The world we live in is so vast and we have to discover it. We are born with a set of tools to touch, feel, see, hear, taste and smell the world around us, but are these tools sufficient to establish an adequate map of the reality in which we live? Do our senses bring us the truth? People developed their knowledge of the world by using their senses. The reason the sky is blue is because our eyes see it that way. The reason we know honey is sweet is because we've tasted it before. It is difficult for us to accept the thought that our senses are deceiving us because we have relied on nothing but them to wander around and gain knowledge about everything around us. But if the senses sometimes deceive us, does this mean that we cannot know anything? To further investigate whether our senses deceive us or not, we must look at their origin. We say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original EssayThe five senses work as intended, and the creator, God, has given us the perfect set of tools to explore and gain insight into the world around us. As Descartes asks in his first meditation, "if God is supremely good and the source of truth", how is it possible that his creation could prove defective and deceptive? We used our eyes to identify the colors around us, our ears to distinguish our mother's voice from our grandmother's, and our nose to enjoy the scent of a rose. All these senses have helped us map the world around us and familiarize ourselves with its works of art, and this makes it not difficult, but impossible for us to deny the fact that our senses have told us nothing but the truth. However, looking at the idea from a different perspective shows us that our senses are simple receptors that have no filters or identifiers for what is really there. For example, a color blind person perceives the color green as yellow and therefore looks at the world through a completely different lens. Likewise, blind people have enhanced hearing abilities, so they perceive sounds and vibrations much more rigorously than normal people. Descartes articulates this through a wonderful example in which he considers a piece of wax. The honeycomb, as he describes it, tastes like honey, retains the scent of flowers, has a golden color, is made up of hexagonal-shaped honeycombs, and has a certain consistency when felt. All of these attributes are detected by our senses, helping us identify this piece of wax as a honeycomb. Descartes then goes on to explain how, if he places the wax next to the fire, the flavor is eliminated, the scent disappears, the color changes, the shape of the combs is deformed and the once solid wax becomes liquid. So, according to our senses, this no longer identifies itself as a honeycomb based on its current attributes, but remains wax. This brings us to our second point, which aims to determine whether the body and mind are somehow connected, and here an important question arises, namely: Would Descartes have recognized the honeycomb if he had simply looked at the molten wax without knowing? its previous form? Returning to the previous example of the wax before and after being placed next to the fire; the senses simply translated it to identify it as a honeycomb. However, did Descartes' senses really identify him as a honeycomb after he melted, and even after his attributes were completely altered, or was it his brain? In this sense, his brain learned that this wax was once a honeycomb, and the only way it would recognize the molten wax was through the experience provided by the senses. In another.?
tags