Appearance vs. Reality: Philosophy's Great Dichotomy

What’s the color of a leaf? Green? But doesn’t the shade of green you see depend somewhat on the time of day and the way light happens to be reflecting off it? Which of these “greens” is the “real” color? And is there a color in the leaf independent of our eyes seeing it?

Join the Syracuse Philosophy Meetup as we discuss one of philosophy’s most enduring and difficult questions: What is matter really like? We’ll discuss whether we know things "immediately" from experience, and how our experiences of the world connect to the real world. How do you determine the “real” properties of a thing, independently of the person observing a thing? And what is the real world anyway?

We’ll use Bertrand Russell’s accessible and brief description of the problem as a starting point for discussion. Chapters 1 and 3 from his The Problems of Philosophy provide excellent material to dive into the question even for complete philosophical novices. I’ve assembled the chapters at the google drive link below:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SlBD1UfHdWqMj14clN93IP7Ty1tYVONKIXLOfvRAj2w/edit?usp=sharing

Hope to see you there!