In Order to Find Out How Things Really Are, One Must Understand the Filters Through Which One Perceives the World
In order to find out how things really are, one must understand the filters through which one perceives the world”. Discuss and evaluate this claim.
For the only world man can truly know is the world created for him by his senses.
-Lincoln Barnett-
The term thing can be applied to an entity, an idea, or a quality perceived, known or thought to have its own existence. Things are all the objects that our senses meet in everyday life processes, emotions, everything that can not be referred to as a living system. I see something, I feel something, I do something…we are surrounded by things. When an image of a thing reaches our perceptive senses continues its journey through many “filters” or “membranes”, where it gets its shape and cognition, and finally settles down in our memory. This process is called perceiving.
We say that through perceiving we gain knowledge, but what is knowledge, then? It is the awareness of reality, a reality that is identified and understood in our mind. I know (therefore I identify and understand) that the Earth is round. Perceiving is the first step on the way to knowledge. However, before we make any conclusion all the data gained through perceiving is altered in our mind, so a picture about the world or a particular thing will be drawn into ones head. And through objectivity one can check the validity of his conclusion. But not all men are the same, thus not all conclusions about the world are the same either. These filters I mentioned, earlier, are actually the means used for identification and cognition of reality: senses, mind, emotion, experiences, reason… Obviously these filters have main role in understanding real world. So a question emerges. Whether they allow us to see how things really are, or just restrain us from reality? Almost everything we know comes from four basic sources. The first one are our senses, then reasoning and intuition, and authority. I myself have placed them in three groups: senses, mind (reasoning,
For the only world man can truly know is the world created for him by his senses.
-Lincoln Barnett-
The term thing can be applied to an entity, an idea, or a quality perceived, known or thought to have its own existence. Things are all the objects that our senses meet in everyday life processes, emotions, everything that can not be referred to as a living system. I see something, I feel something, I do something…we are surrounded by things. When an image of a thing reaches our perceptive senses continues its journey through many “filters” or “membranes”, where it gets its shape and cognition, and finally settles down in our memory. This process is called perceiving.
We say that through perceiving we gain knowledge, but what is knowledge, then? It is the awareness of reality, a reality that is identified and understood in our mind. I know (therefore I identify and understand) that the Earth is round. Perceiving is the first step on the way to knowledge. However, before we make any conclusion all the data gained through perceiving is altered in our mind, so a picture about the world or a particular thing will be drawn into ones head. And through objectivity one can check the validity of his conclusion. But not all men are the same, thus not all conclusions about the world are the same either. These filters I mentioned, earlier, are actually the means used for identification and cognition of reality: senses, mind, emotion, experiences, reason… Obviously these filters have main role in understanding real world. So a question emerges. Whether they allow us to see how things really are, or just restrain us from reality? Almost everything we know comes from four basic sources. The first one are our senses, then reasoning and intuition, and authority. I myself have placed them in three groups: senses, mind (reasoning,
Bibliography: James L. Christian, Philosophy: An Introduction to the Art of Wondering, San Francisco, Rinehart Press, 1973 Abel, Reuben, Man is the measure, New York, The Free Press, Inc. 1976 Roderick M. Chisholm, Theory of knowledge, 3rd Ed. New Jersey, Prentice-Hall, Inc. 1966 www.worldtrans.org/TP/TP1/TP1-47.html www.connect.net/ron/epistemology.html