If there is anything about which we feel sure, it is that the world we experience is real. We can see, touch and hear it. We can lift heavy and solid objects; hurt ourselves, if we're not careful, against their unyielding immobility. It seems undeniable that out there, around us, independent and apart from us, stands a physical world, utterly real, solid and tangible.
But all is not what it seems. First,
the apparently solid table in front me is, it turns out, far from solid. And
secondly, we assume that we are directly experiencing the world around; that
the colours we see and the sounds we hear are there, around us, just as we
experience them. We see the effects of wind but do we see it?
All that I see, hear, taste, touch,
smell and feel has been created from the data fed to me by my sensory organs.
All I ever know of the world around are the images produced in the mind. I
think I am seeing the tree "out there", in the world around me. But
all that I am actually experiencing is the image created in the mind.
This simple fact is very hard to
grasp. It runs totally counter to all our experiences. There seems nothing more
certain than the fact that I am seeing the world as it is, around me. But
however nonsensical it may sound, this is the conclusion we are forced to make.
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