Two of the most important questions in philosophy are:
“What does it mean for something to be ‘true’?”
and
“What does it mean to ‘know’ something?”
Well, I’m going to try to take a stab at them with the gleaming sword of my razor sharp intellect. (I suppose I am supposed to be talking about truth…well, I can wish can’t I?)
What does it mean for something to be ‘true’?
I propose the following definition:
A statement is ‘true’ that accurately describes reality.
Something that you might hear some people say, is that there is no such thing as truth. I would object to this with the question “is it true that there is no such thing as truth?” If it is true, then at least one thing is true, meaning that it is actually false.
A far more significant problem that I see with this definition is that our language is imperfect. Often a statement could have more than one possible meaning, depending on how one interprets it. For example I could make the statement:
“I am awesome.”
And while I’d certainly like to believe this, we can’t really call it ‘true’ until we know what the word ‘awesome’ means. When I say a person is awesome it means that they like to talk about philosophy and have an open mind, but to someone else it might mean that they go skydiving once a week. According to my definition of truth, this statement could be either true or false depending on how you interpret it.
This ambiguity can cause real problems in philosophy, which is why I try to be clear in my definitions. So let’s see if we can define what a ‘true’ statement is a little bit better:
A statement is ‘true’ if it’s most likely meaning accurately describes reality.
and
A statement is ‘false’ if it’s most likely meaning does not accurately describe reality.
Of course this still leaves us with the problem of finding it’s meaning, which will unfortunately continue to be a problem until someone invents a language that is totally unambiguous. But I would like to make a request of anyone who enjoys debate like I do. Please do your very best to be as precise and unambiguous as possible with your truth statements. This makes debates much easier and more fun in my mind. And if you ever catch me using ambiguous language, please point it out to me so I can clarify.
What does it mean to ‘know’ something?
René Descartes was well known for pointing out that there is very little that we can be 100% sure of in life. Socrates also said that he knew nothing, because he couldn’t be absolutely certain. If the definition of the word ‘to know’ is “to be 100% certain” then I would agree with them on that. However, this doesn’t seem like a very useful definition to me.
So, I have no doubt about 2 things. The first is that I exist in some form. The second is that I experience things. How can we go from these two certainties to gain other knowledge? I don’t really think we can as long as to ‘know’ something means ‘to have no doubt.’
In science, many theories are accepted as “fact.” The reason that these theories are currently accepted is that they are the simplest explanation of the multitudes of experimental outcomes that have been recorded. These things aren’t 100% certain facts that can’t be disproven, they are the current best explanations. This is how I propose we define “knowledge”
I ‘know’ something if it is the simplest explanation for my experiences.
I know I am typing because that is the simplest way to explain what I am experiencing right now. I know there is a computer screen in front of me because I am experiencing a visual image of a computer screen, and I experience it when I reach in front of me.
Now you might be thinking, “by that logic, wouldn’t I know that the sun is the same size as the moon? and that the earth is flat?” Well, that wouldn’t explain why I remember seeing images of the round Earth, why astronomers are extremely good at predicting eclipses, and other events, or how there are satellites beaming television to my parent’s house. The direct evidence of our senses is only the raw input, we must then formulate that into a consistent worldview that explains it all as simply as possible.
Thanks for reading! And please let me know what you think of my my writing, my reasoning, and I wouldn’t really mind comments on my razor sharp intellect. :)