Epistemology: Other Forms of Sense Essential for Attaining the Truth

The common or central sense makes us aware of our sense-acts. It is the seat of sense-consciousness, notifying us of the presence of the perceptive acts mentioned above, of feelings, such as pleasure, grief, anger, desire, and of appetitive striving. The central sense enables us to distinguish in a concrete way between the various organs and perceptions and to locate them in the bodily system. That this is not a form of 'intellectual' knowledge can be seen from the actions of animals. They manifest no intellectual knowledge, but they are conscious of the different kinds of sense-perceptions and of the various parts of their body. The main point here is that man I convinced of the reality of his body and of outside objects as revealed by the coordinating action of the central sense.

 

The imagination uses the material supplied by the sense-perceptions to form images of its own fashioning. Dreams are the product of the imagination. But man also uses his imagination creatively, constructing a world of fancy which exists nowhere but in his mind. Man is conscious of the distinction between the figures of his fancy and the people of real life, between the pictured events of his dream and the actual occurrences of external happenings. During a dream he may be unable to recognize events as unreal, but upon awakening he becomes aware of their imaginary character. The essential difference between fancy and reality is perfectly clear to the ordinary man and forms one of his strongest spontaneous convictions.

 

Sense-memory recalls perceptions and events and recognizes them concretely as having been experienced before. It is able to locate these experiences in their proper sequence of time and place. We not only remember the persons and objects we have seen before, but we also remember the time and place of seeing them. That these memory images represent a reality distinct from these images is another spontaneous conviction of man.

 

The connection of instinct with the problem of knowledge is slight. While instinct plays a prominent part in the life history of animals, its function in man in limited, due to the predominant part exercised by man's intellect in the ordering of his actions. It is the cognitive function which apprehends material objects as things either harmful or useful to the organism consequent upon their perception. The influence of instinct is noticed chiefly in actions which are necessary for the preservation of the individual and of the race. Whatever instinct may amount to in man, it is stimulated by external objects and events and always has a reference to external reality: such is man's natural conviction.

 

All senses convey knowledge of the reality of the physical world in some form or other. That, at least, is the view of the average person, and of this he is certain beyond doubt. How far this obvious, spontaneous conviction can be justified before the bar of critical reason, is precisely the duty of the epistemologist to examine and determine.

 

 

Coming up next on Epistemology Today blog: 

Epistemology: Other Forms of Sense Essential for Attaining the Truth