The Issue of The Untrustworthiness of the Senses

SUNDAY WEEKLY ZOOM - 12:30 PM EDT - Book Review: De Rerum Natura by Lucretius -- Read the post for our December 7, 2025 meeting -- or find out how to attend.

 

    I found this YouTube video interesting. It's a very lay presentation of some deep philosophical and scientific stuff and so accessible.

    I can see echoes of Dr. Barrett's work and parallels with Epicurus in using senses and anticipations.

    Thoughts?

    btw... I'm not advocating some Skeptical path here. I believe our senses are our only way to interact with the world. *But* I also think it's much more complex than simply "looking" or "touching" *and* I think that Epicurus may even have had some glimpse of this complexity with [the prolepses + pleasure/pain + sensations] = his Canon. Those "anticipations" seem to me more and more like these mental constructions that let us make sense of the world that Barrett, and now Hoffman and others mentioned in that first video talk about. And pleasure/pain seem to me to exactly coincide with Barrett's "affect" (pleasure/displeasure and level of "arousal").

    I find this all fascinating and find the parallels with a 2000+ year old philosophy even more fascinating!

    Don just to alleviate the concern you just posted about, how about change the thread title to something like "The Issue of The Untrustworthiness of the Senses" which will make it less likely for someone reading the topics to think you are advocating a Skeptical view of that.

  • Don April 11, 2021 at 5:40 PM

    Changed the title of the thread from “The Untrustworthiness of the Senses” to “The Issue of The Untrustworthiness of the Senses”.

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