The only Truth Existing
By: Wendy • Essay • 959 Words • December 14, 2009 • 1,030 Views
Essay title: The only Truth Existing
The Only Truth Existing "We
are, then, faced with a quite simple alternative: Either we
deny that there is here anything that can be called truth - a
choice that would make us deny what we experience most
profoundly as our own being; or we must look beyond the
realm of our "natural" experience for a validation of our
certainty." A famous philosopher, Rene Descartes, once
stated, "I am, [therefore] I exist." This statement holds the
only truth found for certain in our "natural" experience that,
as conscious beings, we exist. Whether we are our own
creators, a creation, or the object of evolution, just as long
as we believe that we think, we are proved to exist.
Thinking about our thoughts is an automatic validation of
our self-consciousness. Descartes claims, "But certainly I
should exist, if I were to persuade my self of something."
And so, I should conclude that our existence is a truth, and
may be the only truth, that we should find its certainty.
From the "natural" experiences of our being, we hold
beliefs that we find are our personal truths. From these
experiences, we have learned to understand life with reason
and logic; we have established our idea of reality; and we
believe that true perceptions are what we sense and see.
But it is our sense of reason and logic, our idea of reality,
and our perceptions, that may likely to be very wrong.
Subjectiveness, or personal belief, is almost always, liable
for self-contradiction. Besides the established truth that we
exist, there are no other truths that are certain, for the fact
that subjective truth may be easily refuted. Every person
possesses his or her own truth that may be contradicting to
another person's belief. A truth, or one that is true for all,
cannot by achieved because of the constant motion of
circumstances of who said it, to whom, when, where, why,
and how it was said. What one person may believe a dog is
a man's best friend, another may believe that a dogs is a
man's worse enemy. What one may believe is a pencil, to
another is not a pencil, but a hair pin. Where one may
believe that a bottle is an instrument, one may believe is a
toy, where another may believe is a beverage container.
Where one will understand the moving vehicle "car," one
might understand "car" as a tree. Our perception of what is
true depends on our own experiences, and how something
becomes true for us. Many circumstances are necessary to
derive at one's truth, whether it is an idea, object, or
language. All perception, besides the perception of
existence, is uncertain of being true for all individuals. Every
thought, besides the idea that we think, has the possibility
that it may be proven wrong. The author of the article,
Knowledge Regained, Norman Malcolm, states that, "any
empirical proposition whatever could be refuted by future
experience - that is, it could turn out to be false." An
example could be the early idea of the earth being flat and
not the current perception of the