Epistemology and Logic 21This view contends that we cannot know truth, it is unknowable.
Probably the most extreme Skeptic was a Greek named Gorgias.
Essentially his contention was, “There is nothing. If there were
something I wouldn’t be able to explain it to you. If I were able
to explain it to you, you wouldn’t be able to understand it.” For
our purposes, skepticism is an unacceptable view of the world.
If we were to accept skepticism as valid, this inquiry into the
great ideas would be foolish. And in a larger sense, we would
close all the books, shut all the schools, cease all study. To act
in accordance with the philosophy of skepticism is to act in
accordance with a philosophy which rejects the very basis for all
action. (This is not to say that we should not be skeptical, or
question, or challenge— the skepticism referred to here is the
philosophical contention that we cannot know.)
We will discuss briefly some of the theories about the nature
of truth and how we come to know it.
Idealism is a theory which contends that truth exists indepen
dent of man, as universal ideals. Those ideals are perceived by
the mind and are understood perfectly in the mind, and in the
mind only. Take for example, the concept of a circle. A circle
exists as a universal, a perfect one dimensional figure of three
hundred and sixty degrees, each point of which is equidistant
from the center. One might see an automobile tire and say,
“That’s a circle.” The idealist would contend that the tire is but
a poor imitation of a circle, a material manifestation of the idea
of a circle, but not a circle. A circle exists as an absolute (Plato
called these ideals, forms), to be known only by the mind, and
only the mind is capable of perceiving truth.
The realist sees truth as a reality which exists not simply in the
mind, but in the relationship between mind and matter. Take the
idea of a wall. The idealist would say that the cinder blocks piled
in a room, which will eventually be the wall, are nothing more
than a pile of cinder blocks. The mind of the mason conceives
the idea of the wall. The blocks become the means to his
realization of the idea. The realist, however, would contend that
the idea of a wall is simply that, an idea— a wall is an integral
combination of the idea and the blocks. Or as Aristotle would
say, “No form without matter, no matter without form.” Truth is
discoverable by the senses as well as the mind.
A theory called the correspondence theory o f truth is, in a