Our Humble Senses

The evidence of our senses in themselves is not, “I look out my window and see the hand of God at work.”

Creating what?

The dirt on my window that further besmogs the sky?

Nope.

Stick with the dirt. Evidence of the senses.

And the various parts of buildings, perhaps five in all, that I can see.

These are my facts, to which I can add bricks and other stonelike things.

(I am not an expert in all the ways we can create the exterior parts of buildings.)

So we could say that to Peirce’s notion of evidence of senses comes the fallibility of individual senses which in some cases is almost complete.

And that word fallible applied to intellect is perceptive.

It should humble us all.

Peirce: CP 2.143 Cross-Ref:††

143. All these tests, however, depend upon inference. The data from which inference sets out and upon which all reasoning depends are the perceptual facts, which are the intellect’s fallible record of the percepts, or “evidence of the senses.” It is these percepts alone upon which we can absolutely rely, and that not as representative of any underlying reality other than themselves.