Wednesday, October 31, 2012
Macbeth's Dagger and Other Illusions
Hylas objects to Philonous' idealism by claiming that on his view there
is no way to distinguish between veridical appearances and illusions.
In other words, idealism implies that the danger than Macbeth sees
before his eyes but cannot clutch is just as real as the dagger he uses
to kill Duncan. Is this a valid objection? How successful is
Philonous' response?
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Philonous' objection claiming that there is no way to distinguish between veridical appearances and illusions is a valid and an extremely important observation. How can the oar in the water look bent and feel strait at the same time? Berkeley claims that illusions are really misinterpretations of perceptions. He believes that these perceptions are disputed by science, thus the perceiver should know the difference between an oar that looks bent and a real oar (the oar perceived most of the time). Essentially the mistake is not in the perception, but rather in the interpretation of that perception.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure if I buy this logic, according to idealism, to be is to be perceived. If we are somehow expected to know which perceptions are in fact real and which are not, how did we justify what the "correct" were in the first place? Isn't science just a collection of perceptions as well? How do we know that we weren't deceived in every single one of those perceptions? There have been occasions of this exact scenario happening throughout history. Such as the classic scenario of the earth being flat. This leads me right back to my faithful philosophy of Skepticism. I feel that Idealism is very similar to Skepticism, except for the reasoning by which each was created. All of the arguments for science and the misinterpretation of perceptions are created through inductive reasoning. Skepticism is the only argument I have heard which is derived using deductive reasoning, and to me this is the strongest form of reasoning.
Additionally, if we use the same example of the oar in the water and add God to the equation, a variety of other obstacles arise. If God is perceiving everything at all times,from all angles, would not his perception be completely different from our own? Couldn't the oar look bent in all directions, or completely straight? If straight, then how does one explain the difference in perception between us and God. This in itself shows that our perceptions are different, and that no concrete idea of anything really exists.
Finally, does not the idea of to be is to be perceived apply to God as well? This would require that God is also always being perceived by another mind, since science itself does not point to the existence of god. I do not think its adequate to say that these rules only apply to humans because it's these rules themselves that brought us to the conclusion that God exists in the first place.
A little bit of consistency is needed here, I think.
I agree with Will that this objection does offer a significant hurdle for skepticism, and one that it may not be able to completely overcome. However, at the same time, I believe that Philonous' reply may be enough to defend idealism in some cases and therefore should not be dismissed out of hand. One such case is that of Macbeth, and the dagger that he holds in his hand. I am no Shakespearean scholar, but this particular scene has always fascinated me. Even though he proceeds to carry out all his antics with the dagger (grabbing it, comparing it to his own dagger, etc.) he is aware that the dagger is but only an illusion, and acknowledges it as such ("There's no such thing:/It is the bloody business which informs/Thus to mine eyes."). In this way, even though Macbeth may not be entirely convinced, he accounts for the misperception he is receiving from his senses. Saying "Yes, this dagger in front of me APPEARS to be real, but due to my perspective and my prior experience of knowing daggers cant suddenly appear floating in front of me, I know that it is not actually real" is the same as saying "Yes, this oar partially submerged in water APPEARS to be bent, but due to my perspective and my prior knowledge that light refraction in water causes straight objects to appear bent, I know the oar isn't actually bent at all."
ReplyDeleteNow, the discussion as to whether or not Philounous's defense can be accepted in ALL cases in another issue entirely, and that is a battle that I'm not convinced idealism would be able to win in the long run. However, for this Shakespearean case and for other cases similar to it, I do not believe this reply can be completely dismissed. And if perhaps it can be shown inductively that this principle applies to many cases of sense deception, it can be taken as a leap of faith that it is generally applicable, and maybe, just maybe, there may yet be some hope for idealism.
In dialogue three of Berkeley's writings, he subjects his own philosophical belief system to several rational objections articulated by Hylus, and then attempts to refute these objections through the words of Philonous. Several of the objections concerning the fallibility of perception follow a common pattern: If, according to Berkeley's Idealism, our sensory perceptions tell the whole truth about our reality, which apparently is nothing but a bundle of perceptions and inferences, then why do we often find our perceptions to misinform us about reality? In general terms, the objection is that if all we have are ideas and reality is the accumulation of ideas, then why do some ideas not cohere with what we know to be true? For example, why do dreams, hallucinations, and perceptions from afar give us ideas about nature that are obviously false?
ReplyDeleteBerkeley provides different explanations for different types of false perceptions. When it comes to dreams, Berkeley gives the tenuous argument that the perceptions we have in dreams are "dim, irregular, and confused," and therefore could never be confused with real perceptions (68). By real perceptions, Berkelely means those that enter our minds through God's volition. In short, he argues that apparitions from our own minds are never confused with the perceptive ideas that God bestows upon us. This argument clearly does not apply to all false perceptions, given the fact that those who have hallucinations mistake those visions with reality. The argument that he provides to account for misleading perceptions of reality, such was when we perceive a round tower to be rectangular from afar, is that these perceptions are not untrue, but the inferences we make from them alone are untrue. We can never be deceived about the way in which we perceive the world, only in the way in which the world actually is. Therefore, when we perceive that the moon is a floating circle about a foot in diameter, we are not misled in that perception. Rather, we are misled If we deduce that we can reach out and pluck it out of the sky. Macbeth provides a tricky case because there is simply no reality in the floating dagger ,and yet he clearly perceives it. It is neither dim nor confused, and yet there is not a correct inference that he could make about it. While Marc suggests that it is just like the oar in the water, that misperception is entirely due to the circumstances of putting an oar in the water. Every time one puts an oar in the water, it will look bent. Macbeth's dagger is completely unaccountable; there is no circumstance which could be predicted to produce an dagger hallucination. The question arises, why would an amnibenevolent God have us be deceived in our sensory perceptions if our perceptions are nothing more than thoughts which travel strait from God's mind to ours? How could God entertain these false perceptions if he is perfect in all respects? If we do have false perceptions of reality on unexpected occasions, those misleading perceptual ideas must not be exact replicas of the ideas that God conceives of in his own mind. How then does the error in translation occur? Maybe it is possible that these hallucinations are conceived of entirely in our own fallible minds, just like those irregular and confused dreams. Why then are they so clear and distinct?
Another issue with Philonous' response to Hylus deals with those perceptions which are not themselves false but can be falsely interpreted. Berkeley obviously expects us to have the ability to take God's ideas with a grain of salt. When he makes the distinction between false and accurate interpretations based on sensory data, he exposes a major flaw in his own belief system.
(read my next blog post!.....)
Berkeley's model for the existence of phenomenon and causes is based on a mixture of Idealism and Occasionalism. Occasionalism is the school of belief that suggests that nothing that happens within reality happens because of our doing, or the doing of some perceivable being. Rather, everything that happens is orchestrated by God with perfect and absolute timing. In Berkeley's view, nothing is ever actually happening because there is not a material environment to have things happenings in. Alternatively, everything we believe is reality is nothing but a rapid string of perceptive and imagined ideas thrown at us with perfect timing by an omnipotent God. The major issue with this model is that occurrences are often predictable. In Berkeley's model, where does our ability to interpret and predict come from?
ReplyDeleteIf ideas of things come from God on perfectly occasioned circumstances, and all of our sensory ideas come to our minds independent of our wills, why are we able to predict sensory ideas by simply imagining the right circumstances or perspective. If I have never perceived a table from directly above, if I have never been exposed to that sensory idea, how can I rightly predict that it will look rectangular when perceived from above. When we think about a table as a material object, an instance of matter, we can immediately conclude that it will look rectangular from the top and that it's top surface will look like a parallelogram from an angled perspective. That is because these shapes are strictly tied to the corresponding perspectives by the definition of table-ness. While it is true that my idea that a table looks such and such a way is entirely in my head and is relative to my perspective, a table as a material object is by definition the source of any possible sensory perception of itself that could be had in any mind. It is silly for Berkeley to assert that the table has no shape at all because the table really has every single shape that could possibly be ascribed to it. We can accurately predict the shape of it from a certain perspective because we specifically know what shapes belong to the table and which do not, given the fact that it is a table.
(continued.....)
According to Berkeley's model, a table is nothing more than a big bundle of ideas that somehow miraculously get grouped together in our minds. If we can be absolutely certain that everything we perceive amounts to nothing more than a perception, and perceptions have no indication of substantiality or reality, how are we able to infer things? In the table example, what justifies my ability to predict that a table appears rectangular when viewed from directly above? I have never viewed a table from directly above so I have neither been exposed to the perception nor the occasion. If I just have ideas that represent that which I call a table from different occasions, but I have no understanding of table-ness or the nature of a table, how can I infer anything about the table's attributes in the conditions I have not experienced? Is it that the circumstances I have experienced are similar enough that if God were to occasion a predictable experience, I would be able to make a decent guess as to what the "table" will look like? If then, what constitutes this inference from similar experience but a reoccurring theme of table-ness? Is this theme also an idea bestowed on me by God whenever I collect sensory data about a particular thing? Is it possible that whenever I perceive a table, God quietly whispers to me to make the same inferences about that unreal object as other times when I turned my head in the direction of where the table should be?
ReplyDeleteAll of this just seems unnecessary and convoluted when there is a clear explanation: that objects really are responsible for the perceptions and inferences we attribute to them. It is not that the problem of predictable outcomes necessarily refutes Occasionalism; it just makes it sound ridiculous and unlikely. It is a general rule of science and logic that if two theories explain a phenomenon, and if neither theory has been proven false, the theory that is simpler is better. Is it not simple to say that material objects produce the qualities of objects that we can observe and predict? What proof does Berkeley have to refute the existence of matter other than the fact that our perceptions of objects are relative to our perspective? It is true that no one perceives a mite's foot in exactly the same way, but if all the possible perceptions of the foot cohere under the same theme of foot-ness, why should anyone doubt the real existence of the foot?
I believe that Hylas is very unsuccessful in refuting Philoneous’s idealism. That being said, Hylas raises the objection that illusion is impossible in the third dialogue. I believe that Philoneous’s response to such an objection is highly relevant in regards to the story of Macbeth. Idealism is based on the belief that all qualities are property of the mind rather than any material object. Therefore, what is the difference between a physical dagger and the illusion of a dagger? Both real and imagined reveal the same, clear intent: Macbeth wanted to murder Duncan. This is exemplified when Macbeth actually reaches out to grab the dagger and is consequentially shocked to discover that it does not physically exist. Whether or not the dagger existed is not pertinent when examining the intent behind the action. It is really quite simple, Macbeth saw what he perceived to be a dagger before him and wanted to use it to murder Duncan. This is similar to the discussion we had in class regarding the example of Dr. Ialacci’s grandmother. Whether or not the axe actually accomplished the feat of killing his grandmother does not, in actuality, matter because his intent was the same. I believe that idealism confirms this idea because a material object does not possess qualities, rather they, and the intent, are creations of the mind.
ReplyDelete