Question

This is for a Philosophy class, and the homework subject is Epistemology!

Answer clearly and thoroughly with about 200-300 words

Q. Sense data are the stuff we take in by sight, hearing, taste, etc. How do humans process these sense data into what we can confidently call "knowledge"

Answer 1

Sense data are things that we receive from the physical world. It’s to say that we can directly relate the object without much difficulty, they are dependent on the mind and they have the properties that perceptually appear to us. For example, when I see an apple, I immediately recognize it as an apple. I don’t need to think of the shape, colour and texture before I decide that’s an apple.
The mind has already made a mental image of the sensory object and that’s called the priori knowledge (the knowledge of truth). When we witness the sensory data directly, it’s called perceptual knowledge (knowledge of things). Both should work together to make the process successful.
There is also another concept called knowledge by description which means that we need to get acquainted with the objects, people etc. For example not many of us have seen a dinosaur directly but we have our mental images of dinosaurs which we read about and seen in the movies, similarly we haven’t seen kings of the past and their legacy but we still come to know about them. Whenever, we come across the names of those kings who we learnt about or the dinosaur, we directly get their pictures in mind.

Thank you for your question.

Please rate if you like the answer.