Sense Perception as a Reliable Source of Unformation

Our senses are our primary way of interacting with the world. Long before we learnt how to talk, reason, or control our emotions, we were able to make use of our sense. However, the question still arises, can we rely on our perception? How do we know what we know? The natural sciences, such as physics, biology and chemistry have all been shaped by the scientific method and are all based on observations. This is how humanity has accepted the relationship between everything in the physical world. The natural sciences have been pushed forward by reason and intuition, but were set in motion by our sense perception. Given these senses, sense perception is a reliable way of knowing, but should not be trusted whole heartedly due to limitations of our physical senses.

As human beings, our most reliable source of information is collected through our senses. We evaluate situations, form opinions and make judgements based on what we see, hear, taste and feel. It is quite straightforward for us to make a conclusion based on sense perception. If we see two cars colliding, we have witnessed a car accident and there is no doubt present. Therefore, our sense perception is a straightforward and reliable way of knowing. There are examples we can draw on to demonstrate the reliability of our senses. Our sense of taste and smell can give us important clues especially when it comes to food. From personal experience, if I feel unwell post eating a meal and that meal is presented to me again, the smell associated with the meal will prevent me from eating it. This is a reliable source of information as it prevents you from feeling unwell by detecting what food may not be suitable for you. Likewise, your other senses play a similar role and can inform you of your surroundings and play an important role in survival.

Our sense perceptions are also a vital source of information when looking into sciences. Perception is the sense of particular importance in science. When carrying out experiments in chemistry, in order to understand reactivity between different agents, you note down your observations. If in your observations, you see the solution becoming cloudy or if you see a change a colour, this indicates how the reaction is proceeding. Therefore, perception plays an important role in scientific experiments. The sense of smell is also important in science. An example of this is when ammonia is dissolved in water to produce ammonium hydroxide, a pungent smell is released and this is an indication that the reaction has taken place.

As for my counterclaim, even though our senses are our primary way of interacting with the world, used long before the other ways of knowing, it cannot be trusted. From experience, we decide what we like and develop a bias. Because of this, we cannot always rely on our senses as they work best at an instant of time. Once the moment has passed, it’s up to our memories to remember what it was like. The senses give us knowledge for the present, then we store the information until we have something else to compare it to, which is what we’re always doing. Sense perception can be deceiving, especially to those who may be colour blind. Their perception of colours is different from ones who can see colours properly, and this can lead to them making serious mistakes, for example, when driving and approaching a traffic light, they may perceive the red regular people see, as green, and hence may cause to an accident. However, this raises the question: Is your red (or any colour), the same as my red (or any colour)?

As a personal experience, when meeting a new person, a way of knowing: intuition. My intuition about them may be that they are a genuinely a nice, caring person. While you may think, that your intuition is something you can trust, you can’t entirely judge anyone by first meetups and intuition until you actually have a general talk with them and get to talk to them. However, it has been the case so many times, that when I judge someone based on my intuition it actually turns out to be right. Another personal experience which I can recall, when I was young, and saw a ghost’s face appear in the curtain, upon further inspection, I came to know that it was the folds of the curtains which shaped like a man’s face. With this in mind, sense perception had hindered my knowledge of truth, therefore suggesting that sense perception is unreliable.

In the Natural Sciences, several experiments were conducted over a long period of time by various scientists, each with different perceptions of what an atom looked like and contained. The way atomic theory developed is that the scientists never accepted another’s perception of the atom, and went ahead to experiment for themselves and develop their own perceptions. In this case, the unreliability of sense perception caused scientists to continue to research and experiment and therefore further develop the understanding of their field. If it was understood that everyone perceives something the same way, there would be no need to prove or disprove someone else’s perceptions.

Overall, sense perception has proved to be a reliable source of information when it comes to certain situations and is also important in sciences. However, it has been see to be an unreliable source of knowing as everyone has different views of the world. For our sense perception to be reliable, senses need to be equally superior and the lack of one may obstruct our knowledge. And therefore sense perception is not a reliable way of knowing since everything we do requires a method just like our understanding of the world, and sense perception is mainly based on intuition and on one’s personal experience therefore defeating the purpose of reliability.