is it reason or sense-experience that is the primary source of knowledge?

Answer 1

All of our reason is born from perceptions. All reasoning and all logical thinking rests on the premise that the senses and experience can be trusted (a dubious premise at that). Our perceptual senses exist as they do as the result of billions of years of accumulated accidents, with those that tended to aid survival usually being favored over those that hindered survival. What we experience is what evolution has led us to experience, and all of our knowledge is gained through the tools that these accumulated mutations have provided us with. Reason is a tool which can only exist within the framework of our sense-experience, meaning that sense-experience is the primary source of knowledge.

Answer 2

All material and worldly knowledge should be doubted because it is limited and only begets more knowledge. Hence Socrates admitted near the end of his life that the only thing he know is that he knows nothing. This can be also explained in the the story of Adam & Eve, if interpreted metaphorically. The result of eating from the Tree of Knowledge led to a world of ignorance and sin (meaning lack of knowledge not something bad or being "stupid"), and humans inheriting the ego/mind to survive. Material knowledge replaced with spiritual knowledge is True Knowledge and taught by all of mankind's advanced spiritual teachers and leaders. Descartes, who was on the leading edge of material truth, discovered a seeming bridge between both spiritual and worldly knowledge, much like Socrates and many other great minds in human history.

Answer 3

It has to be sense-experience that leads us to reason.
At least that is how I have taken your question.We sense something or we experience it and then we start to reason why.
As to what is the primary source of all knowledge well it is whatever governs the laws of physics.You will get a lot of answers to your question but no one really knows the answer but you should keep on asking anyway.

Answer 4

neither is the primary source.

The uncovering of the hidden phenomenon by being involved in a caring and concernful engagement, assigning meaning to the present-at-hand things in the world, making them ready for use, dereadying for use to be then reused for some other purpose, through our language as the medium of this engagement. Reason is a myth to counter-balance the lie of sensory substratum (Descartes' grandest lie and prevailing hoax on mankind, enduring for 200 years or so) that the world so dubiously and proposterously is grounded (falsely).

phenomenological existentialism...

the primary source of knowledge is the immediate engagement of being-in-the-world-amongst-others thru the involvment of language giving meaning to the phenomenon at hand. -Heidegger, Being and Time, p297

For example, driving your car down the road at 75. your tire blows out and you start to swerve. Immediately, you control the car by turning towards the backend spinning, countering the unexpected move, while you immediately use your brakes to slow down until you recover the vehicle.

You did not use reason to meditate upon the situation, logically deducing from among many alternative choices the correct action to take.

You also did not use your sight to know your tire blew and you were losing control of the car, nor your taste, nor your ears, nor did you touch the tire as it burst, nor smell the car swerving out of control. You had no sensory data to give you primary knowledge of how to correct the situation. In other words, your car didn't hit a nerve and you involuntarily took control of the car, like the doctor tapping your knee with the small hammer.

In this situation, the primary source of knowledge was your immediate being-in-the-world engagement with the equipment ready-at-hand falling out of your involvement, unreadying itself (being broken by the exploding wheel) and then being re-readyied again by a meaningful interactivity of the equipment at hand, at an existentially proximity (the driving state of being).

Your mind-body duality is a well-disputed myth, based on centuries old enlightment propoganda, debunked by contemporary thinkers, starting with Nietszche, Kierkegaard, Marx, Husserl, Heidegger, Satre, Merleau-Ponty, Foucault, Deleuze, Derrida.... to name a few.

Answer 5

Alfred Ayer and F. Weismann argued about this to no end.

I tend to side with Wittgenstein: The question is ill posed. This is a false dichotomy.

Both are at work to create our model of reality. Or rather: Neither is.

Neurons do all the heavy lifting.

Answer 6

Reason is that conscious mind which reflects upon and interprets experience... Experience cannot be seen without the mind.

The answer to your question is both are inseparably needed and are , indeed, part of each other.

But, the mind is the container of what we call knowledge and only part of its' source.

Thanks for making me think;
Jonnie

Answer 7

Seems to be more sense-experience. I don't think a lot of people take time to use their reasoning skills. That's why people are so quick to believe something a charismatic person tells them. They sense a person that seems to be confident. If they believe in that they will be confident too. They don't think about it, they just choose to believe.

Answer 8

People have different learning styles.
Visual, Auditory and Kinesthetic & tactile.
I learn by doing (Kinesthetic & textile). Therefore I would say I acquire knowledge through sense experience primarily.

Answer 9

Primary? It depends on the person. A more sensory person would depend more on sense-experience. A more logical person would depend on reason.

Answer 10

Need for survival is the basic quest for knowledge, whether it is physical or intelectual hunger. We seek knowledge to satisfy those needs to sustain us in one form.