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Philosophy

<OpenstaxParagraph>
	Philosophers who argue that knowledge of the external world is impossible do so based on the idea that one can never be certain of the <OpenstaxTerm>truth</OpenstaxTerm> of one’s external world beliefs. But what does it mean to claim that a belief is true? People are sometimes tempted to believe that truth is relative. A person may say things like “Well, that’s just their truth” as if something can be true for one person and not for others. Yet for statements and propositions, there is only one truth value. One person can believe that Earth is flat while another can believe is it round, but only one of them is right. People do not each personally get to decide whether a statement is true. Furthermore, just because one has no way of determining whether a statement is true or false does not mean that there is no truth to the matter. For example, you probably don’t quite know how to go about determining the exact number of blades of grass on the White House lawn, but this does not mean that there is no true answer to the question. It is true that there is a specific number of blades of grass at this moment, even if you cannot know what that number is.
</OpenstaxParagraph>
<OpenstaxParagraph>
	But what does it mean for a statement to be true? At first, this question may seem silly. The meaning of <OpenstaxTerm>truth</OpenstaxTerm> is obvious. True things are correct, factual, and accurate. But to say that something is correct, factual, or accurate is just another way of saying it is true. <OpenstaxEm>Factual</OpenstaxEm> just means “true.” Creating a noncircular and illuminating account of truth is a difficult task. Nevertheless, philosophers attempt to explain truth. Philosophers often are curious about and question concepts that most people accept as obvious, and truth is no exception.
</OpenstaxParagraph>
<OpenstaxParagraph>
	Theories of truth and the debate over them are a rather complicated matter not suitable for an introductory text. Instead, let’s briefly consider two ways of understanding <OpenstaxTerm>truth</OpenstaxTerm> in order to gain a general understanding of what truth is. <OpenstaxTerm>Aristotle</OpenstaxTerm> claimed that a true statement is one that says of something that <OpenstaxEm>it is what it is</OpenstaxEm> or that <OpenstaxEm>it is not what it is not</OpenstaxEm> (Aristotle 1989). A possible interpretation of Aristotle’s idea is that “A is B” is true if and only if A is B. Notice that this simply removes the quotations around the proposition. The idea is simple: the statement “Dogs are mammals” is true if dogs are mammals.
</OpenstaxParagraph>
<OpenstaxParagraph>
	Another way of understanding truth is as a correspondence between statements and the world. The <OpenstaxTerm>correspondence theory of truth</OpenstaxTerm> proposes that a statement is true if and only if that statement corresponds to some fact (David 2015). A fact is a state of affairs in the world—an arrangement of objects and properties in reality—so the statement “The dog is under the bed” is true if and only if there exists in the world a dog and a bed and the dog is related to the bed by being underneath it. The correspondence theory of truth makes truth a relation between statements and the world. If statements are appropriately related to the world—if they correspond to the world—then those statements can be said to be true.
</OpenstaxParagraph>

7.1.4 Truth

1 Introduction to Philosophy

1.1 What Is Philosophy?

1.1.1 Historical Origins of Philosophy

1.1.2 How It All Hangs Together

1.2 How Do Philosophers Arrive at Truth?

1.2.1 Sources of Evidence

1.2.2 Logic

1.2.3 Conceptual Analysis

1.2.4 Trade-offs

1.3 Socrates as a Paradigmatic Historical Philosopher

1.3.1 “The Life Which Is Unexamined Is Not Worth Living”

1.3.2 Human Wisdom Is Worth Little or Nothing

1.3.3 The Importance of Doing No Harm

1.4 An Overview of Contemporary Philosophy

1.4.1 What Can You Do with a Philosophy Major?

1.4.2 An Overview of Your Philosophy Textbook

2 Critical Thinking, Research, Reading, and Writing

2.1 The Brain Is an Inference Machine

2.1.1 The Brain’s Adaptive Ability to Plan Ahead

2.1.2 The Evolutionary Advantage of Shortcuts

2.2 Overcoming Cognitive Biases and Engaging in Critical Reflection

2.2.1 Critical Reflection and Metacognition

2.2.2 Cognitive Biases

2.3 Developing Good Habits of Mind

2.3.1 Strive for Objectivity

2.3.2 Adopt Epistemic Humility

2.4 Gathering Information, Evaluating Sources, and Understanding Evidence

2.4.1 Start with a Strong Foundation

2.4.2 The SIFT Method (Four Moves for Student Fact Checkers)

2.5 Reading Philosophy

2.5.1 Prepare to Read

2.5.2 Engaging with Philosophical Texts

2.5.3 Pre-reading

2.5.4 First Read

2.5.5 Close Read

2.6 Writing Philosophy Papers

2.6.1 Identify Claims

2.6.2 Collect Evidence and Build Your Case

2.6.3 Organize Your Paper

3 The Early History of Philosophy around the World

3.1 Indigenous Philosophy

3.1.1 Challenges in Researching Indigenous Philosophy

3.1.2 Indigenous African Philosophy

3.1.3 Indigenous North American Philosophical Thought

3.1.4 Mesoamerican Philosophy

3.2 Classical Indian Philosophy

3.2.1 The Vedic Tradition

3.2.2 Classical Indian Darshanas

3.3 Classical Chinese Philosophy

3.3.1 Early Chinese Philosophical Thought prior to Confucius

3.3.2 Confucianism

3.3.3 Daoism

3.3.4 Mohism

4 The Emergence of Classical Philosophy

4.1 Historiography and the History of Philosophy

4.1.1 Presentist Approach

4.1.2 Contextualist Approach

4.1.3 Hermeneutic Approach

4.2 Classical Philosophy

4.2.1 Egyptian Origins of Classical Philosophy

4.2.2 Ancient Greek Philosophy

4.2.3 The Presocratics

4.2.4 Socrates and Plato

4.2.5 Aristotle

4.2.6 Epicureans

4.2.7 Roman Philosophy

4.3 Jewish, Christian, and Islamic Philosophy

4.3.1 Defining Jewish, Christian, and Islamic Philosophy

4.3.2 Early Jewish Philosophy

4.3.3 Early Christian Philosophy

4.3.4 Islamic Philosophy

4.3.5 Late Medieval Philosophy in Christian Europe

4.3.6 Jewish Philosophers in the Christian and Islamic Worlds

4.3.7 The Rise of Reason in the Early Modern Era

5 Logic and Reasoning

5.1 Philosophical Methods for Discovering Truth

5.1.1 Dialectics and Philosophical Argumentation

5.1.2 The Use of Reason to Discover Truth

5.1.3 Testing Hypotheses

5.1.4 Laws of Logic

5.1.5 Normativity in Logic

5.2 Logical Statements

5.2.1 Conditionals

5.2.2 Universal Statements

5.3 Arguments

5.3.1 Getting to the Premises

5.3.2 The Difference between Truth and Logic

5.4 Types of Inferences

5.4.1 Deductive Reasoning

5.4.2 Inductive Inferences

5.4.3 Abductive Reasoning

5.5 Informal Fallacies

5.5.1 Fallacies of Relevance

5.5.2 Fallacies of Weak Induction

5.5.3 Fallacies of Unwarranted Assumption

5.5.4 Fallacies of Diversion

6 Metaphysics

6.1 Substance

6.1.1 Fundamentality: The One and the Many