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Objectivity and Reason1
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 February 2009
Extract
The need for objective standards of judgement is acutely felt in the bewilderment created by the world situation of our time, a bewilderment that is partly the result of the rapid advance of the natural sciences, with its profound effects upon metaphysical doctrines, religious beliefs and moral attitudes, and partly due to the intractable problems which have arisen in social and political fields. The progress of the sciences, while it seems to have given us secure knowledge of the world about us, has, at the same time, undermined confidence in the criteria of belief and judgement in the conduct of affairs which hitherto had served to guide mankind. Bereft of these the majority of men are unable to see a clear way through the complexities of modern political and economic life and are overwhelmed by the major problems that confront them. As examples of the major perplexities with which mankind is faced today, I shall mention only three:—
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References
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page 61 note 1 The truth of this view has recently been confirmed by the experience of the congenitally blind whose sight has been restored in adult life by modern surgery. This is described by Professor J. Z. Young: “The patient on opening his eyes for the first time gets little or no enjoyment; indeed, he finds the experience painful. He reports only a spinning mass of lights and colours. He proves to be quite unable to pick out objects by sight, to recognize what they are, or to name them. He has no conception of a space with objects in it, although he knows all about objects and their names by touch. ‘Of course,’ you will say, ‘he must take a little time to learn to recognize them by sight.’ Not a little time, but a very, very long time, in fact years. His brain has not been trained in the rules of seeing. We are not conscious that there are any such rules; we think we see, as we say ‘naturally.’ But we have in fact learned a whole set of rules during childhood.” Doubt and Certainty in Science. Young, J. Z. (Oxford, 1951) p. 62. There can be no doubt that a similar process is involved in learning to perceive through the other senses besides vision, if we had but the means of discovering it.Google Scholar
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