Conatus: THIRD EDITION by Tom Wallace - HTML preview

C O N A T U S

experienced very much as it is and experienced in a similar manner to other people. This might be described as the common-sense view of reality. (‘Realism’.)

OR:

2. Reality is just an illusion. Only mind exists and the mind imagines the external world. (‘Idealism’.)

OR:

3. Reality is an idea in God's mind.

OR:

4. An external reality may exist, but it can

never be known or experienced as it really is. (‘Scepticism’.)

Philosophy tries to make the world knowable through rationalism, science tries to make the world known through observation and religion tries to make this and other worlds known through revelation.

The first of our options above is basically the ‘empiricist’ option — knowledge derived from observations. The first thing we observe about the world is our own consciousness. René Descartes started from this point — with the belief in his own mind — leading to the most famous quote in philosophy: ‘I think, therefore I am’. From there he argued that reality was not an illusion because of the existence of a benevolent God who would not deliberately deceive His creation. But this argument relies on the existence of God for the existence of objective reality. Also the process of thinking does not necessarily prove the existence of

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