How Do We Know if the World Around Us Really Exists?
An Essay on the Eternally Recurring Problem of Scepticism
It is impressively easy to generate scepticism about the world around us, and inject doubt into almost every aspect of what we perceive and thus believe to be the external world. However, it is of utmost importance that we resolve what Descartes saw as the: “disease of scepticism” which, if uncontrolled or unanswered, threatens to upheave the very foundations of knowledge. The disease of scepticism for Descartes was the corkscrew of doubt that the incessant questioning of reality would lead us into.
It threatens to do so because our perception based beliefs are indeed subject to perfectly valid sceptical worries, however, the conclusions that are drawn from some of these worries do not satisfy me to proclaim that we cannot know things external to us.
We can cure the disease of scepticism by assessing the arguments that recognise the ways in which it is possible and useful for us to know things in the world. It is still important to note that beliefs based on perception are indeed vulnerable to sceptical worries, and should not be so easily dismissed. This concern was voiced by English philosopher George Edward Moore’s essay ‘Proof of an External World’ as he beautifully paraphrases the words of Immanuel Kant:
