On the other hand, intuitive emotions have quite often added to the knowledge human beings have. The term is frequently used to justify self-evident truths. Asked to justify why 2 + 2 = 4, one might be able to explain it by 4 - 2 = 2, but eventually run out of justifications, and resort to the trite defense that it is “intuitively obvious.” Intuitions, however, are closely linked to our beliefs: These are often firmly built into inflexible conventions, until a figure, such as Martin Luther comes into the picture, and break the orthodoxy.
In contrast to emotions stands reasoning. Peter applies a deductive approach to ascertain the truth. As long as the propositions in the statements are valid, it follows that the conclusion must be valid: It is intuitively obvious. The scientific method, which rests on this way of thinking, is isolated as the great tool that brought economic prosperity about.
Applying a pragmatic approach, the use of reasoning is justified on the grounds that it has worked in reality, and the conclusion, truth, follows: The stuntman’s faith in the laws of mathematics and reasoning has to be very strong, if he is to put his life at stake, and make that jump across the Grand Canyon. Nevertheless, pragmatism remains linked to inductive logic: The establishment of generalizations, which leaves out the possibilities for exceptions, and is subject to the same fallibility as stereotypes.
This train of thought lead to the one problem associated with deductive reasoning: its basis. It can be used to preserve truth, but the validity of a proposition is dependent on inductive observations of the world. In some cases putting one’s life at stake at something that seems indubitably certain, can prove lethal.
Sir Isaac Newton credited his great ideas to the giants upon which shoulders he had stood. Thus, he points out the great advantage one can gain from using an authority in search for the truth. Much knowledge about our surroundings indeed is reached by such means. Many even put the meaning of live in the hands of others. In the book “Things fall apart,” African tribes’ lives are formed according to the “spirits’” code to conduct. Similarly adherers of religion put their faith in the behavior of their heroes or other symbols of progressive moral behavior.
This branch of knowing, however, is a balancing-act, and involves a margin of error. Shinichi Fujiwara was a leading archaeologist, nicknamed “God’s hand” by Japanese Medias, another authority, and had thus built up a reputation of being an expert: a supposed trustworthy authority. People therefore took his words as sound. The tragedy entered when Fujiwara claimed the Japanese to be more intelligent than others, after excavating Japanese artifacts made with advanced technology. That, however, was a fraud because Fujiwara had planted the fake artifacts there, and later re-discovered them. Such propositions can lead to an ethnocentric brainwash of people, thus molding their knowledge falsely.
If the authority makes an attempt to communicate the truth, the challenge/barrier of language still lurks. Linguistic deterministically speaking, no such problem exists, since thought equals the spoken word, and there observations can be explained 100% clear. Rarely, however, is it valid to conclude upon a universal truth: The neighbor is actually from another language background than Peter. In his country, “no other” is pronounced “another,” and in demand of a quick response he spat out the word from his native tongue. Hence the neighbor’s proposition should have come out opposite of what Peter understood.
Nevertheless, authorities’ strength is that it speeds up a process of synthesizing information that otherwise would have taken time. But to keep in mind their fallibility, they have been subject to similar restrictions as we face judging information.
Symptomatic for how human beings convince themselves of the truth, the man resorts to the ultimate authority: himself. What he sees must be true. Unfortunately that source of knowledge is erroneous. To avoid the well-known limitations of our perception, illustrated by optical illusions, other factors influence one’s senses, and their ability to tell the truth. Although such things as “the Sixth sense” and other intuitions have been argued to exist, the term, senses, has a physical root. As mentioned, emotions tend to color our perception of the world. Like alcohol, love affects the physical aspects of humans. Besides serotonin, other hormones have increased activity in the brain’s perceptive judgment centers. In context to “truth,” it shows interpretations of observations can be distorted by perspective and other factors, such as emotions.
Synthesis of information from any source without this tool of knowing is hard. How would it be possible to reason if necessary observations of premises cannot be made; to hear authoritative accounts; have emotional sensations without touch?
It is relevant to ask if it is at all possible to know the truth; when no ways of knowing are impenetrable to error. Before jumping to conclusions, one could attempt to limit the spectrum where truth occurs: Truth is limited according to some given parameters. These truth factors, however, better eliminate false statements than point out true ones: They filtrate less qualified guesses from better.
The pragmatic theory is a down to earth approach where truth extends from reality: if something works in reality, then it’s true. This goes with the method of science: A hypothesis is established and tested under observation, thus mounting in a conclusive acceptance/rejection of the hypothesis’ validity. The theory gets support from such examples, since it is true that it works in reality. Nevertheless, its basis is inductive reasoning and perception, which are no guarantees of the truth.
Peter could test the hypothesis that his wife committed adultery. In favor of the proposition, it coheres/corresponds to observations from reality: Phone-calls, noises, etc. Truth, however, doesn’t follow logically. To claim so is invalid because the secret calls could be related to something else.
Truth is transparent. Knowledge isn’t solely justified by factuality, because such is not entirely justifiable. The gap between certainty and the hardly quantifiable reliability of a knowledge claim has to be compensated for by conviction/faith. Peter, therefore, is left with different knowledge claims to be justified/rejected, and with the task of defining the truth-spectrum. In context to the prescribed question, the likeliness that a tool of knowing will deliver one the truth is in the end dependent on one’s belief. It would be rather nice to conclude that the most likely way of knowing the truth is through perception, since people tend to put greater faith in own observations and “seeing is believing,” but “tend” is not finite. Truth is defined individually be assigning a belief to a truth subject. Hence the most likely way of knowing the truth is the one in which the belief is the greatest: most often that is perception. Even with untrue dogmatism, beliefs are flexible in the long- run, so one should keep challenging ways of knowing to move closer to truth.
By the way, Peter’s wife was innocent.
This is similar to that implied by the prescribed question.
Socrates once said that it is in human nature to desire the truth.
This will be discussed later.
In fact, emotions can distort the other ways of acquiring knowledge.
In this book, Big Brother deliberately appeals to people’s emotions, in order to make them behave in a certain way. This is commonly known as propaganda.
A psychologist would probably agree that we are slow to confront erroneous intuitions and get rid of them.
Reasoning can either be of an inductive or deductive nature.
I was once told this little story by my grandfather, a farmer, which is an excellent example in support of this idea: “I had a herd of chickens – cute little animals – which had come to rely on that I would feed them at a certain time each day. Foolish of them to think that certain: Because one day I came with an axe instead of feed. Don’t blind yourself.”
Whether it is right or not to follow dogmatism is another question that arises, when knowledge reliance goes to such an extreme.
This book was written by the Nigerian author, C. Achebe. It is about how inflexible beliefs can bring about the downfall of man. Another knowledge issue.
Incas, Moslems, Buddhists, Christians, etc.
Archaeologist exposed as fraud. BBC News, 2000. 2 Jan. 2008 <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/1008051.stm>.
Serotonin is often used in medicine as an anti-depressant hormone: It makes people look more optimistic at the world. Too much of it, however, is highly toxic…same with emotions and perception.
Those parameters are summarized in Richard van de Lagemaat’s TOK for the IB Diploma (Lagemaat, Richard. Theory of Knowledge for the IB Diploma. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.). They are divided into three theories: The correspondence-, coherence-, and pragmatic theory.
From what I have heard, she is planning a surprise birthday party for the man, who is turning 40.
At least as far as human intelligence can grasp. Many things are beyond human understanding, which, for me, invokes humility faced with the immense everything.
In the end truth is formed by beliefs.
