In these Circumstances we must rely on our reason to guide us to safety and truth. When driving a car for example. We must make the rational, reasoned decision not to drive as our perception would not be reliable in reading the ‘truth of the road ahead’. Once during a chemistry lesson we did an experiment about Filtering where we placed in a beaker sugar and water and heated the beaker. I noticed that the water’s level in the beaker was decreasing until it disappeared. I saw and believed that water was disappearing.
However, there’s a scientific explanation (truth) for what happened. In other words, we can observe that human minds are much more sophisticated than they were before where many truths will be ignored and new ones will be discovered. If we take an example of a group of people who witnessed an accident it is very likely that each one of them will have a slightly different version of what they saw. This is why it is very important for the police to get as many witnesses as possible in their quest to try and find some version of the truth.
People’s perception here could be altered by their emotional state at the time of the accident. Human beings are equipped with a ‘flight or fight’ instinct or sense of perception which can come into play in life threatening situations. If we were to rationalize and reason about how to escape from a tiger confronting us we would probably die. In a recent case in Australia, I grandmother jumped on the head of a giant sea crocodile that had clamped its jaws around her sons leg and was attempting to pull her son into the sea.
The crocodile let go of her son and bit off her arm. She managed to save her son purely acting purely on her ‘fight/flight sensory perception reaction. In conclusion, I believe there in no universal ‘truth’. The version of our own reality is dependant on our senses and affected by emotional states. In other words, it doesn’t matter if reality exists or not because what is true for one person may not be for another.
I do believe however, that we really need our senses of perception in striving for truth, but we also need to use our powers of reason, emotion and language to create a more rounded spectrum of reality. Occasionally though we must follow only our sensory perception to lead us to truth, such as in the life or death situations as I mentioned above. “The more abstract the truth you wish to teach, the more you must allure the senses to it” this is a quote for the famous philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche which is an interesting quote that is related my topic.
He discusses that importance of senses and how you must use them to give you truth when the facts around you are not very clear which is quiet similar to how you must use your senses in life threatening situations.
Bibliography “BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | Crocodile-wrestling gran honored. ” BBC NEWS | News Front Page. 09 Feb. 2009 http://news. bbc. co. uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4755870. stm “Friedrich Nietzsche quotes. ” Find the famous quotes you need, ThinkExist. com Quotations. 1 Jan. 2009 ;http://thinkexist. com/quotation/the_more_abstract_the_truth_you_wish_to_teach-the/171051. html;.
