Philosophy concepts and applications

¶ … Philonus and Hylas discuss the issue of skepticism and its meaning. Philonus is presented as the Skeptic from the first, while Hylas sees himself as a realist. However, Philonus suggests that Hylas is wrong and that he (Philonus) can demonstrate that Hylas is actually a skeptic. Hylas does not believe this is possible, yet Philonus proceeds to guide the argument so that he does prove just what he says he can prove.

The discussion beings when Hylas asks if it is not true that Philonus has expressed the view that there is no such thing in the world as material substance. Philonus says he did not say that, and that what he did say is that there is no such thing as what philosophers call material substance in this world. This is the skeptical position Hylas sees him as taking, and Hylas states that he can think of nothing that would be more against common sense than to state that there is no such thing as matter. It is this statement which Philonus says he will use to show that Hylas is the true skeptic.

Philonus wants to establish what Hylas means by a skeptic, and Hylas answers that a skeptic is someone who doubts of everything. The individual is not a skeptic, then, if he has no doubts. Doubting is also described as standing between the positive and the negative, meaning not being sure which is correct. Philonus seizes on this to suggest that Hylas ha made an error in challenging Philonus's view that there is no matter and claiming it is skepticism. If Philonus asserts that there is no matter, he is taking a clear stand on the issue and so cannot be said to be skeptical, for if he were, he would be neither positive nor negative but only uncertain.

Hylas tries to adjust his definition to include a man who denies the reality and truth of things, which causes Philonus to ask what things Hylas means. What Hylas means is that a skeptic is one who denies the evidence of his senses, and since the senses say that matter is a real thing, then the skeptic is denying reality. When Hylas refers to sensible things, he apparently means only those things which can be perceived immediately by the senses. Philonus challenges such a simple definition, and Hylas again backtracks and restates his definition.

Philonus guides the conversation to show that what we perceive, the states we perceive, may or may not be in the objects we perceive, but in any case they cannot be perceived without the presence and participation of the mind. Philonus suggests that any opinion which leads to an absurdity cannot be true and yet he shows that based on what Hylas has said, an object may be hot and cold at the same time, which is absurd.

What Philonus shows in his analysis is that sensory perceptions involve imprecise definitions and cannot be trusted to provide clear proof of the existence or nature of anything. Instead, all that the individual can know is that in some way the external world causes the mind to react to stimuli and to determine various states on that basis. The skeptical position is that our senses mislead us, perhaps in every way possible so that we can never know what is real in the world and what is not. Philonus leads Hylas to the position that nothing then can be known and that it is not possible to divine truth through the senses.

Some failures of sensory perception are more obvious, as when different light is cast on an object so that it looks different or seems to have a different color, different shape, or whatever. Becoming convinced of this, Hylas also begins to think that all qualities and all objects we perceive may exist only in the mind. This is the position that Philonus takes, and there is good reason for accepting this idea given the nature of the discussion that ha gone before. The world of sensory perceptions is subject to doubt, as has been shown, yet we have an image of the world which serves us, an image that is held in the mind. This is the idealist position. When Philonus says that there is no such thing in the world as material substance, or at least of what philosophers call material substance, he is not being a skeptic but is rather being an idealist. He is indicating not that he doubts that there is material substance, meaning he is not sure, but that he is saying that what philosophers call material substance as something outside ourselves can never be known one way or the other. All that can be known is our idea of material substance. We know a chair when we see it because we have an idea of a chair in our mind. Our sense show us something which corresponds to this idea, though whether that something has material substance apart from our perceptions is unknown and unknowable. Any way we would try to know it would involve sensory information except if we concentrate on the mental construct of the chair. We know that we possess this metal construct and that the mind plays a role in receiving and responding to sensory data. The idea, then, is real, while the object as seen, touched, or smelled in the outside world may have no substance at all.