Is Human Knowledge Limited by the Human Senses?

I agree we are ages apart, but I have no desire to see the world through bronze age superstition.

You seem very sure about which age I am from, plus you added superstition...interesting that you seem to have summarize it all pretty quickly good for you.

Just want to remind that wholeness/completeness incorporates both beginning and ending.... To miss or dismiss any of the two is to miss or dismiss the entirety.

The mysticism is dripping from your posts.

Its your perrogative to attach labels, after all the label is merely an idea that ultimately resides in your mind....not mine.

And there is no fault in any man who strive for a purpose of Life and living that looks beyond the whims and fancies of accidents.

If you want to impute a meaning to events, to affirm that there is purpose to existence, it is necessary to justify the claim, not merely affirm it. Faith affirmations are the province of religion, not philosophy. The path of Aristotle led to science and open inquiry; the path of Plato led to mysticism, magic and fraud.

Have you found meaning in following Aristotle? Have you found me aning by rejecting Plato?

Or was that a preamble to justify aimless wanderings? Or is aimlessness all the meaning you have derived.

How do you justify anything to the doubtful, who doubts even without hearing?

Do I require you to justify your claims of aimlessness, other that the claim itself?

There is no need for any more justification of my claims for enough already exist in the things I have said. With or without justification, the hearer will only accept that which pleases his own eyes and ears and provide himself with all the justification he needs.

Only the doubtful insist on justification, for it provides the fodder to feed their doubtfulness.

Your responses imitates the standard atheist vs religionist Scripts. I guess you needed to put me in a box before you drive your nails.

Hello Kess.

I have carefully read your posts and the rebuttals to see this discussion as a whole, and the main problem I see, is that you write in a way that is very hard for me to understand just what you are saying. To me our senses are similar to input devises for the computer, the devise is nothing in itself without the programming to decipher its signals. So, unless our eyes are defective in some way,it's the minds processing proper information and perhaps additional info is coming from other senses to give us an idea of our reality. I realize that eyes need light to reflect off things, and without light our eyes are useless, the blind cave fish show what happens when light is not available.

Regards, John.

Hello Kess.

I have carefully read your posts and the rebuttals to see this discussion as a whole, and the main problem I see, is that you write in a way that is very hard for me to understand just what you are saying. To me our senses are similar to input devises for the computer, the devise is nothing in itself without the programming to decipher its signals. So, unless our eyes are defective in some way,it's the minds processing proper information and perhaps additional info is coming from other senses to give us an idea of our reality. I realize that eyes need light to reflect off things, and without light our eyes are useless, the blind cave fish show what happens when light is not available.

Regards, John.

Agreed that his view {Kess} is somewhat odd but it is still interesting. He seems to be giving the sense organs themselves an independence apart from the cognitive mind. But because I intellectually search beyond the limits of ordinary sensory perception to extend Human Knowledge I must consider this perceptual view with interest if only for the purpose of additional perspective - Who knows maybe he is on to something; Maybe the senses came first and the mind followed later?!?1

Hi UA.

I keep on going back to biology when these questions come up. It shows that eye evolution has take a number of different paths and as such show differing needs for different life forms. Human sight is somewhere in the middle on the scale of usefulness, but they have served us reasonably well but in design they are somewhat clumsy. As I learn more about the senses the only sense of humans which is in the top range is touch which is close to uniform over all of our body, while in animals large parts have very little but with high concentrations at certain points. At present the evidence points to the emergence of homo occurred in the forests of Africa where there was no need or advantage for superior sight. To me sight and the other senses were dictated by survival advantage to the particular life form. Trying to "see" anything more seems to me to be gilding the lilly. To hope for improvement in our abilities in a evolutionary way seems to be a dead end to me at this stage of humanity. I believe that our ability to shape our environment has cancelled anything new spreading through our collective gene pool. For now human evolution is at a standstill.

Regards, John.

Hi UA.

I keep on going back to biology when these questions come up. It shows that eye evolution has take a number of different paths and as such show differing needs for different life forms. Human sight is somewhere in the middle on the scale of usefulness, but they have served us reasonably well but in design they are somewhat clumsy. As I learn more about the senses the only sense of humans which is in the top range is touch which is close to uniform over all of our body, while in animals large parts have very little but with high concentrations at certain points. At present the evidence points to the emergence of homo occurred in the forests of Africa where there was no need or advantage for superior sight. To me sight and the other senses were dictated by survival advantage to the particular life form. Trying to "see" anything more seems to me to be gilding the lilly. To hope for improvement in our abilities in a evolutionary way seems to be a dead end to me at this stage of humanity. I believe that our ability to shape our environment has cancelled anything new spreading through our collective gene pool. For now human evolution is at a standstill.

Regards, John.

i do not disagree with your analysis if evolution is accepted as 'the' explanation of where we now are. But evolutionary theory can be questioned and I do not believe it is necessarily always the explanation. True it is more acceptable than Creationism for most but random chance evolution based upon survival of the fittest alone has its weak points. Sometimes my mind in trying to accept what is tries to see the other side of an issue and occasionally looks for a synthesis of concepts. I have been prone to see what I call evolutionary creationism as a possible alternative - a belief that a process called evolution is occurring but that it is based upon more than just survival of the fittest. It is conceivable that we are in fact the result of genetic manipulation from sources such as Ancient Astronauts and this has been postulated by some. Now if that was the case then the somewhat odd view of the sense organs such as the eye which was given by Kess might have some meaning. Just as evolution can be shown to have loopholes and flaws and is not a complete answer, creationists may not be all wrong either.

And your statement "For now human evolution is at a standstill" is a point I have been bringing up for some time in other forums where I was 'theoretically' Chanelling an advanced alien consciousness which was asking why and suggesting that humans are not evolving to their potential destiny and also indicating that humanity is stopping itself from this potential evolutionary advance. 'They' say it is mans somewhat illogical tendency to repeat his somewhat sordid history over and over again which is the root of the problem - but it doesn't take an alien consciousness to see that. But maybe other senses of other minds than human is what it will take to awaken us from our nightmarish history.

Hello Kess.

I have carefully read your posts and the rebuttals to see this discussion as a whole, and the main problem I see, is that you write in a way that is very hard for me to understand just what you are saying. To me our senses are similar to input devises for the computer, the devise is nothing in itself without the programming to decipher its signals. So, unless our eyes are defective in some way,it's the minds processing proper information and perhaps additional info is coming from other senses to give us an idea of our reality. I realize that eyes need light to reflect off things, and without light our eyes are useless, the blind cave fish show what happens when light is not available.

Regards, John.

What is light? Knowledge deciphered for the purpose of the eye. What is sound ? Knowlwdge deciphered for the ears. What are the senses of smell taste, touch? Again knowledgde deciphered for these organs.

Knowledge as a whole is beyond any one or all these senses. Knowledge resides within the man and this is why he is able to percieve thing via his senses. If not there was no way he could have the perception of and relate to anything.

The man have not realize this so goes through a process of learning....

Now to learn anything the man must first assume he is ignorant....and in this he decieved himself.

And then the man who presumes the position of ignorance, still denies his ignorance because he had learned something ...thinking that all knowledge is external. Now he is puffed up in arrogance.

But any external knowledge must be incomplete because they came through the division of his senses. All the while the fullness of knowledge lays within him untouch by the man.

Now if the man was to realise this he can relate perfectly to any and all things external, independant of his senses even if he continues to use them according his decided purpose.

I think we should re-phrase the original question: "Is Human Knowledge Limited by the Human Senses?"

To: Is the Scope of Human Knowledge Limited by the Human Senses?

As I thought about some of the responses given it occurred to me that this version might be more apt to explain what I am asking.

Hi Kess, you wrote: But any external knowledge must be incomplete because they came through the division of his senses. All the while the fullness of knowledge lays within him untouch by the man. Now if the man was to realise this he can relate perfectly to any and all things external, independant of his senses even if he continues to use them according his decided purpose. [end quote]

Would you elaborate on this fullness of knowledge within? I believe we come into this world with no knowledge, just the autonomic actions which keep us breathing etc. and that all knowledge we obtain comes in through our senses where our mind sorts it. In time corrections occur as we receive more input and perhaps in time develop some wisdom.

Regards, John.

Existence must be percectly united to be existence. Knowledge is the perfection of existence. Knowledge need not know anything else except itself, thus it is always at peace or at rest....in need of no other thing.

Ignorance is exactly the same at the state of rest, for it is too ignorant to know, that it needs to know anything.

So the child while in the womb, is knowledge at rest...but to the man physical senses cannot differtiate between knowledge and ignorance.

So the thought that the baby is ignorant is expected and normal.

At birth the child now experiences life through the division of the senses, this now causes a confusion to the child, not being able to recognise ignorance from knowledge....plus the good nature through their nuturing of the parent reinforces the ideas that they are ignorant.

Now the child is easily decieved, once he seeks gratification of the senses, and at that point he operates as if he is indeed ignorant. The longer he operates in such a mode, the more confused he becomes. When exposed to real life even more so until eventually he dies. Becoming the totality of ignorance.

To escape the person must adopt a certain way of thinking, so that the gratification of the senses are not priority. In doing so he lessens the confusion of knowledge and ignorance until knowledge is fully know for what it is.

This man would now be totally aware of himself, and would be in a state which some has described as being born again, enlightened, buddha etc etc.

Hello Kess.

You seem to want to take us in the direction of eastern philosophy/belief systems. I have insufficient knowledge of them to be able to pinpoint which one because there are a lot of them. The thing that strikes me is just how did you get to this way of thinking besides all those ignorant individuals who helped shape your life thus far? So how did you get so knowledgable despite all this ignorance, how is it that you are able to use a computer to write your message, seeing that a bunch of ignorant people invented this device?

When entering this ultimate state of being you need nothing? No food or air to breathe?

I see you have some knowledge but this far I have not observed any wisdom.

Regards, John.