Why Appearances Might Be All We Have

Have you ever wondered how we know anything at all about the world around us? Think about how you learned that ice is cold, or that strawberries are sweet. You learned these things by experiencing them directly – by feeling the cold of frozen water, or tasting a strawberry. This basic idea, that all our knowledge comes from experience, is the starting point for a way of thinking called empiricism.

Empiricist philosophers believe that our senses – seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching – are our only way to gather information about the world. They think that everything we learn, everything we come to know, is ultimately based on what we take in through these senses. Knowledge, for empiricists, has to come from observation. Real knowledge, they argue, must originate from sensory experiences, as these are considered our only guide to what is actually true.

Now, think about what happens when you see, hear, or touch something. You experience colours, sounds, textures, smells, and tastes. Empiricists are very interested in these direct sensory experiences. Sometimes these are called “impressions” or “sense data,” but you can just think of them as the raw information our senses give us.

One key idea for empiricists is that we cannot be mistaken about what we seem to sense. For example, you might see something red. You might be wrong about whether it’s a tomato, or a red ball, or just a reflection. But, from an empiricist perspective, you can’t be wrong about the fact that you are experiencing something red right now. This direct sensory experience – the seeming red – is considered very reliable and certain. Empiricists see these immediate sensory experiences as the unshakeable truth upon which their philosophy is based. They are supposedly direct and immediate, forming an uncontaminated basis for everything else we might claim to know.

Now here’s where the idea that appearances are all we have comes in. Most people naturally assume that the physical objects around us are pretty much exactly as they appear to us through our senses. We assume that when we see a table, there is a table existing “out there” that is solid, brown, and has the shape we see, whether we are looking at it or not. This is just common sense.

However, some philosophers have questioned this common-sense idea. They point out that how things appear to us can depend on our senses and the conditions. For example, a stick in water can look bent, even though it’s straight. Colours can look different depending on the lighting. These examples suggest that what we perceive isn’t necessarily the thing exactly as it is in itself, but rather the thing as it appears to us.

Empiricists, relying solely on sensory experience for knowledge, face a challenge here. If our only access to the world is through our senses, and our senses only give us appearances – how things seem to us – can we ever really know what the world or the objects in it are like independently of our experiencing them?

For many empiricists, the answer is that we have to be very cautious about claiming to know what things are like in themselves, separate from our experience. They suggest that perhaps all we ever have direct access to are these “appearances” or “phenomena” – things as they appear within our consciousness. It’s like our direct awareness is limited to a “veil of perception,” where our sensory experiences are between us and any external world that might exist.

The world as it appears to us through our senses, the “empirical world,” is real in the sense that it’s what we experience and can investigate scientifically. But the point is that our knowledge may be limited to this world of appearance. We might be certain of our sensory experiences and the patterns we observe among them, but less certain about whether physical objects exist independently of our observing them, or what their true nature might be.

Some thinkers insist that whatever we can experience must exist only in relation to our experiencing it. From this perspective, the most certain reality for us is the reality of our sensory experiences and the world they present to us – the world of appearances. When we talk about physical objects, we might really be talking about the possibility of having certain sensations. The idea that material things depend on a mind for their existence is something some find challenging.

Because empiricists base all knowledge on sensory experience, and sensory experience seems to only give us access to how things appear, they tend to drastically reduce their knowledge claims. They settle for a knowledge of appearances. They are often modest in their philosophy, avoiding claims about hidden realities or deep metaphysical truths that go beyond what experience can confirm. The truth might simply be that unsubstantiated beliefs about an “external” world, as separate from our experiences, are all we can ever have.

In essence, the empiricist focus on sensory experience as the sole source of knowledge leads some to the conclusion that our direct awareness is limited to the world as it appears to us – the world of phenomena or appearances. While we might assume an external world exists, our fundamental, certain knowledge comes from within our own experience, from the stream of sensory information we receive. In this way, appearances are seen as virtually all we have, epistemologically (relating to the theory of knowledge) speaking.

This perspective simplifies the problem of knowledge in one way, by rooting it in the undeniable reality of our own experience. By focusing on appearances, empiricists aim to build knowledge on a foundation they consider secure: the simple fact that we experience what we experience.