, or the abstract reasoning found at the beginning of this essay, which asserted the idealist system? Suppose you were placed before an executioner with a gun pointed at you, and were shown a stone to hold in your hands and look at. Presently the executioner will take the stone and place a sheet over it, to hide it. The executioner, through some superhuman ability, knows the truth of all things, and will ask you a question. He will ask you whether you believe that the stone still somewhere exists, even though it is below the sheet and you cannot see it. A wrong answer will mean your death. Is your loyalty to abstract philosophical argumentation so strong - argumentation so much less clear in your mind than the truth now before you that the stone is still under that sheet - that you will wager your life on the thesis that the stone is not in fact under that sheet? Some philosophers seem to enjoy proving absurdities like the idea that the stone does not exist when it is unseen simply because they can, and no one can refute them. But I do not believe one out of a hundred so-called idealists would face the executioner and assert that the stone does not exist at all, simply because it is behind a sheet.

Of course this is the most blatant ad hominem sort of argumentation, but there are enough controversies in philosophy between people who honestly disagree, without inventing other controversies about which everyone would be in agreement, were it to come down to a question of life or death for us. Philosophy is a study divorced from the practical sphere; but so long as we are arguing for propositions and coming to conclusions that we wouldn't hold for a second were it to come down to matters of life and limb for us, really we are not arguing soberly; but are childishly toying with logic, and asserting things we don't really believe, as if philosophy were just a silly game with words.

So let us take a little dose of common sense, adhere to realism, and see what philosophical fruits will be borne. Yes: my present sensation of my room, carpet and walls is due to light coming from these objects that is detected by my eyes. Yes: the music coming to my ears is from vibrations in the air that my eardrums detect, which are caused by my stereo speakers. Yes: the sensation in my fingertips as I type is caused by the pressing of my fingertip nerves into the surface of the keys on my keyboard.

Let's explore a little how perception of the outer world works. The sensation I have that I see the room I am in is from my brain "reading" the light waves that are in direct contact with my retinas. My brain reads this information of light that is striking my retinas, interprets it, and presents it to my mind as a picture. Much in the way that, when I step outside and interpret the cloudy, gray look of the skies to mean rain is coming, my brain has already done a little analysis itself: it has interpreted the light hitting my eyes to mean that there are those clouds I see, then presented me with the picture of them. One of these analyses of the brain is unconscious, animal, biological and automatic: the light hitting my eyes is analyzed and interpreted unconsciously by my brain, the result being my sensation of cloudy, gray skies. The crudest animal's brain does as much as this. But my human brain analyzes further: it takes that picture the brain has already analyzed and presented to me, and extends it into a future prediction: there will be rain. Just in the way that my analysis of the data I take in (the cloudy skies) leads me to expect rain, so too has my brain already taken in the data of light waves, and interpreted them to mean there are clouds in the sky. Of course, both these processes are fallible; my eyes have taken in what are signals of things, and not the true things themselves, and reached the conclusion that there are clouds in the skies due to the nature of the light hitting my retinas. The light waves hitting my eyes are read and interpreted, and my brain takes this to mean clouds are there above me, and so presents me with their image. All my senses work in this way, whether they are a vibrating eardrum or pressures read by my tactile nerves: purely local data are gathered from what is in direct contact with my body, interpreted, and the conclusion of that interpretation is presented to me in the form of a sensation.

This is the way the senses function: by reading data that is purely local, which is assumed by the brain to be the results of things that are remote. The brain then takes the local data, and interprets them to mean there are clouds in the sky, which is the information it transforms into a visual sensation to present to me.

Not all - or even a small fraction - of the possible data that the human body could (speculatively speaking) pick up locally, and interpret into information about remote events, are utilized. Bats, for instance, use a sonar device - sending out sounds that are picked up by a super-acute surface when they bounce off objects and return to the bat's body. One may assume that the bat's brain processes these sound vibrations into some sort of three-dimensional "picture" for the bat's brain to experience. But as to the precise nature of its sensation, we cannot know what this is. We cannot know the nature of the bat's sensation any more than man born blind could imagine the nature of a given color.

We see quite clearly with modern technology that only a fraction of all possible local stimuli available to the human organism is received, analyzed and interpreted by its five senses, to be presented as information about distant objects and events. A TV working by means of radio waves picks up purely local signals with its particular mechanism, and in this way it is able to interpret a local signal into a given picture of an event that is taking place half a world away. It works in the same fundamental way as human vision or hearing - picking up data with which it is in immediate contact, and processing it into information about a remote event, using a causal principle. There are so many such technologies as these that the reader will already be familiar with many of them, and we need not list all of them here. Suffice it to say that all that is required for a biological organism to make use of local data, to present to the mind information about a remote event, is a sufficiently precise causal link between that local phenomena and the remote event. And all causality is, is some determinate effect something has on something else; certainly this sort of thing is in superabundance in the physical world. So long as the remote event gives off a precise effect when it reaches the area of the organism, it is theoretically possible for that organism to use that effect and draw informational conclusions about what caused it, and thus present the information to the mind of the organism in some sensation or another.

So let us go back to the discussion about how my kitchen "is" when I am not looking. I imagine it to be just as it is when I am looking. But there is a problem with this sort of thought. When I imagine it as it is when I am looking, I imagine it to be as it looks to me. In other words, I am imagining not how it is but how it looks (that is, to me). But how it looks is not the question we have before us; in fact no one, no matter how realist, supposes it is there looking like it looks to me when I'm not there; it simply is how it is when I'm not there. It is in the same state when I am not there as it is when I am looking; only its nature, whether I am looking or not, is not how it looks but how it is.

We have crossed from epistemology to ontology here. We are not discussing things like sights, smells, and sounds. We are discussing truths and how things are. And how things are is not how it is possible for an organism to perceive them, what they look like, smell like, or any other such thing about them. It is, put simply, everything that is true about them.

And so when we are talking about how my kitchen is in-itself, when I am looking or not, we shall have to suppose that the object "my kitchen", conceived after this fashion, is not everything that can be sensed about it, but everything that is true about it. Remember, the senses analyze the data as it comes to them purely locally, and draws conclusions from that data which it presents to the mind as a given sight, sound, etc. But when we consider, ontologically, the kitchen in-itself, how it is outside of all perception, we must give ourselves a kind of omniscience here. We are not talking about what any organism or sense apparatus or fallible intellect could conclude from the facts of that kitchen, or information we could sense about it - we are talking about everything true about it, in an infallible way. The question we are asking is not "What does my kitchen look like when I'm not there?" but, "What is my kitchen when I'm not there?" What it is, is simply everything true about it.

Obviously Locke had it wrong to subtract from our senses superfluous "secondary perceptions". Our senses are only five channels through which they very fallibly take in analyzable stimuli. When we consider things in-themselves, we shall not be subtracting things like "color" and "sound"--we shall be considering these things and a myriad more. Put simply, the kitchen as it is in-itself, is everything true about that kitchen, whether it is possible for any creature to learn of it at all.

A way of looking at this concept is that the kitchen as it is in-itself is how God himself would see it. He would see everything true about it, from the molecular makeup of the sink to the radio radiation passing through it from TV stations, to how fast it is moving with the turning of the Earth. In short, everything that is true of the kitchen. But we need not suppose that God is looking at this, or that any creature is aware of it, for it to be true of the kitchen. What the original question was asking was, "What is the nature of the kitchen not in terms of how anything sees it, but precisely as it is when nothing and no one sees it?" This is a liberation for us and not a confinement. We will not subtract things like color and scent - we shall add and add. For what the kitchen is, in-itself, not as anyone sees it, but simply what it is with everything that is true about it, is a kitchen that is immune to error, and totally comprehensive of all its properties. It is a kitchen that has properties that no one knows of and that no organism could perceive; but the point is that it has these properties and so they must exist. So the kitchen in-itself, whether I am looking at it or not, is a near-infinity of truths and properties, none of them in error or misrepresented or distorted.

So we have arrived to the conclusion that so far as things in-themselves are concerned, when we ask how things are insofar as no creature perceives them, we must include everything true about those things. Thus, it was a mistake Locke made to consider that we would be subtracting "secondary" qualities in human sensation when it came to knowledge of things in-themselves; rather, we must add to them a thousand and million qualities and properties, and take away nothing. Things as far as we see them are stripped down into the five channels nature has given us with which we learn about the world. "Things as they are outside of perception" is simply another way of saying "everything that is true of those things" - which is obviously of a much larger, comprehensive and infallible nature.

Angelhaunt.net: Because earth's madness is heaven's sense.