Keeley Harris
Kidd
Theory of Knowledge
February 16, 2015
“To what extent do our senses give us knowledge of the world as it really is?
Sense perception is any capacity of sight, smell, hearing, taste, or touch, through which the body perceives external stimulus. Sense perception in and of itself is very complex due to the subjectivity of its nature. In other words, because no two people will see, taste, feel, smell, or hear the same object in exactly the same way there is an infinite number of different things they each may “know” about that object and the world around them. This is where the different ways of knowledge such as memory and emotion find themselves deeply intertwined with the concept of sense perception.
Our senses are what connect …show more content…
It could be argued that the things we sense (sights, sounds, etc.) are objective or mind-independent, meaning they exist as a part of reality regardless of actually being experienced by a subject through any particular act of sensing. This does not necessarily mean that the subjective experience of sensory phenomena, which is dependent on things like memory and emotion, is invalid. It would however support the idea of the world being far more complex than we will ever be able to sense. Consider, for example, sounds. We know that we “hear” by listening to sounds, thus, sounds would be the immediate objects of hearing. If a tree falls in the woods and there’s no one around to hear it crash, did it still make a sound? According to an argument of sensory phenomena as objective then yes it would still make a sound because the sound exists as a part of reality regardless of whether a subject experiences that reality or not. This doesn’t necessarily dispute the fact that a sounds existence depends on it actually being heard. In other words, if no one heard the tree fall, the sound that it makes isn’t really a part of reality because according to everyone who is none the wiser about the tree falling, the tree never fell. To determine this would require an investigation of the nature of reality itself and even then the answer reached would not really be completely universal. In short, however, a question is raised: Is reality the sum of all the things I experience and have thus determined to be true or is it simply the sum of all things that exist regardless of me knowing about them or not. The ability of our sense to give us knowledge about our world varies, depending on what you consider to actually be true or “the world as it really
Kidd
Theory of Knowledge
February 16, 2015
“To what extent do our senses give us knowledge of the world as it really is?
Sense perception is any capacity of sight, smell, hearing, taste, or touch, through which the body perceives external stimulus. Sense perception in and of itself is very complex due to the subjectivity of its nature. In other words, because no two people will see, taste, feel, smell, or hear the same object in exactly the same way there is an infinite number of different things they each may “know” about that object and the world around them. This is where the different ways of knowledge such as memory and emotion find themselves deeply intertwined with the concept of sense perception.
Our senses are what connect …show more content…
It could be argued that the things we sense (sights, sounds, etc.) are objective or mind-independent, meaning they exist as a part of reality regardless of actually being experienced by a subject through any particular act of sensing. This does not necessarily mean that the subjective experience of sensory phenomena, which is dependent on things like memory and emotion, is invalid. It would however support the idea of the world being far more complex than we will ever be able to sense. Consider, for example, sounds. We know that we “hear” by listening to sounds, thus, sounds would be the immediate objects of hearing. If a tree falls in the woods and there’s no one around to hear it crash, did it still make a sound? According to an argument of sensory phenomena as objective then yes it would still make a sound because the sound exists as a part of reality regardless of whether a subject experiences that reality or not. This doesn’t necessarily dispute the fact that a sounds existence depends on it actually being heard. In other words, if no one heard the tree fall, the sound that it makes isn’t really a part of reality because according to everyone who is none the wiser about the tree falling, the tree never fell. To determine this would require an investigation of the nature of reality itself and even then the answer reached would not really be completely universal. In short, however, a question is raised: Is reality the sum of all the things I experience and have thus determined to be true or is it simply the sum of all things that exist regardless of me knowing about them or not. The ability of our sense to give us knowledge about our world varies, depending on what you consider to actually be true or “the world as it really