Tok Advantages and Disadvantages of Sense Perception as a...

What are the advantages and disadvantages of Sense Perception as a Way of Knowing? What is Sense Perception? Sense Perception is our primary Way of Knowing. It includes all our 5 senses- sight, smell, touch and taste. It is the reason we are what we are today as the human race, the most advanced species on this Earth. It is our basic point of entry into this world. For example, as a child we see people walk and the way they walk and without reasoning it out we learn how to walk, or sitting on a chair, we don’t ask why he or she is sitting on the chair we just know that a chair is meant to be sat on. This is why I say it is our ‘primary’ Way of Knowing, and then comes reason, emotion and language. Even though there are several advantages†¦show more content†¦Therefore, how reliable is Sense Perception on its own? Not very. In fact it can be deceiving on its own. Sense Perception is a very superficial Way of Knowing. And ipso facto it can lead us to many truths but all very superficial in nature. For example, when we see a table a dog, we know it’s a dog because we’ve taught about it or read it in books when we were a child; the truth is it’s just a dog. Now take for example a sick dog, Sense Perception alone cannot lead us to the fact that it is sick, we see certain symptoms which can tell us if it is sick or not, for example if it is lying in a certain way we reason it out as to why it is lying in that particular way, is it normal or abnormal? Therefore the truth that Sense Perception alone could tell us was just the superficial truth. Sense Perception is often intercepted by our other Ways of Knowing – Reason, Emotion and Language. We watched a video in class about eye-witnesses and how they detect the culprit among all the suspects. This was a very fascinating video about a woman who was raped by an African-American and while she was being raped she managed to get a very good look at the persons face. After surviving the horrendous crime, after a while she was called in to look at a series of pictures of suspects, she identified a picture as the culprit. Then later sheShow MoreRelatedTok Essay: Ways of Knowing826 Words   |  4 PagesTok Essay Ways Of Knowing Using one way of knowing is not enough if you want to determine if something is true or if something is believed to be true. The different ways of knowing are sense perception, reasoning, emotion and memory. Plato once stated that knowledge is â€Å"Justified true belief† which just goes to show that in order to obtain knowledge, we need to know certain thing as a fact, not belief. When we believe something is true, we do not know it for certain. We just have faith inRead MoreHow Can the Different Ways of Knowing Help Us to Distinguish Between Something That Is True and Something That Is Believed to Be True?1871 Words   |  8 PagesTOK ESSAY 4. How can the different ways of knowing help us to distinguish between something that is true and something that is believed to be true? In order to distinguish between what is true and what we simply believe to be true we will first have to define what truth and belief is and how these two terms differ from each other. This paper will then seek to determine how the four different ways of knowing – perception, language, emotions and reason – can help us distinguish between truthRead MoreEssay Limitations to Our Common Ways of Knowledge1219 Words   |  5 Pagesconventional ways of knowing: emotion, perception, reason, and language. From traditional definitions, we know tools are things used to shape, form, or finish. The above quote by Abraham Maslow can be applied to the pursuit of knowledge. In the TOK context, we can make interesting discussion about the limitations of our ways of knowledge, and the advantages and disadvantages we might face by using a select combination of them. As discussed above, over-reliance on a single way of knowing can almost