In the handout from Man is the Measure, Abel discussed nine “good reasons” or sources of knowledge. In a response of 450-500 words, evaluate any two of those sources. Of these, one should be an epistemology that you consider a strong or secure foundation for knowledge and one that you consider relatively weak. Discuss the reasons for your choice and include specific examples.

Among the nine epistemologies suggested by Abel in “Man in the Measure”, I consider sense perception to be a strong epistemology. According to the Oxford Dictionary, “sense perception is to perceive by a sense (sight, smell, hearing, taste, and touch). Long before humans learned how to use language or reason, sense was the primary way to interact with the world, and was the only source for obtaining knowledge. Sense perception is considered to be a framework for many other theories. It also helps people confirm assumptions, as they are very convincing. Two men looking at the ocean might say it is light blue, which cannot be doubted. In addition, acknowledging that it is light blue, it may be deduced that the water in the ocean is clean.

However, sense perception also has its weaknesses. Firstly, according to Hermann von Hemholtz, humans construct images by inferring it based on past experience. Furthermore, it means that humans convert pictures into something based on the understanding of the world. This becomes a weakness, as different people would have different perspectives. Secondly, due to the ambiguity of language, people see the same situation in different ways. What they see might be affected by language barriers such as their mother tongue and word choice. Looking back to the previous example, a Korean may describe the color of the ocean differently to how an Indonesian might, as the Korean language is more sophisticated in colors. Also, a Korean might think of the