Doing Philosophy

Objectives:

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