Nothing is what it seems

On Sat, Jan 22, 2011 at 13:52:20
Louella asked this question:

Kindly explain the saying,

'NOTHING IS WHAT IT SEEMS.'

or does REALITY exist?

thanks...

Louella has struck a nerve with her question. On the face of it, it looks like a beginner's question, the sort of thing that someone who hasn't had much exposure to philosophy would think about. 'Nothing is what it seems.' We know that isn't true, don't we? Some things are what they seem (e.g. the half-drunk cup of luke warm coffee on my desk is a half-drunk cup of luke-warm coffee), and some things aren't what they seem. We sometimes get the wrong impression of things. We correct that wrong impression, and then we see things aright.

But, actually — at least in certain moods — I am more inclined to think that all that's just superficial. What we term 'reality' is just a more or less coherent story, not the real truth about things whatever that may be. — I'm just describing a feeling, you don't need to think particularly deeply just to feel this, say, to feel the way Neo felt in The Matrix.

But note what I just said: 'not the real truth about things'. Louella goes on to ask, 'or does reality exist?' Either nothing is what it seems, or reality exists, but not both. That's the implication of her question. But I'm suggesting the opposite: In stating that 'nothing is what it seems', we have in mind, or imply, that there is something real, a real truth about things, which we can never know, or at least which is very difficult to know, or maybe only a few people know.

What if reality didn't exist? How would you describe that situation? Then everything is what it seems. A thing cannot fail to be what it seems unless reality exists, unless there is a way that thing 'really' is, which is different from the way it seems. If reality doesn't exist then everything is the way it seems to me, and everything is also the way it seems to you. If things seem different to you than they do to me, neither of us can be wrong. We are both right. My world-of-seeming is mine, and your world-of-seeming is yours.

But surely that's just... nuts? How could absolutely everything just be exactly as it seems? That would mean that I never a mistake or error about anything, that it is never necessary to correct my first impressions, that, basically, my beliefs are always true (and so are yours). One only needs to consider that a person's beliefs are are not always consistent with one another to realize the impossibility of what I've just stated.

Plato in his dialogue Theaetetus considered these questions. Interestingly, he didn't think that the idea was so 'nuts' that it was OK to ignore it. He puts the thesis, 'Everything is what it seems' in to the mouth of the great sophist Protagoras. (Some commenators would argue that this is a somewhat unfair gloss on Protagoras' famous statement, 'Man is the measure of all things.') Plato doesn't rest content with saying the obvious: that the very attempt to state the thesis leads to absurdity. He considers how one would have to think of knowledge if that hypothesis were accepted.

If there is no real distinction between 'seeming' and 'reality', then we can no longer think of statements as 'aiming at the truth', that is to say, aiming to correspond with the way things 'really are'. Instead, a statement becomes a tool which one uses to affect someone's behaviour. That's what a sophist aims to do in Plato's picture. As a result of listening to the sophist's discourse you are not 'informed' about 'reality' (because there is no reality). Rather, as the sophist would claim, you are made 'better' in some way. The athletics trainer helps you run faster. The rhetoric coach helps you to impress people with your speaking ability, that is to say, your ability to use words to influence or manipulate them.

In a Protagorean universe, according to Plato, everything as we 'know' it is turned upside down. Nothing is 'rational' or 'irrational', 'valid' or 'invalid', 'true' or 'false'. All one is permitted to say is that the verbal statements we make are either 'effective' or 'not effective'. Nor can one even speak of there being a 'truth' as to whether or not a statement is 'really' effective. All speech is propaganda, all thinking is reacting. In some ways, it is a perfect depiction of the world George Orwell horrifyingly portrays in his novel 1984. That's surely not what Protagoras or the other Greek sophists had in mind, but according to Plato it is the inevitable consequence of the relativist view of knowledge.

So what about that feeling I had, that maybe Louella is right and nothing is what it seems? All this, all of you, these... things around me are just shadows, as indeed am I myself. Plato talks eloquently about this too, in his dialogue Republic, in the allegory of the Cave. But, then, according to Plato, something is real, because you can get out of the cave — if you're clever enough, if you know how to work the dialectic. And then you will 'see', not with your eyes (which can never yield true knowledge) but with your mind. The perfect world of Forms.

But if Plato is right then something is what it seems, after all. The eternal Forms are what they seem (to the mind's eye). You cannot gaze upon the highest Form, the Form of the Good, and not know it for what it is, in its very being and essence.

If like me you think that this is all fairy tales — or 'the last fumes of evaporating reality' as Nietzsche describes it in Twilight of the Idols — then maybe you will begin to feel an unnerving sense of the threat that the Protagorean way of seeing things poses. I can't quite wholly believe in this familiar world, I can't fully accept it's 'reality'. But I can't see anything else either, no alternative, certainly no 'purer' or 'higher' world behind these deceptive appearances. Then, maybe, we really can't say for sure whether the Protagorean view, as Plato describes it in Theateteus might not after all be the only possibility left standing, after all the alternatives have fallen away.

If this is a Protagorean universe, then I am not arguing with you now. I am not making a case. This isn't logic and my words are not governed by any notion of validity. I am behaving — linguistically — a trick invented by a certain species of ape around 50 thousand years ago in order to improve their success rate in hunting non-speaking animals for food. Or whatever is the current explanation. Except of course that what I'm telling you now isn't 'knowledge', or even a 'probable theory'. Just words intended to produce an effect.

One of the more interesting developments in English-speaking analytic philosophy in the last century, was the idea of a clash between 'realist' and 'anti-realist' approaches to the nature of meaning and truth. A foremost figure in the debate is Michael Dummett who argued for an 'anti-realist' theory of meaning, along the lines of the later Wittgenstein's notion of 'language games'. (I first came across Dummett's views in his celebrated book Frege Philosophy of Language London, Duckworth 1973.) To know the meaning of a word or a statement is no more, or less, than to be competent in following the rules for using that word or statement, as accepted in one's local linguistic community.

Subsequently, in an interview (around 1980 in a religious program on TV exploring Dummett's Catholic faith) Dummett confided that his real desire — though he could not yet see a way to do this — was to argue for the necessary existence of God, in a manner similar to the idealist philosopher Berkeley. Rebounding from the Protagorean universe described in the anti-realist theory, there is no alternative to believing in God, if you want to defend your belief in knowledge, truth and rationality. When I saw the program, I was shocked by Dummett's frankness. My D.Phil thesis which I was working on at the time defended a stark version of anti-realism, without the God option.

I don't know exactly where Dummett stands on the God issue today. It is true that he has modified his views on the theory of meaning somewhat. But the stark challenge posed by the philosophy of anti-realism remains: believe in God — or something — or resign yourself to living in the world of 1984. I am aware that there are many analytic philosophers today who broadly follow Dummett's line who would dispute this claim. Wittgenstein believed he was merely combating illusions about our inner life and the 'grammar' of our language. Quietism does not necessarily lead to totalitarianism. However, I don't think that things are that easy or simple. I don't think we really know where we are. My impression is that the way things are going now, it would only take a couple of small steps to find ourselves living in an Orwellian universe.

Meanwhile, academic philosophers debate minutiae, not realizing the ground is being cut from under them.