What can be meant by the Panchantantra saying, Knowledge is the true organ of sight, not the eyes? Is it necessary to have clear ideas to see?

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Samirah Musazi

“What can be meant by the Panchantantra saying, “Knowledge is the true organ of sight, not the eyes?” Is it necessary to have clear ideas to see?

The Panchantantra saying : “Knowledge is the true organ of sight, not the eyes,” almost directly contradicts the popular idea held by many today in which “seeing is believing”.   However to truly understand the question asked, we must firstly define what is meant by knowledge, as the definition for this will surely affect the answer given to the question.

Simply put knowledge can be defined as justified true belief. To elaborate, it isn’t enough to simply believe something and accept it as fact,  what you believe you know must be true, it should be an indisputable fact.  For example I know my name is Samirah Musazi, as it is stated on my birth certificate,  I am therefore justified in this belief, and can take this to be  an aspect of my knowledge.  

This then leads to the question, what are the different ways of acquiring knowledge? And speaking specifically in terms of the question, are our eyes the most valuable tool in our acquisition of knowledge? To answer these questions I shall first examine the ways that our eyes (or sense perception) can be used in our gaining of knowledge, and the very problem with this.

One cannot dispute the fact that much of what we know, we gain from sight. We know for example that it is raining outside, by a quick glance at the window. Or we know that our teacher is getting annoyed by our incessant chatter, by studying the angry expression on his/her face, hopefully prompting us to stop. However sight alone can be very deceiving, and using our eyes as the soul basis in our decision of what is true and false, can at times prove to be unreliable.

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To illustrate my point, I am sure that you also have made the silly mistake of relying on your sight in the morning to make a decision as to how hot or cold it is outside. To clarify, when I was younger, I thought that I could make quite a precise judgement as to whether or not it was hot outside, simply by glancing outside my window.  If it was sunny it was obviously hot, and if it wasn’t sunny then I would need my coat that day. However my method of telling the temperature later revealed itself to me ...

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