#phaneron

Phaneron

noun/ from φανερός

The world, as filtered in through our senses

The term phaneron plays a major role in epistemology and phenomenology, and is usually associated with Charles Sanders Pierce who famously said:

"By the phaneron I mean the collective total of all that is in any way or in any sense present to the mind, quite regardless of whether it corresponds to any real thing or not"

To put it in simpler terms, imagine what would happen if the limits of human perception were to be tweaked just a little bit. A few more colours that our eyes could see. A few more sounds for our ears. It is highly doubtful, almost certainly impossible that we would see the same world as we do now.

The world we call our reality. So it becomes fairly easy to see how the image of the world our senses let in to the brain can be drastically different from how it actually is.

Perhaps the simplest example could be how two people may perceive the same thing as hot or cold. The thing in question has changed nothing about it, yet two individuals can not agree upon an actual state for it.

So is that it? The ultimate limitation of the human mind? To exist in a small slice of reality, forever cut off from the facts of the universe?

Also, it begs of question of what would a being actually capable of viewing the world as it is be like. Would it be correct to automatically give it the name of god, or does it not even make a difference?

Think.