• Jack Cummins
    5.3k

    I was a bit confused by what you were saying because you wrote a lengthy paragraph which seemed to be one long sentence just broken up by commas. However, on getting to the end it seemed that you were saying that you were challenging the causality of senses.

    You seem to be questioning the role of the sense organs, which are presumably the eyes, ears, nose, mouth and tongue, as well as the skin. Our knowledge that these are the senses is primarily our sensory experiences. But probably the neuroscientists can find ways of showing them in terms of feedback to the brain, probably in the way of neuroimaging.

    Of course, if I read beyond the surface of your logic we could be left with a new question in terms of why do we need to experience life in sensory terms at all?
  • aRealidealist
    125
    ... it seemed that you were saying that you were challenging the causality of senses.Jack Cummins
    Yeah, that’s one way of looking at it; but I would describe it as challenging the knowledge of the reality of sense-organs, & not solely of their causality. So it does seem as if you’ve been thrown off, a little, by my manner of writing. So, to be sure, I’m not solely challenging the knowledge of the causality of the sense-organs but of their reality altogether.

    Our knowledge that these are the senses is primarily our sensory experiences.Jack Cummins
    Yet, but note that the knowledge of these are themselves reducible to sensuous identities, i.e., sensations; & that therefore these can’t be the reality upon which sensations depend or are conditioned.

    Of course, if I read beyond the surface of your logic we could be left with a new question in terms of why do we need to experience life in sensory terms at all?Jack Cummins
    “Why,” as in a purpose? Surely one can explain “how” things are, without explaining why, or for what purpose, they are; & so I’ll skip over the question of why “we need to experience life in sensory terms at all?” & instead proceed to the question of “how” one could possibly raise your question, if sensory information is all there is? Seems as if the very possibility of raising this latter question would provide the answer to it. “How”? By the very same kind of way that we can intelligibly represent, in our question, that which exists other than in “sensory terms.”
  • Jack Cummins
    5.3k
    I am a bit puzzled by your line of argument You say that you are not disputing 'the knowledge of the causality of the sense-organs but of their reality altogether.' So are you querying whether sensuous reality exists at all. Are you saying that we imagine it entirely? If this was true why is there a general consensus at all. It sounds to me like you are describing us as minds, dangling to our body but not really connected.

    Are you suggesting that we are associated to our bodies only? Perhaps you could expand on your argument, to clarify your point of view.
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