 It's kind of peaceful out here kind of serene That's a nice smooth water tree behind me Not really much of a wind is still but it's still cool in the morning. It's warming up though Looks very calm doesn't it? looks very Still But appearances could be deceiving and there's You look carefully out in the water. You can actually see a current You can see movement of the water You look at its surface. You can see colors changing Right now. There's a lot of Sun reflecting off of the water right here. It's illuminating my face Reflecting off the water at different places. It gives different shades of different colors to the water That's gonna change through the course of the day as the Sun gets higher in the sky The colors are going to change what's reflected is going to change the more clouds or if the clouds clear up There will be suddenly clear It looks very still it looks very unchanging But the appearances Are constantly changing. I mean we have the water from this angle But it looks very different from another angle. In fact It looks different from another angle. You can keep changing angles and the water will look different No viewpoint is exactly like any other viewpoint In fact, if you focus on different areas of the water You get different colors here The water the appearances are actually constantly changing constantly in a flux right now they look kind of still but if we Change the picture a little bit It looks like things are moving very fast Little twitches here and there This tree behind me We think this tree is constant. We think I mean it's going through some changes sure, but you know this changes are small or slow But if we look at the tree from different angles We get a different appearance altogether The tree the appearance of the tree is fleeting. It moves. It fluctuates The appearance of me fluctuates Right now looks like I'm gone, but you can still hear my voice Did I disappear am I now disembodied? Did I just Duck am I off to the side am I playing a camera trick? Am I even here? There's the appearance of my voice, but you don't see my face Appearances are fleeting Appearances move Appearances can deceive us So we had this angle of the tree that you're looking at right now Well, what about a close-up angle? Does it even look like that tree anymore? Probably not We can even try different close-up angle, but this time you're looking at it and think wow That's a different view of the tree. Well, that's because it's an entirely different view of a different tree That's not the same tree that you're looking at But you didn't know any better because all you have are the appearances You don't really have the real tree All you have are the appearances and appearances can change We can they can the appearances can change so that there's more vibrant color And maybe completely opposite color Or maybe no color Appearances are fleeting. They need not remain the same at all The different appearances one thing can have many different appearances So what do we learn from this? We learn That what we get through appearances Is not What's real with this piece Russell is pointing out the difference between appearance on the one hand and reality on the other appearances are what you see colors the shapes It includes and you're not just I mean appearances are broadly considered here Not just what you see but also what you hear what you taste what you touch what you feel and appearances change They're fleeting They are Contemporary they give conflicting information We saw that with the water The appearance of the water had many different colors happening all at once same thing with these trees behind us You see many colors with the trees and the color will change Depending on the time of day as the moon as the Sun moves through the sky The the trees will be lit up differently and even the the light of the Sun will change depending upon its position in the sky This is why artists are so Fascinated with the morning light and the evening light and the daytime light Right if you've ever looked at some paintings of I forget the artist name, but he did the haystacks He would paint the same set of haystacks, but at different times a day and you had wildly different colors for the haystacks So The the point that Russell is getting at here is that appearances Change They're different under different circumstances but We don't think these objects change in that way When when the Sun moves through the sky and the colors of the tree change We don't think that the tree is changing. We don't think that there's some difference in the tree We think that the objects and yeah, they're going through changes too, but that the changes that the objects are going through are You know Not that not what the appearances tell us Right, then we don't think that the tree is changing in such a way that now the colors are different It's the light not the trees But this carries on with the rest of the objects if I were to walk up a touch this tree So I'm gonna walk up a touch this tree right here It has a different feel depending upon where I'm touching it Some parts are more smooth than others some parts are more rough than others The appearances for objects change all the time Even depending how you look at them When you look when you look at an object differently at a different angle the appearance of the of the object changes So what Russell gets at here is That you know the appearances change The objects are not going through that kind of change the object of what is real the appearances or what it what is changing? Well, if the appearances are what is changing and it's false that the objects are changing like that Then it's false that the appearances just are what is real It's false that the appearances just are what is real there's a difference between the appearances and the reality Well, this leaves us with an interesting problem the appearances are What we know What we immediately know what we immediately know or what you immediately know right here is a sound of my voice What do you immediately see it is my appearance on the video? But that appearance can change You can have one but not the other You can have just my voice but not see me Does that mean that now I'm just completely gone the appearances and I'm standing right here But I could be standing back here I'm standing back here, but now I'm back up front Did I just move instantly? That's not the reality, but that's the appearance So the appearance is Not what is real But what we immediately know what we have access to is The appearances so what I mean by that is you do not have access to the reality Your mind cannot make direct contact with the trees and the objects around you Everything you know about the world around you is given through these senses is given through the appearances But the but the appearances are not what is real So this raises so Russell raises a really interesting question then we had this difference between appearance and reality And the appearance is what is immediately known We don't have access to what is real Is any of this actually around me? My mind can't access all of this all my mind can access is is the senses and that happens all in here So is this even out here at all? As opposed to there is a reality out here. What's it like? Because it's not like what my senses tell me my senses tell me to one thing that it changes that it's all over the place My senses are not what is real So if all I know about what happens out here is What I get for my senses How do I know what any of this is like? Now that you're nice and paranoid about what what your parents has tell you what's really real around you Russell emphasizes that answering this question trying to understand what's really real Given that what we have is not what is really real That is the project of philosophy and it's messy. It's really messy Common sense tells us lots of things about what is real the common sense results in contradictions And just with the appearances with the water common sense tells us the water is blue or clear or green depending on how you look at it, but water is not all those colors in fact you know water is Doesn't really have a color at all. There's the particulates in the water that are doing most of the work It's how the light is refracted that is doing the work. The water is clear So this is the business of philosophy trying to sort out the mess that common sense gives us And it's not easy