My brother, for example, is legally blind, and sees with tunnel vision. He sees everything as if looking through a telescope with a sheer black cloth over it. This difficulty leads him to fall over unfamiliar things such as chairs and books that are lying on the ground, as people with normal vision would be able to see due to peripheral vision. This vision allows for healthy visually capable individuals to see outside the center of gaze. However, though his vision is weak, he has replaced its loss with his other senses; especially strengthening his sense of hearing. This skill is useful in paying attention in class, listening to stories, helping himself and others around him.
Without our five senses, it would not only be difficult to survive, but the connection between humans and the Earth would disappear. Gaugin’s Armchair for example, was a painting by artist Vincent Van Gogh. The chair itself, which Van Gogh observed, was worth about twenty five cents if calculated in today’s currency. However, the painting which he painted is worth over ten million dollars. This is because of the feeling associated with Van Gogh’s painting; of beauty, marvel, awe and individual interpretations. It is because Van Gogh took from the chair its beauty, and created a piece that reflected the chair. 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! However, to our eyes, they really are “real”. Thus, does truth differ with individuals, or there is absolute truth which is sometimes not always found through the senses? In psychology, we studied the abnormal perspective, and how there are so many people who suffer from abnormal behavior and carry with them abnormal thoughts and actions. Thus, do their senses give them truth? Or do they often misguide them into thinking what is correct, when it is really not.
Another area of study is in Biology, where we learnt about wavelengths, especially those in the sky. If a person sees “clearly,” we can ask what color the sky is, and the normal answer would be “blue.” However, this is disproved by scientists who observe the wavelengths of the sky, and claim it to be purple. Thus, if purple is the truth than where does that put the senses of every person, who can see only blue? It can be argued that the color we see is really purple, but we label it as blue. However, if that were true, the distinction between the color blue and purple would not be so extreme to the extent of labeling them with two names.
In English, we studied about several great poets and writers, all who acquire different thoughts and feelings. The thoughts of Chinua Achebe, author of Things Fall Apart are so much more different than Zora Neale Hurston who wrote Their Eyes were Watching God. Although they might look racially alike, their thoughts are revealed through their writing, suggesting that people are not connected to each other, although they might be living, breathing and genetically appearing similar. This disproves that man is connected to each other and to the other, not necessarily requiring the senses to give them truth, as there is not a need to receive external stimuli for perception.
Seeing things, and being able to touch them, such as an apple on the table, proves our sense of sight. Thus, to translate this example to a larger scale, humans come to trust in their senses in daily life situations; that is when two or more of their senses coincide, and verify the manifested “truth”. 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.
