Copyright (c) 2009 Bruce W. Hauptli
In this portion of his The Problems of Philosophy [1912], Bertrand Russell [1872-1970] introduces the distinction between appearance and reality. In many ways, this distinction is at the core of metaphysics, but it is also of central relevance to epistemology--especially to the challenge brought by the skeptics. Once we draw the distinction and recognize our fallibility, the question in the title becomes difficult to resolve. The "appearances" seem to be what we are acquainted with, and knowledge claims about them seem a pale substitute for knowledge claims about reality.
Little doubt seems to attach to claims about the appearances (e.g.: "I appear to be reading something about Russell now," or "There seems to be a distinction between reality and mere appearance"). It doesn't seem that there are many ways one can go wrong in making such claims--for no more reason than that these claims seem to claim so little: they claim that something seems to be the case to the individual who is "having" the mentioned experiences. Ancient skeptics (whether Pyrrhonian or Academic) left such claims unquestioned. In his Our Knowledge of the External World [1914] and Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits [1948], Russell attempts to show how we can go from our knowledge of appearances to knowledge of the existence and nature of bodies in the physical world. Russell's arguments are not generally considered to be successful, and many contend that he ends up in a "solipsism of the present moment"--that is, with only claims about first-person appearances.
In this brief selection, Russell begins by noting (pp. 5-6) that in daily life we don't doubt claims about reality, or place anything like the emphasis that skeptics put upon the distinction between appearances and reality. By discussing our experience of ordinary tables, however, he introduces the notion of "sense-data" (a technical term meant to pick out the immediate sensory experiences (the sounds, tastes, feels, smells, and visual images which are the building blocks of our experience), and distinguishes them from the physical objects which we ordinarily take them to be "about" (pp. 5-7).
Russell notes that "idealists" (for example, George Berkeley) [1685-1753] believe that skepticism may be avoided by simply contending that there is no "external" world for the sense-data to be "about"--there are only the appearances. Russell, however, is a "realist" who rejects this orientation, but, as he notes, realists confront a serious challenge:
8 ...if the reality is not what appears, have we any means of knowing whether there is any reality at all? And if so, have we any means of finding out what it is like?
In this essay, however, Russell doesn't offer an answer to these questions. I use it here to introduce us to the challenge which skeptics raise. Russell's more positive orientation is sketched in his "A Defense of Representationalism" [1927], which is offered on pp. 115-119 of the Pojman text.
File revised on 01/13/2009.