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Offline AATW

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Empiricism and our Senses
« on: August 25, 2018, 11:55:37 AM »
Much is made on here of our senses and how we should use them to determine things such as the shape of the earth.
Few quotes from the Wiki:

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Every man in full command of his senses knows that a level surface is a flat or horizontal one; but astronomers tell us that the true level is the curved surface of a globe!

https://wiki.tfes.org/A_hundred_proofs_the_Earth_is_not_a_globe
(Number 18)

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Shall we blindly believe a theory which in the nature of things is so impracticable, and a theory which directly contradicts the evidences of our God-given senses? We feel no motion; we see no motion; and we hear no motion; while our senses favour the reasonable and demonstrable fact that the earth is stationary.

https://wiki.tfes.org/Albert_Smith

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The average man can’t advance a single reason for believing that the world is round. He accepts that theory on blind faith and rejects the evidence of his own senses.

https://wiki.tfes.org/Leo_Ferrari

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The evidence for a flat earth is derived from many different facets of science and philosophy. The simplest is by relying on ones own senses to discern the true nature of the world around us. The world looks flat, the bottoms of clouds are flat, the movement of the sun; these are all examples of your senses telling you that we do not live on a spherical heliocentric world. This is using what's called an empirical approach, or an approach that relies on information from your senses

https://wiki.tfes.org/Frequently_Asked_Questions

My question/point is: Is this a reasonable approach to determine truth?
I would say no because our senses are limited and can be fooled.
I'm going to focus here on our vision.
A few examples where we perceive things as different sizes where they are in fact the same:



And this one where squares A and B are in fact the same shade of grey but appear very different because of the shading in surrounding squares:



Context is quite important in how we perceive things. In the moon terminator illusion thread Bobby has demonstrated a real life example where the sun appears to be in completely the wrong place to illuminate the moon but the line between the terminator and the sun is in fact straight.

Another good example is horizon dip. The horizon might appear to be at eye level no matter your altitude but multiple experiments have shown it not to be, and the angle of dip increases with height, consistent with a globe earth. The dip cannot be perceived but it can be measured

To sum up:
Taking an empirical approach is a helpful way of determining truth but our senses are limited and can be fooled.
Relying on our senses alone can only get you so far in learning about our universe, since the invention of things like telescopes and microscopes we have been able to discover a great deal more.
"The horizon looks flat" is not evidence for any particular shape of the earth.

Discuss.
Tom: "Claiming incredulity is a pretty bad argument. Calling it "insane" or "ridiculous" is not a good argument at all."

TFES Wiki Occam's Razor page, by Tom: "What's the simplest explanation; that NASA has successfully designed and invented never before seen rocket technologies from scratch which can accelerate 100 tons of matter to an escape velocity of 7 miles per second"