Differentiating an Idea from Reality

Have you ever seen the movie "Inception" starring Leonardo DiCaprio? Well if you haven't, you should. Christopher Nolan, the director, revolved the storyline around dreaming and reality. It reminded me of a paper I had once wrote a few semesters ago about differentiating an idea from reality. What is reality? What is an idea? Are our ideas reality? Well after you read my blog, hopefully it can shed light on what we think reality is. The topic the Professor gave was “If a tree falls in the forest and there's no one around to hear it, does it make a sound?”

Differentiating an Idea from Reality

Descartes epistemology consisted of differentiating idealism from realism in an effort to point out that our senses are not a reliable source to know what is real and what is not (Skirry). Descartes’s argument stated that since our senses can sometimes deceive us therefore we couldn’t rely on them in any way to understand what reality is. For example, if a person looks up at night they will see stars far away, but “light moves at over 186,000 miles per second,” (speed of light) so if a star is 30 million light years away then, the star that a person may presently see is light from the past. The star therefore is 30 million light years old and may not even exist anymore (Pecorino). Our eyes are nothing but an organ connected to the brain that can see only what is within the limits of the eye itself. Even though we see the light of a star in the sky doesn’t confirm it exist in reality. Therefore Descartes argument is that our senses cannot confirm whether or not something truly exists, but rather can only believe it does. So “If a tree falls in the forest and there's no one around to hear it, does it make a sound?” This essay will engage in this epistemological problem and will differentiate ideas such as sound from reality. Sound is a formulated idea derived from our senses, and while it may be undeniably true that a tree causes sonic wavelengths, the experience of a sound coming from the tree doesn’t exist if there is no perceiver to experience it.


It is important to understand that there is no way of confirming anything we perceive to exist. When Descartes states, “I think therefore I am” he means that that the only way to confirm he exists was because he was thinking (Skirry). Regardless of what he was thinking was true or false was irrelevant to the fact that he was a thinking being (Skirry). Therefore if he is in fact a thinking being then he must have a mind, and if he has a thinking mind, then he must exist. Because if we didn’t have a thinking mind then a person would be nothing other than a carcass. Our mind is what makes us human. Looking in the mirror as everyone in the morning does isn’t enough confirmation for Descartes that we truly exist. Descartes would argue that in a dream (not reality) a person could look in a mirror and see him or herself but it wouldn’t make them real because it is only a dream. When a person looks at themself in a mirror is isn’t the person they see that proves their existence it is that fact that they are thinking and processing what they are seeing. Regardless if what they are seeing is a dream or reality, if they are thinking they exist. Our senses make up the world we know even reality, but to confirm reality Descartes’s claim says we can only confirm that as thinking humans beings we exist, and we can only believe in the external world itself, as we perceive it. So how do we function as humans if we cannot prove the existence of the world?


Humans function off of ideas to make the world around us have meaning, but ultimately to function with the environment around us. According to John Locke’s empiricism there are two types of ideas; one is derived from sensation such as seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, and smelling,” and the other is derived through “reflection” or thinking, doubting, or knowing (Kemerling). The idea of a star in the sky at night is an idea of a sun, which is derived from our sense of sight. The other type of ideas are reflective, such as thinking of how “sweet” candy taste when we eat it, or maybe “doubting” we heard a sound coming from another room on a quiet Halloween night (Kemerling). To break it down even more Locke believed that every idea had primary and secondary qualities. Primary qualities consisted of “intrinsic” ideas such as “bulk, figure, texture, and motion" (Locke). Primary qualities were part of the object itself. For example fuzziness would be a primary quality of a kiwi’s outer skin. A secondary quality would be intangible characteristics such as "colors, sounds, smells, tastes, etc" (Locke). Intangible qualities are ideas of characteristics that are necessary for the object to have, but cannot be used to prove the true existence of something. For example soda may taste sweet and might indicate the presence of sugar, but diet soda also taste sweet and has no sugar, therefore the experience of sweetness while it may be a true experience cannot prove the true existence of sugar in soda. Furthermore, what is true doesn’t necessarily prove existence. It is important as philosophers to understand that that truth does not equal existence especially in regards to qualities of reality. “Everything we know, everything we believe, every thought we can entertain is made up of ideas of sensation and reflection and nothing else” (Kemerling). Our thoughts of reality are simply ideas made up of qualities of what is real, but the truth of reality cannot be confirmed by an idea or the truths of certain qualities. Ideas are what compose every thought that the mind entertains and to function as humans we must trust (or have faith) in the ideas derived from our sensory organs (McCormick) are in fact real. If we cannot accept our ideas or believe in our senses, then the human life and mind would serve no purpose. After all, the mind is nothing without its senses to feed it knowledge.


One problem with Locke’s epistemology is that ideas (representations of intangible and tangible objects) can never be verified. “The notion of representative realism,” was a problem, so Berkeley got rid of substance (objects) and claimed that everything is an idea and ideas exist only in minds, so if everything is an idea then all things that exist, exist only in the mind (Browne). Or in other words “we live in an ideal world or world of ideas” (Browne). Berkeley’s claim relies on the notion that perception of existence are linked, so if an object cannot be perceived then one must conclude that it doesn’t exist based off our inability to perceive it. Berkley’s claim is that we live in an unsubstantial world and for many is hard to believe, but if ideas are all we know then there is no way to know a substantial world. Berkeley states, “to be is to be perceived,” or “existence depends on perception” (Browne). The problem with this is that just because we are not capable to perceive an object one moment and turn around and not perceive an object doesn’t mean it no longer exist. Or does it? For example if there is a newly planted tree outside and we leave it for a year and come back we will see it has grown and therefore conclude that although we couldn’t perceive it with our eyes, it still in fact exists.


Immanuel Kant argues that our knowledge itself is not perfect, and that human knowledge is limited by the physiology of our sensory organs (McCormick). Kant states that there are physiological rules associated with our physical body and reality can only be perceived only in the manner in which our body is capable of perceiving it (McCormick). For example, there are many types of different sound waves, but the human body can only experience or hear certain frequencies, therefore leaving many other frequencies unknown to the naked ear. Humans live in a world of laws and limitations making our knowledge limited, such as not knowing whether or not a star exists at a particular moment in which we see proves that there is a limitation of our eyesight. Kant challenged the rationalist way of thinking as well as the empiricist; instead he believes that the mind conforms to true reality by yielding to the rules (laws of physics) that govern it. This makes certain parts of reality unperceivable and therefore unknowable (McCormick).


So the question is, “If a tree falls in the forest and there's no one around to hear it, does it make a sound?” To answer this question it first must be broken down into different questions. We all as humans can think of a sound of a branch breaking and can also imagine the sound of a tree snapping in half or falling over, but if there was no body around to hear a tree fall over would it make a sound? Well according to Kant the laws of physics (and laws of the physiological body) would say the snapping of a tree would cause sonic wavelengths in the air that are perceivable to the human ear and therefore a sound would occur. On the other hand John Locke would ask Kant well what is a sound? The sound of a tree falling is intangible and is what Locke would call a secondary quality derived from our sense of hearing to understand the object or tree in motion crashing to the ground. If a sound is a quality it must also be an idea, and if a sound is an idea then there must be a person to experience or entertain the idea or sound of the tree falling over (Browne). The real question is there a person to experience the tree making a sound? If a person was present to hear the sonic wavelengths of a tree falling then the idea of the sound (quality) exists, and therefore it would make a sound. If there was no person there, to hear the sound (idea), it would never exist, and therefore the tree would make sonic wavelengths but not a sound (Browne). Berkeley epistemology states that there must me a perceiver for something to exist, and the only other the tree could have made a sound without a person is a for there to be some sort of universal perceiver (God) (Browne).


It is important as philosophers to able to differentiate an idea from reality. An idea is tool only to a mind, just as the mind is a tool to understanding reality. An idea is a product of our senses, which is defined and limited by the physiology of our body and of physics of the world and universe in which we live. John Locke’s empiricism stated that our minds are created as a clean slate and reality fills our mind with ideas that eventually make up our knowledge (Kemerling). All the sensory-data is perceived through our senses, which then conform to reality in the form of ideas or reflections of the world (McCormick). According to Descartes our minds consist of intangible perceptions of the outside world, and there is no way to confirm the reality of the outside would but only differentiating what is unreal (our ideas) from what truly exist in reality (the universe). Conversely it is important to understand the importance of our senses because without them we would not be able to attain knowledge from the external world and without knowledge our minds would be a clean slate indefinitely making our humans unthinkable and therefore non-existant.