perception and evidence: forum for week of 10 Oct

I agree with Shmo's side of the argument. Admittedly the empiricist's epistemic ideals are out of reach for human beings, (due mostly to Mo's first statement), but that is no reason to abandon perception as evidence. Despite reports from experiments where human beings seem to show that their perceptual beliefs can be prejudiced, or that we can be tricked, if we are determined to bring into question one of our beliefs we do not usually fall into such traps as we repeat our observations more carefully, as in the scientific method and draw conclusions in which we can have more confidence.