Would you rather trust your senses or would you go with what you thought?
Well, this is an age old question, one of the distinguishing features between and among illustrious philosophers, writers and creative individuals in all genre of expression, from science to the humanities, including arts and music.
The question of Empiricism versus Rationalism..
Rene Descartes went to the extent of saying ‘I think therefore I am‘ while Epicurus and The Charvak school would not give a hoot to what they thought, they would do what would sensually be more pleasurable to them.
This distinction is significant at many levels, from the evolutionary need for survival to our day to day life to the highest modalities of creation.
If we look at the seats of sensory perception and rational thinking biologically, we would be left with no doubt at all that in terms of both evolution and anatomy, thinking stands on a much higher pedestal than sensory perception. For example, the faculty of thinking comes much later in the ladder of evolution. And the qualities and intricacies of the process of thinking keep getting better on the ladder as evolution progresses and we can all see the wide variation in the capacity to think among individuals of the same species.
The seat of thought is the cerebral cortex while basic sensory processing like hunger and sex are controlled at the sub cortical level. Finer sensory assessment is of course handled at the cortical level if you consider the highest levels of sensory experience.
At the most elementary level, life is managed by simple reflexes. This is basically a simple motor response to a sensory input, very fixed in nature and very purposeful as well. All similar creatures behave similarly in a given set of circumstances, for example every living being will pull away on touching a hot object and the evolutionary purpose behind that is to protect the living being from harm and let it survive.
Our eyes will shut reflexively when exposed to a bright flash, no thinking goes behind that and again the purpose is to protect the eyes from possible damage. Above this level of reflex activity is the level of sensation. As we know we have sensory inputs through our five senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch. We all depend to a large extent on the various sensory inputs we are exposed to and we respond and react in our own ways to them.
This individuality and difference in the ways we respond to the same sensory inputs is controlled by our genetic makeup as well as by the way we have been brought up, the way we have conducted ourselves and the influences which have come our way. Majority of our day to day living can be explained at the above noted levels of existence.
A step higher on the ladder comes our Thinking.
I am talking of Reason and rationality.
This is a hallmark of the human species that one can apply the powers of the mind to imagine, understand, remember, solve problems, innovate - basically, think and the degree to which these faculties are evolved in a human is way ahead of what any of our other species can claim to have, at least as far as we know at this time.
I must make it clear when I say reason is above sensory perception and sensory perception is above reflex action, I do not mean we can exist without any of them. All of them need to be there together to enable an individual to survive, enjoy life and thrive.
As the unchallenged leaders among our fellow species on the path of evolution, we must apply our minds to what we do or don’t and that includes the willingness to dissect rationally how much value we attach to sensory gratification as compared to reasoned calculation.
Reason also means being aware of the limitations of reason itself and to have an open mind to things we do not yet know and we can not reasonably explain for now.
To deny the existence of things we cannot rationally prove is to deny ourselves the world.
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