A famous philosopher, Rene Descartes, once stated, "I am,
[therefore] I exist." This
statement holds the only truth found for certain
in our "natural" experience that, as
conscious beings, we exist. Whether we
are our own creators, a creation, or the object of
evolution, just as long
as we believe that we think, we are proved to exist. Thinking about
our
thoughts is an automatic validation of our self-consciousness. Descartes claims,
"But
certainly I should exist, if I were to persuade my self of something."
And so, I should
conclude that our existence is a truth, and may be the only
truth, that we should find its
certainty.
From the "natural" experiences
of our being, we hold beliefs that we find are our personal
truths. From
these experiences, we have learned to understand life with reason and logic;
we have established our idea of reality; and we believe that true
perceptions are what we
sense and see. But it is our sense of reason and
logic, our idea of reality, and our
perceptions, that may likely to be very
wrong. Subjectiveness, or personal belief, is almost
always, liable for
self-contradiction. Besides the established truth that we exist, there are
no other truths that are certain, for the fact that subjective truth may be
easily refuted.
Every person possesses his or her own truth that may be
contradicting to another person’s
belief. A truth, or one that is true for
all, cannot by achieved because of the constant
motion of circumstances of
who said it, to whom, when, where, why, and how it was said.
What one person
may believe a dog is a man’s best friend, another may believe that a dogs
is
a man’s worse enemy. What one may believe is a pencil, to another is not a
pencil, but
a hair pin. Where one may believe that a bottle is an
instrument, one may believe is a toy,
where another may believe is a
beverage container. Where one will understand the moving
vehicle "car," one
might understand "car" as a tree. Our perception of what is true
depends on
our own experiences, and how something becomes true for us. Many
circumstances are necessary to derive at one’s truth, whether it is an idea,
object, or
language. All perception, besides the perception of existence, is
uncertain of being true for
all individuals.
Every thought, besides the
idea that we think, has the possibility that it may be proven
wrong. The
author of the article, Knowledge Regained, Norman Malcolm, states that, "any
empirical proposition whatever could be refuted by future experience - that
is, it could turn
out to be false." An example could be the early idea of
the earth being flat and not the
current perception of the earth being
round. History tells us that at one time, the
perception of the earth was
thought to be flat. This notion was an established truth to
many because of
the sight and sense that people perceived about the earth’s crust. At one
point, to accept the newer truth that the earth is round, meant that, what
one believed was
true, really wasn’t. And, what if, at some point in the
future, we were told by a better
educated group of observers that the earth
is not round, but a new shape we’ve never
even perceived before? Would we
agree to the scientists’ observation that they have,
themselves, agreed to
this more accurate shape of the earth?. We would probably agree to
change
our knowledge of truth to the observations of experts. This is an example that,
what we may have once believed to be the absolute truth, may be proven wrong
at any
time. And what we actually know, may not be the truth after all.
Truth may also be refuted through the identified appearance or sense of an
object. A
great modern philosopher, Bertrand Russell’s, idea of appearance
and reality explains that
perception of a table and its distribution of
colors, shape, and sense, vary with each point
of view. Commenting on the
distribution of color, Russell states that, "It follows that if
several
people are looking at the table at the same moment, no two of them will see
exactly the same distribution of colours, because no two can see it from
exactly the same
point of view, and any change in the point of view makes
some change in the way the light
is reflected." What one person sees the
table as green, one might see as red at another
viewpoint. And what might
seem to have color is actually colorless in the dark. What one
might
perceive as being rectangle, may look oval in another view. What may sense the
table to be hard by a touch of the fingertips, may be soft by the touch of
the cheek.
Determining hardness of the table depends on pressure applied and
judge of the sensation.
No assumptions can be absolutely true because there
is no determining factor in choosing
the right angle to look at or sense the
table. There are no determining factors in which
angle or measurement is
better to judge than the other in sense of color, shape, and feel of
an
object. Every object is determined self-contradicting which can be refuted by
questioning its perception and even the existence for its use.
Our
experiences from our "natural" existence gives us a bias of all that is true,
which is
self-contradicting. The ideas and objects that we encounter are
determined true by
personal evaluation in the relationships of those ideas
and objects in connection with our
being. The relationship of the ideas and
objects in connection with another person’s life
may be contradicting to my
own beliefs. "I am, [therefore] I exist," may be the only
statement with any
validity of our certainty. We cannot test the validity of our reality,
reason, logic, and perception in relation to all individuals, but we can
test to the validity of
our existence by thinking, therefore, being.
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