“All we have to believe with is our senses, the tools we use to perceive the world: our sight, our touch, our memory. If they lie to us, then nothing can be trusted. And even if we do not believe, then still we cannot travel in any other way than the road our senses show us; and we must walk that road to the end.”
Gaiman
Philosophers and psychologists have grappled for ages with the concept of ‘Truth’. Even more difficult is trying to explain the relationship between senses and recognition of truth. While a full-scope examination of the relation between truth and senses would require a detailed examination on both the psychological and the philosophical fronts, this essay shall restrict the query to just the psychological aspects.
Our five senses of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and touching, are based on the ability of the physical organs namely the eye, ear, nose, tongue and skin to receive information from the exterior world, sending the information to the brain where it is processed and then eliciting a response. How the brain processes this information depends on certain ‘Apriori’ knowledge hardwired into our system due to millions of years of evolution as well as learned behaviour and knowledge gained as we live life.
For example, a baby perceives pain through its skin when it is pinched and thus the relation between tactile sense and the ‘truth’ of pain is established. As we grow older, our parents, elders, teachers and peers teach us to recognize what is right, wrong, good, bad, possible dangers and other aspects of life which are a part of the concept of truth.
Learned behaviour is the subject of vast studies in behavioural psychology which addresses the behavioural aspects of human psychology. If we were to encounter a wild animal in the jungle, the instinctive response on ‘seeing’ the danger makes our heart beat faster, the release of adrenaline and the brain calculates the judicious course of action, whether to fight or to flee. What our five senses perceive is coloured by our experiences which then are rationalized by the mind to provide a corresponding response.
However, there are times when senses get deceived. When the human body is suffering from fatigue, senses do not perform optimally leading to faulty comprehension and response. At other times, what we observe need not necessarily be true such as a mirage in the desert. At such times, perceptions give rise to wrong conclusions partly because of not having the right information or the right level of knowledge to process the information and arriving at the truth.
For example, not very long ago, a man believed in the fact that the Earth was at the centre of the universe, as it so appeared to the human eye watching the movement of heavenly bodies. This ‘truth’ underwent a transformation when scientific methods of observation proved it otherwise. Gaps in our individual understanding of various aspects of the observable world can at times cause problems in arriving at the ‘truth’ of an event or a happening. But, for most activities of life, we are well equipped by nature and our teachings to recognize what is the truth. Therefore, the truth of the observable world suffices for us to get along with life. In my opinion, there is great truth in the maxim propounded by Rene Descartes who said “I think, therefore I am”.
References
Descartes, Rene. A Discourse of a Method for the Well Guiding of Reason. Part IV. 2008, EBook by Project Gutenberg. Web.
Gaiman, Neil, English born American Novelist, Journalist, Screenwriter, Children’s author and Comics writer of American Gods, amongst many others, b.1960. Web.