TOK Sample Essay- Somiran

"Truth is that to which the community ultimately settles down" (Charles Peirce). Analyse and evaluate this claim.
Truth is often very closely associated with beliefs. Each person's beliefs are influenced by a number of environmental factors. The family structure, social and religious ideas and even cultural background plays an important part in defining an individual's belief. All these factors which influence our beliefs, in a collective form, can be called “community”. The truth, as we know it today, is nothing but something we are comfortable with. Something which seems to easily fit with the rest of our beliefs (Coherence truth test) is thought to be true by a majority of us. This general pattern of long-standing beliefs being accepted as the truth has greatly changed the way we perceive things to be. Often times, only because we so strongly believe in a particular idea, we refuse to be open minded to any answer other than ours. It is possible that we know is not true at all, yet since it is the easiest way of knowing things, we feel good about it. This brings us to the questions about the ways of knowing and their limitations. The truth is not evident to us in many cases and factors such as perception, emotion and language form obstacles in our way of attaining the truth. Emotion stops us from seeing a situation objectively and perception shows us what we want to see, not what actually is. Thus truth, in its true form, becomes elusive.
We often see that what a "community ultimately settles down to" is accepted as the truth. This is a problem encountered in the way of knowing related to the social sciences. Various assumptions are made under which conditions are studied (in subjects like psychology and economics). The so called "truth" that we obtain from these studies is thought to be universally acceptable and people forget the assumptions that were laid down before drawing any conclusions. However, it is the idea which gets most readily acknowledged by society which finally contributes to the truth.
In the natural sciences as well, various things which the community has been accustomed to has been thought to be true and often used as the foundation for further analysis and evaluation. The atomic model of chemistry which consists of a nucleus in the centre containing nucleons and being orbited by electrons is a hypothesis. No scientist has seen an atom till today yet the atomic model was created and is used as the basis for all the studies pertaining to atomic bonding, nuclear physics and nanotechnology. Thus the community, over a period of time, has ‘grown’ into this system of knowledge. It is completely coherent with all other theories in chemistry and thus, practically speaking, there is no reason to change this. This gives us an examples of how what the community believes to be true may actual be more beneficial to us than the actual truth itself. What if we were to discover the non existence of nucleons and presence of something totally different? What if these findings could not be generalised into a body of knowledge? Thus, accepting the current atomic model (which may not be true) is convenient.
However, there are cases where the morphing of beliefs with the truth may not be best for people. This particular applies in cases of strong belief such as religion or superstition. High levels of religious fanaticism often arise from age old beliefs and customs which are accepted to be the “right” way of living. In the process of strongly believing in superstitions, people often end up narrowing down their outlook on the world. Also, there is a general belief among people that whatever the majority believes is right. It is not impossible (even though it may be highly unlikely) for a whole sect of people to be completely blind to the truth. For example, people in the Middle Ages believed that the Earth was flat and that the Sun revolved around the Earth among various other things. There had to be a time when there was a certain individual who denied the communal belief and went on to discover the truth. Thus accepting whatever is told to us and whatever is laid down in front of us on a platter is not always the best thing do. Many of the things we know today may also be untrue and there might be a time in the future when these beliefs are destroyed.
This brings us to the question of why do we accept whatever meets the eye to be true? It is hard to point out the truth in an objective manner. There is no way of knowing the absolute truth about the universe, our lives, or the things that happen around us. What we humans, over the years, have done is created various models, made generalizations and drawn conclusions in the patterns we see around us. We know that every time a ball is dropped from a cliff, it will (and most definitely will) fall into the valley below. This, we now call gravity. We can see that the sun rises in a particular direction every day (which we call east) and sets on the opposite end of the sky (which we call west) every evening. Thus we reach the conclusion that our planet rotates about its own axis in a particular direction.
All these conclusions which humans make are, to the greatest extent, corresponding with our other beliefs. If someone was to define gravity as a repelling force rather than an attractive one it would not be coherent with the fact that objects fall down to the earth when left from a height above it. However, to make it coherent, one could lay down the fact that gravity is a repulsive force from the sky. Thus anything that is taken closer to the sky would be repelled from it by this force called “gravity”. As we can see, coherence is important in shaping up which of our beliefs are finally accepted as true. Another one of the truth tests is the pragmatic test which states that anything that is practical to believe in is the truth. This too seems to fit in with all the assumptions we make in the different areas of knowledge. They apply to the world around us and thus these theories are practical. Often times, religious beliefs fail this test of pragmatism since killing people or discriminating against them based on which god they believe in is by no means practical!
Thus it is clearly evident that there are various barriers we face in attaining the truth.The idea of Peirce that "Truth is that to which the community ultimately settles down" is accurate to a very large extent. I believe that what Peirce says here is something that humans have been doing for a very long time. As mentioned before, truth can hardly be classified or defined in an objective manner. Then what is the truth? Peirce succeeds in answering this question in a very practical way. Humans do settle down to a convenient and practical sort of reasoning which fits perfectly into the picture of the world. It takes a lot of time to displace these beliefs from our minds that have been so well moulded in with the rest of our beliefs. Community chooses its own truth based on whatever works best for them. This is exactly what Peirce says. The process of settling down to a certain belief over time does lead to it being called the truth.

1265 words!