The Truth Is out There

The Truth Is Out There

Morality includes the study of knowledge, or Epistemology. There are two ways to know things. You can know from experience or from testimony. How do you know China exists? You know because you've been there (experience) or because somebody who has been there told you about it (testimony). In the fable for this chapter Bernie the duck did not know his identity. He found out that he was a duck because the owl told him. He found out through testimony. He was not an ostrich because he couldn't put his head underground and he wasn't an owl because he couldn't jump up into the tree. One is able to know through experience or testimony.

Chapter one also dealt with truth. If a tree falls and nobody hears it, that doesn't mean it didn't make a sound. Things are what they are even if we may not realize it right then or have categorized it in the wrong way. Just because the sparrow thought Bernie was an ostrich doesn't make him an ostrich. He was a duck even if neither he nor the sparrow realized it then. The truth is out there whether we have discovered it or not. In Plato's story he told of the people in the cave that only saw shadows and nothing else. When one man came out he was brought upon the truth. When he tried to tell the others about the truth but they would not believe him because the shadows were all that they knew. This same example can be used in science. Many years ago people thought that the world was flat. But as we now know the world is round. Many people were reluctant to believe that it was round. Even though people thought the Earth was flat, it was still round. The truth is never changing.

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