TOK ESSAY: SENSE PERCEPTION

To what extent can we rely on our sense perception to give us knowledge of the world around us?

Before I start going into the sense perception of different individuals and what ‘knowledge’ really means, I’m going to start by dealing with the question as a whole. Although there have been many philosophers, thinkers and in deed, curious people willing to challenge the world around them throughout history, up to date all the questions we have come up with can only be classified into three main groups: those with one correct answer, many possible correct answers and those with no correct answer at all. The title of this essay of course fits into this third category which is – I find – the one to which the most interesting questions correspond to.

Now that I have acknowledged that I do not expect to come up with a definite correct answer to this essay’s title, in fact don’t think any one ever will; I want to address a key word in this question – ‘knowledge’. The broadness encompassed in the definitions of abstract nouns such as ‘knowledge’ make it very difficult and practically impossible to pin down their meaning and are thus very complicated words to discuss. Not only are abstract nous very subjective, meaning their full definition varies depending on each individual, but – as it happens with similar words like ‘love’ or ‘hate’ – we barely know as much about them and their meaning as we don’t. This brings us to a very complex and controversial concept that must be dealt with before moving on to the different ways of knowing (i.e.: through sense perception). To answer the question in this title we must understand what knowing really means. We as humans claim we know many things, but can we classify those claims as being true knowledge? What is the difference between a ‘belief’ and ‘knowledge’? This question is so complex that a whole