Can We Trust Our Senses?
Science, Mystical Moments, and Commonplace Reality
Common sense tells us that what we see is what we get, but as we grow older and more experienced, we learn that this isn’t necessarily true. Sometimes we are surprised. Sometimes our senses deceive us. Sometimes things are not quite as they appear. On occasion, our first impression of something turns out to be completely wrong.
This would not be a problem if it wasn’t for the fact that our senses are all we have to go by. We have no choice but to trust them. How else can we know the world around us?
Opposing Worldviews
Three centuries ago, the Empiricist philosopher John Locke saw sensation as the great source for most of the ideas we have. For most of the ideas, he said, but I think he meant all. In An Essay Concerning Human Understanding he wrote:
Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge? To this I answer in one word, from experience.
Rationalist thinkers like Gottfried Wilhem Leibniz did not agree. In his Discourse on Metaphysics, Leibniz said:
It is a bad habit we have of thinking as if our minds receive certain forms as messengers from the outer world, or as if they had doors or windows… Nothing can be taught us of which we have not…
