Ib Tok~ Truth and Certainty Cannot Always Be Found in the Senses

IB Theory of Knowledge

Knowledge Issue: Truth and certainty cannot always be found in the senses.

Skill Set: Linking the areas of knowledge.

In theory of knowledge, students learn the areas of knowledge through the ways of knowing

which consist of emotion, logic, linguistics as well as sense perception. Sense perception is a way in

which students gain their knowledge through their senses. For instance, some people are visual learners

while others are auditory learners. Visual learners learn from using their sense of sight such as looking at

pictures, diagrams and charts. On the other hand, auditory learners learn by their sense of hearing, they

learn by listening to a lecture or a presentation. Either way, with the five senses, people can explore the

world and learn from them. However, something can always go wrong. For instance, we have seen in

movies that in desserts when people are so thirsty, they imagine water, this image is called a mirage. So,

what happens when we see these imaginary images, are our eyes playing tricks on us? Well, it is not

really our eyes, but our brain. The body is telling the body that it desperately needs water, and the brain

makes you think, you have found water. Therefore, this indicates that your brain can sometimes lie to

you which in turns makes your senses unreliable.

An empiricist is considered to be someone who believes that people obtain their knowledge

from sense perception or empiricism. If I see, hear, taste, smell or feel something, it will become part of

my knowledge and experience. For example, if someone tells me that mint chocolate chip ice-cream is

good, I will not believe them until I taste the ice-cream myself. This trust in our senses comes from our

trust in ourselves. Like the example mentioned above, you have to try things for yourself, if someone

else tries something, you do not believe them as much as you believe yourself. “Tell a man that there are

300 billion stars in the universe, and he'll believe you. Tell him that a bench has wet paint upon it and

he'll have to touch it to be sure.” (Anon) This quote supports my argument of the overconfidence we

have about our sense perception.

Our trust in our senses is similar to our trust in the sciences. We trust science due to the theories

that are formed because of evidence and research. Nevertheless, theories sometimes are wrong,

because the evidence and research may be proved incorrect. So, just like sometimes science can

be wrong, so can our senses. Similarly, we trust our senses, because we consider ourselves the

evidence of the truth however, it is the brain that interprets everything making our senses be wrong. For

instance, there is this optical illusion in which you have to stare at the center of a circular board with

black and white swirls while it is spinning. Then, after thirty seconds of staring at the center, whatever

you look at, it will look either inflated, if the swirls were coming outwards or deflated, if the swirls were

spinning inwards. Therefore, because our brain was interpreting all that spinning, it made it seem like the

next thing we look at has a different size than usual.

The world is a dull universe. There is no sound, no color, no anything. It is our senses that use

the ‘waves’ that are in the world and then our brain that interprets them as information we can

understand. For example, if someone knocks on a door, that is basically a bunch of vibrations that are

sent in our ears which are then sent in our brains and interpreted as a knock. Nevertheless, someone

else might interpret the vibrations as pounding on the door. As it is seen, people can have different

understandings of the same things due to the different brains. This way of perceiving things differently

can also create uncertainty and skepticism, because it makes looking for truth more challenging and

looking for truth more dubious. In other words the act of interpreting and seeing things differently

creates uncertainty because things are viewed differently and therefore cannot be proven if they are true

or not.