Sunday, February 17, 2008

Empiricism's claim

What do you make of empiricism's claim that all of our knowledge is based on the use of our senses? What areas of knowledge do you think support this theory? Are there any types of knowledge (mathematical knowledge, for example?) that you think are a problem for this theory?

Well, at some point i agree with this claim. Our senses provide certain portion of information about the outside world. The eye, the ear, the nose, the skin all have vast numbers of receptor cells, hundreds of millions in total, each providing at least one bit of information. We get knowledge through society. People are all around, we interact with others all the time. Every interaction is a learning situation, whether positive in nature (loving) or negative (hating). The senses are the sources for our knowledge. But this is just the fundamental level. We can't have knowledge only based on our senses. I believe, this claim could be applied to natural science, history.