Senses & Truth

Senses

Your senses are the inner being of our souls and that is what needs to be used first and foremost. Trust can be broken and emotions are deceiving/ Our senses tell us when something is wrong and if we chose to ignore our senses and trust what someone is telling us we can end up being hurt and if we go on emotions boy, children get hurt many times when they feel that bad and trust that a bad person with a sob story will tell them. NO we need to trust our senses…

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Tricky question – FIRST, we have to be totally AWARE of our senses – what they make us feel like and what they mean. Emotions are quite a bit harder to truly understand. When a person IS totally aware of their senses, then it is important to trust them at all times. Emotions should be acted on only after you really understand them, so trusting them automatically is not always wise.

The senses never give us truth… they give us data. Truth is not something we sense, it is something we recognize. Truth is a state of being. Accuracy of the data imparted by the senses is pretty reliable, however our interpretation of that data is many times in error. Emotion is the body’s reaction to thought. We can trust the information that emotion imparts only as far as we have been able to become aware of how it operates in our lives. All emotion is giving us information about ourselves and is best dealt with acceptance for what it is. Knowing the real message of our emotions as opposed to just reacting with them is the measure of how much one can trust his emotions.

Most of the time, but not always. Because if you’re hopped up on pills, well then your senses really won’t be all that reliable.

The question is askew. Rephrase, -when should we trust our senses in rooting out a lie-. Our senses work best in trying to prove if something violates our knowledge of reality, not if what we know is absolutely true, but rather if a new truth violates known truths, and the old ways remain the way. Previous experience with our senses let us know that something is fishy. We may not know the truth per say, but we know crap on velcro when we smell it.

When I feel there’s something is wrong, there’s a truth to it. When I fell I can’t stand anymore then I should let go.

Our greatest enemy is ourself including our senses. What we feel sometimes kills us or telling us what will come ahead. We should know when to trust our senses and when not to.the truth is what we sense,different sense got different truth,but is is all based on what we SENSE,and SENSING is the nature who know ITSELF,SO ALL IS TRUTH. EVEN ILLUSION IS THE TRUTH OF SOMETHING REALLY EXIST BEHIND THE SENSING.

I strongly believe in trusting ur instincts & ur inner voice. But u should also take into account the evidence & the clues around us.

hey guys i’m going to do my ToK essay on “When should we trust our senses to give us truth?” (#2)

Some ideas i’ve got so far is defining truth …. how sense perception is how we see the world and the way we interpret it might be flawed and so what we take to be true could be false …

I cannot really come up with any examples of WHEN we should trust our senses to give us the truth because i don’t really believe senses give us the truth ( except for when my milk is really hot or cold but again that is with respect to me, might be the opposite for another) .. i think senses just gives us raw information tht we then process through our knowledge and come up with what we believe is true but is what we believe to be true really true? yeah am i heading in the right direction with this essay? any help appreciated

hey i am doing the same topic yea i think ur in d right direction..start by defining truth (this can get philosophical) and then the senses namely sight, smell, touch, hearing and taste. The functioning of all these senses together may give u sum truth (again, what is truth??) but isn’t truth based on our own perception? the best example for reasoning that i came up with is belief in god. we don’t see him, hear him, feel him, etc. but we still believe in him. Now wat causes this? It is the faith and for us it becomes the ultimate truth. then wat if u hav a cold? can u still trust ur sense of smell?

just emphasize on small everyday examples..it should b fine. Glad to help. Keep me posted if u hva any other ideas

I think you’re heading in the right direction! For TOK essays I have found that you don’t have to come up with an answer, you just have to debate the topic (because when is there ever an answer in philosophy?) Somehow, you should relate it back to knowledge. Research the philosopher A.J. Ayer and his concept of ‘justified true belief’ – basically, for something to be known it has to be believed, justified (by the senses perhaps) and true. The difficulty is proving whether something is true (science, for example, never ‘proves’ anything – just supports it). Then, there’s the whole spiral of how to test the accuracy of your senses (or any other way of knowing): how do you then test the accuracy of the method you use to test whether your senses were accurate, and then how do you test this method… etc. There is another theory of knowledge known as justified reliablism – where for a knowledge claim to be knowledge it has to be believed, true and justified according to a reliable cognitive process – there is a lot of debate over what constitutes a ‘reliable cognitive process’ and in particular about whether the senses are trustworthy enough to be this process. It’s worth a research.

The question seems to be rooted in a similar question from last year: “Are some ways of knowing more likely to lead to the truth than others?” If you could get hold of some of these essays you would definitely get some idea of how to tackle this question (Just don’t misuse them – using same examples, etc.). If you ask nicely, I can email you my response to that very question.

Truth

I hav a question… definin truth n al that is fine! but isnt the topic suppose to be around “when” can v trust the senses..to giv us truth

True, and that is what the essay should focus on, but at the beginning of your essay you need to define your terms. There is no point writing an essay that no-one understands. When I say define truth, I mean briefly – take a paragraph or so and the beginning of your essay to define stuff (knowledge, truth, just some of the more abstract concepts that you’ll be dealing with)…

TRUTH is CREATED as part of a biological process. It can be understood in terms of DEVELOPMENT, ECOLOGY, EVOLUTION, and PHYSIOLOGY.

As we transfer information we learn about the world (let’s call it “reality”) into ourselves by means of whatever sensory abilities we can bring to bear, we are right to question and test our percxeptions — to establish the validity and reliability of our experiences and the beliefs they engender. Is there a difference between the real world (“reality”) and what we think we know about it (“truth”) ??

We are all concerned about what is true and what is not — with what is real. Do we always perceive what we think we do? How far can we trust our senses? (read Plato on this point!) Scientists that explore the boundaries of what is known of the world are especially wary. They are often confronted with information for which there is little or no precedent to guide their judgment about the meaning of their data. For example, having an emotional investment in a particular outcome of an experiment is a notorious source of unconscious bias. The objectivity of a researcher is highly admired as is their efforts to assure the validity and reliability of their data.

Never, our senses are deceiving. There is no constant formula to our senses. It what makes it so hard for us to observe things clearly, to gain a sense of reality. We shall never be able to perceive something from other people’s viewpoints, ergo we shall never have a shared opinion. If anything, we can only rely on mathematics and reason. It is the most universal thing we have.

Your senses, sight, hearing etc always give you the truth, they are incapable of anything else. The problem is, how do you interpret the evidence. There are books on optical illusions but if you know it’s an illusion it easy to see the trickery. If you don’t know it’s an illusion you can be fooled, so be cautious.

its what you perceive as truth till you shown different..for example..when we ask mommie and daddy where do babies come from and you get the ole stork story…you find out later…ya know?

#1. When they corroborate with what we logically reason.

#2. Whenever they do not contradict themselves, or the past.

#3. Whenever you are sensible, alert, and “at rest.” As examples, being drunk or high does not count as this.

#4. At all times. You can trust your senses! They simply pick up what is around us!

#5. Never. Do not trust your senses! They are fooled far too easily!

Any time that truth can be independently verified by evidence, sound logic, science, etc.

True of false exists only in our language. There is a commonly told joke of a man driving on a two laned roadway. A beautiful woman drives past him going the other way in a convertible. As she goes by she leans out and yells, “PIG”. The man is visibly upset and starts thinking, “Why did she call me a pig? I don’t even know this woman. Maybe I met her and don’t really remember her face?” He continues driving as he’s having these thoughts. As he rounds a bend in the road, he runs into a huge pig standing in the road. So all that happend was she yelled pig. There was nothing true of false in what she did. But his interpretation of her action–that she called him a pig–was not related to the reality of what happened. Even had he thought she was trying to warn him, that would only have been one possible interpretation and may not have been any more true than the interpretation the she’s calling him a pig.

when we are using our senses solely for the material sides of things, and we feel certain that we would have the agreement of most or all rational observers over what we sense.

In a rational state of mind, a car seen approaching should be taken as a real event.

find that strictly scientific people have problems straying from their scientific rigor in ToK. You must find a way to diverge from this science thing and write a balanced essay. I’ll say what I always do in these ToK threads. Find something one end of the spectrum such as Math/Science and then find another AoK to contrast it with such as Art/Ethics etc. I don’t believe we should ever trust our senses to give us truth. Why do you think we have created so much advanced machinery that can perceive what we cannot, to give us reliable knowledge? Did your teacher not show you psychological illusions to show how awful our perception and senses are? The bottom line is that we should rarely trust our senses to give us truth, but unfortunately they are all we have

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Our senses are how we view the outside world. Without them, we would be hopeless. I then gave a few examples of animals trusting senses with their lives – senses are used to understand the outside world, the world that is foreign from our bodies. However, our senses can be deceived, like a magic trick. Also, there are some spectra’s of light that our human eye cannot see. So therefore, we can’t trust our senses to give us ALL the info. Then I defined truth and linked it with the information that our senses gave. Then I stated that perhaps what we see may not be what we see after all, just what we call it. Hence, I am typing on a computer, or more accurately, I am communicating my ideas to you on a object I call a computer, whether it be it or not. The latter would be more ‘true’ than the former. Quote Rene Descartes and describe the ‘Matrix-effect’. Then conclude. Can’t remember what I got exactly, but I remember I did really well. Hope it helps.

I think one big way of knowing to talk about in this title would be perception – and the problems with perception, how perception are subjective/biased? and can be deceived. But as you said it’s important to focus on the WHEN of perception, not the WHETHER.

Tok essays are about 4 things

defining the words

arguing against what you think

arguing for what you think

concluding that what you think is write

with a sprinkling of areas of knowledge throughout

2bh ur question doesn’t seem very TOKey, it doesn’t lend itself to any specific area of knowledge.

relate truth to truth in science and maths or 2 other areas of knowledge.

for example in science we see salt dissappear when it goes into water, but if we evaporate off the water than the salt will still be there. what we observe is something dissaperaing but the truth (scientific truth) is that the salt dissolves due to etc etc scientific explanation.

i submitted this essay yesterday.. it had the same question to answer..

you just mention in the main body a bit about the argument between believing in senses or not with evidences and the say when we must trust them .. i wrote that we trust them when it seems logical for example when u put a pencil in a cup of water then observe the pencil broken because of refraction,, then in this case u dont believe in it because u can easily use another sense which is touch to check.. thats what i wrote i dont know if its right or not .. but nothing is wrong in TOK.. right..? >> think so just give alot of examples in ur essay.. hope ive helped..