Category: Truth

Explain:

From the beginning of his essay, “Now the blindness in human beings, of which this discourse will treat, is the blindness with which we all are afflicted in regard to the feelings of creatures and people different from ourselves”(WJ). William James is making the argument that we all have a blindness to the truth, and that blindness is all depending on how much the truth really affects us as a person. To go more in dept, giving the example of racial discrimination.

A lot, and when I say a lot I mean most, caucasian people in the world owned a slave or two. And most knew that it is wrong to treat a human being that is built like you just a different color, the way the treated them. Slaves were treated like objects and punished when they didn’t fulfill their potential. And for the people who knew that this was wrong, didn’t seem to pay it no mind. They had that blindness that William James describes. It didn’t affect them in a negative way to make them want to change. As long as you are in your higher up you didn’t see a problem with the disrimination of others.

James suggests that we “do not be blind to our own blindness”. He basically wants us to recognize everything that’s going on, and then recognize how we are blind to the things that don’t affect us. He wants us to take what we see and instead of pushing it to the side, we should use it to change the lives of others. Because after all, we are all living in the same nation, why not make it the best nation it can be. Be humble.

Apply:

I think William James would definitely agree with some of the points that Roosevelt said in his speech “The Strenuous Life”. Both of their works can be compared with the same views multiple times. I think James would agree that in order for people to be successful you have to put in the effort so you can live the life you want to have. He would agree with that because he wanted others to put in the work to help the country and forever end the blindness that we were all built with. But, William James might also disagree with Roosevelt’s speech because Roosevelt was also trying to develop imperialism in America as well as support a better and stronger military presence in the world.

James would criticize the fact that every American has to work toward greatness every day of their lives. He would also criticize that people only need to worry about themselves, yes people need to lose the blindness that we all have, but in order to lose that blindness, we have to focus on what’s going on around us.

Evaluate:

I believe that William James is right in this argument. In order to create a better world for the following generation and even the generations alive now, we must focus on the negative that is going on around us and direct our attention to everyday issues that we choose to ignore because they don’t affect us directly in the moment.

A critic might argue that change starts within. I agree but the only way you can really understand change is to watch how it affects others and changes things and people for the better.

I believe that William James kind of had the same concept that John Winthrop had in his “A Modell of Christian Charity”. They both want overall success for the country in the time period they are living in. They both believe the answer to success is to think outside of ourselves and help on another, even if that means putting aside our personal vendettas.

What is the truth? Is there an adequate concept to define the truth? Many would be tempted to say that the truth is what corresponds to the facts, but perhaps doesn’t this depend on the level of knowledge of people, the moment, the environment, and even religion? How long was it true that the earth was flat? Joseph Goebbels said that a lie properly repeated a thousand times becomes a truth. So, is the truth changing?

The truth can refer to a proposition or a reality. A proposition is true when it is not false and reality is true when it is not apparent, illusory, unreal, or non-existent. But what does this mean? Initially, the first philosophers sought truth against falsehood, illusion, and appearance. In this case, the truth and reality were identical, and reality was considered identical to what it is. But throughout history and more towards contemporary philosophy, this changed. Philosophers like Martin Heidegger, A.J. Ayer, and William James formulated theories that presented different definitions of truth. The objective of this essay is to analyze the theories of these three philosophers to determine which of them presents a better description of the truth.

The truth for Martin Heidegger does not mean, in the traditional way, ‘veritas.’ That traditional truth that is stated as the conformity of the proposition with the thing is totally rejected. Heidegger argues that for us to access that truth, there must be (and there is) a pre-opening to the entity; this means that there is a set of pre-knowledge and/or prejudices. The concept in which Heidegger fixes his interest is in the Greek term “Alethia”. This term refers to the truth being equated with revelation, concealment, or more specific, ‘with the state of not being hidden.’ Heidegger, in his work of Being and Time, introduced this term in the existential analysis of Dasein (human condition), in which he makes the distinction between a properly inauthentic existence as opposed to an authentic existence. It is there, where Heidegger causes the truth to lose its privative character and is presented later as a rectitude of the statement.

On the other hand, A. J. Ayer in Logical Positivism presents the Principle of Verifiability. This principle aims to be a norm to distinguish meaningful propositions from those that tell us nothing or are simply absurd. For Ayer, a sentence makes sense, if whoever says it can verify its statement. To explain its principle, Ayer makes a first distinction within the criteria of verifiability by differentiating between practical verifiability and verifiability in principle. For him, if a proposition can provide the real observations that determine its truth or falsehood, that proposition is verifiable in practice. While, if it is known what possible observations would decide on the truth or falsity of a given proposition, the proposition is verifiable in principle. The principle of verifiability can be weak or strong depending on whether the conclusion can be established by experience or not. However, according to Ayer, all propositions that have factual content are empirical hypotheses, whose function is to provide a standard for the anticipation of an experience.

Finally, William James, one of the pioneers of pragmatism, considers that truth is not an inherent and immutable property of the idea, but that it is an occurrence in the idea according to its verifiability. In this sense, the verifiability for James consists of a pleasant feeling of harmony and progress in the succession of ideas and facts. Sequentially, having such ideas, each of them follows another and adapts to each event of the experienced reality. In turn, these true ideas fulfill a fundamental function: being useful tools for the individual, so that he/she can use them to guide himself/herself. James defended a humanistic and practical conception of the truth, rooted in human experience and indexed in the available evidence. To explain his argument, James distinguished between two ways of knowing things: intuitively or through an external chain of physical or mental intermediaries that connect thought and thing. The version of William James is summarized in that the “true” is only the resource in our way of thinking, just as the “right” is only the resource in the way we behave. By this, James meant that truth is a quality whose value is confirmed by its effectiveness in applying concepts to actual practice.

In short, it can be said that the truth is then for a man to discover in himself what he thinks things are. Although the three philosophers present elements that could be valid in certain circumstances, in my opinion, William James is the one who does it more accurately. Heidegger and Ayer use the criteria of existence and verifiability as key elements of the truth. The Apostle Thomas would have described it as “see to believe” (John 20: 24-29). For Heidegger, the truth is the adaptation of the intellect with the thing, it is the discovery, the element of existence, which occurs in the phenomenon of being in the world that is proper to the existence, the revelation of existence. On the other hand, Ayer, with its principle of verifiability, argues that a sentence makes sense, if whoever says it can verify its statement. This criterion seems to present the truth as an isolated element. In that sense, the version of William James is more accurate. He presents ‘truth’ as a resource in our thinking, just as ‘right’ is just the resource in our way of behaving. James shows how truth can evolve, by associating it with a succession of events: ideas that follow each other. It even admits that it will be indexed to the available evidence, presiding, if necessary, the verification criteria. This harmonizes it with the idea of ​​progress.