Thread: What were the attitudes to sense perception of the pre-socratic philosophers and sophists?

I am looking for resources that help answer that question. I have primary sources and fragments of Thales, Parmenides, Anaxagoras, Anaximander and Pythagoras. What I am looking for is commentary on that particular line of inquiry.

"As Heidegger notes at the beginning of Being and Time (1929) aisthesis, for the pre-Socratic Greeks was related to the process of revealing and concealing (alethia) (Heidegger 1962). Physical sensory perception was trusted as knowledge." http://www.minerva.mic.ul.ie/vol11/Representation.html"There were rationalist reactions to the arguments of Thales, Anaximenes, and Heraclitus. That is, some suggested that too much emphasis was being placed on observation and not enough on what reason alone demands. Reason, it was argued, teaches that because truth is understood to be stable and unchanging, then knowledge of the universe must demand consistency. But if the universe does provide truth, then it too must be stable. Thus, it is our perceptions that are in constant flux since the senses, above all else, provide a constant source of changing perceptions. Thus the senses cannot be regarded as a source for truth and knowledge; only thought and reason lead to Truth." http://www.angelfire.com/ks3/tsader_philosophy/Soccio_text/Presocratics--Lecture.htm

It would seem from that, that Thales, Anaximenes, and Heraclitus were Empiricists, relying on sensory perception to provide them with the information their minds needed about the world.

"the third major distinction which came about as a result of pre-Socratic thought was that of appearance versus reality. Essentially, this distinction demonstrates the idea that there is a profound difference between how reality appears to man through sense perception and what reality must actually be according to logical necessity."
http://www.objectivismonline.net/content/view/42/34/
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