When should we trust our senses to give us truth?

International Baccalaureate Theory of Knowledge

2. When should we trust our senses to give us truth?

Word Count: 1569

At one point or another in the Theory of Knowledge (TOK) course, we are demonstrated a pictorial representation of the TOK course. The traditional TOK diagram revolves around the knower(s). Orbiting around the knower(s) are the ways that a knower shall use, like a resource to understand and explore the world around them. One of these resources is sense perception. Our senses are inputs in our body that we use to learn and expand our knowledge of our ever evolving world. Along our journey of learning and expanding our knowledge, we will, and always continue to discover truths. For example, it is a hot day, and you want to drink the cold glass of water in front of you. But how do you know that what you see is in fact a cold glass of water? Should you trust your senses, in this case, your sight to pick up the glass of water and drink it, or ignore them? The truth is then what we interpret from that data that our senses are giving to us. In certain contexts our senses are useful to the truth attaining process and to different degrees, but they neither give nor withhold truth from us. It is what we make of our senses that give us truth. Knowledge areas that pertain to attaining truth via our senses are human science and history. There are also many everyday life situations as to when to consider trusting your senses to achieve truth, such as whether you have all senses or not, the effect of mental illness and what is accepted in our present day society.
Human science is the area where we are seeking to know meaning- related realities that are not bound to specific time and places. When performing scientific experiments it is given that you will use and trust your senses to give you the right answer. But sometimes our senses are deluded from the truth because when performing scientific experiments, you will want your hypothesis to prove right. So in order to find the real truth, truth is attained by making other people repeat the experiment, so that answers are not biased. When many different people have observed at different times, given that they all have 5 senses, then and only then can you judge if your senses have actually told you the truth. One of many famous repeated experiments are Galileo Galilei's dropping of different objects from the leaning tower of Pisa. His experiment was to prove that all objects, whether one is lighter or heavier than the other, falls at the same rate. (Trubin) Scientists that have repeated this experiment with their own senses and arrived at the same conclusion as Galileo are: Giuseppe Moletti, Jacopo Mazzoni, and Simon Stevin. They have seen that the objects fall at the same time and heard one thump in the ground. So their senses have permitted them to obtain the common truth that all objects fall at the same rate during and after observing the fallen objects. It is then useful, in the realm of science, to rely on your own senses as well as the senses of others to obtain truth.

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History is another area in which this topic is related to. It is the area where we are seeking to know meaning- related realities 1 that are bound to specific time and places. Everyone has views and opinions; which are influenced from their upbringing, society and culture. Thus their views and opinions will sometimes be the same and sometimes will not. So when a group of people witness an event, their own opinion of what happened will not always be the same, even if they saw the same event. An example of this is the movie Vantage Point. The plot of this movie is that there was an attempt of assassination on the President of America and is told from several different perspectives. (IMDb Inc.) The movie presents the perspectives of a news producer, the Secret Service agents, a troubled police officer, an American tourist, the president's view and of the terrorists. This movie shows that our senses do not give us the total truth due to different views, but it is what we make of all the different perspectives all together to get the truth behind all the perspectives, meaning truth is found discursively .

Although those areas only permit knowing what our senses do to present truth in science and history, now when do we trust our senses to present truth in everyday life when we are performing everyday familiar conscious acts ? Here we must examine situations when we must consider trusting our senses to get to truth: whether you have all senses or not, the effect of mental illness and what is accepted in present day society.

Having all senses is the optimum amount of senses that a human being can have. It is a privilege and fortunate event of having all of them to rely and trust on in your life's daily routine. But what if one or two senses are absent? This occurrence happens to many people every day, either permanently like being blind since birth or temporary like not being able to smell because your sinuses are blocked for the time being. Although some senses may be absent, one will rely on the other better senses to gain truth. If a blind man is standing on the crossing, he will not be able to see the cars that are coming or going, hence he will need to if a car is passing or not through a different method. This is where his other better senses, in this case hearing, come to great use; he will know if there are cars or not by its noise and if there are people at the crossing as well, he will be able to listen to their movement and by other sounds. By trusting in his better senses, the blind man is able to see the truth of the matter- whether or not there are cars passing.

A mentally ill person may have all their senses but truth cannot be achieved because their senses might delude and mislead it. Many of us will not believe someone who is hearing voices in their heads; whereas to them these voices are as real as water is for us. But how do we know that he is really hearing voices? This example shows that we can trust our sense but not fully because according to the realm of science, hearing voices is unnatural and basically means there is a malfunction in the brain. So it is not useful to trust your senses when trying to get truth from a mentally ill person. However a mentally "healthy" person can also be deluded from the truth as well. A girl sees her boyfriend hugging another girl. She trusts her senses that are misleading her and concludes that he is cheating on her. Obviously you need more information to the situation to firmly confirm that he is cheating on you. Therefore if you are in an emotional state, it is also not a good case to rely on your senses to give you the truth because of a "jumped into" conclusion you might drew. Thus we can trust our senses to an extent but it is better of us when interpreting our senses that the real truth is found.

Our interpretation of what we see is widely influenced on how our culture and society interprets them. This would be accepted as a "norm" or a common truth of the society. For example, people who see teenagers dress all in black and have their hair covering their faces automatically think that they are "emos " that cut themselves. But that is not necessarily true; they might just like dressing that way, not listen to that type of music and are not depressed and unenthusiastic. The easiest way to know that someone is an emo, is to rely on your hearing and seeing. If they are always looking sad and depressed and all they talk about are miserable thing, then they must be emo. For example, Pete Wentz, one of the singers of Fall Out Boy, plays punk rock music, wears black make up and has hair covering his face but is not "emo" just because he has some characteristics of an emo. Here, we are not able to get truth when we interpret what our senses are telling us due to outside influences.

In conclusion, we use our senses all the time, whether we are aware of it or not. We can use or senses and gain truth from the data that our senses give us in scientific experiments, and historical events. Furthermore, they are useful during everyday actions and decisions. A person with absent senses uses their remaining and better senses more consciously and actively in order to get to the truth. But contrastingly a mentally ill or healthy person can have their senses intact but read their senses wrongly and truth is then not given. The societies "norms" or common truths, can delude our senses of gaining truth, because of misjudgement. So ultimately our senses, hearing, seeing, smelling, tasting and touching are useful at certain contexts at attaining the truth but do not give or withhold truth from us because it is what we make of what our senses that gives us truth.

Words: 1569

Bibliography

Fitzgerald, Adrial. Unrestricted Yearning: A Compendium of Philosophy Based on the Works of Bernard Lonergan. 6 November 2006. 12 June 2008 < http://unrestrictedyearning.blogspot.com/ >.

IMDb Inc. IMDb- The Internet Movie Database. 2008. 12 June 2008 < http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0443274/ >.

Lonergan, Bernard. "Lonergan's Theory of the Criteria of Knowing (Epistemology) (Notes from Mr. Fitzgerald)." n.d.

Trubin, Julian. Following the Path of Discovery. September 2007. 12 June 2008 < http://www.juliantrubin.com/bigten/galileofallingbodies.html >.

Meaning is what we bring our attention to in our conscious- intentional acts. Meaning may be intelligent or unintelligent, reasonable or unreasonable, responsible or irresponsible.

Discursive means that we must know everything about the situation to find an answer.

Conscious act: an intentional action derived from our own performance where we have put our direct awareness/focus to it.

People who listen to soft- core punk that integrates from depressed melodramatic angst-full teens.