Wednesday, December 8, 2021

The Inherent Subjectivity Of Sensory Perceptions

Sensory perceptions like seeing the sky or hearing another person talk are no less subjective than desires, emotions, and conscience, yet people act as if there is some special inherent validity to hearing, seeing, or smelling something, as if the mere experience proves that one is perceiving a physical world exactly as it is.  Sensory experiences are in no way an automatic sign of anything more than that one is having the experiences.  In fact, all experiences involving the senses are subjective to the point of not even having any self-evident connection to actual external events or objects.

It is not even obvious after thorough, prolonged reflection that the five senses and other similar senses (as opposed to a "sense" like the intellect that can be directly proven to correspond to the external reality of the laws of logic) connect with anything external at all.  It only seems that way, even if the sense of touch can be proven to contact some sort of matter--but there is only a single way to prove this [1].  Without a blind acceptance of the idea that the senses are accurate--and even someone who concludes that people must be perceiving real external objects because different people claim to see the same things has a blind acceptance based on consensus that may itself be a deception--one could never come to that conclusion except in part with the sense of touch.

It is objectively true that sensory perceptions exist and that they could exist even without any external world for them to correspond to.  Perceptions are first and foremost indicators of one's subjective experiences, and they do not automatically amount to anything more.  It is far from obvious that anything other than the laws of logic and one's mind exists.  There is only one way to prove that any kind of matter exists [1], and it is something that almost no one at all would ever come to unless a very specific kind of rationalist already discovered it and mentioned it to them.  The fact that so many people act like it is immediately obvious that an external world of matter exists establishes nothing but their stupidity.

Logical truths are inherently true whether or not a person wants them to be or even knows of them, but it is logically possible for the external world itself to only exist when it is perceived.  Of course, no one could ever prove or disprove this, as one would have to perceive when one is not perceiving--an impossibility.  However, even without knowing if this concept is true (and it would still be objectively true that the external world exists if it is dependent on perception), it is true that the experiences provided by the senses are subjective by default.  In fact, it is impossible for any being to have sensory experiences that are not subjective, and this does indeed have certain ramifications for substance dualism.

It would not even be conceptually possible to imagine the world being an illusion or that one's perceptions do not resemble external objects and environments if mind and matter were identical, so the very fact that there is an epistemological distinction between perceptions and matter can lead someone to discover the metaphysical distinction between mind and matter.  Still, the everyday use and experience of sensory perceptions makes the issue and its aspects seem too overwhelming to some people when they try to analyze it rationalistically.  This is not true: the subjectivity of sensory perceptions and certain objective truths about sensory perceptions are not beyond anyone's grasp as long as they have senses and the willingness to look to reason.


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