Ontology

Understanding Being

The Problem of Objective Reality

Yet being encompasses both appearances and illusions, as well as sensory givens, for all possess their own modes of presence and objective determination. What, then, is objective reality in relation to these givens?

Let us first consider several well-known solutions to this question that have been proposed at different times within various philosophical traditions, abstracting from purely historical and personal attachments (who, when, and under what circumstances put forth such ideas or followed them).

The most apparent solution here is a simple denial of objective reality as such (in other words, nihilism). As we have established, the most certain truth is the existence of the self—the I-subject—who experiences the transient and ordered phenomena of the world within consciousness. Would it not be simpler to completely reject the notion of reality, asserting that there are no real objects? Everything that exists is present in the consciousness of I-subjects.

The world becomes a peculiar “pretense” of objects, emerging for various reasons in the order they are presented. In the extreme case, this form of nihilism reduces to the recognition that only the self exists, as even other “consciousnesses” can be interpreted as merely appearing to me. (This view is called solipsism, although in its pure form, it is likely that no one truly subscribes to it). Solipsism has been repeatedly challenged, or alternatively, its irrefutability acknowledged while other alternatives were recognized as more acceptable. However, the positions of solipsism and nihilism are more a refusal to address the question than an actual solution. Indeed, why are phenomena ordered? (And this is an undeniably certain fact). Why are they ordered in relation to intersubjective experience? (Which, if desired, can be interpreted as a unique aspect of the orderliness of phenomena). Thus, one must either recognize that any experience is arbitrarily generated by the I-subject's consciousness (with its “arbitrariness” and “awareness” being unclear) or acknowledge some independent force, external to the I-subject, that organizes this experience, namely, objective reality.

If experience is arbitrary, the subject must first conceive the content of this experience and then actualize it as specific personal experiences. However, the conception of experience is also an experience, meaning the subject would need to conceive of the concept, then the concept of the conceived concept, and so on ad infinitum. Here, infinity implies unfulfillment and impossibility. Were it possible for the subject to somehow initiate the givenness of this conception in discernible images, the subject would need to become aware of awareness itself, but this awareness would also constitute an image, leading again to infinity. Therefore, the experience generated must have an independent cause, one that exists outside the bearer of consciousness, which is the reality of the object. But how does the object enter consciousness?

In naive thinking, sugar is sweet in and of itself, roses are pink, and fire burns. Perceived sensory qualities are directly ascribed to objects. Naive realism falls into another extreme: it denies not the reality but the manifestation of reality. The visible object and the real object are one and the same. Moreover, it is visible to all in identical conditions. However, this form of realism also generates confusion, as it remains unclear how to understand the identity between the sensory image and the actual object.

Among early philosophical interpretations of reality, there was also a materialistic perspective. From this viewpoint, the world consists of some amorphous proto-substance, matter, which is objective reality as such. This material foundation cannot be destroyed nor does it ever arise; it always exists, yet from it, all other objects are constructed, differing in their configurations. Ultimately, these constructions are composed of the same material entities, yet there is a limit to the simple, elementary, which is what is referred to as matter as such. Matter has been contemplated as absolute homogeneity—something that is initially unformed, with no part differing from another. But such a lack of differences, in fact, implies that nothing exists! So how does something emerge from nothing? We must conceive of the primal emergence of some structure wherein one thing is distinct from another—a primary heterogeneity that cannot be eliminated. In contemporary physics, matter refers to the most elementary structures of interactions that can be registered and to which all substance can be reduced. In ancient atomism, such elementary structures were interpreted as the smallest bodies that never arose and could neither be disassembled nor entirely eliminated. However, the concept of the body, though intuitively understandable, has proven to be exceedingly problematic (the examination of this question exceeds the scope of our course, yet it is essential to remember that it is connected to the most dramatic debates in modern physics).

The manifested reality, according to materialists, is a reflection, an imprint of real (material!) objects in something also material, akin to a footprint in the sand or a photograph. These reflections are characteristic of highly organized (complex) beings, who utilize them for orientation in the world of objects. The real object, impacting such a being, generates within it a specific response in the form of a sensory image and, secondarily, memories of it. (Memory itself is also material, akin to a recording on some medium and the mechanism for retrieving it).

These laws of emergence and transformation of generated bodies constitute the nature of each object, the entirety of which forms natural reality in its development. Within it, reason arises as a highly developed form of the organization of matter.

Although appealing, materialism possesses a weak point. It remains unclear how, under this approach, sensory qualities or qualia—redness, warmth, sweetness, pain, etc.—emerge. In materialism, everything is reduced to interactions between bodies (organized structures). The qualities of higher-order systems can be derived from elementary interactions, considering the entirety of the interrelations into which they are woven. For instance, the pressure of steam can be reduced to the chaotic collisions of gas molecules with one another and the walls of the chamber. The parameters of the gas (temperature, pressure on the walls of the container) characterize not individual molecules, but the entire system of their movement under given conditions as a whole. Yet in both cases, we think of movements in one sense. Similarly, a visual image can be understood as a reaction of a neural network to the influence of reflected electromagnetic radiation, where a specific wavelength serves as a signal-stimulus for the receptor neuron, initiating a relay of signals through the network of neurons in a particular sequence. At the core of this transmission lie biochemical transformations within each of the neurons. Ultimately, we arrive at some action, such as moving toward the source of light, reacting to a change in the field of vision, or recognizing a familiar object, etc. Importantly, we can model all of this, and our device can recognize familiar objects, such as fingerprints, leaf shapes, or letters, just as well as we do. Certain physical characteristics (intensity of light, distribution of surfaces reflecting waves of varying lengths) will be isomorphically represented in another structure, such as a network of excited neurons or in the operation of semiconductor devices. Yet nowhere in these transformations does red or pain emerge! They cannot be derived from any state described here. What we have in the brain is merely a network for processing signals. At what moment does the color red emerge from a wavelength of 700 nm in a chain of chemical reactions? Neither the color nor the sensation exists. How then can it arise in these reactions? We can conceive of a device that reacts to all known signals just as a human does, and nevertheless, we would remain uncertain as to whether it experiences anything or merely reacts. Does a boiling kettle feel hot when the heat is turned off? Yet there is nothing in the brain that fundamentally differs from the functioning of a kettle (except for far more complex processes of signal processing).

From this predicament, two paths are attempted. The first ascribes to substance as such a certain ability to generate sensory states. Thus, bodies made of proteins, fats, and carbohydrates will experience something, while those made of silicon, tantalum, and tungsten will not. Not very convincing, is it? The second, more prevalent approach seeks to describe a chain of transformations whereby a state devoid of sensation generates sensation as a specific characteristic of the signal-processing network. Allegedly, the state of such a network is identical to sensation as such. This, too, proves unsuccessful. One must ascribe a psychic quality to matter as such, meaning that any interaction must have its sensory equivalent. However, sensations are experienced by the I-subject, hence it is necessary to conceive of the soul as a particular material formation. Yet in this case, the very concept of matter requires such a rethinking that it fundamentally transforms, leaving only the word behind.

Another branch of reasoning regarding reality leads to a rejection of the recognition of matter as the primary foundation. If consciousness and qualia cannot be derived from matter, is it not simpler altogether to abandon this concept and introduce another basis of reality that is inherently conscious? This approach was brilliantly executed by the Irish bishop George Berkeley, who substituted matter with God, a notion that delighted him both as a bishop and for religious reasons.

However, it is first worth delving more deeply into the concept of matter. Much later, in the eighteenth century, French materialists redefined this notion to the extent that it lost any "substantial" specificity; matter came to be understood as the objective reality that influences our senses and generates sensations within them, thereby reflecting things in our consciousness. This interpretation, popular in our textbooks, is, however, devoid of the specific "bodily" content of matter, as it only pertains to the existence of an external cause of phenomena in relation to consciousness. But such a cause could very well be, as Berkeley believed, God. God, in his view, generates sensory images in individuals, and does so in a manner that is interpersonally coordinated and presented in a certain order.

If we continue along this line of reasoning, then what is referred to as the soul is nothing other than the perception of oneself, a sensory image present in consciousness. This all-encompassing consciousness possesses some primary unconditional (absolute) givenness, which as such does not generate anything. Yet it is in this consciousness, for some intrinsic reason, that the entire diversity of sensory experience arises, divided into a multitude of individual subjects of perception, each of whom in their limited horizon of awareness "seems" to have revealed the reality of their world. In such an ontological system, "matter" becomes something fictive, a thought that corresponds to nothing real (but as a thought, it is characteristic of the worldview of the subject who contemplates it). In simpler terms, matter is a virtual reality, an "as if" reality, a conceptual possibility, something conditional within a system of concepts, to which nothing can be related outside of it. (However, the same could be said of God!)

It is noteworthy that in such a scheme, the sensory givenness of the world is easier to explain, as it is neither derived from anything nor reduced to something of a different quality. The world is a distinct cross-section in the stratification of consciousness, but for each subject, the composition and scope of the worldly givenness differ. Many believe that this scheme is incompatible with the findings of natural science; however, this is not the case. Natural science deals only with facts and the search for patterns within them, and the facts remain the same regardless.

The position that asserts that consciousness is the essence of reality, and that the objects of the life world are images within consciousness, is referred to as idealism, which stands in contrast to materialism. However, some clarifications regarding the notion of idea are necessary. Initially, in ancient Greek philosophy, the term "eidos" (image) or "eidos morphe" (image of form) denoted an intuitive concept of figure, contour, or, in general, the structure of something, in opposition to the material from which an object is made. For instance, the representation of a person mimics the characteristic visual contours of their body, which correspond to a marble sculpture and to a living human being. However, form also suggested something else: the unity of the form across various embodiments. Individuals may differ, just as separate sculptural representations of people may vary; yet there exists something common to all: a characteristic image that allows us to distinguish a person from, say, an elephant or a wolf (as such). Atomists like Democritus employed the concept of eidos to describe both atoms (indivisible particles, which nonetheless possess a certain shape and can mechanically connect like parts of a construction set) and aggregates of atoms that fill a specific space. The configuration of this whole emits its image and further sets in motion the atoms sensitive to these emissions, which imitate the corresponding image (similarly to how an imprint forms on photographic film under the action of rays).

Plato, however, conceived of ideas somewhat differently, which was akin to the understanding of the logos by Heraclitus and the Pythagorean numbers and figures. Ideas are incorporeal, yet they serve as peculiar ultimate conditions that define something in its perfected form. Since for the Greeks, improvement signifies a change in a specific direction, it possesses its limit: something improved can no longer be, for that limit embodies absolute perfection (there is no further improvement possible). Such perfections and definiteness of things, which simultaneously represent the ultimate goal of all transformations, Plato regarded as ideal being (in our terminology, these ideas can also be interpreted as ideals). They are that unchanging element in the mutable world, which is identical to itself, and it is through ideas that general names (universals) refer. Thus, for Plato, there exists beauty as an idea, goodness as an idea, as well as the idea of a dog or a cat (that is, dog-ness or cat-ness), which are embodied in particular objects (in something we evaluate as beautiful or in some cat that is a cat precisely to the extent that cat-ness is distinctly manifested within it). In this understanding, things are manifestations of ideas; the idea is not an imprint of the thing, but rather, conversely, the thing is an imprint of the idea.

It is important to note that in Plato's understanding, ideas are not mental constructs. Ideas are by no means illusions, nor are they sensory experiences or thoughts. Ideas represent definiteness independent of the existence of individual objects in sensory perception. They are grasped by the mind, contemplated, yet are not generated solely by the act of thought.

The thought of ideal objects is most vividly represented in mathematics. In what sense do numbers or figures, such as a triangle, exist? Are we entitled to say that a triangle arises as a thought in someone’s mind, and as soon as they cease thinking about it, the triangle disappears?

Clearly, the existence of the thought of a triangle and the existence of a triangle are not one and the same. In the surrounding world, triangles do not exist: no body possesses such characteristics in a literal sense. We merely seem to overlay the image of a triangle onto the things we perceive and interpret something as an object of triangular form (that is, approximately similar to it). The definition of a triangle organizes our thinking, yet in what sense does the triangle exist prior to this thought?

Ideal objects bear some resemblance in their givenness to sensory objects, yet their givenness is arbitrary: I can think of them, or I may not. However, when I do think of them, they objectively condition a certain thought. The definition provides a framework for my thinking.

Christian theologians interpreted ideas as thoughts of God, as His designs that are manifested in the structure of the universe. Thus, the concept of idea acquired a psychological meaning: initially formed in consciousness, and then realized as an act of will: let it be so. In this way, the creator and his creation were mediated by ideal being. Ideas are the designs of the unconditionally existing, God as the primary reality. As such, they are secondary to God; yet God, being all-good and all-wise, does not think arbitrarily; all His designs are perfected. They represent a secondary reality, a reality conditioned (in contrast to the absolute reality of God). Finally, material reality is the embodiment of ideal prototypes in a world where freedom of action exists; thus, not everything that occurs within it is conceived by God, yet all is assessed in the light of divine values. Medieval scholastics-realists interpreted the reality of general names in precisely this way: as terms that denote an idea existing independently of material embodiments and preceding them. In other words, the idea of dog-ness exists independently of whether there is at least one dog in the world, but if one exists, this idea preceded its emergence. This is akin to the blueprints of an engineer that precede the construction of a machine.

René Descartes in the seventeenth century provided a different understanding of the concept of idea, which subsequently spread widely. For Descartes, the material world consists of extended bodies shaped in a certain way. Here, the ideal and material coincide objectively. However, something else arises: alongside the material existence of extended bodies (the substance of corporeal things), a thinking being experiences mental images (ideas) that are somehow connected to the material bodies but are not reducible to them and do not merely reflect them. These two substances—ideas (mental images) and bodies—coexist. This position is termed dualism. Both are synchronized by God, who is also the creator of thinking beings, into whose minds He instills such ideas from which the entire fullness of material reality can be derived. Thus, divine ideas also enter the minds of humans, for whom they are psychological constructs. Hence, in later European tradition, the term "idea" began to denote mental images, including sensory ones, interpreting them as reflections of the real world. Consequently, the notion of the ideal began to be contrasted with the real. At present, this word has two substantive dimensions: in one, the ideal is contrasted with the material; in the other, with the real. Materialists, who equate the real with the material, accordingly attribute a characteristic significance of something secondary to material reality to the concept of idea. However, since for materialists everything that exists is material, ideas too are material in their physical foundation, though they are secondary to something they reflect.