Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Gun Control
Today in seventh hour, we got into a discussion concerning gun control in he US, in relationship to Pragmatic Theory. It was suggested that both sides to the argument (for and against) were justifiable through all three theories, and so there is no clear side. Like Hegel's theory, this creates a thesis and an antithesis. My question is, how do you (the TOK student) justify this controversial subject? How can you apply these theories to this, to properly justify your true beliefs so that you know something? Can two different people discussing the same topic know two completely different things? What other areas or topics of discussion can this apply to?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Most people, including myself, will most likely use logic, or the coherence theory if we want to get all TOK-talk, to justify their position on this issue or any issue. This is most likely because logic is the most recognized justification because if something is logical, it will make sense to the majority of people who hear it.
Referring to the other theories can also help justify the issue of gun cojntrol. Someone for gun control may remember an incident where he was shot or someone he knew was. This, of course, is the correspondance theory. As for the pragmatic theory, I won't delve into that a lot because it was discussed greatly during seventh hour. Basically both sides could show a convenience for both sides. As for the last theory, our class hasn't learned about it yet...
With these theories in mind, yes two people can know different things on the same issue. One could take his position and logically prove it while one could pragmatically prove his, or they could both just use different logic to prove their opinion.
Sorry if that was confusing, but basically I'm saying that with these knowledge theories we have been taught (at least so far in our class), the theories imply that truth is relative.
Rick Andrews
I think it's one of those things where you can never get past half-truth. Because both sides can believe something and have it properly justified, and it may pass all of the truth tests, but the truth tests tend to be really individualized, so there's only a portion of the truth to be found. That's my perception of it.
The correspondence theory is basically truth through the 5 senses, so I'm not sure how that would help here, but I agree with what Rick says about Coherence & Pragmatic theories...
Post a Comment