How our senses enable us to learn about things around us |
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The same thing happens in scientific knowledge. Ultimately, it always begins with direct living contemplation, with the observation of things, that is, with the direct interaction of the student with the objects under study with the help of the senses (sight, smell, touch, hearing, taste). If people did not have sense organs, they would never be able to learn anything about the world around them. People communicate with the outside world, perceive it directly only with the help of their senses. If a person was born, for example, devoid of visual organs, then he does not know and will never know what color is. Born without a functioning organ of hearing, a person is deprived of the opportunity to cognize sounds. It is therefore understandable what a huge role the sense organs play in a person's cognition of the world around him and in his entire life: they are the only "windows" through which people communicate with the world around him and get to know it.
Trying to prove their assertions about the unknowability of the world, idealists give examples when our senses perceive certain phenomena not as they are in reality. For example, a stick partially dipped into the water seems broken, the rotation of the Earth around its own axis is perceived by us as the movement of the Sun around the Earth, parallel railway lines seem to converge somewhere in the distance, etc. All this, of course, takes place, but does not at all speak of the fact that our feelings always distort the real picture. First, such distorted perception is a relatively rare phenomenon; secondly, even in these cases, with the help of reason and social practice, people have learned not only to determine the discrepancy between the object and its reflection in our minds, but also to establish the reasons for such discrepancy.However, people do this not only by means of "pure" thinking, but primarily by referring to the subject itself and studying it directly. In general, our sensations, as a rule, give a correct reflection of the objects of the material world, which allows people to reasonably orient themselves in the world around them and learn about it.
Sensation - this is a reflection in our consciousness of individual qualities, aspects of objects of the material world, affecting the sense organs. For example, when we observed a lamp standing on a table, then a sensation of a certain shape of this lamp, its color, hardness, temperature, surface character, etc. appears in our consciousness. Sensations are the result of the impact of material objects on our senses. A person can communicate, connect with the outside world, cognize it and orientate correctly in it only through sensations. But sensations are only the first stage of cognition; they convey only certain properties of objects, phenomena. The integral image of objects, phenomena, as a set and the relationship of their properties, is reflected in the consciousness of people through a higher form of cognition - perception So, if you observe any plant, then with the help of our organs of vision its shape, color, size are felt; when you touch it with your hands, you feel the nature of the surface of the stem and leaves, their shape; with the help of smell, its smell is established, etc. Io all these sensations are perceived by us not in isolation from each other, but as properties of a single object, in this case a plant. Consequently, perception arises on the basis of sensations, However, it is not a mechanical sum of sensations, but represents an integral sensory image of objects, phenomena with the entire set of their properties, qualities, sides reflected in sensations. As you know, the world is extremely diverse. We are always surrounded by many different phenomena, objects, each of which has many properties. Moreover, each property evokes in us a completely definite sensation. That is why a person constantly receives a huge amount of sensations from various objects and phenomena that have many qualities. All of them reach a person's consciousness not in a chaotic form, not as a disorderly heap of sensations, but in the form of images of the objects, phenomena, processes around us. So, going out into the streets of a big city, we get a lot of visual, auditory, olfactory and other sensations. But from this multitude of sensations in our consciousness, the perception of houses, asphalt streets, sidewalks, moving people, cars, trams is formed; it is not just various sounds that reach our ears, but the noise, for example, of a trolleybus, the talk of people, the sounds of a car signal, etc. How does a person orientate himself in all the diversity of sensations and perceptions that he often receives at the same time, which helps him to correctly perceive the surrounding diverse world?
Only thanks to the long-term experience that a person acquires from an early age, thanks to the repeated combination of visual perceptions of the sizes of objects at different distances and tactile perceptions of these objects, he learns to perceive correctly the sizes of objects located from it at different distances. In addition, the so-called selective nature of perception helps to correctly navigate in all the diversity of the reality surrounding a person, that is, our ability from the totality of numerous sensations and perceptions to select and perceive precisely those that most interest us at the moment, and to be distracted from everyone other sensations and perceptions. For example, when an astronomer studies this or that star, he singles out this star from the multitude of stars, focuses his attention on it, only perceives it, studies its "behavior" and does not notice all the phenomena that occur at this moment, both in the sky and and around the observer. In accordance with which sense organs a person has, there are the following perceptions: visual, auditory, olfactory, gustatory, tactile and motor. Moreover, each of them, as a rule, does not exist in isolation from the others: in the overwhelming majority of cases, they are closely interconnected and form complex combined perceptions. So, if you observe the operation of one or another mechanism with the aim of studying it, both visual and auditory perceptions are obtained simultaneously, which are closely related to each other, mutually influence each other, complement each other. The third form of sensory reflection in the consciousness of a person of the material world is representation, which is the image of those objects and phenomena that are not directly perceived at the moment, but were perceived earlier. Consequently, representation is the reproduction in the human mind of those objects, phenomena that affected our senses, were perceived in the past and preserved in our memory. It is known, for example, how easily images of close people, familiar, previously perceived objects, events, phenomena are reproduced in our consciousness. But in our consciousness, ideas may arise about such objects, phenomena, events, facts that have never been perceived directly before. For example, every person who has never been to Moscow imagines the Moscow Kremlin, its towers, Kremlin stars, etc. Studying the history of our Motherland, we somehow imagine its historical figures, social events, etc., although many of them have never been directly perceived. Such representations arise on the basis of viewing pictures, photographs, films that reproduce these objects, phenomena, events, as well as after reading a book or listening to a story describing them.
Thus, ideas arise under the influence of the reality around us, in the process of the concrete social and historical activities of people.Social practice improves our perceptions. Arising on the basis of sensations and perceptions and being sensually visual images of objects, phenomena of reality, representations are part of the first, initial stage of cognition - the stage of direct living contemplation. At the same time, they contain elements of generalization, and this makes them a higher form of sensory reflection of the material world in human consciousness than sensations and perceptions. Representation is not just a sensually visual image of objects, phenomena of the material world, not their mechanical imprint in the consciousness of a person, but the result of all the rich experience of past perceptions. Therefore, representations play a significant role at the second stage of the cognitive process - the stage of abstract, i.e., abstract, thinking. So, cognition begins with the direct interaction of a person with objects of the external world, which takes place in the process of social practice. Sensations, perceptions and representations constitute the first and necessary stage of cognition - the stage of direct living contemplation. Andreev I. D. - How and why do people know the world |
When a person wants to get acquainted with some object for the first time, to find out what properties he possesses and what he is, he always starts with direct observation of this object. He has a need to examine this object, determine its color, shape, taste, smell, hearing, if possible. Only having done all this to one degree or another, one can say something definite about the subject, express one's judgment about it.
That is why the assertions of idealists that human cognition of the surrounding world is carried out only in the course of "pure" theoretical thinking, "free from sensibility", without referring to the objects and phenomena being studied, are completely anti-scientific and absurd. Moreover, idealists claim that if the surrounding objects directly affect our senses, then this prevents us from knowing them. And the more reliably a scientist isolates himself from the outside world, they argue, the more tightly he “closes his eyes and plugs his ears,” as one ancient Greek idealist philosopher put it, and, therefore, the better he protects himself from the influence of the environment, the less obstacles he will encounter on the path of knowledge , the more successful it will be by removing some thoughts from others by purely mental operations. This happens, it turns out, because the objects around us in themselves are supposedly not the same as they are perceived by our senses, which mislead us, interfere with knowing the real essence of objects and phenomena. For example, the prominent contemporary English idealist philosopher B. Russell writes: "Our immediate visual data, by virtue of their subjectivity, are almost certainly not what is in the physical objects that we say we see them." .
Sensory cognition, or cognition with the help of the senses, is carried out in three main forms: sensations, perceptionsand views.
It turns out that perception is based not only on sensations that are caused at a given moment by certain objects, phenomena, but also on the entire totality of a person's past experience, his practical activity. The experience of the past helps to recognize perceived objects, to navigate in the multitude of sensations and perceptions received from the surrounding reality, to comprehend them, to understand the phenomena and processes that arise around us. For example, by the sounds coming from the next house, we unmistakably recognize the playing of the piano only because we have seen this musical instrument and heard the sounds it makes. Considering this or that object even at a considerable distance, we clearly determine the relief of its surface, approximate dimensions, distance to us, etc., again thanks to past experience.If a person born blind will gain the ability to see after a successful operation, at first he will not be able to distinguish volumetric objects from flat ones, to establish the difference, for example, between a ball and a circle. And only later, as a result of repeated combination in the process of practice, tactile and visual sensations, caused by volumetric objects, will one begin to perceive them correctly. For the first time after acquiring sight, a blind person perceives the same object as different in size if it is located at different distances from it.
Since representations are based on the past perception of objects, phenomena, facts, events, etc., either directly or indirectly, and the basic classification of representations proceeds from the same principles as the classification of perceptions: visual, auditory, olfactory, and gustatory representations are distinguished. , tactile and motor.
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