Understanding Truth: Theories and Criteria
Is Knowledge Possible?
The most radical problem presented is whether knowledge is possible.
- Dogmatism: Dogmatists are confident in their ability to describe what we think naively and believe they have reason.
- Skepticism: Skeptics consider it impossible to obtain reliable knowledge.
- Empiricist Subjectivism and Realism: Both deny the possibility of universal knowledge. Subjectivism depends on the individual, and realism depends on culture, age, or social group.
- Pragmatism: Pragmatists identify the true with what is useful. An example is Kant.
- Criticism: Criticism occupies an intermediate position between dogmatism and skepticism. It is always possible to obtain a certain knowledge, and it can tell how far or try to verify its knowledge.
- Perspectivism: Perspectivists claim that you can get knowledge, but considering that each generation has its own historical vision.
Realism (Aristotle)
- Priority: The object. The important thing is understanding reality. Everything revolves around things.
- Defense: Reality exists by itself.
Idealism (Descartes)
- Priority: The subject. The important thing is awareness and knowledge. Everything revolves around ideas. We do not know things as they are but how they are manifested.
Phenomenology
Phenomenology tries to know things that are given to consciousness, where we capture the real. It opposes idealism, as they adapt to the subject, but not objects that are manifested in him.
Hermeneutics
Hermeneutics seeks to understand human actions and historical reality, so it says that there are no facts but interpretations. To understand, we have realized that consciousness depends on language.
The Truth
- Greek: What is hidden and not human, reason and discovered the show through language.
- Latin: Description of what is said regarding who you say.
- Hebrew: Expresses the truth in the sense of confidence.
Criteria of Truth
Criteria of truth are those procedures by which we distinguish truth from falsehood.
- Authority: A statement is considered true when a single person is considered an expert on the subject.
- Tradition: Something that over time is considered truth is taken as true.
- Correspondence between thought and reality: That will be true whenever we see or empirically. Ex: Water boils at 100ºC.
- Consistency logic: It is obvious that there are contradictions in the statements that belong in the same system.
- Utility: A statement is true when it allows us to go ahead with our investigations. Ex: The human genome.
- Evidence: The fact that without appearing as indisputable, though often necessary to show it. Ex: The sun rises every day.
Theories of Truth
Truth as Correspondence or Appropriateness
Truth is understood as a relationship between correspondence or appropriateness. The concept is spontaneous: the match between what is and what it says. The first represents Aristotle; it was therefore demanded that the representative.
Truth as Coherence
Use the criterion of truth as coherence, represented by Hegel in the eighteenth century. It will be true whether or not a theory can be integrated into a wider one, and this is supported.
Pragmatic Theory of Truth
A statement is true or false if it is useful to solve problems, i.e., the hypothetico-deductive method. Ex: All the driftwood in the water was really not until a wooden float.
Consensus Theory of Truth
The theory advocated by the neopositivists. Use dialogue to discover the truth of the statements, so when we say something is true, we mean that we have sufficient reasons to defend it.