When can we trust our senses to give us the truth?

International Baccalaureate Theory of Knowledge

Topic: When can we trust our senses to give us the truth?

The human body consists of five different senses: to smell, to hear, to see, to taste, and to feel. To a certain degree our own senses can give us the truth; however, to realize when to trust our senses can vary significantly. If we look back to the Stone Age most human would believed in one main concept, and that was to trust our sense with reasoning and logic to give us the truth. Reasoning and logic provides information to our senses of what is actually happening. Today our race continues to believe in that concept, but we have obtained a higher understanding when to trust our senses for the truth. This is why when we trust our senses for giving us the truth with reasoning and logic, a lot of things must be taken into consideration, for instance, we must be aware when we are observing something with our senses, such as a magic trick or an illusion.

First, I am going to introduce the two areas of knowledge, one of them being natural science and the other one being arts. The concept of natural science is that it only supports the evidence and the certainty in what we see; therefore it is a straight forward logic, what are senses tell us are usually true. Likewise if science is a concept that only supports the evidence in which we all have to agree with, then each human will have to agree on what is being based. On the other hand, the artistic perspective is a creative aspect of our mind. Within the artistic mind, it can bring many unordinary ideas where it could be integrated in a way where each individual have their own meaning towards it. Between these two areas of knowledge, both can be expressed and integrated into the statement of when we should trust our senses. In science, it is based on the world’s perspective where everyone agrees with each other. For instance, the research that has been done on space exploration is based on how we observe asteroids, radiation, planets and starts. An example of this would be the Van Allen radiation belt; this radiation belt can cause great affects to humans, but scientist have studied and understood how to overcome this issue to prevent harm for astronauts. However, when we do trust in things, we must use our reasoning and logic as mentioned before. But our interpretation of when we can acknowledge the truth may be subjective. While both scientific and artistic approach seems to be relevantly appropriate in the understanding of when to trust our senses for the truth, they contain aspects that can be easily contradict one another.

The truth can be defined into various definitions depending on what is being used for. The truth could be a prospect of what we want to believe. However, everyone in this world all have a different approach to the meaning of truth. For instance, if we observe the meaning of what is true for different ethnic groups, each one of them all may have a different approach to it. Even as of today, the North African countries still do accept the circumcisions for females where as the people in America believe that is it wrong to circumcision females.

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The truth in believing in our senses is based on reasoning and logic. Every single sense we have, is practically needed in every case of our daily lives. If any of our senses fail, it could alternate our entire lifestyle and even the way our body functions. Our world is based on a simple concept; the things we naturally see are true with reasoning and logic. If we look more into the area of science, it gives the human mind a more certainty in the meaning of truth. It seems to me that if our sense gives us the truth to what we observe, then at this very moment the picture of me sitting in a desk typing on this laptop and the scenery of a sun setting in the back ground would be exactly the same if any other person came in. This fundamental sense has allowed us to live our everyday life without any worries or harm. Our eyes are based on only one concept, what we see is the truth, but as said before, reasoning and logic must be taken into consideration. For example, when we drive any vehicles, such as driving an airplane, car or boat, our eyes provide us information on our surroundings, and yet they have not failed us. If we imagine ourselves observing up into the sky we can only see the colour blue that stretches every corner of the earth. However, the science behind the theory of why the skies are blue is because of the different wavelengths that are being emitted by the sun. Since blue/violet have the shortest wavelength, it is scattered more through the collision of oxygen and nitrogen, however; our eyes are more sensitive to blue light. The truth behind the theory of whether the sky is blue or either the sky is composed with diverse colours into a single strand of light is still based on our sight of how we observe things. Therefore, when scientists use their eyes to observe their data collection they still depend on their sight to give them the information they need. For that reason our eyes give us the truth.

This brings us to another area of knowledge. The arts seem like a fashionable way to bunch up every idea we have into a language that can be interpret differently among different people. Many people approach art in their own fashionable way. An example of this would be the famous painting, “the Mona Lisa,” by Leonardo Da Vinci. In this painting, many spectators have comment on the figure’s smile, whether or not is it an optimistic smile, or an iniquity smile. Our eyes can only scrape the surface of the painting, but the true meaning behind it is far beyond our senses reach. Another example of this would be the piano composition, “Für Elise” by Beethoven. In this piano composition, the melody that is being portrayed brings forth is a soothing romantic piece. Many people believed that the reason why Beethoven wrote this song was because he was heartrending over a woman. However, many others believed that this piece was written for a specific lover. Yet, our ears cannot detect the message that Beethoven can hear. This shows that not all of our senses can give us the truth.

Yet we cannot always depend on our senses to give us the truth. We are humans, we make mistakes all the time and so does our senses. What makes us to trust our senses even more is the fact that we back everything up with reasoning and logic. If we observe any kind of illusion or magic trick with our senses, it will tell us what is actually seeing; however, with reasoning and logic incorporated we will be able to determine what is actually happening. An example of this would be a magician sawing a girl in half. As our eyes tell us, the girl is sawed into two pieces and is put back together; however, if we use reasoning and logic to determine the trick behind this magic trick, we will be able to find out the method behind the trick. Therefore we cannot always trust our senses to give us the truth behind things.

By concluding whether or not to trust our senses to give us the truth, it cannot be easily determined nor can it not be easily trusted by directly using our senses. Reasoning and logic plays a huge role into defining what we should believe with our senses. The two area of knowledge that is used in this essay both shows that we can never completely rely on our senses to give us the truth because of the fact that many humans can interpret the truth in a whole different perspective. The only thing that I believe we are able to trust with our sense is when we use reasoning and logic.