The Passion for Truth

We finished off class yesterday by going over the list of intellectual virtues listed in the Philosophy Toolkit handout. Dr.J brought up the question of which virtues are the most important; I felt this was a very important question. The first idea that came to my head was the importance of the first virtue listed which is the passion for truth. I stated my opinion about the importance of this virtue during the class period, but I feel that I could expand on this idea greatly.

Each of the different virtues helps prove the importance of the passion for truth. Critical thinking is an important part of Philosophy because it is a process involved in almost all parts of Philosophy. The interesting idea about critical thinking is that it is difficult to come up with an example of critical thinking that does not relate to the passion for truth. Anytime a person uses critical thinking, either they are on the search for truth, or they need to have an idea of what truth is in order to use accurate thinking. Critical thinking would not be important if no one cared about truth because the process of critical thinking would not accomplish anything without a basis of what is true. Furthermore, even if we were not completely sure what is true, we could still use critical thinking, but we still would need to know what we think is true; without a passion for truth, we would not care enough to have a basis of what we think is true.

The ideas that prove the importance of the passion for truth in the critical thinking example remain very similar throughout all of the other virtues; each virtue remains similar because they all depend heavily on the passion for truth. Judgment is an obvious example of the importance of the passion for truth because it is difficult to have a capacity to make useful distinctions when the truth is not important. It does not seem possible for someone to make useful distinctions when they do not care about what is true because how could they even know what is useful and what is not.

The rest of the virtues listed seem to show the importance of the passion for truth because they all relate to a person’s views and opinions; this is because it seems difficult to have views without a passion for truth. A person could not have views that were important to them if they did not care whether their views were true or not. In addition, deciding between two different views seems impossible because if you do not know which view is true, both views seem to be the same. The passion for truth seems to be the only virtue on the list that can exist without all of the other virtues; therefore, the passion for truth is the most important intellectual virtue because all of the other virtues depend on it.

Can we know what a useful distinction is without a passion for truth? And, Can the passion for truth exist without any of the other intellectual virtues?

In response to Nicole Proulx’s Post

It seemed that Nicole was wondering if we could even know what truth is from using the two truth theories. I believe there is only one way to treat this question, and this strategy relates to something that Dr.J said during class. Dr.J brought up the idea of science because he was talking about whether we can believe anything; he made the comment that at some point we have to believe what exists in our world, and to stop trying to doubt everything. I agree with this idea because we could doubt everything as being real, but that strategy would not be very helpful.

Nicole made the point about how we assume people who hallucinate are crazy, but we may not know who is really hallucinating; I do not find this type of questioning to be useful because we have nothing to compare our world with. No matter how many questions we ask, we can only try to come up with the answers that our world provides. If we were living in a dream world, it would not matter if we doubted that we were in the world, we could not prove what the real world was like.

The other main reason I feel we should not doubt the truth that corresponds with the world is the Coherence Theory of Truth. I feel that this theory has too many issues to be taking seriously as a valuable theory. If you look into the Coherence Theory, it is very similar to the Correspondence Theory. The Coherence Theory attempts to be different by not using a beliefs relation to the world to find truth, but instead it uses other beliefs. Besides the obvious problem of not knowing if these other beliefs are even true themselves, there seems to be one major issue; it is impossible to avoid using correspondence with the world to find truth because the only ideas that we know of come from our world. The Coherence Theory of Truth seems like another false attempt at trying to disprove what we know in this world, only by using evidence that this world provides.

I do not feel there is any way to confirm that what this world shows us is real; we cannot confirm nor deny something that comes from this world, when the only evidence we can gather comes from the same world. We can confirm something as truth by using its relation to the world, but this is something that everyone already knows. I think that it is good to question things about our existence, but completely doubting what this world determines as truth is a mistake.

Even though I feel confident about the Correspondence Theory’s purpose in all of this, the Coherence Theory still feels confusing. It seems like the Coherence theory does not help determine truth because it finds beliefs are truthful only by using other beliefs, all of which come from the same world used in The Correspondence Theory.

Is the Coherence Theory of Truth a pointless attempt at denying the Correspondence Theory, or should it be considered a useful theory of truth?
And, Can the Coherence Theory of Truth be used without someway leading back to the Correspondence Theory?