Illusion: psychological mechanisms and perceptual phenomena

Illusion

The Argument from Illusion -- a Description

The British philosopher George Berkeley sets forth an argument that separates the experience of the reality of an object from the object being experienced. By doing so, he suggests that things exist in different states -- not only the physical. This duality, plurality, or concurrent entity that one perceives is not the real object, or so Berkeley argues, because it has different properties than those properties one assigns to the material object. He supports his argument using several examples where the initial observation one might make has nothing to do with the reality of the object.

The Argument is not only that concerning illusion, but of hallucination and perceptual relativity. If an illusion is does not have the characteristics of the material object, then what is it? Similarly, the question is posed in terms of hallucinations for which no material object exists and perceptual relativity, for which material objects exist, but with characteristics of their material reality and illusion blended. The conclusion, then, is that all one's immediate experience excludes the real material object. One has moved from specific examples, of which there are many, to a generalization, which suggests that one experiences every material object in an illusory manner, as well as a material one. Once must now broaden one's understanding of the argument to include the all. This is accomplished through the second stage of the argument.

The argument suggests that even if one could experience a material object in all its reality upon first perception, one could not know whether one was experiencing it, or the illusion of it. Therefore, one experiences all material objects without really knowing whether they perceive the true essence or the illusion. Further, the argument continues, at what point does the illusion one experiences become the material object. When one blends the perception of an object with ones knowledge of that object, there is a point at which the knowledge one holds true erases the illusion.