What Is TRUE with a Capital “T”?

Epistemology Chapter 2: The Bumpy Roadmap to Truth

Epistemology: Venn Diagram for Knowledge

What is skepticism? American Heritage Dictionary offers several meanings I like:

1. A doubting or questioning attitude or state of mind; dubiety. synonym: uncertainty
2. c. A methodology based on an assumption of doubt with the aim of acquiring approximate or relative certainty.

Epistemology would be falling-off-a-medicine-ball easy if we rejected all claims and observations — simple but utterly useless. While many people use skepticism to mean that, I’m not one of them. To me, the sense quoted above works well for epistemology.

From Plato’s time forward, philosophers in search of truth have looked for justified true beliefs (JTB). That means that I should accept proposition P is true when:

1. P is true, and
2. I believe P is true, and
3. I am justified in holding that belief.

For instance, I am typing this text in the evening. I have a lamp lighting my desk. The lamp is on. It is a fact that it’s on and not off. I believe the lamp is on. I am justified in holding that belief because I can see the lamp and the light it sheds on my keyboard.