I’ve seen a lot of philosophical questions in some of my academic endeavors that involves a lot questions on what we can even begin to trust. For example, Descartes’ “evil demon” thought experiment about if every single sense we have is actually curated by a great deceiver. I haven’t watch been seen this idea referenced in many different contexts as well (such as VSauce’s “How do we know what is real?” video). I was wondering what your guy’s thoughts on the philosophy of knowing more than “I think therefore I am.”
- There are two different “modes” we operate in. There’s the philosophical mode, where we can imagine all kinds of doubts about our senses. And then there’s real life, where we rely on those same senses constantly without hesitation.
- In practice, you already trust your senses every day. If you’re walking, driving, holding a conversation, or making decisions, you’re depending on what you see and hear—and it works. You don’t stop and wonder if the road might not be real before taking a step.
- That’s actually the important point. Whatever doubts we can raise in theory, in real life our senses prove themselves reliable because everything lines up consistently—what we see, what we remember, how things behave over time.
- So the question isn’t whether we can imagine doubts. It’s whether our senses are dependable in the world we actually live in. And the fact that we function, decide, and navigate reality successfully every day is pretty strong evidence that they are.
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Ultimately that is all we can know – if your basis is sheer reason.
Descartes was correct: to know more, there must be faith. And in any reasonable Creation, the Creator would give us modes of interacting with the rest of Creation that we can more or less trust – i.e. our senses, not just our reason.
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But at the same time, we (those of us with imperfect vision and diminishing hearing, anyway) also know that our senses miss things, and that what we see doesn’t fully match reality.
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I agree with you, and I think your point helps refine what I was saying.
- Yes, our senses are imperfect. We miss things, we mishear, we misperceive. What we experience doesn’t map perfectly onto reality in a one-to-one way. But that’s precisely why we don’t rely on a single sensory impression. Instead, we rely on patterns:
- repeated observations over time,
- multiple senses working together,
- correction through memory, reasoning, and other people’s input.
In other words, the reliability of our senses isn’t based on perfection—it’s based on correction and consistency. Our senses are not infallible, but they are self-correcting within a broader system that, taken together, tracks reality well enough for knowledge and action. That’s why, even knowing our limitations, we still trust them in practice—and are generally justified in doing so.
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Basic metaphysics 101…I’m I dreaming you….or are you dreaming me? what did the burning bush say…”I am”.
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I guess for me there is really only three ways of knowing and one is just hope.
- We have our senses. We don’t have the senses of insects and so we don’t see the color of plants the way they do. So our senses are what we have.
- We have the wisdom of others. We gave historical data, current data and predictions based off of data by experts. I see honeysuckle all over the southeastern forests and fences. You find our miles and miles away from people. You would presume it’s native. Experts thought show that it’s the invasive Japanese honeysuckle.
This is not really knowing but hope. We can live our life as if God is real. We can feel we know he’s real. But we don’t really know it. We hope it.
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If We could all agree on everything then everything is correct, but then we all could agree on evil and this would be Hell. All We have here is a lot of Dis-Agreement, but We Keep trying to Agree with Each Other. Terry Sampson indicates “I Agree” here in this text stream of thoughts. We think We’re individually correct and and find others Dis-Agree. We think We can do things moderately, like drinking Alcohol, but too much Will possibly cause Liver or Kidney Failure. My Sister had this happen at 56 Years old. So We try Alcohol Anonymous and try to get you to agree to stop alcohol altogether(“Sin no More”).
I’m 73 Years breathing and about 11 months in the Womb. My senses are not the same as they were many years ago, but me inside this body has changed what I agree on with Myself. I was sold on the Sense of Freedom and I tried any thing like jumping the train turnstile and the police didn’t agree with my sense of Freedom. I tried to walk out of Department store with more Records in my bag than I paid for and the Police again didn’t agree with me. My senses tell me Guns can do a lot of damage and my senses tell me don’t have one for I might hurt someone or even myself, so I don’t have one, but very few agree with my senses.
This all boils down to Christ saying “My Kingdom is not of this World” I agree with Christ and His Holy Spirit and I agree sometime in the Future I will be in the Mansion Promised.
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Correction: I think therefore there is thinking. But no, this doesn’t mean some thing Imagined with various attributes and labeled as “I” actually exists. Some have answered this by supposing the I we can know exists is some unknown or even unknowable thing – but that is just a different set of attributes and frankly to call it unknown or unknowable sounds like word games to me which ultimately just means we are talking about something we don’t know exists.
Frankly when I see a word, in this case “knowing” diminished to the point where it no longer applies to anything, this tells me that the meaning and expectations of the word has failed, and we really need to re-examine what we mean by the word. I have concluded that traditional idea of “justified true belief” is mostly hot air. Nobody believes things they don’t think are true or justified. And thus I think a better definition of knowledge are the beliefs we live by. The application to science, for example, are the theories we routinely use to conduct scientific inquiry itself – these should be called “scientific knowledge.”
As for how we can trust our senses. I don’t think this is such a difficult question, for it really is the same as how we trust anything. By proven reliability. And frankly it is the interpretation of any source of data which is corrected by experience. In this I am thinking about optical illusions and such, which are certainly not about anything unreal, but about exercising caution regarding what we are actually seeing.
It seems a greater challenge to me, to ask how we know the universe wasn’t created this morning with all our memories provided as they are. But that is the failing of the old traditional definition of knowledge. By the definition I have suggested, our knowledge of the past existing is simply our choice to live life more meaningfully.
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Thanks for posting. This concern has long intrigued me. Historically, it was a central question in the dispute between rationalism and empiricism.
The problem, however, is even worse than portrayed. Sensory perceptions are time-limited. (I’m thinking of this in pre-scientific terms; science operates somewhat differently). Imagine you witness an action, or hear something spoken, or taste a fine meal. You infer that those experiences are real.
However, the next day they are no longer sensory perceptions - they are memories. And years of research has shown that human memories are notoriously unreliable. In my opinion, this renders the case for empiricism even more problematic.
Generally, the better approach is the humble one: simply to accept uncertainly, and frame beliefs in terms of conviction rather than certainty.
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I agree that memories are often unreliable and that framing beliefs in terms of conviction rather than certainty is often wise. Memories can be partly ‘rewritten’ when we go through what happened and tell about our observations. With time, memories tend to lose details. Yet, some memories make stronger imprints than others and can be remembered a long time.
When we are speaking about science, making notes or records is the standard practice. That minimizes the caveats of changing memories.
When we speak about something that humans experienced, interviewing several of the observers may help to identify the core of the events even when some tell misleading details.
When we speak about the events described in the NT, we do not know how well the eyewitnesses and writers remembered the details. The events were exceptional, which hints that the memories made strong imprints.
Luke tells that he had interviewed many to get the story right.
There is a hypothesis that teachings of Jesus were written down quite soon after (and possibly even before) Jesus disappeared to Heaven and that the gospel writers got some of the details from that source (Q source).
There is also the real possibility that the Holy Spirit helped the followers to remember important events.
To conclude, although our observations are not perfect because of the limitations of our senses and our memories are not always reliable, there are ways to minimize the effects of these limitations.
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People seem to be assuming that we get it right in the first place. It doesn’t matter how good or accurate the memory if the original perception is incorrect.
Richard
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Incorrect.
This hasn’t been true for any part of the history of science since it came after the invention of writing. Thus in the whole history of science the observations of science are meticulously recorded and no longer just memory. And to this we have added many other media by which observations and experimental results are recorded.
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Agreed!
The truly rigorous Atheist should be a SOLIPSIST as well …. to creep out from under
umbrella requires FAITH!
G.Brooks
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