Reality and knowledge: philosophical perspectives

Reality and Knowledge

Epistemology (the study of knowledge) has occupied philosophers and laypeople alike for as long as human beings have had a conception of reality and knowledge. Many philosophers, beginning with Plato, have argued that reality and knowledge are essentially abstract concepts. Aristotle argued, in contrast that knowledge and reality must be based on the senses and inductive reasoning, while Hume argued that our understanding of reality and causation is fundamentally flawed, and that skepticism was the only workable way to knowledge of the world and the internal self. The philosopher George Berkeley presented what is perhaps the most extreme argument against an Aristotelian view of reality in arguing that the material world does not exist, and that objects are simply made of up ideas. While Berkeley's view of reality as based solely upon the mind is extreme and somewhat tenuous, Hume's understanding of the limitations causality and human understanding seems to have real merit. Essentially, we cannot totally rely on our five senses to gain knowledge of the external world.

All men by nature desire to know," writes Aristotle in his Metaphysics. It is this desire that has driven humankind to attempt to understand the basis of our knowledge about ourselves and the world about us. This desire likely began as soon as human self-insight developed, and has continued to the present day, as movies like the Matrix challenge our conceptions about reality and truth. Great philosophers like Plato, Aristotle, David Hume, and George Berkeley have made important contributions to this study of knowledge and reality. This paper will examine the insights of these philosophers, and their diverse understandings about the limitations of human knowledge and the external and internal world.

Plato, born in 428-7 B.C.E, was perhaps the earliest philosopher in the Western tradition to contemplate the nature of reality. He developed the theory of forms or ideas as the basis of human reality. To Plato, the world that perceive through our senses is only "an imitation of the pure, eternal, and unchanging world of the Forms" (The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Plato). To Plato, the idea or form of beauty can only be approximated by human knowlege of beauty. For example, a beautiful rose, person, sunset, poem, or song is only an approximation of the true idea or form of beauty itself. No matter how seemingly perfect, each of these cannot quite match the form of beauty, which is perfect beauty. The concept of forms extends to concepts like equality, justice, great and small, and even objects like a bed. Essentially, to Plato, the best human knowledge that we can hope for is our best approximation of true nature, or form. Reality in essence remains hidden from us, and we simply see representations of forms in our everyday experience.

In contrast, Plato's student Aristotle (born 384 B.C.), disagreed with Plato's assertion that the world could only be known in the abstract. Instead, "Aristotle believed that the world could be understood at a fundamental level through the detailed observation and cataloging of phenomenon" (Hooker). It is Aristotle's understanding that we can gain knowledge through empirical observation that is reflected so completely in the modern world's embrace of the scientific method. He relied heavily on the technique of inductive reasoning, where he studied a multitude of examples and then tried to derive fundamental rules and concepts from these studies (Hooker).

For Aristotle, knowledge could be classified into different objects of knowledge, and the relative certainty of knowing these objects. Objects like mathematics allow for a knowledge that is certain all of the time (two plus two always equal four), while other types of knowledge cannot be certain (such as human behavior). Ethics, politics, and psychology are also categorized as this type of uncertain knowledge.

For Plato, change in the world could be understood as variations on imperfect representations of forms and ideas that were constant and unchangeable. However, to Aristotle, the visible world represented reality, and to explain change Aristotle had to describe principles that would explain change. For Aristotle, reality and knowledge were based upon an understanding of the root causes of change. In his thinking, there are four basic causes of change and motion in the universe. These are: 1) the material, 2) the formal, 3) the efficient, and 4) the final. The material cause is the physical matter, such as the wood of a chair. The formal cause is the pattern or structure (the formal cause of a chair is "chair-shape). The efficient cause is the means by which something comes into existence (the carpenter is a chair's efficient cause). The final cause is the purpose or function (sitting is the final cause of a chair) (Hooker).

While Aristotle's understanding of empirical evidence as the basis of reality has been profoundly influential, it is not without its criticisms and refinements. David Hume, born 1711, argued that our standard understanding of causality is fundamentally flawed, as our knowledge of the relationship between cause and effect is based on habits of thinking, rather than on the true forces exerted by the external world. Hume notes that humans regularly observe events that occur together, and thus develop the habit of expecting the effect when we first observe the cause. However, to Hume this is fundamentally flawed, as there is most often no real understanding of the reason that leads the cause to he effect. As such, Hume argues that most of our supposed knowledge of the world is simply based on flawed habits (The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, David Hume).

In An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, Hume argued that causation does not really exist. He argues that humans have no real or rational justification for many of our beliefs that go beyond our immediate and personal observations. Here, Hume is skeptical about the inductive reasoning used by Aristotle as a basis for understanding the world. Effectively, Hume argues that inductive reasoning offers no support for the conclusions that we make about the world, and thus inductive reasoning is a greatly flawed means to knowledge, argues Hume. Similarly, Hume argues that we know little about the reality of the self, or of the external world. As such, he notes that skepticism is the only real and defensible view of the world about us.

George Berkeley (born 1685) was a contemporary of Hume, who argued that the mind was the true basis of all reality. While Aristotle argued that reality was based on the senses, empiricism, and inductive reasoning, Berkeley took Hume's criticism of these to the extreme, essentially arguing that "matter does not exist" (The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, George Berkeley).