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When Should We Trust Our Senses to Give Us Truth?

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Submitted By jdevuyst
Words 1583
Pages 7
To begin with, it would be incorrect to proceed to answer this question if key words are not defined; ambiguity would change the meaning of the words displayed on this page. So, to begin with, my understanding of trust and the definition that will define my essay is that trust is to place confidence in something or someone, which in this instance is something – our senses. For example, everyday I place trust in my driver Seth’s ability to maneuver and speed through Ghanaian traffic without crashing, a remarkable feat as traffic here is impossibly disorganized. No matter the danger, I always get back in the car with him; that is trust, this could also be considered a necessary risk, but that is beside the point. Moreover, truth is an equally multi-definable word. For the purposes of this essay, truth is any fact that, no matter who or what you are, it remains the same. For example, pure water boils at 100 oC at 1.01 x 105 Pa, nobody can deny that no matter whom or what you are, and therefore it is true. In terms of senses, this essay will deal with our human sense perception: sight, touch, hearing, smell, and taste.
Instinctively, the first turn I take when answering this question is to look at it scientifically. In my IB Physics class we have learned, for example, in terms of science, when we think an object is a certain color, it is actually precisely not that specific color. Color is transmitted through light, light is a wave and each color has a different wavelength that differentiates it from the others. Objects can either absorb or reflect certain colors depending on their wavelengths. Therefore, the color that we see something as, is the color that it is not. The shorts I am wearing at this moment in time seem to be red, but what I am seeing is the absence of red. Conclusively, if it is universal truth that we are after, in the realm of sight and color, we

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