The Egocentric Predicament

             Even on an intuitive level, people often express the problem of the "egocentric predicament" or the fact that we are limited in our perceptions as to what we personally think and feel and experience. Our ability to obtain objective knowledge is limited by our biases and our perceptions. Quite often people will say 'you don't understand unless you've been there,' or 'you can't understand what childbirth/cancer/losing a parent is like until you've experienced it yourself.' But beyond subjective feelings, even on the level of the senses, the philosopher John Locke acknowledged that objective sensory data was difficult to establish outside of the subjective individual mind and body. A blind man might see a dark room, while a sighted person would see a room full of light and colors.
             Locke stressed that the many differences human beings have as to the correct manner in which we ought to behave means that there are no innate, pre-existing ideas common to all beings, rather culture shapes those perceptions and there is no single line of continuity between the egos of all human beings. Essentially we are locked into our own perceptions and limited by our perceptions. To account for the existence of a material world, however, Locke created two different classes of properties known as primary and secondary qualities. Primary qualities were intrinsic to the object, like space, movement, and texture and thus could be objectively established. Secondary qualities like color, taste, smell depended on the human senses, and are thus what we might call subjective (Uzgalis, 2001).
             For example, the piece of pizza sitting in front of me might have the primary qualities of being flat, being stationary, and having a stringy or oily texture, but my ability to see the slice depends on my sense of sight, and whether it smells edible or tastes like good food depends upon my own taste and cultural upbringi...

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The Egocentric Predicament. (1969, December 31). In MegaEssays.com. Retrieved 08:44, March 29, 2024, from https://www.megaessays.com/viewpaper/202701.html