Quote:
Originally Posted by photon
Seems to me the Humean idea of evidence is flawed, since anything we perceive with our senses is poor evidence. One of the strengths of science is its ability to overcome our deficiencies. Look at a good magician, or watch a skilled pick pocket or grifter, they can manipulate the human attention easily and show how truely inadequate our mind is.
|
We can over come the deficiencies to a degree, but is it enough?
No matter what, humans are still bound by our limited senses to experience the world. Sure, we can artificially heighten some of them so that we can experience things that we otherwise couldn't. For example, we can experience types of radiation outside our normal optic range. However, the only reason we had a hunch that they were there to begin with is because we could see and feel their effects. I find it hard to believe that in a universe as vast and complex as ours, that it can be experienced exclusively with the 5 senses that evolution has allowed us to have. There are likely phenomena all around us that we will never be able to understand or even conceive of because our minds and senses haven't evolved in that way.
I remember a thread on here about the possibility of aliens and one person commented on how if there are aliens, there is a good chance that we would never be able to communicate with them. They could have totally different senses, and they could have evolved in such a way that notions we take for granted; like 'up and down' or 'left and right' might not mean anything to them.
Ah, I'm kind of loosing the direction of the topic, but the point is just that there are aspects to the natural world that I doubt we'll ever be able to comprehend no matter how far we advance in science. They might even be things that are relatively simple in the complexity, but we just haven't evolved in a way that allows us to think on that level. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try, but it does make me uneasy trusting it 100%.