Unreliability of Sense Perception?

[katesmom]

I was recently introduced to Descartes. Ive read some of his meditations & I’ve had a lot of anxiety about some of his ideas.

I honestly never questioned my senses. God gave them to me to perceive the world around me and I never questioned them? I certainly hope they are reliable & giving me accurate perceptions?

Ive been thinking about this a lot & wondered if others have been bothered by his ideas?

Thank you

 

[GEddie]

Not really. Sure, our senses have limitations, but without them, we’d have no mind at all.

We only discover the limitations of our senses by using them.

ICXC NIKA

 

[The_Wizard]

Optical illusions are one example of the unreliability of one of your senses.

 

[MindOverMatter2]

I was recently introduced to Descartes. Ive read some of his meditations & I’ve had a lot of anxiety about some of his ideas.

I honestly never questioned my senses. God gave them to me to perceive the world around me and I never questioned them? I certainly hope they are reliable & giving me accurate perceptions?

Ive been thinking about this a lot & wondered if others have been bothered by his ideas?

Thank you

In-order to know for certain that your senses are basically reliable, you first have to logically demonstrate to yourself that you exist, and then that God exists and once you have identified that this God is perfectly good, you can then argue that such a God would never deceive us or allow us to be deceived all the time. God would grant us basic consistent knowledge, even though it is imperfect. On that basis you can be certain that in general the universe exists and so do other people.

 

[tonyrey]

You should be delighted by the ideas of Descartes not in a state of anxiety! Our senses are reliable but they are not infallible whereas we are infallible with regard to our thoughts. We know what we are thinking even if what we are thinking is nonsense! We have direct experience of our conscious mental activity. It is **our sole certainty **whereas everything else including the existence of things and other persons is inferred from our sense perceptions. This irrefutable fact reinforces our belief in the power of the mind and therefore the reality of the Supreme Mind.
http://forums.catholic-questions.org/newreply.php?do=newreply&p=8145354

 

[ThinkingSapien]

I honestly never questioned my senses. God gave them to me to perceive the world around me and I never questioned them? I certainly hope they are reliable & giving me accurate perceptions?

Ive been thinking about this a lot & wondered if others have been bothered by his ideas?

Thank you

Descartes wrote some things that I don’t agree with, but you’ve focused on the possibility that our perceptions and senses deceive us.

There may have been a moment in which I was bothered while thinking about the possibility that my senses might not be inspired from reality. But if I am inescapably being fed false sensory information by demons, machines, or what ever the false source I only know how to act in the context of that false information, so I just roll with it. I’ve had experience with acting within the context of false perception (more on that in a bit).

False sensory (name removed by moderator)ut isn’t the only way that some one may have perceptions that are differ from reality. Perception is influenced by context that includes among other things memories and knowledge/beliefs that a person has already acquired; it’s not a function of sensory (name removed by moderator)ut alone. Within these forums people have different beliefs of whether or not the god Yehweh father of Jesus exists (I am being specific because tow word ‘god’ alone has been applied to many deities), and within those that believe there are some points of disagreement. The differences in these beliefs influence how we all perceive reality and it shows in our replies to each other.

Techniques of monitoring brain function such as fMRI and other studies suggest that cognitively speaking there’s not a natural difference in how the brain treats belief and knowledge. Knowledge can even be described as being a belief with high confidence. So I may use the two words interchangeably in the context of cognitive processes.

False and inaccurate memories from confabulation, memory conjunction, or some other flaw of reconstructive memory contribute to context for perception. Bring functioning affected by injury and degenerative conditions (Alzheimer) and psychological and pathological conditions such as psychopathy can also be taken into consideration here. Medical conditions, drugs, and traumatic events can also lead to hallucinations. Some one experiencing one of these problems know that what they are perceiving is “true.”

I’m capable of holding a conversation with a real person while still sleeping and performing simple mechanical operations (such as activating my phone). And because my speech is as it would be while I am awake on more than one occasion some one has had a conversation with me without realizing that I was asleep. As long as the conversation doesn’t go into the current state of things there’s no way for a person to know that I am not awake. If some one ask me about something related to the present then it becomes apparent that I am not awake; I answer questions about my present locations, time of day, and so on according to the context of my dream. (My friends now know to interrogate me and ensure I am awake before starting a phone conversation if they call late).

False perceptions can happen, false perceptions do happen. That’s part of reality.