Sociology

All knowledge claims should be open to rational criticism. On what grounds and to what extent would you agree with this assertion

To prove that all knowledge claims are true, one should have justification that makes others believe it. Human beings normally expect that all knowledge claims should be open to rational criticism, and if not proven, they may be canceled as being justified and reliable. The reality is that not all knowledge claims are open to rational criticism because to be open to rational criticism a knowledge claim should have reasons and prove to justify that its true  there are 3 ways to use reasoning to explain about knowledge claim which are inductive and deductive reasoning and to prove there should be physical evidence of it. However there are still some knowledge claims that have no proves to justify that its the truth. So using rational criticism to justify a knowledge claim requires both methods of reasoning (inductive  deductive), truths and also proves. The example that can be taken from one of knowledge claim is Religion. We cannot prove and justify that God really exists and its only based on faith which makes that not all knowledge claims could be open to rational criticism. At the same time, it is based on the evidence that proved others that God exists.

Here is a question that brings believers and non believers into endless arguments can one prove that God exists by saying that he or she had a vision, or even hundreds of people who reported to have seen the same vision of Jesus, Mary, Angels or God Here we face with culture and generally accepted terms of conduct and knowledge sharing practices. If the society is perceptive towards accepting visions, dreams or signs as evidence, then critical reasoning applies to this as a valid source of reasoning. If a layer of society is pragmatic and considers claims like this fraudulent and misleading, tricks of the church, etc, then this method loses its credibility.

We can discuss about concepts of love, devotion, belief, care and many other realities of our daily life and find arguing sides that will not agree on a single concept.

The mediated transfer of information and knowledge is considered to have enough bases for serving as a solid base for reasoning. At this stage the responsibility of accepting the truth or denying falls on the recipient of the knowledge. The ancient and contemporary court has relied on the evidence for thousands of years, and has tried to accommodate itself into true or false knowledge claims by creating auxiliary rules of solving the gap of immediate reasoning opportunity (calling at least two witnesses, using moral andor religious codes, threatening in case the evidence is fraudulent, etc.)

Its true that every judgment that people make should have reason and prove that may lead us to truth, but what is truth Truth is the quality of being true and its based on the reality. Truth also relates to the agreement of many people about a thing. There are 3 theories that explain truth which are coherence, correspondence and pragmatic theory.  Three of them have different directions that direct us to areas about how to fulfill the aspects of being true. Coherence leads to a belief, correspondence leads us to a fact and pragmatic leads to the usefulness of making the thing become truth. Truth also relates to our perception of judging which is reasoning. Reasoning is also known as analytic truths which if it combines with the word logic it could judge a knowledge claim. The example of combining both reasoning and logic is used in mathematical truth where 11 is always be 2. There are no arguments that could deny this statement. But here again we face with another phenomenon perception.

Different people are in the position to formulate different modes of knowledge on a certain phenomenon due to their personality, life stories, expectations, personal interests and their worldview in general. Here the truth relies upon coincidence of perceptions.

The first issue is Can rational criticism support the existence of God Like Martin Luther said, You must abandon your reason, know nothing of it, annihilate it completely, or you will never enter heaven. This explains that religion and reasoning does not match in any case. People think that religion cannot be true either proven that its fake through out reasoning. People could think that its true and its real if they have beliefs in it which lead to faith. To prove about a knowledge claim, there should be proves physically and reasons which is not provided in religion. Its impossible to prove that God does really exist. People only have faith, that faith is build by whom they believe without doubt and no true proofs. Which here it may be concluded that rational criticism does not support the existence of God.

The second issue is  Is reasoning able to clearly justify truth There are 2 kinds of reasoning deductive and inductive. What differentiates both is that deductive reasoning is more to the general view and inductive is more to particular idea rather than to general view. To explain in more details here is the example. Freddy is a human, human are all clever, therefore Freddy is clever. This example shows deductive reasoning, which again relates more to the general view. By this example, also shows that deductive reasoning does preserve the truth by showing the validity of the argument but it has nothing to do with the truth and the falsity of its premises. Inductive reasoning also cant clearly justify about truth. Example that can be used is Freddy is clever when he studies Tommy is clever when he studies, therefore human is clever when they study. Inductive reasoning goes beyond our senses and its more to the logic, which make us hard to rely on it. Inductive reasoning is too informative but it is less certain than deductive reasoning. Both of the reasoning lead us to fallacies, which fallacies come from the haste of generalization and it could be misguidance. All of these factors may cause bad reasoning and it could limit the reliability of the truth by using inductive and deductive reasoning for showing rational criticism.

The third issue is Does the role of language manipulate truth The uniqueness of language also makes difference in the people interpretation towards something. There is no knowledge that could be studied without the existence of language. It may be concluded that language is the best way to give information and it also misplaces the interpretation of people towards the meaning. For example, the difference between the words murder and manslaughter. Both has the same meaning which is a person who kill another person but the interpretation of people when listen to the word means different thing which manslaughter will be more negative compared to murder which lead to the misunderstanding of the meaning. Also, language has the power to manipulate about truth, which mostly is during the translation from one language to another language and its used during the wartime to manipulate about whos the good and whos the bad. Language could result misunderstanding because language cannot constantly have the same meaning.

A lot depends also on intonation, gesture and mimic. The same word pronounced in different intonations, combinations of gesture and mimic may result in altering the original dictionary meaning of the word. If we look into language deeper, even pose and level of voice may completely change the whole meaning of words, that could be interpreted in another context when pronounced in another way.

Every claim in knowledge should be shown to justify truth and rational criticism cannot be used completely to work out knowledge claim. As it is shown above, logic and rationalism does play most of the role in deciding the truth. It has both the advantage and disadvantage. The advantage is that it could be proven without anyone could deny and against so its always true but the disadvantage is that it cant be proven using reasons. A thing that cannot be proven using reasons may lead to bad reasoning and its non-sense.

To conclude my discussion I would like to note that every knowledge claim must be clarified, by using reasons and show proves, to justify about truth and clarify its judgment and eventually, not all knowledge claims are open to rational criticism because not all of the knowledge claims could be proven physically. From the other hand knowledge and transfer of knowledge are existent based on the human factors of knowledge bearer and the recipient. After all, the decision whether any proof is physical and acceptable, or it is abstract and untouchable, is in the hands of the knowledge recipient.