Ontology and Epistemology, Knowledge - Essay Example

?Ontology and Epistemology Introduction What is reality? If reality is whatever we see, hear, feel, taste, and smell constitutes reality, then is reality merely a collection of data perceived through our senses? What is real? What is true? Is what is true the same or different from what we believe to be true? If it is, or is not, how do we know? In philosophy, there are many ways to study the different points of knowledge from a human perspective. Reality is full of wonders and questions begging to be answered. In this essay, we will talk about two important ways of studying a phenomenon in reality. We will talk about ontology and its direct, objective approach to studying an entity, and epistemology, with its more intrinsic approach concerning knowledge, truth, belief, and justification. Ontology Ontology is the study of kinds of things that exist and its nature of being (“Ontology”). It is said that everything that has a name exists. Every noun points to an actual entity. Ontology is the study about that entity. Whether the concept is concrete such as a microorganism, or abstract such as resilience, the study of that entity as something that exists is the ontological approach. It is generally a descriptive and categorical way of thinking that examines the nuts and bolts of an existing entity, categorizing and differentiating it from other entities. I am holding a flower. The flower I am holding is a rose. The thorns are pointy and can pierce my skin. These are all ontological notions. It is the recognition and classification of an entity that exists and its constituent parts. Epistemology Epistemology on the other hand is the study of knowledge. It questions what a person knows, how he knows what he knows, and how much a person can know about something. Some philosophers believe that knowledge is a True Belief that has Justification. So the three components of knowledge are that it should be true, the person with the knowledge must believe it is true, and there should be proof or justification that it is true (Sahakian and Sahakian). If epistemology is about knowledge, this is how they look at the situation: I KNOW it is a flower because all flowers have a stem, a stalk, leaves and a bunch of petals on the tip. This is true because it is consistent with other flowers who also have the same characteristics. I KNOW it is in my hand because I can feel it and see it in my hand. This is true under the correspondence theory of truth and Naive Realism. I KNOW it is a rose because I was taught by my teacher that this is what a rose looks like. This is true under the criteria of authority. I KNOW that the thorns can pierce my skin because pointy objects can pierce my skin. This is true under Consensus gentium. All these things are considered knowledge because I believe that they are as they are, and my beliefs are proven to be true because the justification satisfies the criteria of truth. Satisfying the criteria of truth is needed to justify a proposition. There are many criteria for truth, some of which are valid, and others are not. These criteria are all valid or invalid to certain extents. Truth The criteria for truth consist of Authority which states that a proposal is true as long as a qualified individual says it is. This criterion is not very reliable since different qualified individuals can have opposing views toward a single topic. Coherence is the criterion in which a proposal is true as long as the facts are well explained and are reconciled to support that proposal. This criterion could be the most effective test of truth but is limited by the person’s ability to gather all the relevant facts. Consensus gentium is a general truth accepted by all of mankind. An example is the existence of gravity; consistency can be either mere or strict. Mere consistency makes a proposition true as long as two correct statements don’t contradict. Strict consistency needs a prior true statement to validate the proposed true statement; correspondence makes a proposition true if the proposition corresponds with the object; custom denotes that whatever is popular is true; emotions uses feeling to determine judgment with or without facts; instinct argues that the proponent for every instinct has a referent in reality; intuition is a “gut feeling” on the truth of something; majority rule uses statistics to determine if a proposal is true or not wherein the verdict rests on the most number of people; naive realism relies on the senses, saying that only those that are perceived by the senses is true; pragmatism relies on tried and true notions, deeming them to be true; revelation is a truth revealed from an assumed source; time posits that truth can be revealed over time; tradition is similar to custom but has generations of custom to support a truth rather than what is customary in the present (Sahakian and Sahakian). These criteria for truth have different levels of acceptance in different contexts, and some are more reliable than the others depending on what information you have to work with. If there is a lack of evidence or information, people tend to use unreliable criteria to establish a “truth” (Sahakian and Sahakian) Belief Belief, on the other hand, is simpler. It is what can potentially be knowledge if it is found to be true and justified. What a person believes is not necessarily a truth but belief alone is not considered as knowledge. People believe something in the hopes that it would explain phenomena that happen in their everyday life. Beliefs are proposed truths to be subjected to justification that are used to answer questions about reality. Belief in God as an Example In the initial part of the essay, we used a simple example of a rose in the hand to demonstrate epistemology and ontology. To demonstrate further, in addition to applying truth, belief and justification as part of epistemology, let’s tackle one of the greater debates in human history: the existence of God. Ontologically speaking, God is a superior being that may or may not be omnipresent, omniscient, and immortal. He causes the phenomena around us, and he has the power to affect our lives. “He created the world and everything in it” (John 1:3, qtd. in Goshen Christian Church). He judges the people, and he gave us free will. Epistemologically speaking, saying God exists can be considered a belief. I believe God exists because there been no justification or truth presented yet. Now, to make the belief of God’s existence knowledge, let us try to justify it with the criteria of truth. Authority - The church, the largest governing body over Christianity says God is real. Considering that they spent centuries of their time studying the existence of God and have kept a vast store of knowledge pointing to God’s existence, they can be called authority figures on that matter. However, scientists, particularly physicists, spend their careers researching, studying, and trying to find a relatively more concrete explanation for phenomena based on research and logic. These people have made great advances and have disproved a lot of religious dogma over the years. They can also be called authorities by virtue of their careers focusing on explaining phenomena through scientific methods. What we see here is the weakness of Authority as a criterion for truth. This is when two authorities oppose each other’s opinions, leading to a dispute as to what is true. This then shows that authority is not a good criterion for truth on the existence of God. Coherence - Throughout human history, people have been trying to gather as many facts as they can to explain phenomena. One of the explanations is the existence of a powerful deity. Conflicting information between religion and science shows that as of the present, there are not enough facts to support the truth under the coherence criterion. This makes coherence a poor criterion for finding out the truth. Consensus Gentium - The opinion of the existence of God is highly disputed, rendering the truth by virtue of consensus gentium implausible. To establish a truth by consensus gentium would need everyone to agree to that truth. Even then, that notion has a chance of turning out to be wrong like when people used to believe the world was flat. Consistency (mere) - Mere consistency can justify the existence of God, especially in unexplainable situations. For example, two doctors are treating a disease with two different treatments. Doctor A uses treatment X and finds no change, and Doctor B uses treatment Y and finds no improvement. Miraculously, the disease is cured without the help of the doctors; therefore, God must have healed the disease, indicating God’s existence. The problem with this is that mere consistency disregards other unthought-of or unspoken possibilities. Consistency (strict) - Strict consistency cannot prove God exists because there is no infallible prior truth that could lead to the conclusion that God exists. The truth of a belief under strict consistency is only as truthful as the prior statement that defends it. If a person says “I prayed to God, and my disease was healed; that means God is real”; he is using strict consistency to defend his claim under the prior statement that he prayed and his prayers caused his disease to be lifted. This prior statement is a perceived truth based on poor coherence. There is not enough facts to establish that his prayer and his prayer alone was the cause for his cure. The infallibility of the prior statement is consistent with the infallibility of the statement that God is real. Correspondence - Proving that God exists with using correspondence is also difficult since there is no infallible evidence that God is real. This is not enough solid evidence about His existence to defend against conflicting scientific explanations of how things occur. Custom - According to custom in a religious community, God exists, but it is not very convincing since custom offers no explanation as to the origin of God or its validity. Custom has never been a good indicator for truth since it is not based on fact, but based on what is “usually” done. Emotions - In moments of high emotion or rhapsody, people tend to look towards a deity, but that doesn’t mean that they exist. It just means that they believe in them. Instinct - It is believed that it is part of our instincts to believe in a superior deity. During times of uncertainty, humans have the tendency to look up to a higher power, and this instinct validates the existence of God. The problem is, instinct is difficult to define and cannot be a reliable test for truth, so the existence of God is still questionable. Intuition - Intuition differs between people. The concept of God might have emerged as an intuition, but it still needs other criteria of truth to verify. Majority Rule - This is a smaller scale of consensus gentium with the same pitfalls. It is a poor determinant of truth about God. Naive Realism - This criterion refutes God because he cannot be directly perceived by the human senses. People cannot see God, cannot feel God, cannot hear God, and cannot smell God directly to validate his existence. Pragmatism - This is one of the ways that led to the belief of God to persist for so long. People believed in God in ancient times, and that belief has fulfilled the purpose of being an answer to people’s unanswered questions; thus, they stuck with it. That is until science proves otherwise. Revelation - This is a truth revealed by God or some other deity. Experiencing one would validate the existence of God, but it is difficult to use as a standard of truth beyond those people who actually experienced the revelation. Time - This is another reason why religion exists to its current extent these days. For centuries, religions have been preaching dogma that has been difficult to refute. By virtue of the time criteria, the fact that very few erroneous beliefs and errors were found would validate its truth. Tradition - Related to custom and time, tradition also strengthens the hold of religion over society. Activities and beliefs we’ve held for centuries continue to be done out of tradition, though most of them probably are not true. Discussion We see here that belief can either be true or untrue, but needs justification for it to become knowledge. Considering the truth, it is better to say I believe in God and leave it at that. There is nothing wrong to believe, but it is another matter to treat belief as knowledge when it lacks the truth. Belief is powerful in that it can change how a person perceives the world. People need to believe in some things even without truth to be able to function fully. People need to believe in something, so that they can seek the truth, and in finding it, generate knowledge. The problem lies in people who mistake belief for knowledge and try to spread it to the world. In most places, they will find people who will question them. This is good because even though questions can seem obnoxious, annoying, and insulting, it is in essence a way of finding the truth. The more questions are asked, the more truth is revealed until the belief that was spread under the guise of supposed knowledge becomes valuable and true knowledge that can be used to benefit mankind. In other places, the supposed truth will be accepted without question. Here, it will grow and mislead, making it harder to disprove as it spreads to more and more people, until it gets so big that the belief can now cloud the truth. This is where knowledge slows down and stops growing. Some believers of these unverified claims can be so adamant in what they believe that they would take a contradicting belief personally, leading to conflict, and sometimes war. This is in essence what happens during the many wars in history. Leaders find a different way of doing things in another place, and they feel the need to correct it. Their corrections are met with resistance, until it escalates into aggression and war. Personally, Beliefs should be kept with an open mind. If people were to truly understand the meaning of belief and truth according to philosophy, they would know the difference between belief and knowledge, knowing that an open mind is essential for beliefs to become knowledge. It would also help to keep it in mind when another person talks about his beliefs and his knowledge because even if it contradicts your own, you will be able to ask the right questions and arrive at clear conclusions as to where both of you stand without the need for conflict. Conclusion So, Belief is essential to generate knowledge, but belief alone can hinder it. Truth needs to be found in belief for it to be considered knowledge. This is epistemology. It tries to find out HOW a person knows things, and why he has come to that conclusion. On the other hand, ontology is concerned with the flesh of the subject. It does not ask why or how it exists, but it finds knowledge in what it is, what it is made of, and what it can do, categorizing it with things that are similar and apart from other things that are different. Works Cited Goshen Christian Church. n.d. Web. 17 Oct. 2012. . “Ontology.” Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. n.d. Web. 17 Oct. 2012. . Sahakian, William, and Mabel Sahakian. Ideas of the Great Philosophers. New York, NY: Barnes & Noble, 1993. Print. Read More