Sensory Perception

[jonb]

To be fair, the senses are completely unreliable and the fact that they make up a majority of our information about the world is staggeringly worrying. As a critical empiricist I find that the best thing to do is abstract what you can from the sensible and then avoid anything more than is necessary.

I have had a think about this, and to my mind it is exactly the wrong approach. If the information you are receiving is at odds with the logical structure you have constructed then you should not belittle the information. Maybe you are assessing the information wrongly, and the only way to find that out is be constantly re-evaluating it, or the anomalies it is throwing up in your construction, is depicting that there are disparities. Without testing no system of logic is worth its salt. It is only in taking note of the anomalies that we can move forward. Newton would be thought of as being entirely right if somebody had not noticed the edge of the sun when Venus moved in front of it, or the way pollen moves in water. Anybody wishing to move forward should have far more of an eye on what doesn't work, is odd, is illogical, than just going over what seems to confirm what they already know.