CHAPTER SEVEN

7. What Are The Premises of Truth?

Going back to the roots of the Western philosophic tradition, the attempt to study the world, to learn, to become educated, is inseparable from the concept of truth.

The very idea of education assumes that the human mind is capable of discovering and knowing truth about the world in which human beings live, including truths about human beings themselves.

The search for truth begins with three premises that provide the foundation for all learning and knowledge:

1.The first premise is the common experience that human beings find themselves in a world, a universe, a cosmos, that they did not create, and which they do not control, but of which they are part.
2.The second premise is that there is an order, or a regularity, to the cosmos of which human beings are part, evidenced by such common observations as the sun always rising in the East and setting in the West, or the fact that dogs always give birth to puppies, while human beings always give birth to babies, and there is never a mix up.
3.The third premise is that reason is natural; human beings are rational by nature. Reason is a function of the human mind, and the mind can freely observe, think, and discover truths about the universe in which human beings live. Human beings experience the freedom of their own mind to contemplate evidence, intellectually, and judge for themselves what others assume to be true. Each human mind has the capacity to decide what s more (or less) likely to be true.

These three premises are the beginning point of philosophy, of all education. If these premises were untrue, the attempt to discover truth, to learn, and to become educated would be pointless and impossible.

This is a very general sketch of classical Western philosophy. We should emphasize that while the three premises above are features of the West, or Western civilization, those who have taught these ideas never understood the premises to be limited to Western people.

They assumed ALL human beings, everywhere, are capable of discovering and knowing truth because all human beings live in the same natural universe and all human beings possess a free, thinking, rational mind.

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