Chapter 7 - 1

Chapter 7

Sentence Simplification Questions

01 Philosophy

Representative Realism

Everything people know about the physical world comes to them through their senses-sight, touch, sound, taste, and smell.

Most days, people put simple faith in this information as being a perfect reflection of the rear, physical world.

But people are also sometimes fooled by their senses.

This raises the question: how accurately can the physical world be known if all knowledge of it comes through the senses?

That is the problem posed by the philosophical viewpoint known as representative realism.

The father of this popular philosophical school was John Locke (1632-1704).

Locke inquired into the origin, certainty, and extent of human knowledge in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding.

While his work was hailed by many for its simple approach to difficult issues, it was attacked by others because in the end, his critics argued, it could not confirm that the world-even exists.

According to representative realists, people cannot perceive the world directly, only the impressions and ideas perceived through the senses, or what is called the “veil of perception”.

In other words, people do not know the objects of the world, only their ideas of them.

But this raises a serious question.

The problem with representative realism is that it cannot say anything for certain about the real world because every statement describes only sensations of the world, which are subjective.

Looking at a table, one person might see it as brown and square, while another person sitting in a bright corner might see it as white and rectangular.

How can people know for certain that others see, hear, and taste the same things they do—that one person’s brown is another’s brown?

Whose perspective is correct?

Critics ask that, if all people know is their individual perceptions, which are not necessarily the same, why do people all act and exist as if they perceive the same things in the world?

Representative realists address these questions by saying that our senses act together to confirm the existence of real objects with fixed characteristics.

For example, a table might look different to two people, but it they walk around it and touch it, they will end up agreeing on its properties.

By agreeing on the properties of the table, they have proven that the table exists in the physical world and is the source of their perceptions.

Critics do not agree on whether or not Locke definitively argued that the objects in the world, or even the world itself for that matter, are real.

This is a significant problem in the field of philosophy, because the science of knowledge requires proofs of the assumptions on which all other knowledge is based.

Still, most people in their everyday lives act as realists.

They do not question whether the physical world exists, but believe that it is more or less as they perceive it-even though they cannot prove it.