Question

5) Many people express a strong affinity for the Sophist’s position that “there is no reality beyond how things seem.” Suppose that I disagree with this claim, and say that it seems to me that there is a reality beyond appearances such that some-times appearances are mistaken and we fail to perceive things as they really are. Is there a way for the Sophists to respond to this without either a) committing themselves to the idea that the opposite of their position is no less acceptable than their position OR b) essentially abandoning their position and telling me that how things really are is different than how they seem to me.

Answer 1

Sophists were scholars who deployed their clever rhetoric to win discussions in their favor. Their chief aim was to debate with tools that aided them in furthering their beliefs and causes. In this pursuit, they had little to no care for the absolute truth.

The statement posed above, is a sophist axiom that was used to turn tides in one's own favor and was generally employed as it aided in winning perspective. If one discredits this stance the most likely rebuttal to one's belief that reality is likely to be more than it seems, from a sophist, would be that: there is no way to prove otherwise as ones senses are all that one can depend on and the only process that helps validate results as well as through the processes of one's own mental faculty - hence, in that case, there is veritably no reality than what it seems to be.