EXPERIENCE CANNOT JUSTIFY OUR BELIEF IN THE EXISTENCE OF OBJECTS

Experience Cannot Justify Our Belief in the Existence of Objects Independent of Our Perceptions

Experience Cannot Justify Our Belief in the Existence of Objects Independent of Our Perceptions

Introduction

Empiricism as a solution to the problem of knowledge makes two basic assumptions concerning knowledge: The source of knowledge is sense experience. There are no innate ideas. The mind is a blank tablet (tabla rasa) at birth; any concepts that the mind has is came by through sense experience later to birth.  The criterion of knowledge is sense experience. The senses are the only criterion by which concepts can be checked to work out if our concepts are factual or not. Empiricism would characterize reality as the correspondence of our concepts with detail or objective reality. (David, 1748)

To work out if our concepts correspond with truth there has evolved in the history of beliefs several ideas of perception. These theories of perception recount how our concepts or perceptions correspond with reality.

 

Theories of Perception

Naive Realism or Objectivism

This is simplest theory of perception. In supplement to the assumptions widespread to all types of empiricism, naive realism makes the next farther assumptions in relative to the understanding of objective reality:

We see objective truth (physical objects) directly.

These objects live individually of us.

The characteristics of these objects are as we see them.

The problem with naive realism is that our perceptions of the object can and manage alter, while the object (naive realism assume) manage not. (David, 1748)

 

Common Sense Realism

Common sense realism is that pattern of naive realism tending in the direction of dualistic realism. This was the theory of knowledge of a school of Scottish thinkers based by Thomas Reid (1710-1796) which tried to set up a theory of knowledge which would support the very shrewd conviction of the man on the street. This theory held that we see the external world exactly and that the sense-data either manage not live or play subordinate function in perception. In Aristotle's psychology widespread sense is the school by which the widespread shrewd are perceived. Aristotle likely attributed to this school the purposes of seeing what we see and of joining the facts and numbers from the distinct senses into a lone object. In his An Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principle of Common Sense (1795), Reid took this notion to focus that the widespread ...