When an object, for instance, a colorful toy, is hidden from sight, infants under the age of 8 to 9 months often become upset that the item has vanished, even when they saw you cover it in plain sight with a cloth.
They don't search under the cloth. The object is gone, no longer exist. This is because they are too young to understand that the object continues to exist even though it cannot be seen.
If you have ever played a game of "peek-a-boo" with a very young child, then you probably understand how this works.
It is called the cognitive insight of object permanence, which means knowing that an object still exists, even if it is hidden. It requires the ability to form a mental representation of the object.
You know what the toy looks like and you know that it is under the cloth and when you are gifted with the insight of object permanence, you lift the cloth, and bingo!
Babies aren't philosophers. They don't question reality. They are organisms that interact with their environment, learn and come to conclusions, which enable them to constantly improve their interaction with their environment.
In that continuous process of interaction one of their conclusions is, that, when you don't see an object, it still exists. So, as human beings, we grow up with the awareness of an external world, independent of us.
But then, when grown up, we become philosophers and start asking questions. And then we all of a sudden discover that we are trapped in our own heads. How do you mean.... an external world?
Yes, I have experiences of a world in which I live, but read my lips... EXPERIENCES. I only have sensory experiences in my mind. I see things and say they are real, but when I am dreaming of hallucinating, I say the same.
So, when I am asked, what do you know, what are you certain of, then I only can answer, that what is in my mind. For the rest, I can't give you any guarantee.
Maybe this already rings a bell. The philosopher who analyzed this to the bone was Descartes with his "Cogito, ergo sum". The only thing I can be 100% sure of is that I have thoughts, but even the content of these thoughts I can doubt.
It lead some philosopher, George Berkeley, even to believe that our reality was only constituted of our sensory input,
and that object permanence was guaranteed because everything was also in god's mind. Well, ok, he is excused, he was a bishop.
But what I am thinking about is the fact, that what you see in Berkeley's philosophy, is that it could very well be the case, that philosophers have a strong inclination to overrate the mind.
We do enormous things with this mind. I recently spent time watching all kinds of movies on Youtube, in which astronomers and astrophysicists explained tons of things about time, space, gravity,
how space-time is bending light, what happened at the moment of the Big Bang, what all our space telescopes see,
how we see things that happened billions of years ago, that the universe is some 13 billion years old...... stop!
All these ideas are originating from our mind, but they are also encased in the limitations of our mind, for whatever you may think, the real questions aren't answered by all these impressive astronomical theories.
For instance, if the universe has a duration, what was there before the beginning, is there any indication of an ending of this duration of the universe, and if not why not?
This makes me think of the Indian materialists of some 1000 years BC. Some of them were so strict, that they said, what we really know is what we experience, our sensory input.
All inferences based on sensory experience do not lead to reliable knowledge, unacceptable as truth.
If you take the Big Bang theory, it is knowledge based on inference. I know there is a link with astronomical observations, but let's discuss that some other time.
I guess my line of thinking went to outer space today, but what it boils down to is the question, how do we position the phenomenon MIND in our debate about Idealism and Materialism? I think, good for another lecture....
Thank you all again for your attention....
Main Sources:
MacMillan The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2nd edition
TABLE OF CONTENT -----------------------------------------------------------------
1 - 100 Philosophers 9 May 2009 Start of
2 - 25+ Women Philosophers 10 May 2009 this blog
3 - 25 Adventures in Thinking 10 May 2009
4 - Modern Theories of Ethics 29 Oct 2009
5 - The Ideal State 24 Febr 2010 / 234
6 - The Mystery of the Brain 3 Sept 2010 / 266
7 - The Utopia of the Free Market 16 Febr 2012 / 383
8. - The Aftermath of Neo-liberalism 5 Sept 2012 / 413
9. - The Art Not to Be an Egoist 6 Nov 2012 / 426
10 - Non-Western Philosophy 29 May 2013 / 477
11 - Why Science is Right 2 Sept 2014 / 534
12 - A Philosopher looks at Atheism 1 Jan 2015 / 557
13 - EVIL, a philosophical investigation 17 Apr 2015 / 580
14 - Existentialism and Free Will 2 Sept 2015 / 586
15 - Spinoza 2 Sept 2016 / 615
16 - The Meaning of Life 13 Febr 2017 / 637
17 - In Search of my Self 6 Sept 2017 / 670
18 - The 20th Century Revisited 3 Apr 2018 / 706
19 - The Pessimist 11 Jan 2020 / 819
20 - The Optimist 9 Febr 2020 / 824
21 - Awakening from a Neoliberal Dream 8 Oct 2020 / 872
22 - A World Full of Patterns 1 Apr 2021 / 912
23 - The Concept of Freedom 8 Jan 2022 / 965
The Discussion
[13:17] .: Beertje :. (beertje.beaumont): thank you, herman
[13:18] herman Bergson: The basic question today is regarding the reality and existence of an external world
[13:18] herman Bergson: because all we only have is what is in our heads.....sensory input
[13:19] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): indeed all we know is based upon inputs from the outside that we hear that this is how it is, like with the baby example in the beginning
[13:19] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): sound, sight feel, smell ect
[13:19] herman Bergson: indeed
[13:19] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): the we start making logical connections
[13:19] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): then3
[13:19] herman Bergson: But here comes the catch......
[13:19] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): that then become our accepted reality
[13:20] herman Bergson: yes, Bejiita but watch this.....
[13:20] herman Bergson: we have sensory input.....
[13:20] herman Bergson: ok....we all agree on that....
[13:20] herman Bergson: but WHAT is this input?
[13:21] herman Bergson: How does it get organized so that we say...ahhh that is an apple
[13:21] herman Bergson: or yes, that is a circle
[13:21] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): its true that some other species for ex see colors differently, some can even see in IR or UV and they see colors different then we so what we see as say green or red might not be green or red for them
[13:22] herman Bergson: YEs...I am thinking about that sometimes myself....
[13:22] herman Bergson: How does reality look like for a dog for instance?
[13:22] herman Bergson: Doe s the dog 'think" we are dogs on two legs?
[13:23] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): ah
[13:23] bergfrau Apfelbaum: parents teach us that this is an apple
[13:23] .: Beertje :. (beertje.beaumont): in the evening when the sun goes down, i see the sky as violet, my husband says it's blue, totaly different color for me
[13:23] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): and also in reality without an eye that can see a spectrum of em there is only darkness, our breain creates the perception of light and color
[13:23] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): same with sound, vibration in air only
[13:24] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): brain turn it into sound
[13:24] oola Neruda: some people teach.... prejudice
[13:24] herman Bergson: I once sat on a terras next to lady who talked to her dog in German....and I wondered....how does she know the dog understands her German?
[13:25] herman Bergson: Yes we can learn a lot...but that doesn't say anything about the existence of an external world
[13:25] .: Beertje :. (beertje.beaumont): same way as we understand english?
[13:26] herman Bergson: I saw the dog consulting a dictionary :-)))
[13:26] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): dogs can learn a language also even it cant speak it,
[13:26] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): so they learn to understand your language, at least parts of it common words ect
[13:27] herman Bergson: All jokes aside...dogs learn sounds and to combine them with behavior...they have no understanding of language
[13:27] oola Neruda: tone of voice?
[13:27] herman Bergson: yes
[13:27] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): maybe they don't know the exact meaning but when a dog hear the word food for ex it knows there is something in the food bowl and goes there
[13:28] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): learn things like this
[13:28] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): in your language
[13:28] herman Bergson: it has learnted to connect the sound with the appearance of food...Pavlov did it by ringing a bell...same effect
[13:28] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): aaa yes, a classic Pavlov's bell
[13:28] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): the dog bell
[13:29] herman Bergson: But what it is about today is the question, what is in your mind?
[13:29] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): classic experiment
[13:29] herman Bergson: IS what is in your mind the real thing, or is it the result of stimuli from an external world
[13:29] oola Neruda: for me, it is experiences...
[13:30] herman Bergson: and if so...how are we able to organize and understand all this input?
[13:30] oola Neruda: what happened last time this whatever came up...
[13:30] oola Neruda: context of experience
[13:31] herman Bergson: next lecture we'll pay a visit to Immanuel Kant...he had some bright ideas about the question
[13:32] oola Neruda: ,my mother would give us canned sardines as we lived FAR from where there were fish... they had tiny bones in them
[13:32] herman Bergson: In a previous project we already studied the ability of the mind to recognize patterns
[13:32] oola Neruda: so when I ate a watermelon and ran into the little white seeds... i thought they were bones...
[13:32] oola Neruda: context of experience
[13:32] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): everything is fish
[13:32] herman Bergson: funny....the bones of a melon :-)
[13:32] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): ir everything has tiny bones in them
[13:33] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): or
[13:33] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): ah
[13:33] herman Bergson: but understandable
[13:33] oola Neruda: pre school
[13:33] herman Bergson: yes..and a logical deduction at that age :-))
[13:34] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): aaa before u know the difference , u had that sardine can so u expect everything to have tiny bones in them
[13:34] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): if thats your first input from what u most often eat
[13:34] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): things like that
[13:35] oola Neruda: no bones in the sandwiches...peanut butter. but no bones
[13:35] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): canned tuna ect in tomato sauce was and still is a fav, love it on a piece of bread
[13:35] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): ate that a lot as little
[13:35] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): to breakfast
[13:35] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): and similar
[13:36] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): damn now i want that!
[13:36] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): forever since
[13:36] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): i had that
[13:36] herman Bergson: Better to end our discussion here before we begin to exchanges recipes of all sorts :-)
[13:36] oola Neruda: lol
[13:37] herman Bergson: So, thank you all again.....
[13:37] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): well preparing for the night snack later afterwards
[13:37] herman Bergson: Class dismissed.....
[13:37] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): :) or is it just me that have those?
[13:37] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): ㋡
[13:37] .: Beertje :. (beertje.beaumont): yes just you
[13:37] herman Bergson: tuna sandwich it will be today Bejiita ^_^
[13:37] bergfrau Apfelbaum: thank you! Herman and class
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