Paradoxes of Perception: Do Chairs Exist?

Hey everyone, welcome back to my blog!! I hope you have all had a good week, my days have just been getting slower and slower because I keep getting more work and simultaneously am losing energy. I would genuinely sell my soul for A-Levels to be over, I don't think anything in the world could have ever prepared me for this. Despite this, I do love all my subjects and am very grateful to have a few offers, I just need to work on meeting the grades now which hopefully won't be too bad. One of the universities I'm applying to requires me to do an academic interview and to prepare for this, I was looking at some interview questions I could be asked. A question I came across was 'how can you prove that chair is really there?' I remember looking at the screen for ages wondering how the hell I was meant to prove the existence of a literal chair. I went to one of my philosophy teachers to ask her for help and she helped me out and told me about paradoxes of perception so I thought I'd share that with you guys!

Paradoxes?

I have actually already written a post about a specific paradox, the raven paradox. You can find the link to it here. That was a bit of a laugh but it does give the general idea as to what a paradox is.

Throughout this post, I will be discussing two paradoxes of perception: the argument from illusion and the argument from hallucination.

Argument From Illusion 

The philosopher David Hume (literally such an icon, we studied him in class as he has counterarguments for everything and believes nobody) presented the argument from illusion. He gives the example of a table. If the table is closer to us, we see a larger image; if the table is further away from us, we see a smaller image. Despite the physical properties of the table staying the same, we see different things in our mind (I know there is a physics explanation for this but just bear with me for a minute). Hume concludes that rather than seeing the physical table, we see an imaginary version of the same table in our mind which does change in size. Basically, when you look at the table, you are only aware of the mental image, not the physical table. If we apply this idea to the big question here of whether chairs exist, I think the argument would probably say something like 'you are aware that chairs exist, but when they are moved around, you are only looking at the image of the chair in our mind which does change in physical size due to our perception of it.' I would probably conclude this with saying that chairs do exist, but we only see a mental image of the chair, we don't actually see the physical chair in front of us.

This then raises the debate of whether everyone else can see what you're seeing because you look at images in your mind rather than the physical object. How do we not know it is all made up in our heads?

Argument From Hallucination 

The argument from hallucination is quite the opposite to the argument from illusion. It starts off with the idea that people are aware of sense datum rather than physical objects in particular cases and then generalises from these cases to all cases. I saw a YouTube video which compared this to Macbeth. Macbeth hallucinates a dagger and goes out to physically reach for this dagger which implies that he thought it existed in reality when it simply existed in his mind (I'm pretty sure this is about the floating dagger before he kills Duncan?). I know that this sounds similar to schizophrenia symptoms because this could be applied to anything like hearing voices. We can say that we do not hear voices that aren't there, but it could also be said in a contradictory manner. If a person hears voices, how do they know they're not there? It could get long and complicated but I already have a difficult matter at hand, proving whether chairs exist, so let's get to that. There could be a possible experience of seeing a chair, we can say that we see a chair. If there is an absence of a physical chair, then it would be said we cannot see the physical chair. The 'chair' we see is simply just sense datum. If we are aware of the same sense datum when seeing a chair in our mind and a chair in reality, we know that for any experience of seeing or hearing something, there is a possible hallucinatory experience which is just like it. If these possible experiences involve awareness of the sense datum, we are aware of sense datum whenever we see or hear anything. Physical objects (like the chair) might hide behind the veil of perception, but if we stare at them as intently as possible, we never just see the physical things that presumably surround us.

I just realised I forgot to actually define what sense datum is which might make this much harder to understand. It is essentially what an individual sees in their mind when presented with information. It contrasts with a physical object which is something that everyone can see.

The Veil of Perception

I just thought I'd end with writing a bit about this concept that (I think?) John Locke created called the veil of perception. Locke believes that we are all born a blank slate and that there are no innate ideas, everything we learn is through external interactions. The correspondence between the external world and a person's ideas implies representational realism. This is the idea that a person's sensations contain a representation of what is being sensed. Representational realism is often what people talk about when talking about the veil of perception.

The veil of perception is basically the notion that things are not seen as they are in themselves. We do not see things the way they really are because we will always perceive things with sensation. The perceived things exist without perception so there is a 'veil' which we cannot penetrate.

I can already think of many counterarguments for this but quite honestly, I'm really tired so I might just have to leave you guys with your thoughts and wondering if we live in the matrix or not (sorry not sorry!)

I hope you guys enjoyed this week's post! I think I've come to the conclusion that chairs don't exist, in fact maybe nothing exists. I know I went through all this effort to research and understand theories and arguments but honestly, I don't really care whether things exist in real life or in our mind. I'm just here to live life I guess and whether that's going on in my mind or in real life doesn't make a difference. As long as I'm having a good time, I'm more than happy for all of it to exist in my mind. Right, you can tell the sleep deprivation is getting to me seeing as I'd probably change my answer if I reread this later on. I hope you all have a really great week ahead, love you guys <33