"All statements are true in some sense, false in some sense, meaningless in some sense, true and false in some sense, true and meaningless in some sense, false and meaningless in some sense, and true and false and meaningless in some sense" — Malaclypse the Younger. Truth is a fact that has been verified. There are many procedures that must be completed for something to be considered truth. Truth in its full extension is an intellectual aspect of reality that is unchanging, internally harmonious, universal and without error. However false is something that cannot be proven but, instead false can be debated. In this Theory of Knowledge essay it will be shown that there are no absolute distinctions between what is true and what is false.”
In this paragraph it will be shown that natural science can support and decline the claim “There are no absolute distinctions between what is true and what is false”. The reasoning behind natural science indicates that evolution is neither true nor false but instead it meets the criteria approved by scientists which classify it as science. In order for a theory to be recognized as science it must meet these criteria’s: consistent, parsimonious, useful, empirically testable & falsifiable, based upon controlled & repeated experiments, correctable & dynamic progressive, and tentative. Evolution is Consistent because all evidence provided supports evolutionary theory and common descent. Evolution is Parsimonious because its naturalistic meaning doesn’t consist of redundant concepts, entities, or processes which reflect our understanding of the universe. Given the fact that evolution is the combined principle of sciences it’s considered very useful. Without the background premise of evolution most of ...
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Evolution is deemed as being scientific because it is testable and correctable, unlike creationism which deals with “God’s will,” an unchanging and set in stone philosophy that contradicts any scientific notion it attempts to deliver. Evolution is the scientific explanation to how organisms developed the forms and functions
For many years humans have pursued the meaning of truth, knowledge and understanding. For many this pursuit of understanding the meaning of truth doesn’t end until one finds a “truth” that is nourishing to them. Even if this is the case one may choose to look for an alternate truth that may be more satisfactory to them. This pursuit of truth does not always have to follow the same path as there may be different ideas for everyone on how truth is actually obtained and which is a better way to obtain the truth is. Two philosophers of their time, Plato and Charles Peirce had their own methodologies and ideas on how truth and knowledge could be obtained.
Darwin's theory of Evolution have been known by the world for many centuries. Even so, not all scientists supp...
Williamson in his book Knowledge and It’s Limits primarily seeks to support his novel perspective of “knowledge first” epistemology (v). This approach sets forth the idea that knowledge cannot be analyzed into more basic concepts, such as belief or truth. The basis for this argument is that knowledge is a mental state, and thus it cannot be broken down into the combination of external conditions – like the state of the world such that it makes a proposition true – and internal conditions – like belief in a proposition or the justification of that belief (6). Certainly, Williamson is able to illustrate in his introduction the way in which he equates belief and knowledge as mental states, and refutes the idea that belief is conceptually prior to knowledge. However, Williamson takes the assertion that knowledge is a general factive mental state and supports this claim by offering it as a new approach to epistemology that avoids the problems of trying to analyze knowledge, and instead allows for knowledge to be the central concept used to elucidate others, like justification and eviden...
Anyone with even a moderate background in science has heard of Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution. Since the publishing of his book On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection in 1859, Darwin’s ideas have been debated by everyone from scientists to theologians to ordinary lay-people. Today, though there is still severe opposition, evolution is regarded as fact by most of the scientific community and Darwin’s book remains one of the most influential ever written.
The authority of the theory of evolution can be characterized by defining what qualifies as a scientific theory. Although there are several perspectives regarding what science is, they are based on the same premises. Karl Popper, a philosopher of science, claims that the process of “conjectures and refutations” is the method of science (46). In this process, a
How we approach the question of knowledge is pivotal. If the definition of knowledge is a necessary truth, then we should aim for a real definition for theoretical and practical knowledge. Methodology examines the purpose for the definition and how we arrived to it. The reader is now aware of the various ways to dissect what knowledge is. This entails the possibility of knowledge being a set of truths; from which it follows that one cannot possibly give a single definition. The definition given must therefore satisfy certain desiderata , while being strong enough to demonstrate clarity without losing the reader. If we base our definition on every counter-example that disproves our original definition then it becomes ad hoc. This is the case for our current defini...
In this paper, I offer a solution to the Gettier problem by adding a fourth condition to the justified true belief analysis of knowledge. First though, a brief review. Traditionally, knowledge had been accounted for with the justified true belief analysis. To know something, three conditions had to be met: first, you had to have a belief; second, the belief had to be justified; third, this justified belief had to be true. So a justified true belief counts as knowledge. Gettier however showed this analysis to be inadequate as one can have a justified true belief that no one would want to count as knowledge.
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Evolution views life to be a process by which organisms diversified from earlier forms, whereas creation illustrates that life was created by a supernatural being. Creation and evolution both agree on the existence of microevolution and the resemblance of apes and humans but vary in terms of interpreting the origins of the life from a historical standpoint. A concept known as Faith Vs Fact comprehensively summarizes the tone of this debate, which leads to the question of how life began. While creation represents a religious understanding of life, evolution acknowledges a scientific interpretation of the origins of life. The theory is illustrated as the process by which organisms change species over time.
Talking on both sides of the debate, each side feels as though the other has no scientific reasoning come up with their theory. In reading the article written by Shipman, the evolutionists believe that intelligent design has no concrete evidence on how the world was crea...
The evolution theory, one of the most significant theories, laid groundwork for the study of modern biological science. This theory has lead scientists into unending debates due to lack of empirical supports. Until the mid-eighteenth century, when Charles Darwin came up with an explanation to evolution, scientists, then, began to endorse this hypothesis. In “Natural Selection,” Darwin explains the natural selection, a plausible mechanism that causes evolution, to gain approval of his cynical audience for his evolution theory. He supports his claim with numerous examples of animals and plants that have developed traits beneficial for survival. A century later, Stephen Jay Gould, influenced by Darwin’s work, supports the evolution theory with a different method. In “Evolution as Fact and Theory,” Gould, in contrast to Darwin, criticizes his detractors, the creationists who believe that every life form is the creation of a supernatural being, to reinforce the validity of the evolution theory. Gould undermines creationism by emphasizing its misused concepts of theory and popular philosophy, proving that it is not science. Besides denouncing creationism, Gould also provides theoretical examples as evidence to prove evolution is a theory. Despite their different approaches, both Darwin and Gould effectively prove the existence of evolution.
Opinions in a finite domain are susceptible to different interpretations and uncertainty, and what is true for one person does not necessarily have to hold true for another. Thus, the concept of truth derived by man is ridden with inconsistencies, all of which are in direct violation with the very definition of truth. Since the building block of human knowledge is this flawed truth, then human knowledge itself is flawed. Sim...
Question No. 5 “No knowledge can be produced by a single way of knowing.” Discuss.
Truth is essentially divided into two main types of truth. There is empirical truth that is what is observed, what can be tangibly learned from observation. For an example we look at, Starbucks makes coffee and other hot beverages. This is a form of empirical truth, which is what is observed. Other than the empirical truth, there is truth. Truth is defined by us, by our beliefs, experiences, observations. This is the problem that there is with the nature of truth, because our experiences, and beliefs may differ from someone else giving them different truth. There are several theories on truth, and they are the Correspondence Theory, the Semantic Theory, the Deflationary Theory, the Coherence Theory, and the Pragmatic Theory. In this paper, we will be focusing on the Correspondence Theory and the Coherence Theory ( insert citation, IEP website).