How useful are the senses to the knowledge
seeker?
We all have to start somewhere on our
quest for knowledge. It is absolutely unavoidable. How can I write the second
sentence without the first? I cannot. Likewise, how can I build an idea without
a foundation which I take to be true, even though I have no evidence for this
foundation? I cannot. To make this more solid and less of an abstract, floaty
idea, let me put this (and my neck!) on the line.
The
beginning of knowledge, the first instrument of truth, is sensory experience.
This would be some form of 'Empiricism' in philosophy-terms. What can be
touched, tasted, seen, heard or smelt is our foundation for knowledge. We can
narrow this list down a bit, and put 'sight' on a pedestal, as it is the most useful
sense in discovering knowledge.
At any
rate we have our foundation. We can gain knowledge through the accumulation of
sensory data. By experiencing things we can piece together general rules: when
X happens, Y will follow. We can provide observable, testable evidence to
convince people that our theories have a certain probability of being correct.
We can take an unromantic view of the world, unobscured by mythologies and
beliefs. We are born as blank slates, created equally to develop ourselves however
we might. Nothing is set in stone, and everything is reversible. The old can be
overwhelmed by the new. Nature can be drowned beneath a deluge of experiences.
What comes out, is what goes in. That is it.
'Is that
it?'
No, for
the senses are useless... -
There I
said it! Of course I do not mean it, I am just stirring up a bit of beef. But
what I mean to say is that they are useless on their own. Reducing
reality to sensory experience is like observing a frozen lake and thinking it
only an icy surface. In trying to understand human beings, we cannot rely
purely on the 'output' of peoples behaviours. Nor can we understand ourselves
from a purely empirical position, as so much of what we are is not even truly
experienced by our senses.
Our
senses do the job they were designed to do. However, they are not sufficient to
tell us anything universally true - objective knowledge - because on top
of them lies a personality. This subjective personality has the ability to
prioritise, it has emotional weights attached to it, which drive and pull it.
For instance, it can focus on rushing to the bakery, and as a result miss the
forlorn snail innocently crossing the pave.
Scrunch! - one
dead snail. For what - an iced bun?
Our
personalities can be dominated by group psychosis (being made to ignore facts
of reality because everyone else around us is ignoring it). The rules and norms
of society can be counter to the acquisition of knowledge, and our own sensory
information can be ignored, or perverted, because of it.
Taken
into a broader context, no amount of sensory awareness can guarantee that
personalities will prioritise what is important over what is trivial. No amount
of sense data placed upon the scale will produce an ounce of meaning - placing
a heap of pieces on a board does not create a chess set - and without meaning,
or subjective purpose, we cannot seek knowledge. For knowledge is whatever is
useful to our interests and biases as individuals, or masses. Anything that is
not useful, is not knowledge. Therefore, we cannot rely on a purely
'earthly' concept of using experiences of the real-world to find knowledge.
There is no knowledge out there, even if there is a real world beyond us.
Knowledge needs a subject to find it – you!
Let us
look at an example to further this: we have two sides of the same coin -
enchantment and disenchantment. You and I could walk through the same shopping
mall. You bedazzled by the colours and squeaky clean shops, me disgusted by the
lack of spontaneity and the artificial-ness of the environment. You excited
about the shiny surface of a curvaceous mobile telecommunications device, me
sickened that anyone could ignore the horrid conditions of the asian
serf-worker whose blistered hands made it. We would both be sensing the same combinations
of molecules and atoms, the same colours and smells, the same outer world. Our
senses would be roughly equal in their capacity to detect physical matter. Our
different positions are therefore not caused by sensing something different,
but our reaction to experiencing the same thing. A massively complex
reaction that is part emotional, part rational, part natural-animal, part chosen by our will, and so on. At any
rate, something within us is choosing to come to a different conclusion. All
whilst using the same sensory experiences.
Yet if
the first instrument of knowledge is sensory experience, how is it possible for
us to come to such radically differing viewpoints when experiencing the same
things? There is one answer to this. The foundation of knowledge is not the
senses, however useful they are.
Sense
information becomes important only after we have decided what is
important.
Knowledge,
with a big K, is impossible -
If we
accept the above train of thought we lead to the inevitable conclusion.
Knowledge seeking does not begin with a pure desire to sense the world,
to capture it on the 'blank slates' of the mind. What the end product of
empiricism's grand project - the scientist - studies and develops is decided by
factors which are almost always political, economic, or personal (just ask -
how many noble men and women of science engineer the weapons of tomorrow, or
waste time developing anti-hair loss products?)
There is
no such thing as pure sensation; all senses are wreathed in subjectivity,
emotion, prejudice, thoughts of past and future, concepts created by language,
and so on. If we could use our senses in a pure sense, unobscured by
personality, everything would become inseparable.
Without
the power of words to divide and highlight things, without the concept of time
to predict things, and without the weight of emotion to move us into action and
create our preferences we are incapable of seeking any knowledge at all. The
ability to do these things is innate - we are born with them. We, as
individuals or masses, merely choose how to use our innate faculties.
The
first instrument of knowledge is what-is-important to us. Yet what is important
to us?
St.Zagarus
The
Philosophy Takeaway Issue 51 'Open Topic'
