Contemporary Theories Of Knowledge Research Paper

Contemporary Theories Of Knowledge - Research Paper Example Meaning and purpose are often taken to mean the same thing but in this case, they will be taken to mean different things. Personal lives may be taken to mean an individual’s account of his/her experience but for the sake of this essay, I will take personal lives as the generalized experience of people rather than the effect on my own personal life. This is because one person’s account of existence cannot explain fully the extent to which knowledge produces meaning and purpose as some knowledge is second-hand. Knowledge for Plato is â€Å"justified true belief† (Lagemaat 24; Lemos 9; Russell, n.p). The â€Å"whole point† of knowledge as this would mean that the absolute or only point of knowledge is to produce meaning and purpose hence one has to agree or disagree with the statement but not to a certain extent. However, I will argue that knowledge produces meaning but sometimes does not produce purpose in our lives. Although knowledge influences our purpose in life, purpose can be achieved through different ways without knowledge. As stated earlier, knowledge is ‘justified true belief.† However, the concepts of truth and belief need the explanation as they are controversial concepts. According to Dunn, the truth is â€Å"things that can be justified and believed in† (n.p). It distinguishes knowledge from belief hence what we claim to know must be true, if mere belief, it is true or false (Lagemaat 24). As such, believing that something is true does not make it true. According to the correspondence theory of truth, we can know if something is true through our sense experience while for coherence theory, a proposition must match with what we know to be true. Knowledge can also be true if the majority of people believe in it (Dunn, n.p). For pragmatists, the truth is whatever is useful to us.