Objective Knowledge Essay

937 Words2 Pages

In this paper I will explain what objective knowledge is and why we can have objective knowledge. I will clearly define several key terms that are crucial to this discussion. With these definitions in mind, I will explain the necessity of objective knowledge for reason and reality. Then, I will outline and expound on a reduction absurdum argument, explaining the contradictory postulate and exposing a contradiction. Finally, I will describe the view of Global Skepticism, and show how the Global Skeptic lives in opposition to his or her outlook. Through these arguments, it will be apparent that logic and reality demand the existence of objective knowledge. Definitions are vital for clarification in arguments. Firstly, I will define logic and …show more content…

Without, objective knowledge, there are no facts or actual things to know. Basically, knowledge itself is useless because it has no relationship to reality; there is no realness to that knowledge. On the other hand, subjective knowledge is simply opinion or preference. Subjective knowledge is changing and solely up to the individual. If there is only subjective knowledge, then we can postulate ideas and produce arguments but there is no reality to them. For example we can say, “My favorite flavor of ice cream is chocolate.” However, there is no basis for actual ice cream or chocolate or flavor or anything. These things all rely on objective knowledge to definitely be real things. Without facts and reality, everything is simply an illusion of the mind and nothing is real or actual. Subjective knowledge relies heavily on previously assumed objective knowledge. Eliminating objective knowledge, results in a situation where reason is useless and no reality can me …show more content…

(1)‘All knowledge is objective.’ (2)‘All knowledge is subjective.’ (3)‘Some knowledge is objective.’ (4)‘Some knowledge is subjective.’ For this discussion, I am defending the statement, (3)‘Some knowledge is objective’. Statements (2)’All knowledge is subjective’ and statement (3)’ Some knowledge is objective’ are contradictory, meaning that they cannot both be true at the same time. Also, if one is true the other is consequently false, and if one is false the other is necessarily true. In order to prove one these contradictory statements, we can use an argument in logic called Reductio Absurdum. This tactic takes the opponents argument and finds a contradiction with in the argument. First we assume that one statement is true. If we can find this statement to be self-contradicting, we can show that it is actually false. Therefore, its contradictory statement must be

Open Document