When Should We Trust Our Senses to Give Us the Truth - Essay Example

It would be pertinent to observe here that, had our senses given us the objective truth, then the sensation of color would have been identical for everyone.

To further illustrate this point, take the example of the sound. Our ears perceive certain wavelengths, which are interpreted by our brains as sound. There are supersonic and subsonic wavelengths that our ears cannot perceive. At the same time there exist creatures like bats that can easily perceive such wavelengths. Again, earthworms have no auditory perception at all. They pick up vibrations from their surroundings through their sensitive skin, and these vibrations help them navigate and find food.

If we were earthworms we would argue that there is no such thing as sound! A simple experiment can easily be arranged here to judge the correctness of senses. We can take two buckets full of water, one ice cold and the other hot, and dip one hand in each of these. After a while, take a bucket full of lukewarm water, and dip both hands in it. The hand which was earlier placed in the hot water bucket will feel cold and the other will feel warm. It is apparent from this small experiment that even in a limited way, our sensory organs don't provide reliable data.

There are other, more insidious ways of tricking the senses, drugs being one. Senses can also lead us astray under conditions of extreme emotional duress. Keeping the above in mind, we can conclude that we can't always bank on our senses to provide us with correct and reliable information. Similarly, there is reason to believe that our senses are often unable of providing us with complete information - so to say "the whole truth".In recent years, scientists have discovered that 95% of the contents of the universe are invisible to our current methods of direct detection.

The observable universe, which can be perceived by the senses comprises 5% of the mass of the actual universe. The rest is dark matter and dark energy. There exist realities that our senses can't perceive! There is a hilarious but thought-provoking episode in the third book of Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. During a trial, one of the witnesses, "a strange and difficult man" called Prak is administered a drug to force him to tell the truth. Inadvertently or deliberately, the amount administered to him is excessive.