ABSTRACT
In the preceding chapter we examined the meaning and importance of the notion of testing by experience. We have seen that to test by experience is ultimately to look for the consequences of our beliefs in sense-perception rather than in feeling or intellectual insight or action as such. Granted, then, that sense-perception does play this critical role in vérification, it may now be asked what right science has to assume that sense-perception is trustworthy. This is a problem that has often been raised. To Plato, as we saw above, sensation was obviously untrustworthy. Its objects are constantly changing. Does science, in fact, rest on shifting sands? Or does sense-perception give us truth? Are there elementary sensations directly given, directly corresponding to the qualities of things and so indubitable? We shall examine three views concerning the reliability and ultimacy of sense-perception:
