Do you trust the senses for scientific examination of the external world?

[Kyriakos]

Similar to a very old thread of mine, where i reffered briefly to the famous saying of Protagoras that "Man is the meter of all things: of those that exist that they exist, and of those that do not exist that they do not exist".

In my view this axiom is a good compromise in the issue of the disbelief of the senses which is so ussual in philosophy.

Some basic example: when you see an object you form an image of it dependant on your senses, in this case sight. The object does not have a "real" form, but it has as many forms as there are different (in eyesight) observers of it, or alternatively no form at all.

Another example: an observer of a sphere, if he only can see in two dimensions, would be seing a moving expanding and diminishing circle when the sphere would move vertically (ie the dimension which he could not observe).

But there can be all sorts of different sighting mechanisms. Maybe for an alien entity a line is seen as a collection of utterly non-Eukleidian shapes.

So, to get back to Protagoras, i think that his saying is important because it alerts us that nomatter that the senses are not showing us "Reality", they do show us a subset of reality: human reality. And this is important for we are humans.

Anyway i can add some more points later, but you can discuss the issue of trust and mistrust of the senses if you want to, and also the saying i mentioned which places mankind in the center of existence and the universe (from mankind's perspective).

 

[Quackers]

I don't think it's a big deal, we have invented telescopes and microscopes to detect things we cannot see with our natural senses. I'm certain new machines will be made to detect things like that.

 

[Kyriakos]

Yes, but careful: you still use your eyes to see through the telescope and therefore you still see an (albeit mechanically enhanced) human view

 

[warpus]

Do you trust the senses for scientific examination of the external world?

I don't trust my senses to be perfect, no.

That's why we have peer review as an integral part of the scientific method and process.

 

[civ_king]

How do you prove space? I'm not talking about outer space, I'm talking about the enormous space inside atoms, and yet we perceive solidness.

Also how many senses do we have?

 

[galdre]

Interesting OP

Our perception seems pretty limited to me, as well as our capability to understand what we perceive.

 

[Winner]

Yes, but careful: you still use your eyes to see through the telescope and therefore you still see an (albeit mechanically enhanced) human view

That applies to optical microscopes. Electron microscopes give you an image on a computer screen.

---

Anyway, what we perceive as "reality" is in fact a continuously updated model construed by our brain based on sensory inputs. It usually serves us well, but it is easily fooled. That's how most "magic" tricks work - they create a certain expectation in our brain. The brain then models the movement of the magician's hand (for example, it can be anything) according to these expectations to create a prediction. Of course, the magician does something completely different, which momentarily confuses the brain. This results in an illusion - it's a dissonance between the model and the sensory input.

 

[Neonanocyborgasm]

The problem with disbelief in the senses is that it leaves nothing to believe, and therefore solipsism.

 

[Kyriakos]

That applies to optical microscopes. Electron microscopes give you an image on a computer screen.

Hm, but you still see that image through your eyes, it is information shaped again in a way that it can be humanly percieved and sensed and made sense of. There is already a lot of "human-only" in all that i think

(by which i do not have to mean that alien science would be different in everything, but it might, this is another projection of this issue)

 

[Winner]

Hm, but you still see that image through your eyes, it is information shaped again in a way that it can be humanly percieved and sensed and made sense of. There is already a lot of "human-only" in all that i think

(by which i do not have to mean that alien science would be different in everything, but it might, this is another projection of this issue)

Well, of course there could be an alien race with a completely different set of sensors. For example a "blind" race that relies purely on echolocation, touch, and smell. These beings would of course model reality (see the rest of my previous post) differently from us, and their whole culture would be totally alien to us.

Take colours - there would be practically no way to translate this term, except as "different wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation that can be perceived by our sensory organs". Or maybe they'd have their own acoustic "colours". They'd obviously not use computer screens like we do, but maybe something that produces fake "echos" that their sensory organs would interpret as "images" (analogous to how we see things on a computer screen - it's weird, writing this while watching how the letters appear on my laptop's display ).

Communicating with them would surely be a challenge.

 

[warpus]

I really do not see the problem here that can't be solved with peer review. If I see something with my eyes and they deceive me - what are the chances that every other person looking at the same thing is going to be deceived in the exact same way?

Peer review solves all these sort of problems.

 

[Zelig]

Our senses are based upon physical realities of the universe, as long as we understand these, and the limitations of our senses, this is a complete non-issue.

 

[Kyriakos]

I really do not see the problem here that can't be solved with peer review. If I see something with my eyes and they deceive me - what are the chances that every other person looking at the same thing is going to be deceived in the exact same way?

Peer review solves all these sort of problems.

You seem to be thinking of a false sense as in pathologically or accidentally false, but the topic is about senses as very human and therefore not presenting a reality other than the human one

Imagine the beings that saw the sphere in two dimensions as a circle: all of them would see an expanding and diminishing circle so peer review would not help them.

 

[warpus]

You seem to be thinking of a false sense as in pathologically or accidentally false, but the topic is about senses as very human and therefore not presenting a reality other than the human one

You seem to be implying that there is some sort of underlying "truth" (or reality) to things. There isn't. All you can do is bounce photons off of things and see what comes back.

I don't think it's possible to "see a thing as it really is" because the only way things can be observed is by.. observation. You can never get to the "meat" of the matter, because it sort of doesn't really exist. Observation is all you have.

If any of our senses aren't giving us the whole picture or are giving us a "wrong" picture, it's really beside the point, IMO.

Imagine the beings that saw the sphere in two dimensions as a circle: all of them would see an expanding and diminishing circle so peer review would not help them.

A sphere in 2 dimensions IS a circle, so these beings wouldn't have been deceived. They would only be missing a piece of the puzzle, which they could potentially fill in later if they managed to build a device to observe things in 3 dimensions.

So it's not really a question of not trusting your senses, to me. It's a question of realizing that you will NEVER get the full picture. You get pieces of a puzzle.

 

[Joecoolyo]

Also how many senses do we have?

According to Cracked (or at least the article), 14 to 20.

 

[bernie14]

wouldnt it make "sense" that there is one reality outside of each individual's interpretation of it, that is our senses take the information form the environment and our brain then "percieves". consensual validation (or peer review I guess) does seem to be a big help to distinguish between "reality" and perception", but not 100%.....thousands of years ago, people may have looked accross a plain and agreed that the earth was flat..that is what their collective perceptions may have been telling them, but we know that it was not reality....

as usual, it will come down to an argument of semantics, if a tree falls in the forest, does it make a sound/ (depends on how you define "sound")

 

[Kyriakos]

Interesting point, Bernie. I guess i too do not think that there is any "real form" of things. If there was a real form it seems there would need to be some perfect observer of it, and even then you would be pressed to note why this perfect observer has to be deemed as not only better than other observers, but so better that the views of others are cancelled. Easy to claim it in the case of 2 dimension observing/ 3 dimension observing / 3+x dimension observing beings, but not that easy if there are other differences

 

[madviking]

They ain't perfect, but as far as things we have, it's the best we got. And as mentioned earlier, corroboration helps minimize any errors in our perception.

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

What use would doubting one's senses instead of just going out there and doing the research be, exactly?

 

[warpus]

Interesting point, Bernie. I guess i too do not think that there is any "real form" of things. If there was a real form it seems there would need to be some perfect observer of it, and even then you would be pressed to note why this perfect observer has to be deemed as not only better than other observers, but so better that the views of others are cancelled. Easy to claim it in the case of 2 dimension observing/ 3 dimension observing / 3+x dimension observing beings, but not that easy if there are other differences

It's impossible to have a perfect observer anyway. By observing you are directly affecting what you are observing - so what you end up observing is not the original object anyway.