Perception and Knowledge
... The theory of perceptual skepticism goes further to generalize that the "real" world, which is beyond what we perceive it to be, will always be unknown to us because of the limits of our senses and brains. Without having to expand into further more complicated philosophy, the two theories above oppose Lucretius' view because they indicate that humans will forever be ignorant of the objective "reality" that is "inside" what they perceive. The theory of perceptual realism, in contrast, implies that humans have access to part of "reality" depending on their senses. How can our senses "sense" absolutely nothing? What we sense is reflected by what is being sensed. The human eye may not have receptors for infrared patterns, on insects for instance. However, a healthy human eye in conjunction with a focused human brain and the sense of perspective can determine the presence, appearance, quantity, and motion of a group of bees based on the physical limitations of the human eye in terms of focal distance and quality of organs. What the person has perceived in this example can be proved scientifically to be a part of the "reality." Furthermore, the theory of perceptual realism doesn't deny apart from the fact that humans are imperfect and limited by their senses that they are also prone to illusions, hallucinations, delusions, and being biased in their interpretations. "I perceive" the theory of realism to mean that in a well planned experiment where all the variables are controlled and taken into account, the subjective observations of the people would reflect an actual part of the objective "reality." In Plato's allegory of the cave, the prisoners were further limited in terms of what there senses were permitted to receive and the background knowledge of "reality" that they had in their brains. The prisoners were never exposed to the world the way other people were in that all the prisoners remember from birth are the shadows cast on the walls of the cave. I agree that the prisoners have sufficient reason to believe that the shadows aren't mere shadows, but the real objects and that the sounds they here are coming out of the "shadows." This is a good argument for the theories of relativism and skepticism since the prisoners assume what they are sensing to be "real" because of the restrictions imposed on them. Therefore, the prisoners are fooled by their perception of "reality" in comparison to what people outside the cave perceive to be "real." However, in defense of the theory of realism, the prisoners' may have assumed that the sounds came from the "shadows," which is incorrect. However, they fundamentally heard the sounds, which is part of the reality. Therefore, the prisoners weren't entirely isolated from the "real" world as Plato had assumed and had some access to it, p...