Constraints on PERCEPTION ...

[Bill Shear]

>Date: Wed, 18 Aug 1999 10:07:27 -0400
>To: Ray Lester <R.Lester at NHM.AC.UK>
>From: Bill Shear <bills at mail.hsc.edu>
>Subject: Re: Constraints on PERCEPTION ...
>Cc:
>Bcc:
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>
>>Indeed there ARE constraints on each of our individual 'perceptions' of
>>'reality'; and I personally would go further than Stephan allowed himself
>>to do - as I did recently in a piece I wrote about 'Metadata' where I
>>quoted from Brian Magee's 'Confessions of a Philosopher':
>>
>
>And so on, and so on....this is just the kind of solipsistic crap that
>gives philosphy a deservedly bad name amongst scientists.
>
>Look--we see what we see, we sense what we sense.  We test it against the
>world and if it works, chances are it is, in fact, real.
>
>Our sensory systems evolved over 4 billion years to produce an accurate
>picture of the environment; those systems that did not produce the right
>results (survival) disappeared.  We have every reason to believe that the
>picture of the world we get through our senses and the instruments that
>extend them is an accurate view of reality.
>
>So what if someone can argue that "reality" does not correspond to our
>mental picture of it?  When we use that mental picture to deal with the
>world, it works.  That is all ye know, and all ye need to know.
>

Bill Shear
Department of Biology
Hampden-Sydney College
Hampden-Sydney VA 23943
(804)223-6172
FAX (804)223-6374
email<bills at hsc.edu>