[Music] i feel amazing day everyone it's good to have you again welcome to another day of full amazing discoveries and learning but why don't we start by having a short recap of the previous lesson in the previous full amazing episode we learned about reflection a process that aids us in understanding what is going on around us using the holistic point of view we also learned about the many possible ways of understanding the dynamics of philosophical reflections what are these ways we could use the principles theories and findings presented by science the morsilian way as presented by the philosopher gabriel marcel plato's masterpiece the allegory of the cave and of course the moral theology i hope that you remembered all of that from our previous session and that you are now ready for more full amazing adventures i have been browsing the internet for a while and i am not sure if all these news articles are factual because there is a lot of fake news out there oh we think i must share this one are you sure you would want to share that how sure are you that it is in fake use well think before you click she's right since philosophy is the search for truth we must keep in mind that when we see things on the internet it is a must for us to always effect check every piece of information that we get which leads to the following questions how do we validate the information we get from the world around us how do we distinguish opinion from truth i can bring it to a place where we can all discover the nature and theories of truth oh it's you well that would be great what are you waiting for get yourselves ready for another full amazing discovery i am teacher joshua your full amazing teacher broadcaster i'm teacher joseph your goddess maestra and this is the fourth episode of the introduction to the philosophy of the human person [Music] welcome to the doors of truth a place where we can all discover the nature and theories of truth come on let's get inside [Music] wow it feels good to be here according to philosophy if you want to know the truth you have to use not emotions but thinking to think however is an act of choice that is not always done properly therefore we need guidance to straighten out our thoughts this is the room of epistemology epistemology comes from the greek term epistem which means knowledge and logos which means study of therefore epistemology is the study of knowledge according to the russian-american philosopher einrad epistemology is a science devoted to the discovery of the proper method of acquiring and validating knowledge the purpose of epistemology therefore is twofold first to show how we can acquire knowledge and second to validate if the knowledge we acquired is really knowledge how do we make sure that it is true since knowledge plays a central role in epistemology let us briefly describe its nature according to merriam-webster knowledge is the fact or condition of knowing something with familiarity gained through experience when you know something you understand its nature you identify what it is and it stays with you knowledge then is a retained form of awareness knowledge is a mental state that is knowledge exists in one's mind therefore and thinking things cannot know anything knowledge is a kind of belief if one has no beliefs about a particular matter one cannot have knowledge about it precisely hence knowledge require belief of course not all beliefs constitute knowledge belief is necessary but is not sufficient for knowledge we are all sometimes mistaken in what we believe in other words while some of our beliefs are true others are false as we try to acquire knowledge what we are doing is increasing our stock of true beliefs yes it is good to know that belief by itself is not sufficient for knowledge these will avoid us from becoming a victim of fake news which is all around us but how do we acquire knowledge in the first place we will learn about that as we enter the next door welcome to the room of knowledge acquisition to know is to know something and this something is what philosophers call reality existence and being existence is everything there is it includes everything we perceive and everything inside our heads existence is really all there is to know if one has no knowledge about it knowledge is impossible our first and only contact with reality is through our senses knowledge begins with perception at first the senses give us knowledge of things or entities later we become aware not only of things but certain aspects of things like qualities quantities relationships and even actions and these characteristics cannot be taken away from its entities red for example cannot be separated from objects like apples and strawberries as walking cannot be separated from person that walks and the like after we perceive things we begin to notice that some things are similar to others for example we see three individuals let's name them one pablo and pedro they might not have something in common at first glance but when we compare them to other entities say a dog we can say that they are different because they can speak and they do not bark and that difference highlights their similarities we therefore group them into one class which we call humans grouping them into a class we call humans is an example of concept and what is a concept according to the dictionary a concept is an abstract or generic idea generalized from particular instances next we use abstraction to narrow or widen our concepts feel amazing then after we assert or deny these concepts by coming up with a preposition yes so from our concept earlier we can now affirm that humans can speak and deny the human spark so how do we demonstrate these statements are true we now provide an argument an argument is a group of statements one or more of which are claimed to provide support for a reason to believe one or the other to clarify this definition let's use the same example that we had earlier we say that juan pablo and pedro can speak humans can speak therefore juan pablo and pedro are humans these arguments express a reasoning process and that's what we call inference aside from arguments did you know that there are other forms of inference that will help you know if the knowledge that you acquired is really knowledge let me guess are we going to learn that in the next door absolutely let's go welcome to the room of knowledge validation now we already know what we know and how we got to know it the next thing to do is validate whether what we know is true or not first ask yourself how did i come up with this disbelief by what steps you now have to retrace the steps that you took to acquire that knowledge do you still remember what we did earlier in the previous room let's see first we know that something exists and that's reality then we use our senses and that gives our perception after that we learn more things about it and it now becomes a concept in our mind then we affirm or deny the concept that we have which is what we call proposition lastly we provide or give support and reasons to believe in what we propose and that process of prisoning is called inference what a very sharp memory teacher joshua now to validate whether what we know is true or not we will use the very same steps that we use in acquiring knowledge but this time we will do the steps in reverse order in a process that we call reduction this is a good time to recall what the ancient philosopher heraclitus said knowledge acquisition is the way up well knowledge validation is the way down if we perform the process of production we will realize that all true knowledge rests ultimately on sense perception let's have an example let's use these three statements i am alive i have a body i can breathe you can only validate these statements if you observe yourself using your senses feel your body are you breathing feel your pulse is your heart beating observe your body is it moving these and the countless examples provided by your senses prove that you are alive great however not all statements can be validated directly by the census some ideas need proof validation is a multi-step process that ultimately rests on sense perception another way to determine if a statement is true is by a consensus mostly if the majority agrees that the statement is true then it is true but there are certain limitations to this approach because something does not become true just because a majority of people believe it that is right far too many times in history false ideas became popular and these phenomena have led to disaster for example the vast majority of germans during the time of adolf hitler believe the jews were racially inferior the nazis supported this false belief by using pseudobiological science this was obviously false and the result of the false consensus was the extermination of millions of jews in the many parts of your room and that is the reason we are saying that consensus has certain limitations yes consensus may be helpful but it is not always reliable well we still have another option to test whether a statement is true and it is by means of action for example you want to know if person is friendly what would you do well the best way to find out is to approach the person that's the action i would take to find out if a person is friendly or not feel amazing now you have learned already how to validate your knowledge to add more insights let us determine how to distinguish truth from opinion this door leads to the truth and opinion theater are we going to watch a movie it's for you to find out identifying truth can sometimes be tricky the reason is that there are times when we have an idea that we feel strongly about and we know deep down to be true sometimes this leads us to generalize that others believe it the same way that we do this is where opinion comes in but before we delve deeper into that i want you to prepare your pen and paper i would like you to watch the following news brought to us by ptb 4. then list down the statements that you will hear and group them as to whether they are truth or opinion roll vtr pinocchs [Music] bhattai puyanta is an international travel magazine saresota nas travelers or cnt 2020 reader's choice awards puesto did you jot down some statements now i will help you assess your answers through some characteristics of truth and opinion how by taking note of this acronyms cib or sib and c-o-b-i or kobe the first one is cib if the statement can be confirmed with other sources and is made independent of one's interpretation and preferences based on facts or reality then this statement is a truth on the other hand we have kobe if the statement cannot be confirmed and is open to interpretation based on emotions and inherently biased then this statement is an opinion did you group your statements correctly feel amazing now let us proceed to the last door of truth i guess you may still have questions now let's understand truth with these theories first we have the correspondence theory of truth the next one we have the coherence theory of truth and the last one is the pragmatist theory of truth now let us settle them one by one as we get into the last door let's go the basic idea of the correspondence theory is that what we believe or say is true if it corresponds to the way things actually are based on facts it argues with the idea that corresponds with reality is true while the idea which does not correspond with reality is false let's have some examples for example if i say the sky is blue then i look outside and see that it is indeed blue then my statement is true on the other hand if i say pig has wings then when i look at the pig and it does not have wings then my statement is false in general statements of beliefs propositions and ideas are capable of being true or false next we have the coherence theory and with that we are going with a statement given by austin klein he is a writer and a great contributor of articles about secular humanism and agnosticism forkline one might conclude that the statement is true only when the statement is tested as a part of a larger system of complex ideas consequently by using this method one can ascertain if the statement is true or false based on whether the statement coheres with the larger system or not for example if you pick up a ball and drop it accidentally the action cannot be simply explained by our belief in the law of gravity which can be verified but also be a host of other factors that may have something to do with the incident such as the accuracy of our visual perception lastly there is the pragmatic theory of truth which states that a belief or statement is true if it has useful application in the world if it does not then it is not true in addition we can know whether a belief or statement is true by examining the consequence of holding or accepting the statement or belief to be true for example there are some people who think that there is a ghost or vampires because they find it useful in explaining unusual phenomena and in dealing with fears so if we are going to use the word truth then we'll also define it as that which is the most useful to us all these theories represent the ideas of rationalist philosophers such as baruch espinoza guide pride wolham libnys george wilhelm freyrich hegel and the british philosopher bradley and they are useful in our quest to further understand what truth is and that's it i believe this marks the end of today's film amazing discovery this place taught and made us realize a lot of things first we'll learn about epistemology and the nature of knowledge second we learn how to acquire and validate knowledge then we learn how to distinguish truth from opinion and lastly we were introduced to different theories of truth for our next full amazing episode we will continue discovering more about the world of philosophy with teacher jossa i am so excited and i can't wait to be with you next week i am teacher joshua and i am teacher joseph we hope that you will be with me on our next few amazing discoveries learning and adventures [Music] [Music] [Music] you