Understanding the Limits of Human Knowledge and Truth
Understanding the Limits of Human Knowledge
This is the second fundamental issue in establishing what we know, and there are three basic positions.
Dogmatism
- Affirms that intellectual capacity is sufficient to know reality as it is, so that you can set universal and absolute truths, completely certain and indubitable.
- This position is based on total trust in the possibilities of the senses or human reason.
- It is considered a naive position that has been criticized by many philosophers. For example, Kant says that it is the dogmatic position of the philosophers who, having not done a review of the powers of knowledge, support the ability of reason to know.
- In general, dogmatism is understood as the attitude of someone who tends to impose a doctrine or values without sufficient evidence and without admitting discussion.
- They argued that there is something wrong and have alternatives. Inflexibility (like Muslims).
Relativism
- Affirms that there are no objective and absolute truths.
- That truths are relative means that a trial is true depending on conditions or circumstances on which it has been formulated, depending on the human being who posits it, the society we live in, the historical moment, and so on.
- Already made by Protagoras (480-410 BC) in Classical Greece: “Man is the measure of all things.”
- There are no universal truths or necessary truths; every truth will depend on the historical period in which it is developed.
Skepticism
- Affirms not knowing if absolute truth exists, but even if it existed, there would be no way of knowing what it is.
- This inability to find the truth is based on the error of the senses or the lack of agreement among human beings, even in those more general principles.
- Advocated by ancient philosophers like Pyrrho of Elis (360-270 BC) and modern ones like Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592).
- The alternative in this position is not to adopt any opinion or belief, as we cannot decide on anything.
- This is what is called suspension of view, silence as an option that allows us to achieve serenity and thus be happy.
- Some objections have been based on the paradoxes that have this position in the extreme (skepticism is contradictory when it says that nothing can be affirmed. If anything is true, why has it to be asserted? One cannot live with a conviction that nothing is true. If you took it literally, you could not do or think anything. Doubt is already evidence of a certain truth).
- However, partial skepticism applied only to some objects or aspects of human knowledge can be a good measure to mark the boundaries of human knowledge because it serves to determine what is unknowable to us and what is the nature of our own knowledge.
- Doubts the value of knowledge, the human capacity to know reality, and if that fact were known, it could not be sent because there are no common meanings and common ideas.
What is Truth?
Introduction
Is truth something that is discovered, or is it built?
- Discovered: Objective truths, equally valid for any subject, independent of the subject.
- Constructed by the individual: Subjective truths, only verifiable by the person making them.
- Constructed collectively: Intersubjective truths, which can be shared and checked by different subjects.
Depending on where we set the limits of human knowledge, the kind of truth we believe we can achieve.
Theories of Truth
Truth as Correspondence or Material Truth
A proposition is true if there is a correspondence between what is said and what is done, and false otherwise. For example: “It’s raining” will be true if indeed it is raining, and otherwise, it is false. This is also what is called material truth.
In Aristotle’s classic formulation, truth as a correspondence between thought and reality is defined as follows:
“To say of what is that it is, or of what is not that it is not, is true. To say of what is that it is not, or of what is not that it is, is false.”
What’s on my mind or in language is applicable or adapted to external reality.
Consistency as Truth or Formal Truth
A proposition is true if certain principles are derived by correct reasoning. If I say something coherent, it is true. This is for the formal sciences (mathematics and logic). The truth of the conclusion that we derive from correct reasoning is derived from the principles set (it is impossible that the conclusion is false if the premises are true).
Also called a formal truth or validity. In this conception of truth, a proposition is true or false within a system of other propositions (for example, elements of a mathematical system). This criterion really means no contradiction within a system (consistency). This truth has its own, but is relational and therefore, will be true if your relationship with the rest of the statements is logical (derived from them correctly and without implying a contradiction).
Truth as Income or Instrumental Truth (Utilitarianism or Pragmatism)
A proposition is true while running or to be useful. An idea is true if the praxis (practice) demonstrates its effectiveness. It is defended by William James (1842-1910). For example: The law of universal gravitation. It is not intended to be a real description of how effectively the solar system works; it is considered accurate as it is shown to be useful in explaining or predicting phenomena. It has an instrumental view of truth.
Perspective as Truth or Perspectivism
Affirms that all truth is born from the individual perspective, historical, cultural, etc. This theory is linked to relativism and defended by the Spanish philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset (1883-1955).
What is the Origin of the Truth?
A species lived on a lost planet (Earth) and invented the truth that it was fiction.
Truths are metaphors that have forgotten that they are. According to Nietzsche, truth has no theoretical value. What encourages and is practically vital to life is the truth, and what is damaging is falsehood.