What is a true belief?

Epistemology is a philosophical approach focused on giving accounts of how we know what we think we know. Rationalism is the idea that human beings come to understand the world primarily through our rational capacity rather than through sense experience. Rene Descartes is generally considered to have kicked off the era of modern philosophy in the 17th century with his work, which is referred to as Cartesian philosophy. Empiricism takes the opposite approach, arguing that experience is the basis of understanding. The scientific method is consistent with this approach, insofar as scientific ideas and concepts arise out of—and in turn are affirmed by—sense experience and other empirical evidence. Kantian philosophy attempts to resolve the rationalism/empiricism debate. Kant argues that knowledge ultimately comes to us via the understanding that structures and organizes sense data. He reaches this conclusion by distinguishing between ideas that exist prior to experience and ideas that come from experience. Phenomenology offers another alternative to the empiricism/rationalism debate by rejecting the mind/body dualism and focusing on lived experience as the foundation for what we know. Phenomenology as a theory is derived from descriptions of experience, rather than being a theory we construct and then apply to experience.

What is True? Epistemology Part II: Truth Tests

Empiricists believe that for a claim or belief to be true, it must have empirical warrantability. In other words, the belief must correspond to some experience in the external world. This does not mean that all unwarranted beliefs are necessarily false, just that we have no evidence that they are true. Empirical warrantability is consistent with the correspondence theory of truth and is based upon the assumption that there is an objectively present world of facts that exists beyond our perception of it. Kant’s concern with empiricism is that we can never know things objectively, how they are in reality; rather, we only know things as they appear to us. This is what is known as the egocentric predicament. The coherence test gets us out of the egocentric predicament in a way. Rather than requiring correspondence with an objective reality, this test simply requires that a belief is consistent with a cohesive account of the world, i.e. a paradigm. Mathematics and science are good examples of cohesive accounts of the world. One of the problems with the coherence test is that paradigms have been known to contradict one another. This is where pragmatism comes in. This test is grounded in practicality: if a belief works, then it is true. Someone who takes a pragmatic approach to truth will acknowledge that truth is grounded in lived experience rather than correspondence or cohesion to some fixed account of reality. The Ewe creativity test is similar to the pragmatic approach, with one important addition: what is true is not only what is practical but, also what has the power to bring about a better human situation.

What is True? Aesthetics

F.W.J. Schelling (1775-1854) offers an alternative to Kant’s view that we can only know the world as it appears in our own minds (phenomena) not reality itself (noumena). Schelling posits that in art, consciousness and materiality are reunited. Perceiving this unified, infinite reality requires not the intellectual rigor we saw in rationalism and Kantian idealism but, rather, what Schelling calls aesthetic intuition. Art thus discloses truth not by correctly corresponding to objects in the world or by virtue of cohesion with an accepted paradigm but through experience of the beautiful. Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) also takes the Kantian subject/object split as his starting point. For Schopenhauer, there is no God, no fate, just accidents and chance. We ignore this meaninglessness and hide behind the veil of Maya. Art can penetrate the veil that separates us from the truth that is the futility of life, however, which is why there is truth in art. Schopenhauer’s idea that art succeeds in revealing truth where rational accounts have failed appealed to Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900). Schopenhauer’s mistake was that he failed to affirm life itself as both suffering and joy. The two forces of life are the Apollonian (dream) and the Dionysian (state of intoxication). The Apollonian dream makes our particular lives possible, whereas the Dionysian unifies us with the whole. These two are reconciled in Greek tragedy, the art form that acts as a transfiguring mirror. Martin Heidegger (1889-1976 also rejected the natural standpoint of rationalism, empiricism, and Kantian idealism, maintaining that we are not isolated minds who objectively examine and represent the world through art or philosophical theory. Instead, we are beings-in-the-world. The work of art allows the truth of being, of our being-in-the-world, to become intelligible. Thus, art is not mimesis, not a representation of the truth. It is truth.