The use of perception is even integrated in the Indo-European culture. It emphasized the use of sight to find insight in the world. This led the characteristics of creating sculpture or picture to represent the ultimate truth, gods. In Semitic culture, the focus is on hearing to know truth. Thus the way to know the ultimate truth of God is to hear his words.
Although perception is a useful tool to know the world surrounding us, it does not necessarily lead to reality and so it is less likely to lead to truth. Different perception will lead to different understanding of the world. Cats have eyes that are biologically different from the ones of humans. This allows them to detect prey movement along the ground at greater distances. Bats ‘eyesight are relatively much poorer than human’s ones and bats are able to receive high frequency sounds to redeem this defect. Thus their understanding of the world will be very different from our conception to the world.
This problem with perception is exacerbated by the fact that everything in the nature is changing. The same river can never be seen because the water in it is constantly flowing. Therefore using perception, knowledge that is gained will be changed in the next minutes. Therefore it is pointless to know some knowledge that will become false in very short time. Thus it seems that perception could not lead to a general statement that reflects the reality because what you know will be false in a short time.
The problems of using perception led some philosophers such as Plato and Descartes turned to reason to find the truth. Deductive logic which is one of the powerful uses of reason gives absolute certainty for the conclusion. For example all humans are smarter than monkey. Jack is a human and so he must be smarter than a monkey. The conclusion must be absolutely certain according to this deduction.
Deductive logic is supplemented by inductive logic. Cases could be considered to establish a general statement for the reality. Thus this corresponded with the definition of truth which is the general statement that could reflect the reality.
However reason also has its own problems that diluted the chance of leading to the truth. Although inductive logic gives us absolute certainties but it does not mean absolute truth. For example all young men are easy to get emotional. Jason is a young man and so he is emotional. We got a totally valid and absolutely certain conclusion but it does not necessarily reflect the truth. Thus the truth of the conclusion is heavily depended on the truth of the premises in the deduction.
Similarly, the probability of a general statement that is resulted from inductive logic is depended on the number of cases that are being considered. If Henry knows that two of his friends like to eat chocolate, he concluded that all of his friends will like to eat chocolate also. Clearly, his general statement is weak and hasty because only two cases are considered. Thus deductive and inductive logic both fundamentally relied on the assumption to reflect the truth.
On the other hand, we based on our observation to make an assumption. In other words, we use the sensory perception to find the general pattern of the world. In the axioms of math, such as two points can be joined by a straight line, are based on the observation of the world to arrive at. This implies perception providing the necessary raw material or the assumption in which reason could be built upon it to find the general statement that could reflect the reality.
The combination of perception and reason to find the truth is reflected in math. Axioms or assumptions are the groundwork and substantial deductions are built upon them to arrive at a theorem. Euclid applied axioms to deduce to the Pythagoras theorem. This combination is also reflected in the physics and chemistry. Hypotheses or the assumptions that are based on previous observation are laid out to be proven. Logical and scientific method is then applied by scientist to prove the hypotheses.
Since perception and reason could not independently lead to truth due to their associated problems, their combination could have done so. Nevertheless, perception contributes the groundwork for reason to flourish. Thus perception is slightly more important because its absence will lead to no assumption that allows logic to arrive at a general statement that reflects the reality.
Although the combination of perception and reason could lead to truth, language is needed to provide a medium to spread the truth out. This let more people to gain the knowledge of the truth. Thus it indirectly leads people to the truth.
The language allows communication but it also has the chance of muddling the meaning of the truth. Since our truth is the general statement that reflects the reality, this statement is restricted by the grammar and vocabulary of the specific language that is used. The ambiguity of the words leads to misunderstanding for different peoples. For example, all niggers should be removed in my house. The word, “nigger”, has a racist connotation but what I mean here is the dark brown color.
Another problem of using language to lead to truth is the diversity of languages. People from different cultures have different languages. This might lead to a wide range of conception to the world. In translated works, there is often the problem of not fully translating the meaning of the words to the other languages. The Chinese word, “勢”, could only be loosely translated as force or the general impression in English. In fact there are no words in English that could exactly match its meaning in Chinese. This suggests people from different culture will not have the same conception to the world.
Thus this weakens language being the medium to spread the truth out. Firstly when the truth is received by a people from a different cultural background, this will cause misunderstanding because the two cultures have different conceptions. This difference might further distort the statement and the reality also. Secondly, this diversity slowed down the process of spreading the truth out.
The other problem is the nature of being secondary in language. We first have the idea and the language began to organise them into category. In taxonomy, individual observations are made and they are organised into specific characteristic for categories of animals. Thus we have each particular idea and we use the language to organise into a coherent form. This suggests that language is being the secondary source. When perception and reason had gathered the raw material, language came in to arrange them into categories.
After perception, reason and language are considered, each way of knowing could not independently lead to the truth because each of their associated problem. Only when perception is combined with reason, a general statement that reflects the reality is produced. However perception is slightly more important than reason because it first provides the necessary material for assumption. Also language acts as a catalyst to speed the process of spreading the truth out. However, language is likely to distort the meaning of the statement and its secondary nature did not allow it to lead to the truth.
