Not Sights and Not Sounds

Abstract

If one raises the question as to whether we are more indebted to sight or hearing in our knowledge of the external world, the usual reply is sight. Informally it is said that sight makes us aware of objects which are themselves silent, and while uninterrupted silence might well be oppressive, still it would be less so than the absence of light and all that light reveals. Such a statement is not untypical, or not so odd as to misrepresent some common claims. We do see many more things than we hear, but not because of our senses. Rather, we think and speak in terms of “things”, which things are ordinarily thought to be objects, part of whose descriptive content is attributable to sight. An equally if not more important part of the descriptive content of these objects is founded on the sense of touch, but that need not detain us here. The position remains that in contrasting the revelations of sight and hearing, those who both see and hear normally tend to award the palm to sight.¹ This choice however is based on a misapprehension about what we can perceive and the terms in which it is expressed.