Before analyzing this claim by Charles Pierce, we must dissect the context to make some sense of the claim as a whole. Firstly, the claim mentions the term “ the community.” This term may have been used to suggest all of civilization, with all miscellanies, which basically defines community as the whole world. Contrariwise, communities could be separate communities with different truths of their own. Religious communities could be implied. However, does that truth refer to one-truth or the amalgamation of all combined beliefs. Moreover, the use of truth in the claim remains ambiguous. Two possibilities would be that the claim would be a definition of truth. That Truth is the “a claim that the community ultimately settles down.” Or could it be the fate of the alleged community and its eventual acceptance of the truth.
Firstly, referring to the previous paragraph about the definition of truth, we can notice that the definition of truth still remains ambiguous in philosophical terms especially when discusses with belief and knowledge. Truth apart from being something verifiable is the limiting concept from distinguishing knowledge from belief. Something that one may believe may be knowledge if it can be justified by proof or justification. Basically, if it can be stated to be true. Until that happens, a belief remains a belief.
When Pierce mentions the word “community,” his point was to leave the claim as ambiguous as possible. A community is a set of people with some shared element. Basically, anything in common. Whether it is a group of people with similarities in religion, location, or even sexual orientation, they all represent a community. Thus the claim implies (also a liberal expression) that these groups of agents settle upon a believe to be true. However, this raises questions on the technicality of the latter. To begin with, do these truth apply to the world outside the community or the community itself or does it restrict itself to the respected communities? Also, what validity do these communities have to hold these as truths?
Moreover, Charles Pierce implies in his claim, he includes the postulates that are both correct and incorrect. For example, a test was carried on the latter on the discovery channel where a group of five men came together for an assessment where they needed to ask a series of questions. Four out of the five men were actors. Only one of the men was chosen at random for the experiment. The questions were to point at the tallest line drawn on the display. Through out the experiment, as instructed, the four actors would always choose an incorrect answer. Along the experiment, the actors kept choosing an incorrect line. Eventually, the one randomly chosen man chose the incorrect answers. The latter story gives us an example of how the complete community settles upon the fallacious claim. This both agrees and disagrees with the claim made by Charles Pierce. It agrees since the “community” collectively agrees with one answer. Although incorrect, the answer was made by the complete acceptance of all members of the community. It disagrees because the answer was untrue. Even though the example proved that that the answer of the majority was ultimately the answer of the whole, the example does not talk of the truth. They only refer to issues of sociology and how a lone party can succumb to pressures of society and agree to something he is not completely in accordance with.
The claim, when relating to natural Science seems to contain flaws. This is mainly dealing with new discoveries in technology and science in general. For example, Yip until someone proved otherwise, the entire world though that the world was that. And up until 60 years ago, the brightest men on Earth thought that the atom was the smallest being until the discovery of sub-atomic particles by John Dalton. One new discovery changed the belief of scientists and mankind in general. This raises questions for the claim, “ the truth,” since we cannot apply the latter if the truth has been proven false. How does the claim apply if the truth is no longer the truth? This situation would emerge many times in the period to come because science has new discoveries by the day. How does this change fall onto the nature of the claim and all its universality? Each new discovery in science or history can cause a deep-seated shift in paradigm. It may be a new phenomenon or a piece of recovered documents. What is true now can be proven false later. Thus in this area of knowledge there can never be an absolute truth. They can only be termed as interim theories constantly being revised and improved from before. Thus we can only claim today that the sub-atomic particles are the smallest beings on earth as the new truth until another comes in its place.
This claim does not seem to find space when talking about different belief systems and the ultimate truth. Taking the question of existence for example. There are several possibilities for them. For example, I believe in God. I believe that there is “someone.” I believe that he created us for a reason. A reason known only by “him,” undisclosed to the universe. However, someone may believe in the other theories created by men and women around the world. For example, the most popular of them all, the big bang theory including matter and anti-matter existing from nothing but vacuum. Also, there are those who believe in theories put forward by movies such as “The Truman Show” and “The Matrix.” They believe that humans are simply guinea pigs as a part of an experiment. They believe that someone is watching us. Someone, who is superior and gives us human’s a different situation to see how we respond to it and to each other. The same people in the same community can have different interpretations of it. However how does the claim compensate for the different beliefs and how would the complete community agree upon such a truth and if so what would it be?
In conclusion, Peirce’s statement is as varying and subjective as the truth itself – while it holds true and can be supported in many cases, the community cannot always decide on the truth, and the truth is therefore never known.
No comments:
Post a Comment