1. The document outlines the objectives, concepts, and steps of doing philosophy including identifying knowledge, describing how knowledge is acquired, and explaining how validating knowledge leads to truth.
2. It discusses key concepts like perception, concepts, inference, and defines a concept as an abstract idea formed by combining aspects of a group.
3. Validating knowledge involves retracing the steps taken to acquire it - perception, concept, proposition, inference - and determining if a statement is true through consensus agreement or testing it through action.
1. The document outlines the objectives, concepts, and steps of doing philosophy including identifying knowledge, describing how knowledge is acquired, and explaining how validating knowledge leads to truth.
2. It discusses key concepts like perception, concepts, inference, and defines a concept as an abstract idea formed by combining aspects of a group.
3. Validating knowledge involves retracing the steps taken to acquire it - perception, concept, proposition, inference - and determining if a statement is true through consensus agreement or testing it through action.
1. The document outlines the objectives, concepts, and steps of doing philosophy including identifying knowledge, describing how knowledge is acquired, and explaining how validating knowledge leads to truth.
2. It discusses key concepts like perception, concepts, inference, and defines a concept as an abstract idea formed by combining aspects of a group.
3. Validating knowledge involves retracing the steps taken to acquire it - perception, concept, proposition, inference - and determining if a statement is true through consensus agreement or testing it through action.
1. Identify the meaning, importance, and source of
knowledge. 2. Describe, the steps/processes of acquiring knowledge. 3. Explain how validating one’s knowledge leads to truth. Group Activity (Synthesizing/summarizing)
Reality Perception Concept Inference Concept
An abstract ideas or mental
picture of a group or class of objects formed by combining all their aspects. Validating one’s knowledge
1. Validating one’s knowledge is to ask oneself the
following question: “How did I arrive at this belief, by what steps?” (Binswanger 2014). Thus you have to retrace the steps you took to acquire the knowledge, the process (Binswanger 2014). • One will therefore realize that the steps you took to acquire knowledge (perception-concept- proposition-inference) are the same steps needed to validate knowledge. 2. To determine if the statement is true is through a consensus (Abella 2016). If the majority agrees that a statement is true then it is true. 3.To determine whether a statement is true is to test it by means of action (Abella 2016). For example you want to know if a person is friendly. Well the best way to find out is to approach the person. Truth vs Opinion
Truth is knowledge validated and
when we say validated we mean they are based on the facts of reality. Truth is:
1. Based on the facts of reality
2. Can be confirmed with other sources 3. Independent of one’s interpretation, preferences and biases An opinion has the following characteristics: 1. Based on emotions 2. Open to interpretation 3. Cannot be confirmed 4. Inherently biased • “Plato’s Allegory of the Cave” “Some prisoners are chained inside a cave, facing the back wall. Behind them is a fire, with people passing in front of it. The prisoners cannot turn their heads, and have always been chained this way. All they can see and hear are shadows passing back and forth and the echoes bouncing off the wall in front of them. One day, a prisoner is freed, and dragged outside the cave. He is blinded by the light, confused, and resists being led outside. But, eventually his eyes adjusts so that he able to see clearly the things around him, and even the sun itself. He came to realize that the things he thought were real were merely shadows of real things, and that life outside of the cave is far better than his previous life in chains. He pities those still inside. He ventures back into the cave to share his discovery with the others—only to be ridiculed because he can hardly see (his eyes have trouble at first re-adjusting to the darkness). He tried to free the other prisoners but they violently resisted (the other prisoners refuse to be freed and led outside, and they even tried to kill him)”. 1. What does this story mean? 2. How does this passage from Plato help you turn your attention toward the right thing (i.e., truth, beauty, justice and goodness)? Assignment:
Theories of Truth
pragmatic theory correspondence theory coherence theory