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Philosophy is a fascinating mode of human thought. It penetrates into all aspects of existence, transcending rational inquiries about the fundamentals of the world and venturing into the very nature of experience itself. It’s like a new language that, once unlocked, can be applied even to the mundanities of everyday life.
If a sign one day appears down a road I frequent, then I’m going to assume some sort of agency put it there—like the road’s owner or workmen. Though I did not witness the hole being dug up and the sign installed on that small plot, it nevertheless appears as a sensuous reality for me, confirmed by the visual sensory impressions of light interacting with my eye. Therefore, the appearance of this particular feature on the landscape implies historic actions, in this case, the product of human labour. But here is what I realise, the sign’s existence unveils the philosophical underpinnings of causality—the unseen forces shaping our world. I didn’t witness the sign being installed, yet I am inferring its origin based on visible evidence.
Philosophy pushes us further to consider the nature of perception and sensory impression—how the play of light on the sign paints a picture in our minds. Making us question is what we see an accurate representation of the objective world, or is it merely an interpretation constructed by our cognitive processes? This is what you do as a philosopher. You grapple with such questions, seeking out to unveil the layers that shroud our understanding of reality.
Throughout the world, innumerable events are constantly arising and ceasing—both significant and insignificant—all happening independently of my presence. Hence, the fact that the sign stands firmly in the ground when at one time it did not, suggests that events and activities in reality occur without my conscious awareness; that reality is not dependent on my conscious awareness in order to be.
But that is the default view or perspective that we all have isn’t it? That the world exists external to us and all the objects that populate it have their own autonomous existence far removed from our sensory awareness. In philosophy, a mind-independent reality is known as realism. Mind is not required for animate or inanimate matter to be.
Objects in the world radiating out detectable sensory information act on my body and its sense organs, my consent does not matter whether I want that to happen or not. Things that I desire, like events to experience or objects to covet into my possession are only partially under my control. The same goes for things that I am averse towards and wish having nothing to do with appear anyway, like weeds strangling flowers in a garden. But despite all that I can only confirm that as fact when it becomes a sensuous reality for me, otherwise only imagination remains as fictitious as the fairies.
With my reductive materialist eyes, all objects in the world—both cherished and averse—are made up of atoms, the elementary building blocks of matter which constitute our everyday reality. What I really am seeing—including that sign living rent free in my mind—is a world of different configurations of atoms, complexly arranged according to the laws of physics, chemistry and biology. Our encounters with people, animals or inanimate objects have these impersonal building blocks as their existential condition, remove these building blocks, and the grand spectacle of life dissipates into the void—no more people, animals or inanimate objects.
This is what Philosophy offers me and you, it opens doors to ways of reflecting on experience which we would have never pondered on beforehand. How do the building blocks of atoms intertwine with the canvas of perception to create the world we perceive? What is the nature of existence when perceived through the lenses of both mind and matter? Through materialism, we seek the scientific truths that form the bedrock of reality, while phenomenology grants us the wisdom to perceive the world through the kaleidoscope of subjectivity. Philosophy invites us to traverse the bridge between the tangible and the intangible, where the ordinary becomes extraordinary, and the mundane is laced with profound. It challenges us to question the very boundaries of knowledge and the inherent limitations of human perception. And that is what is worth pursuing as a human being so long as we live.
