Understanding Knowledge: Sources, Properties, and Truth
The Sources of Knowledge
The sources of knowledge are experience and thought. Through these, we learn from experience. Experience must be prolonged by thought. Experience is also called intuition, which can be sensuous (what we see and touch) or ideal (ideal objects). Concepts are the ideas we have of reality. Knowledge is always the result of thought applied to sensory or empirical content.
The Three Properties of Experience
Sensory experience is essential because it allows us to understand things that really exist:
- Appearance: How something looks (color, form, etc.)
- Existence: Whether something is real
- Evidence: The undeniable nature of what we perceive
Evidence allows us to distinguish between true and false.
Objects of Knowledge
Ideal objects or beings of reason are products of our thought or imagination. This knowledge corresponds to the logical theory of mathematics. Real objects represent real things that occur in the sensory world or culture. This knowledge corresponds to general science and the humanities. Values are natural qualities of objects that make us perceive them as good, bad, or disgusting. This knowledge relates to aesthetics, psychology, economics, and ethics.
Degrees of Knowledge
There are different degrees of knowledge, and our knowledge is constantly increasing. We distinguish between knowledge and opinion based on information provided only by the senses, and scientific knowledge itself, which involves reason ordering and interpreting the data received through the senses.
Evidence and Certainty
Doubt arises when we cannot comment about the truth or falsity of something. Suspicion is a hunch that may be true, but we cannot justify it. Review occurs when we give our consent without full security. Full security is certainty.
Principles of Knowledge
- First Principle: We cannot give our assent to what is presented as evident in our consciousness.
- Second Principle: Evidence may be overridden by other stronger evidence.
Incontrovertible Evidence
Incontrovertible evidence is evidence so strong that it cannot be denied or overruled by other stronger evidence (e.g., the whole is greater than the part, a triangle has three sides).
Criteria of Truth
The criteria of truth involve four principles:
- Corroboration: Ensuring that something is true.
- Coherence: Maintaining consistency (if a phrase is used at the beginning, it cannot be changed at the end).
- Practical Application: (Major criterion) The practical consequences corroborate the truth of a theory.
- Universality of Evidence: The truth can only be based on evidence that any rational person can have.
Truth as Adequacy (Aristotle)
Truth is the fitness between thought and reality. We think about things according to our mental structures and cannot know what reality is regardless of how we know it. We can only know those aspects of reality, the phenomena, to which we can access in accordance with our ways of knowing.
Truth as Corroborating Evidence
Truth is evidence sufficiently verified. There are three types of evidence and therefore three kinds of truth: ideal, real, and sobre securities. The idea of truth as corroborating evidence that resists criticism solves the problems posed by the theory of truth.