The interior of the body is objectively unknowable through reason and introspection alone. No matter how long a person reflects on reason or looks within their thoughts, emotions, and even sensory perceptions of normal bodily experiences, they will never suddenly discover that their heart pumps blood, that there is a brain behind their eyes, or that there are 206 bones in an adult body (one without injuries or abnormalities that forfeit this number of bones, that is). Sensory investigation, which still ultimately reduces down to either mere perceptions or very limited provable contact with an external world, is needed for this inquiry. A person could spend a lifetime wondering about the interior of the body and never know from logical necessities, psychological self-exploration, and daily experiences with the senses.
It is indeed objectively true that seeing, hearing, smelling, and tasting things cannot prove anything more than that one is having the experience of seeing, hearing, and so on. Almost the entirety of the sensory world is impossible to prove as having the nature it appears to have, and all epistemological truths about the external world need to be understood in light of this. Even if this was not the inherent nature of general sensory perceptions without at least partial omniscience alongside them, the inside of one's own body is not knowable from observing its exterior. This makes it a great example of something that many people seem to make obvious assumptions about.
In the sense of absolute logical certainty, how would or could someone know that they have certain interbal organs or features just because someone else claims they do? Even if someone knew in full their exact internal anatomy and physiology, how could they know someone else must have the same organs? The interior of the body is usually just assumed to be a certain way based on medical hearsay, and it is much more likely that a non-rationalist would realize their outer bodily appearance and their experiences from one moment to the next do not hint at things like neurons than it is that they would realize that the inside of the body cannot be perceived without the senses, making almost all perceptions of it potentially illusory.
It is easy to find sensory evidence that the interior of a person's body is very likely structured and functioning in a very specific way, but the leap to assumptions is still invalid because assumptions, hearsay, and non sequiturs are inherently contrary to reason. This skepticism is not the same as believing that a person does not have a heart, lungs, arteries, a nervous system, and other features inside their body; it is the acknowledgment that it is logically impossible to know the interior of the body from the exterior, that sensory perceptions (with one exception [1]) prove nothing but that the perceptions exist as an experience of one's consciousness, and that inductive reasoning--in this case, assuming that a quality of person other than that necessary truths apply to it must be true of other people--is epistemologically invalid.
The empirical evidence certainly suggests that all humans have a certain kind of largely shared anatomy, but that is not the point. Just as so many people go about their lives without ever truly realizing that seeing what appears to be directly in front of them is not proof of anything but perceptions, many people do not realize that the inside of their bodies is not revealed as directly as it might seem to them. Assuming anyone's ideas and claims aare true, even when those ideas are accepted by almost everyone, is stupid and dangerous. Induction and assumptions, especially when they are based on emotional persuasion or potentially illusory sensory perceptions, are nothing but irrational steps into darkness that cannot be illuminated given human limitations or that can be dispelled by reason. Even something as seemingly "obvious" as what is there underneath human skin is in no way epistemologically clear.
No comments:
Post a Comment