EssaysForStudent.com - Free Essays, Term Papers & Book Notes
Search

The only Truth Existing

By:   •  Essay  •  959 Words  •  December 14, 2009  •  1,030 Views

Page 1 of 4

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

Download as (for upgraded members)  txt (6 Kb)   pdf (95.3 Kb)   docx (13.1 Kb)  
Continue for 3 more pages »