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The Problem of the External World

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2010

D. W. Hamlyn
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Extract

Heidegger says concerning the question of the possibility of a proof of the existence of an external world that ‘the “scandal of philosophy” (Kant's words) is not that this proof has yet to be given, but that such proofs are expected and attempted again and again’. Heidegger thinks this because our being (Dasein) is in the world, and this is something which Descartes for one failed to appreciate. I am not concerned here to answer the question whether Heidegger's own views on these matters will do, though I think that they will not. Indeed they might well be said to beg the question at issue, in that Heidegger starts from the presumption that we are actually in the world, even if we are not in it in the way in which the tree in the garden is (and does not this last point make a great difference to the situation?). Another way of reacting to Heidegger would be to say that he does not treat the fact and force of scepticism seriously enough when he makes that presumption. After all, it is possible for us to raise sceptical doubts about the existence of a world apart from ourselves, while it is not possible for the tree in the garden to act similarly. Hence, even if we make the presumption that we are in the world, as Heidegger insists, we are in it in a way that leaves untouched the possibility of sceptical doubts about what that world and our being in it are like. It might, logically, be the case, for example, that the world consists of just me and that my being in the world is no more than for me just to exist. In other words, my being in the world does not directly entail that there exists a world apart from me.

Type
Research Article
Information
Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements , Volume 24 , March 1988 , pp. 1 - 13
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 1988

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References

Notes

page 13 note 1 Heidegger, M., Being and Time, trans. Macquarrie, J. and Robinson, E. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1962), 249.Google Scholar

page 13 note 2 See my Metaphysics (Cambridge University Press, 1984)Google Scholar, Ch. 2, and the reference to the work of Myles Burnyeat given there.

page 13 note 3 Grice, H. P., ‘The Causal Theory of Perception’, PAS Suppl. Vol. (1966), 121ff.Google Scholar, reprinted in Warnock, G. J. (ed.), The Philosophy of Perception (London: Oxford University Press, 1967), 85ff.Google Scholar

page 13 note 4 Peacocke, Christopher, Sense and Content (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983)Google Scholar, Ch. 1. See also my ‘Unconscious Inference and Judgment in Perception’ in my Perception, Learning and the Self (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1983), 11–29.Google Scholar I do not agree, however, with Peacocke's way of characterizing the sensational element involved. The whole idea of perception involving sensation goes back to Thomas Reid.

page 13 note 5 Plato, , Theaetetus, 158bff.Google Scholar

page 13 note 6 Schopenhauer, A., The World as Will and Representation, trans, by Payne, E. F. J. (New York: Dover, 1969), I. 5.Google Scholar

page 13 note 7 Hamlyn, D. W., The Theory of Knowledge (London and Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1971), 50–52.Google Scholar

page 13 note 8 See, for example, Berger, P. L. and Luckmann, T., The Social Construction of Reality (London: Allen Lane, 1967)Google Scholar, and a critique on my part, ‘The Concept of Social Reality’ in Secord, Paul F. (ed.), Explaining Human Behavior (Beverly Hills, Cal.: Sage Publications, 1982), 189–209.Google Scholar

page 13 note 9 There are admittedly problems about that, in that, as Aristotle pointed out at the opening of his Posterior Analytics, learning presupposes prior knowledge. Hence, if a regress is to be avoided, there must be ways of coming to know things which are not learning. I have tried to say something about this issue in my Experience and the Growth of Understanding (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978)Google Scholar and in ‘What Exactly is Social About the Origins of Understanding?’ in my Perception, Learning and the Self (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1983), 162–177.Google Scholar

page 13 note 10 Berkeley, G., Principles of Human Knowledge and Three Dialogues of Hylas and Philonous, Warnock, G. J. (ed.) (London: Collins, 1962)Google Scholar

page 13 note 11 It is one of the great virtues of Dretske, Fred's Seeing and Knowing (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969)Google Scholar that it emphasizes the great range of things which we can rightly be said to see, and the great range of facts of which we can rightly say that we see that they obtain, including, for example, facts about molecular structure. We cannot see these things unaided, but that is not a reason for saying we cannot perceive them.