Persuading a Skeptic (Sense-Experience)

[A pair of siblings walk through the streets of Ancient Greece on their way home from the market.]

CHRYSANTHOS: Brother, something has been bothering me lately.

ORFEAS: What is it, Chrysanthos?

CHRYSANTHOS: What if… Orfeas, what if I am not real?

ORFEAS: Don’t be silly. I can see you, can I not?

[Orfeas puts an arm around Chrysanthos’s shoulders.]

ORFEAS: And I can hold you, just like this. And I can smell you, and know from a whiff that you haven’t bathed since Noumenia. Simple observation can tell me that you and I exist, right here.

CHRYSANTHOS: Perhaps, but what if your senses deceive you? What if we – the world as we know it, even – are but a lie, an illusion?

ORFEAS: Is this what reading philosophy all day does to the brain? Stop thinking so deeply and help me carry this block of cheese.

[Sighing, Chrysanthos takes the block of cheese.]

CHRYSANTHOS: Fine, but allow me to explain as we walk. There are many things we think we perceive that actually prove impossible.

[Chrysanthos tears off a piece of cheese and pops it into his mouth.]

ORFEAS: What did you do that for?!

CHRYSANTHOS: To illustrate a point, my brother. Don’t look so appalled; this cheese and our dinner shall prove illusory in the end.

ORFEAS: Spoken like a true younger son.

CHRYSANTHOS: Your senses tell you that this block of cheese has gone from an uneaten state to an eaten state, correct?

ORFEAS: Yes, but you don’t have to rub it in.

CHRYSANTHOS: Your senses, Orfeas, are mistaken. Do you agree that things cannot come to be from nothing? That is, objects such as this cheese cannot simply come into being from nonbeing.

ORFEAS: Of course. This is why we cannot simply snap our fingers and obtain more cheese from thin air – the cheese had to come from the market, at a price, and before that it had to come from a cow, which was birthed by a mother cow, and so on.

CHRYSANTHOS: Indeed. Well, if we believe that nothing can come from nothing, and in turn nothing can disappear into nothing, then all change must be impossible. After all, the cheese just now would have had to go from not-eaten, to eaten. The being of eaten would have had to come into existence from the nonbeing of eaten. We, too, at our births, would have had to go from the nonbeing of alive to the being of alive, and vice versa at our deaths.

ORFEAS: You assume that this idea of being unable to come from nothing nor disappear into nothing is not restricted to tangible, physical matter – that it extends to intangible traits as well.

CHRYSANTHOS: Yes, and I think that is a reasonable assumption to make. It is absurd to imagine even an object’s characteristics coming into existence from nonbeing. Empirically, this block of cheese cannot suddenly appear eaten for no reason. More philosophically, nonbeing in general is a paradox in itself. If nonbeing existed, it would have to be, which fundamentally contradicts the idea of nonbeing in the first place. It follows that there is no such thing as nonbeing. For this reason, everything that exists – both tangible and intangible; everything – could never have entered a stage of nonbeing. They must have always been.

ORFEAS: Isn’t the statement, “there is no such thing as nonbeing”, a paradox as well? You imply that nonbeing is in a state of nonbeing. Furthermore, if nonbeing does not exist, how do you explain the fact that I do not currently possess one million drachmas? Are those drachmas not in a state of nonbeing?

CHRYSANTHOS: Hmm, you raise a fair point there. I suppose that instead of considering the two states to be being and nonbeing, we can consider them being and concept. When something is not present in the current reality, it is a concept. Nonbeing is a concept, and your one million drachmas are, too. Concepts can be, but only in one’s thoughts. As such, things cannot transition from concept to reality, just as you cannot simply imagine such a large sum of money into existence. Furthermore, the past and change both exist only in a conceptual state, as figments of the mind. Well, my brother, I think you finally said something profou— Aah!

[An out-of-control mule-drawn cart thunders by, nearly crashing into Chrysanthos. Orfeas pulls him out of the way.]

ORFEAS: Watch where you’re going! If that cart had hit you, you might have died – never to utter your philosophical musings again. And then it would get terribly quiet around the house.

CHRYSANTHOS: Don’t be so dramatic. Again, my brother, change is impossible. Had I died, it might be said that I never existed in the first place.

[Orfeas gets an uneasy feeling, but is not certain why.]

CHRYSANTHOS: That said, the motion of that cart was quite paradoxical as well. Do you agree that one cannot travel an infinite distance?

ORFEAS: Of course not. That would take an infinite amount of time, and would be infinitely tedious.

CHRYSANTHOS: Precisely. So what if I told you that the cart must have travelled an infinite distance just now? The philosopher Zeno of Elea proposes this: In order for it to have gone from, say, the end of the street over there to the block where we were just now, it must have first travelled  the distance between those locations, correct?

ORFEAS: And then it would have to travel the remaining , yes.

CHRYSANTHOS: Let’s not get too hasty, my brother. Before reaching the halfway point, it must have travelled half of that half distance – that is,  of the overall distance. To travel  the distance, however, it would yet have to travel  of the way, and , and on and on and on. So you see that the cart must have had to travel an infinite number of distances to reach us – which, as you aptly observed, is quite impossible, as it would have to take an infinite amount of time. It follows that the cart could not have really made the motion. In telling you that it did, your senses have deceived you.

[Orfeas pauses thoughtfully.]

CHRYSANTHOS: Reason is the only reliable source of information – and reason tells me that our physical circumstances cannot be. If the ever-moving, ever-changing world we perceive is a falsehood, what else might our senses be lying about? My existence? Yours? Perhaps we are but some formless consciousness dreaming a fabricated instant.

ORFEAS: But, Chrysanthos, what if you have it backwards? Your reason tells you that much of what we see and do is impossible. Does it not follow that your reason must be faulty? Does it not follow that we cannot trust the workings of our feeble human minds, and are left simply to rely on our five senses to tell us what is and is not?

CHRYSANTHOS: The problem with that, Orfeas, is that there is no way to measure the objectivity of these senses you so revere. Think of your senses as a representation of the world, the same way a drawing or a map may be representations of a particular object or place. In general, to determine the accuracy of a representation – say, a portrait of you, drawn by old Andreas down the street – I would go up to you, portrait in hand, and compare the image to what it is supposed to be depicting. With this I can identify the mistakes, such as the way he always gets your nose wrong. Against what reference, however, might we compare our perceptions of the world?

ORFEAS: Perhaps accuracy might be assessed by asking another person. I see you in front of me, a short young man carrying a yellow block of cheese. I could tap on the shoulder of a passing pedestrian and confirm that he observes the same thing, like so: Hey, you!

[Orfeas waves at a passerby.]

ORFEAS: You see my brother here beside me, do you not?

[The passerby gives him a funny look and walks away.]

ORFEAS: Well, it was worth a shot.

CHRYSANTHOS: I am not that short, and even if that man had responded to the abrupt question of a stranger, who is to say that both of you weren’t mistaken? It would be like comparing a portrait drawn by Andreas to a portrait drawn by me; there is no primary source. What if all human eyes are limited in some capacity, and the block of cheese is not actually yellow, but pink or green, when observed by another creature? Or what if I am not actually a short man, but several daktyloi taller, with a long, undiscovered bodily organ sprouting from the top of my head that only bees can see and touch? My appearance as perceived by other humans may not be universally objective.

ORFEAS: In that case, does it even matter? So long as we can determine that all human eyes see the same thing and all human hands feel the same thing, is that not enough for our practical purposes? It does not matter if cows, for instance, are but fabrications of the mind, when we have discovered a mechanism for creating such delicious cheese. It does not matter if the sun and the stars and their passage are illusory, when we can use these to consistently track the hours and days. It does not matter if motion is theoretically impossible, when we can make our daily travels yet more efficient with carts and speedy mules.

CHRYSANTHOS: You think too small, Orfeas. The point of science – indeed, our very mission as human beings – is to unlock the secrets of the universe, to arrive at the ultimate, objective truth. Mastering the illusion pales in comparison to mastering the greater world that our senses alone cannot comprehend.

ORFEAS: Then this is where our viewpoints diverge. My senses tell me that you and I are real, and happy, save for the fact that you have eaten my cheese. Who cares, then, if the gods know this to be false?

CHRYSANTHOS: Is it not a waste? To linger in deception when we might instead know the truth?

ORFEAS: Spending time with you, my brother, is not a waste. Never.

CHRYSANTHOS: Even if I am not real? Even if I am not me?

ORFEAS: What are you talking about, Chrysanthos? You spoke of change and of motion and of invisible organs piled upon your head. What does any of this have to do with-

[Orfeas stops walking.]

ORFEAS: What does any of this have to do with your initial concern, that you are not real? …Chrysanthos?

CHRYSANTHOS: Well. I have stalled for as long as I could, to try and soften the blow, but now I suppose it is unavoidable.

[The world starts to fade to black.]

CHRYSANTHOS: You really do think too small, dear brother, for the truth matters more than you think. I have one last argument to make, before we say our last farewell. Dreams.

[The marketplace has been consumed by shadows, leaving only the two brothers.]

CHRYSANTHOS: You can never truly tell if you are in one.

ORFEAS: That’s right… My brother, Chrysanthos, is dead. Two years ago, you were killed by that cart. I am asleep, and dreaming of you. You have been trying to hint at this, all this time.

[The light of dawn begins to filter through Orfeas’s closed eyelids, casting a golden hue over all.]

ORFEAS: No. Let me live this delusion just a while longer. I can see you, and I can hold you, and that can be enough.

CHRYSANTHOS: I am sorry, but we must go our separate ways. So, please, do not look at me like that.

ORFEAS: Like what?

CHRYSANTHOS: Like I am anything more than a fabricated memory. Wake up, Orfeas. I have never passed away.

[Chrysanthos offers a wan smile.]

CHRYSANTHOS: I have never come to be. The only thing that exists is this instant, this present. Live in it, please. For my sake.

[Orfeas reaches out a hand, but Chrysanthos is gone. All that remains is his bed and the morning crickets, and the heavy silence of an empty home.]

ORFEAS: Perhaps the past is not real. Perhaps you are not real. But the concept of you – the memory of you, residing in my mind – is. I will cling to that for as long as I live.

Reflection Paragraph

            I knew I wanted to discuss whether or not sense-experience is illusory, and I realized that part of the advantage of writing in a script format – as opposed to pure analytical text – was that I could use the characters’ circumstances to better illustrate my points. This is where I got the idea to make one of the debaters a hallucination, though over time, this became more of a fun stylistic detail. From a more scientific viewpoint, the part that I find the most interesting is when the siblings consider the goal of science – to “master the illusion”, or to find the underlying truth. It reminds me of realism and instrumentalism. Chrysanthos is a realist, insistent on unveiling objective truth. Orfeas takes a more instrumentalist approach, deciding it does not matter if aspects of his world are illusory, so long as practical objectives can be achieved. This interaction became an example of how people with opposite viewpoints can come to an agreement by adopting realist or instrumentalist attitudes. Another major learning point was when I attempted to figure out Parmenides’ evidence for the problem of change. I first tried to stick to straightforward empirical evidence, such as the fact that physical objects cannot simply emerge from thin air, but I felt like there ought to be more to the argument. So, I did some further research, and was surprised to find that the formal logic leading to Parmenides’ conclusions has always been a point of much uncertainty, even among his followers. However, I did discover some information about his denial of nonbeing, and tried to work this into an argument. Orfeas’ counterargument stumped me for a while, and I am still uncertain how an Eleatic might have responded. Chrysanthos’s proposed state of conceptuality is somewhat similar to Aristotle’s potentiality, except that it is unable to transition into being. Finally, I learned a few things about ancient Greek culture when building the debaters’ environment, and was able to incorporate concepts such as Noumenia (Νουμηνία, the first day of the lunar month), drachmas (δραχμή, a currency unit worth six obols), and daktyloi (Δάκτυλοι, a unit of measurement that can be translated to “fingers”).

Works Cited

Lloyd, Geoffrey E. R. “4 – The Problem of Change.” Early Greek Science: Thales to Aristotle, W. W. Norton, New York, New York, 1974, pp. 36–45.

Mark, Joshua J. “Parmenides.” World History Encyclopedia, World History Publishing, 28 Apr. 2011, www.worldhistory.org/Parmenides. Accessed 29 Nov. 2023.

“Denial of Not-Being.” Encyclopedia Britannica, Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., www.britannica.com/topic/denial-of-Not-Being. Accessed 29 Nov. 2023.

DeWitt, Richard. “2 – Truth.” Worldviews: An Introduction to the History and Philosophy of Science, 3rd ed., John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey, 2018, pp 21-23.