Eddington and Everyday Experience - Essay Example

Eddington and Everyday Experience The question has been posed that, given Arthur Eddington's idea of an ordinary view of the world as one "which spontaneously appears around me when I open my eyes" and is "a strange compound of external nature, mental imagery and inherited prejudice," how accurate a description is this of everyday experience Epistemology is a term often used by philosophers when deciphering the world around, not only human beings but also the whole of all living things. These epistemologies are referred to quite regularly when explaining what ordinarily is simply something that is accepted without question in everyday life. Often though it is something that is lacking a foundational source, the idea, 'it is there because it is' often falls into place, especially in a philosophical sense. For example Arthur Eddington's interpretation of the existence of the world is a key interpretation of this type of thinking. In his following statement it is obvious how he utilizes the areas of philosophy to try and make sense out of the universe surrounding him. "The world, which spontaneously appears around me when I open my eyes," is "a strange compound of external nature, mental imagery, and inherited prejudice". Factual knowledge is not as simple or self-evident as it so often seems to be. Thus, the process of learning cannot be taken for granted. Several different theories of the learning process have been established in Western philosophy and the memes of culture. One of these is Skepticism. Skepticism itself questions everything and places doubt where none should exist. The main message it relays to mankind is one of a negative nature, claiming that man will never reach a heightened sense of knowledge about any certain issue in life or the world in particular (Hooker 1996). So, it is found within the realm of skepticism nothing is for certain and the foundational sustenance of the utilization of epistemologies themselves finds doubt in anything and everything. Although skepticism is admonished by those who don't follow the theorization in behind it, it still shows some crude evidence as to why some doubt so much, in even the simplest of things. The reason for these doubts within this theory is due to the imperfections of the human mind, which can possibly include: faultiness in reasoning and judgment, poor memory, limited accessibility to an object of scrutiny, a lack in the accuracy of the senses, the possibility of mistaking illusions (such as dreams) for reality, and the possibility of misinformation. The issue then, with skepticism is that it finds fault with everything, even those that take simple, common sense notions where the majority of people would find to be, "self evident". Although scientific people are typically described as taking the sceptical view of a new idea that seems "wild", the scientific method is most accurately rooted in the philosophy of Empiricism. To Empiricists, the senses are indeed highly accurate and, moreover, they are our foremost tool for acquiring knowledge about life, the universe, and everything. In stating "which spontaneously appears around me when I open my eyes", Arthur Eddington indicates that our environment is perceived by our senses. There exists an outside world to which we are only connected through our senses and construct a mental image of it. There exists a disparity between what is perceived to be and what reality essentially is. Even in an ordinary view of the world, it is sometimes dubious if we can rely entirely on our sensory data. Some simple examples are illusions, in which we can not trust our senses since they mislead us to draw odd conclusion. Most Empiricists, however, recognize the existence of a priori truths, which are those of mathematics and logic. In Eddington's claim of "inherited prejudice", the interpretation of it can go in several directions. Prejudice is neither knowledge nor belief, although it is rooted in the latter. The word prejudice comes from the Latin word praejudicium, which means "previous judgment." Under the aspect of empiricism, it is possible to assume that he meant a form of knowledge, which we perform as habitual thinking. It goes on the fact that if something worked before or if new information was gained from something relevant then it must be so, and won't differ in the future. For example, the sun always rises, everyday a person counts on seeing that orb move to the centre of the sky and every evening it makes its descent back down, this is how those who follow this theory see life and relate it to their existence. Holding onto such presumptuous knowledge, it may prevent to experience what really is going on. The idea is very controversial since it even leads up to religion and cultural knowledge blurring our minds and unable us to perceive the real world. Moreover, we grow up in a world, in which the attitudes and beliefs of our parents, siblings and friends have an immense influence on us. Already living in a culture, our inherited judgement exists in almost every single aspect of our lives and experiences. We learn of it language, values, ethics, customs, legal system, traditions, etc., and more important it can affect what we believe and know. Thus, our world has many different cultures; the view of our world is altered through "inherited prejudice" and therefore can be very diverse. While learning and speaking a language, language itself can have a tremendous influence on what we claim as knowledge. Different languages can contain words which are supposed to express an idea, but the word might be missing in other languages. There has been a discussion about linguistic determinism, meaning that the language spoken defines how we experience and know the world. An idea, which occurs to be true, is that we categorize the world to understand it, but most of these categories are linguistic. Therefore, we experience and perceive a world through linguistic categories to understand the perception itself. In contrast to Empiricism, Rationalism insists that "reason alone," without need of any sensate experience (at least not directly), is our foremost guide and prime mover in understanding. While Rationalists share the Empiricists' insistence on scientific methodology, they do not believe the human mind to be a blank slate. At the time when we are born, there already exist ideas in the mind, which are thought to explain and reason the world. This is called "innate idea." The two fundamental concepts underpinning this view are that we already have perceptions which allow us to know more than what sensory input can provide, and that by using reason we are able to gain information about our world absent sensory input. Therefore, the innate idea equips us with knowledge that has not come through any sense experience or direct deduction. A particular sensory experience may inform us, but it does so by inspiring us in such a way that the knowledge we have innately comes to the fore. The experience does not offer us new information per se; that information was already a part of our nature and the sensory input was only a catalyst for discovering what we already knew. Overall, the claim of Arthur Eddington appears to be right in many aspects, but only in a simplistic way. It leaves too many aspects open in describing the everyday experience. A more reasonable approach would be to understand that there are many ways to interpret the world around us and that useful portions of all three philosophies noted herein can be combined to give us a more accurate view. For example, a scientist will approach a particular experiment with rightful skepticism. In that initial negativity, however, the scientist is not so convinced of his own mental imperfections that he stops the process. He is convinced that he can find the truth. As he proceeds into the experiment itself, he will look to his senses as a primary source for distilling the facts before him into conclusions. From those conclusions, he will gain knowledge. His conclusions, though, do not occur outside of preliminary expectations. As he enters into the sensory observations phase of the experiment, he will do so with a hypothesis or an idea of what is going to happen; how to explain the sum of the parts. This example evidences a more complex approach than that advocated by Eddington because it utilizes parts of three divergent philosophies. In their extremes, these disciplines become inappropriately exclusionary of other, equally valid approaches. Eddington's statement is a good start, but it doesn't go far enough as a viable methodology for describing everyday experience. Our daily world is best experienced by skeptically combining our sensory perceptions with those things that we know innately. The resulting interpretation of events in our world stays balanced and, in leaving the extremes of philosophical disciplines behind, more accurate. Read More