Ib Tok
TOK essay – November 2012
* “There are no absolute distinctions between what is true and what is false.”
“Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.”
Marcus Aurelius
The quotation above explains the claim that is discussed in this essay; weather truth and falsehood can be distinguished. If a person claims they are aware of the truth, it is impossible for it to be absolute. Absolute truth would be information, which has not been manipulated by cultural and ethical aspects of the time and place, by the media, or even by people for whom would be pejorative for the truth to come out clearly. Usually perception makes the judgment weather to believe or not in certain claims. However, what if truth is false? Information can be so manipulated that facts we are absolute certain of can be misleading. There is a thin line between truth and falsehood, one little detail can expose whether the verity of a statement.
Truth and falsehood can be defined by: “The Truth is a property of a statement or belief about a fact, or about a relationship between a number of facts, such that it describes this fact, or this relationship, with sufficient precision and completeness for the purpose of a particular inquiry. While falsehood is a property of a statement or belief about a fact, or about a relationship between a number of facts, such that it describes this fact, or this relationship imprecisely or incompletely for the purpose of a particular inquiry.” For two words that have been considered opposites for all human course their definitions have a big amount of similarities, therefore the truth can be transformed into falsehood very easily, the other way around having the same possibility.
Going back to the statement, let’s say two children ware near by when a bomb exploded, they heard the noise and saw the explosion by were not hit by it. When the children arrived in their respective houses, they told their parents what
* “There are no absolute distinctions between what is true and what is false.”
“Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.”
Marcus Aurelius
The quotation above explains the claim that is discussed in this essay; weather truth and falsehood can be distinguished. If a person claims they are aware of the truth, it is impossible for it to be absolute. Absolute truth would be information, which has not been manipulated by cultural and ethical aspects of the time and place, by the media, or even by people for whom would be pejorative for the truth to come out clearly. Usually perception makes the judgment weather to believe or not in certain claims. However, what if truth is false? Information can be so manipulated that facts we are absolute certain of can be misleading. There is a thin line between truth and falsehood, one little detail can expose whether the verity of a statement.
Truth and falsehood can be defined by: “The Truth is a property of a statement or belief about a fact, or about a relationship between a number of facts, such that it describes this fact, or this relationship, with sufficient precision and completeness for the purpose of a particular inquiry. While falsehood is a property of a statement or belief about a fact, or about a relationship between a number of facts, such that it describes this fact, or this relationship imprecisely or incompletely for the purpose of a particular inquiry.” For two words that have been considered opposites for all human course their definitions have a big amount of similarities, therefore the truth can be transformed into falsehood very easily, the other way around having the same possibility.
Going back to the statement, let’s say two children ware near by when a bomb exploded, they heard the noise and saw the explosion by were not hit by it. When the children arrived in their respective houses, they told their parents what