We don't have a complete arsenal of senses? (Montaigne)

With skeptics, it’s very common to have a distrust of the senses since after all our senses can be deceived. Skeptic philosopher Michel de Montaigne has a distrust for the senses and about acquiring knowledge just through experience and appearance alone. This distrust leads Montaigne into postulating that maybe there are animals out there who have senses that we don’t have, and we can't ever completely trust our senses because there's a good possibility were missing senses. In this blog post, I will be postulating what it would mean if we didn’t have a complete arsenal of senses.

This skepticism and distrust of the senses are found in Montaigne's famous essay “The Apology for Raymond Sebond”. Skepticism to label it and give it a fairly easy definition is a doubting nature towards specific knowledge. Montaigne not only proving we can't trust our senses but contemplating if there are senses we are unaware of could be monumental. Showing however an example of how Montaigne's skepticism is shown by not trusting appearances would be if you just met a guy named Ron at the bar and you guys became friends, next day you're at the grocery store thinking you see Ron you call out his name but to no avail alas the said person you're calling out, comes over and talks with you and then makes you realize that Ron has a twin brother named Jack. However, this explains Montaigne's skepticism because using your senses you truly believe this Jack guy is Ron, but your senses tricked you into believing that.

Since we can now understand this distrust in the senses lets further explore what it could mean if we were missing senses. This would mean especially for empiricists that we would not be able to have complete knowledge of something in this case. Since empiricism focuses on acquiring knowledge through our senses this would mean that empiricism is incomplete and couldn’t acquire perfect knowledge. And maybe some other species sometime throughout time whether it be an advanced civilization that eventually visits earth or if it’s an animal on earth already who undergoes evolution to acquire more senses that maybe then we would be closer to true knowledge via senses since other species could have more and or different senses than us. This is of course if someone first subscribes to empiricism.

This could also determine that we will never grasp something for certain. Because once we discover if another species has a sense, that we don’t then how do we know when or how another sense will come about. Pointing this out can help make an argument in favor of skepticism since we won't know when or if we will ever have every sense and since we can't trust senses completely anyways this could help support a skeptic viewpoint. Since senses than only correlate how we experience life instead of how we gain knowledge, it can be shown that senses are a tool that can be used to help with knowledge acquirement and its development but shouldn’t be the sole provider.

Realizing the possibility that we may not have acquired every sense possible for a human can help us also realize we as a species may not be done with our evolution and we could very likely be a completely different looking species in say thousand years. And this philosophy and way that some people go about obtaining knowledge and wisdom could be seen as complete and utter drivel when it comes to a human who's undergone this evolutionary change in a thousand years.