Differences Between Visualization And Mind-Dependent Objects

Visualization and Mind-Dependent Objects If I tell you that everything in the world that you can see only exists in your mind, would you believe me? Most likely, you would think that the idea is absurd and that it is against common sense. What if I say that there are philosophers that can prove this concept? In the First Dialogue of Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous, George Berkeley does just that. He simulates dialogues between two philosophers to try to show that mind-independent objects may not exist and that the world is only made up of our senses. Berkeley’s Dialogues begin with two philosophers, Philonous and Hylas, running into each other while strolling through a college campus. Hylas expresses that he is concerned with …show more content…
because he has established that they are mind-dependent. Philonous then proceeds to say that it is impossible to imagine an object without secondary qualities such as color or shape. Even Hylas agrees that he has a hard time trying to think of anything corporeal without attaching secondary qualities such as shape or color to it. Philonous then concludes that it is impossible to think up of an object with an “absolute extension” without also attaching secondary qualities along with it. Since the shape or the color of the object is mind-dependent, how can you be sure that the extension remains the same under different …show more content…
Your nerves stop working, so you cannot feel anything. Your mouth, ears, eyes just all stop functioning. Once that happens, how do you know what is going on in the outside world? How would you know that there is an outside world at all? You would only be convinced that the outside world is still there because you have experienced it before losing your senses. Now imagine that you were born without any senses. You have no knowledge of the “outside world”. You do not even know what the “outside world” is. In this case, the “outside world” would not exist at all. In fact, you would not exist at all. The reason you know that you exist is because you have your five senses that tell you what you are feeling. A common objection here would be that even though you may not know about the “outside world”, many other people in the world are still experiencing it, therefore the “outside world” would still exist. But the only reason that you know other people would still experience the “outside world” is because you currently know that they are feeling it right now. Therefore, nothing would exist for you.
Of course, I am not crazy enough to say that nothing exists at all and that everything is an illusion. Real objects do exist, but only the ones you are perceiving and only in the way that you perceive them. Without perceiving an object, there is no way