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1.1 Existence of Truth: EpistemologyVersion 1.4 September 2019                                       (Previous Version) These are the questions we ask in the introduction (Section 0.1.6 – paragraph 1): What is the truth? It is difficult to know what really is true. Some say there is no absolute truth. Is there such a thing? Is everything relative?  Can one thing be true for you and not be true for me? Is there some ‘higher truth’ that lies beyond the merely rational? Do we have to ignore emotions to get to the truth? Do faith and reason apply to totally separate domains, as some people say? Can we be totally rational and ignore emotions and feelings? Are our beliefs caused by our genes and how we grew up? Can we arrive at, and agree on, at least some approximation of the truth? How do we know what is NOT true? How can we tell whether science or history is right, or which religion to believe, or which political leaders to follow? Can we be sure about anything? The study of how we know what we know is called epistemology. We are not in these pages concerned with an academic study of the whole field and its history. We simply want to know how people now can work out what is true and why. Unfortunately it's not simple at all. We need to work it out so that we can decide what to do, in our day to day life, and in the big decisions of life. We look at how we know what we know under the following topic headings: (We look at linguistics in the next Chapter – 1.2 – because it relates to how we see and discuss reality, to work out what is in fact true rather than whether truth is possible and what it is).
After we have gone through these topics, we conclude that it is reasonable to seek the truth. This is the current summary of our conclusions in epistemology: We all face a dilemma that our beliefs arise due to causality or out of chaos, so they are not necessarily true, yet we do choose to seek the truth, and in so doing we must accept the uncertainty, that our choice is a leap of faith, and hence we must allow for diversity and respect others, but we must reason about faith and have faith in reason. Because we choose to do this, and our values reflect our choices, we say we value truth. Because we choose to acknowledge the uncertainty of this core choice we value diversity. The following pages explain how we justify these conclusions.
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