Senses and Sense Perceptions from an Epistemological Perspective

Sense perception can be studied from different perspectives. Reviewing the place of sense perception in various disciplines, the author suggests some of the most important issues in this regard that can be investigated from an epistemological point of view. He considers most notable from among them problems such as whether sense perception is a kind of knowledge by presence or a type of knowledge by representation, the way sense concepts refer to their referents, the possibility of understanding essentials and the nature of objects, and the reliability of sense perception.It seems that our knowledge of sense perception—namely, corporal reaction itself—is born by way of knowledge by presence, while sense perception is a knowledge by representation, leading to a notion and idea, not to a proposition and affirmation. On the one hand, one cannot reach the depth and real differentia of things through senses nor through reason, and on the other, sense perception is unerring. Possible errors are the result of rational judgments and interpretations about them.