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Introduction

In every individual there is an innate ability to sense things. These senses could be just a perception, an experience, and a thought made by an individual. At the subatomic level, everything is connected to each other- the tree to the human being, the human being to the rock, the rock to the fruit, the fruit to the air. In the field of science, atoms are frequently explained with the empty space contained in them. Thus, these atoms exist in every individual and the Earth as a whole, connecting humans with the world by energy. Thus, if we are all connected, our senses are the only way that help us come out of our individual shells and connect to the external forces around us. Thus, the question then leads us to when should trust our senses to give us absolute truth. The journey to find this "truth" has been toiled by man since the earliest of times, and still, man continues to discover the answer. For our senses to guide us in the right direction, we have to train them and govern them with our intellect. Thereafter, imagination, emotion, logic has to balance out to give a perfect equilibrium to our senses. If our emotion is given preference over the senses, there may be room for inaccurate perceptions, as they are not tangible. ...read more.

Middle

Thus, because the painting was done with Van Gogh's senses of seeing the chair, today it is recognized by many as a masterpiece, and for people to recognize the sensual effects of the chair, they too have senses to interpret and savor art. To fully come to a conclusion, it is important to understand what our senses are and what they are based on. The five senses are based on perception through touching, seeing, hearing, tasting and smelling. These five senses aid in deductive and inductive reasoning, helping in perceive unrelated things. For example, in animate objects such as a table or a book, is made "real" by our sense of seeing and feeling it. To verify its "reality" we can perhaps even smell it, listen to it fall or bang on something, and taste it. Thus, the senses rationalize the truth with the reality of the object, made "true" by our senses. However, can relying upon the senses give us truth, always? To trust in the senses is the standard approach most individuals take. Webster's Dictionary defines trust as a "reliance on the integrity and surety of a person or thing". The absolute reliance on our senses can sometimes also be misleading. How many times have we constantly seen people in our society who suffer from delusions and hallucinations? They "sense" them, claim to see them, feel them, hear them, and sometimes even touch them! ...read more.

Conclusion

When someone throws something at you, you are likely to use your sense of vision, sound and maybe even smell as you would duck to avoid it hitting you. If you were to say, "no, senses should not be trusted" and stood there, you are likely to get hit. The outcomes of situations most likely leans towards trusting the senses in give us truth, rather than emotion or other cognitive approaches. These comparisons prove, according to most humans, that senses should be trusted in every situation, as it has helped them with small scale situations formerly. Thus, there are two different arguments that were proposed in this discussion. Senses should be trusted because they help humans with small scale situations, and the truth does not necessarily impact the outcome. The senses all aid in carrying out daily activities of life and connect the world together. However, does this mean that they should be trusted? Science has proved the "truths" that our senses give us to be false. Thus, if the presumed truths are faulty, then there are no truths with senses. On the other hand, if everyone is connected to each other with matter and energy, senses are radiated to other things and humans, affecting the whole world. Therefore, senses may evoke a general objective truth that leads man to connect to man, to objects and to the universal system, making life a process of understanding an absolute truth through different ways. ?? ?? ?? ?? Z. Somji 1 001147-081 ...read more.

This student written piece of work is one of many that can be found in our International Baccalaureate Theory of Knowledge section.