Truth and Epistemological Nuances
Posted under: I’ve been aching to write something about one of my favorite philosophy classes I took up before. I’ve always this entire dialogue to find the truth and meaning quite tasteful. It felt like a bad dream recurring over and over again. You wanted to forget it, and yet it just wet you appetite enough for you to be curious and ask questions more.
Before I posit my question I think it is best that the discourse begin with a definition of the word truth. According to the dictionary TRUTH is “the conformity to fact or actuality; a statement proven to be or accepted as true” and yet by the very definition we already posit a philosophical conundrum. Is merely the conformity of the truth and or actuality enough to prove that something is true? Neither does the acceptance of a statement prove to be the last and final bastion before a statement is declared the truth. We as human beings have claimed things to be TRUE as proven in history before and yet time and again we have reversed these claims and had to accept a new truth. My philosophical question for you dear readers today would be, is there such a thing as ABSOLUTE TRUTH?
Taking the classics route, the very first philosopher to insinuate the concept of absolute truth would be PLATO. In his doctrine on the world of Forms he claims that everything we see on earth or in reality are just merely copies of the PERFECT. The objects and items that exist in reality have some perfect copy in the world of forms. The world of forms contain the “perfect”. Take for example a carpenter constructing a table. He is grabbing the idea or rather, the concept of the table from the world of forms. He KNOWS the idea of the perfect idea and replicates it in reality. But then it posits that then how come the table is not perfect? Plato understood that we were not perfect beings, we are actually incomplete. The virtue and purpose of life was to actually make us complete. Then we arrive at the conclusion that because we are imperfect we are not capable of creating perfect things. Thus the imperfect table.
I will pause my discourse for a moment as I gather my thoughts and will write a follow up blog entry.
