Reality and the External World

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses the notion that there is an external world and that people generally interact with it in similar manners. It describes and analyzes the philosophies of Rene Descartes and George Berkeley who both attempted to formally justify these notions. Furthermore, the paper compares and contrasts the views of the two philosophers in their explanations of the external world and reality.

From the Paper:

"It seems that there is an almost undeniable disconnect between our mental constructions of how the world operates around us--largely through language--and the way in which this world may actually work in an objective sense. Since, according to Berkeley and many others, there may be little logical backing to the notion that an objective, physical reality can ever be reasonably approximated by any of us--because we are so completely committed to our own individual points of view--it has been historically difficult for correspondence theorists to generate a formula by which objective truth can be determined. After all, the linguistic mechanisms that we all make use of every day involve, extensively, relational propositions, universals, predicates, and other functions that fail to unambiguously possess any meaning in the physical world."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Berkeley, George. "Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous in Opposition to Sceptics and Atheists." From Classics of Philosophy edited by Louis P. Pojman. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.
• Descartes, Rene. "Meditations on First Philosophy." Classics of Western Philosophy: Fifth Edition. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1999.

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