Moderator: Aldus Marius
Quintus Claudius Locatus wrote:Salve Marce,
I don't believe your (neo)platonist view. As being a cynic, I rather believe that all our sensations are right, as they are given to us by nature.
So a rather accepting cynic then? This would be an impossible position to defend, as was well known in Greek philosophy. A simple demonstration of the unreliability of one's sight is to place a pencil in a glass of water. Or you might refer to mirages or hallucinations. Your senses of smell and taste are interdependent and again are easily deceived; the old trick of placing an orange under the nose of a blindfolded person and giving them an apple to taste. Aural perception is totally unreliable. those strange bumps in the night one hears cannot be identified without first being familiar with what the sounds might be. And touch as well can be deceptive. The five blind guru's coming upon an elephant, each with a different explanation, or a similar story from Buddhism used to illustrate the unreliability of one's senses.
Our senses are the only reliable source to get information, thus knowledge.
How do we get knowledge? By collecting information with our senses. Than one has to consider if this information is true for him. If it isn't, he will reject it. If it is, he will incorporate that information and alternate it until it reaches his thoughts. When having done this, he will be able to express this information and from this point on it can be named "knowledge".
Well, our senses being an unreliable source of information, we do not gain knowledge by them. What you describe here is discerning from the information gathered by our sense, consistent with other information we have stored away, to determine an opinion, not knowledge.
This simple explanation shows that there are many types of knowledge. The information you have gathered may be visual, corporal, etc. Thus there are many types of experiences that lead to knowledge, but knowledge is universal, no matter how it is attained.
Loc
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