It is undeniably true that all information we ever assimilate and every basis for human personality, knowledge and behaviour comes from human sensory organs. The only sources are:

1) Direct experience (in other words, using sensation to gather data on something)

2) Acquiring external knowledge (being told about someone else's direct experiences)

3) Instinct/intuition. (solely behavioural and non-cognitive)

As Locke asserts, human sensation can never see itself from the outside, because when we attempt to view our own senses, we are experiencing those senses from within them. So my question is this: How do we know they are accurate? They observably tally with the environment. In other words, when we have eaten an apple once, when we eat another, we know it will taste like an apple (provided it was the same variety, there was nothing wrong with it, etc.). If it doesn't, then it can be logically deduced that the problem lies with our senses and not what is providing the sensation. The existence of such a problem can be proved to exist in either

- the non-comparibility of different sensory data. For example, studies have shown that people under the influence of hallucinatory drugs will hallucinate, but frequently only one sense will be 'misled'; for example, the percipient will hallucinate a fire, but will hear no crackling and feel no warmth.

- the expected outcome does not result (as stated above)

The trouble is, as I started this post off with, that there is no way we can experience a lack of experience. In other words, there is no way to see without eyes - sensory data, our only means of assimilation (whether direct or indirect), relies, obviously, on human senses, of which, because there being a lack of camparibility with existence without sense, we can never gauge the reality-conditioning nature of or lack thereof. So I give you this question: How can we prove the validity of human experience in terms of objective truth and not just as a combination of (possibly infinitely elastic) human sensations?

-- (winston@NOSPministry-of-love.co.uk), June 30, 2001

Answers

"So I give you this question: How can we prove the validity of human experience in terms of objective truth and not just as a combination of (possibly infinitely elastic) human sensations? "

What difference does it make?

-- sleepy (y@w.n), June 30, 2001.

If all your senses were totally deprived from birth would you know any thing at all? Not possible of course, even Helen Keller had a sense of touch and smell and taste.

What difference does it make? What difference does anything make?

-- Lars (larsguy@yahoo.com), June 30, 2001.

"How can we prove the validity of human experience in terms of objective truth...?"

Read it again, Lars. Again, what does it matter? This question has nothing to do with sensory deprivation. This is one of those silly "what is the sound of one hand clapping?" questions. There is no answer to a question like this.

-- Waking up (y@w.ning), June 30, 2001.

Maybe, but I see a real question. Probably a trivial one but maybe not: can human consciousness exist without information from the external world by way of the nervous system?

-- Lars (larsguy@yahoo.com), June 30, 2001.

i.e., can mind exist without body? Don't see how.

-- Lars (larsguy@yahoo.com), June 30, 2001.