So I thought it might be fun to assess an argument that seems to show we can never know if material objects exists without being perceived. It'll help if you really engage this post and think about these questions as they come up.
So, first: How do we usually verify facts? If I tell you "There's a blue pen on the table," how do you determine if what I said is true? Think about it. If you're a normal person, you probably said something like "Go look and see if it's there," which is precisely how we verify statements of fact like that. We have to observe the world around us to determine which statements of fact are true.
Second: We would really like to say that material objects (chairs, tables, pens) exist without being perceived (without anyone or anything observing them). This just seems intuitively true - mountains don't disappear just because no one sees them.
Here's the problem: We have a statement of fact, something like "Material objects exist even when unobserved." We would really like this statement to be true, but how do we verify it? No, really. How do we verify this statement to be true?
What we have is a statement that is talking about all unobserved events. As soon as we try to observe these events/material objects they are no longer unobserved. So it seems we can NEVER verify a statement like "All objects continue to exist unobserved." Therefore, we can never know whether or not material objects exist independently of the mind.
Here's the argument shortened:
1) We must make empirical observations to determine whether or not statement of fact are true. 2) The statement (M) "Material objects exist unobserved - independently of the mind" defines a specific class of observations (O) {x| x is not observed} 3) Any event/object that is observed would not be a member of the set (O). So, (From 1 and 3) the statement (M) can never be verified.
I suppose we'd need another argument that basically says if something can't be verified then it isn't knowable to get the conclusion. This may be a point of contention. I'd really like to destroy this argument, if we can.
