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Submitted by pink01 on May 20, 2008
Category: Philosophy
Words: 1252 | Pages: 6
Views: 65
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Introduction
Ontology has been of crucial human interest for thousands of years. Movies, such as Matrix and series like the X-Files, puzzle people with confusion about the world they experience in daily life. By inducing them to question what they take for granted as reality. Claiming to know the ultimate truth is a very courageous statement that has to be proven. Does a statement like “It’s the truth and nothing but the truth” (Klamer,2006) really hold or is science more about the quest for the truth and coming as close to it as feasible?
The essay at hand will briefly elaborate on whether one should focus on the ultimate truth in a science like economics or whether we merely have to understand and investigate truth as a revelation of a picture that helps us to understand how the world works and finally approaches ultimate truth.
Truth and the role of epistemology
Often, two individuals in conversation with each other, experience a totally different subjective truth regarding their perceived reality. Arguably, we may consider one subjective version trustworthier than the other or consider the truth to be somewhere in between, as a relativist perspective would suggest. Nevertheless, we enter a sphere of confusion in daily life, as well as in science, and experience a strong desire for proof. In order to come close to the truth, there are several epistemological approaches. A realist bases his ground on logical consistency. Descartes, a pure rationalist, considered reason as the key to everything (Klamer, 2006). He defined universal truth in a geometric fashion. Leibniz explained universal truth mathematically and his basis served as a common ground for hard-nosed scientists. The Vienna circle proclaimed a hypothetic deductive approach towards scientific truth, whereas according to Rorty, scientific truth is a construction, which is in line with a relativist, post modern view that regards truth as “all opinion”...
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