When Should We Trust Our Senses to Give Us Truth Essay Example

perception isn’t completely reliable.

The idea of sense perception comes from the idea of empiricism and how experience is “of primary importance in giving us knowledge of the world”. (Holt) Sense perceptions provide us only with the information it gives us, it cannot reason more than what it has in front. Many famous philosophers and authors believe that we use groundless faith everyday or “animal faith” as some others may so call it (George Santayana). Basically what this means is that we believe what we see through our eyes but we cannot question the image without reason and the sense of rationalism.

We cannot rely on sense perception to flaunt the “truth” because there is more to what the eye can see or to what we may feel. If we as humans were to completely rely on sense perception solely we would be like savages, because our minds would only filter what we see and not reason to see if what you see is the “truth”. For example if we just relied on sense perception we would be easily fooled into conceding that everything is safe and good or the exact opposite that everything is harmful and dangerous.

If we relied on sense perception to guide us without utilizing other ways of knowing we could be mislead into causing harm to ourselves and acting upon instinct like that of animals. If we observe the hoax appearance of some poisonous berries we can believe that they look delicious and harmless when in reality they can kill you quickly. This is when we cannot use our sense perceptions to indicate the truth in this situation. A human cannot function with

only possessing sense perception as a way of knowing.

Sense perception is needed in a human to fully function because it allows us to receive natural inputs that the other ways of knowing cannot allow us to do so. Sense perception is important just as the other ways of knowing, but I can concur that we cannot fully depend on sense perception to bequeath us with the “truth”. Every way of knowing is linked with each other and this causes each way of knowing as infallible to us because we need each one to be humane and acceptable in society.