The Role of the Senses
The senses provide man (and various other creatures) with the perceptual data that forms the base of his consciousness—“the first evidence of existence.”1 Man leaves the animals behind at this point, and abstracts various concepts from this root sense data.
The role of the senses is to give us the start of the cognitive process: the first evidence of existence, including the first evidence of similarities and differences among concretes. On this basis, we organize our perceptual material—we abstract, classify, conceptualize. Thereafter, we operate on the conceptual level, making inductions, formulating theories, analyzing complexities, integrating ever greater ranges of data; we thereby discover step by step the underlying structures and laws of reality. This whole development depends on the sense organs providing an awareness of similarities and differences rich enough to enable a perceiver to reach the conceptual level. The development is not, however, affected by the form of such sensory awareness. As long as one grasps the requisite relationships in some form, the rest is the work of the mind, not of the senses. In such work, differences pertaining to the form of the initial data have no ultimate consequences.2