As I stated earlier in Part 1, epistemology is the study of knowledge, or how we know what we know. Since the time of Plato and Aristotle, JTB (justified true belief) has been the standard understanding of knowledge. And even though JTB is not a sufficient condition for knowledge, JTB is a necessary condition for knowledge.
As branches of philosophy, both logic and epistemology rely heavily on the distinction between true and false. In Sophist Plato says, “A false belief will be a matter of believing things that are contrary to those which are.” In Metaphysics Aristotle more specifically says, “To say of what is that it is not, or of what is not that it is, is false, while to say of what is that it is, and what is not that it is not, is true.”
Logic is a way to think so we can come to correct conclusions by understanding implications and the mistakes people often make in thinking. Logic is also the study of the methods and principles used to distinguish good (correct/true) from bad (incorrect/false) reasoning. For example, there are three principles of logic.
- Principle of identity: for any statement A, A is identical to A.
(A is A)
- Principle of noncontradiction: for any A, it is not the case that both A and not A.
(A is not non-A)
- Principle of the excluded middle: for any A, A or not A.
(either A or non-A)
Likewise in epistemology, there are three theories which have been proposed regarding truth. They are 1) the correspondence theory of truth, 2) the coherence theory of truth, and 3) the pragmatic theory of truth. It is worth noting that the correspondence theory of truth aligns with the positions of both Plato and Aristotle quoted above, and also remains the dominant position throughout most of philosophical history.
- The correspondence theory of truth states that a belief is true if and only if that belief corresponds to the facts.
- The coherence theory of truth states that a proposition is true if and only if that proposition coheres with the other propositions that one believes.
- The pragmatic theory of truth states that a proposition is true if and only if it is useful to believe that proposition.
For more information, please see chapter four “What is Truth, and How Do We Find It?” in How Do We Know? An Introduction to Epistemology by James Dew and Mark Foreman.
~ Boethius ~