I said, “Right, a claim is true only if it corresponds to real-
ity. It must match the way things really are in order to be
true. Truth is an idea or statement that corresponds to reality.
Just believing something doesn’t make it true.” I continued,
“If truth must correspond to reality to be true, then is truth
something that we create or something we discover?”
She suggested, “Something we discover?”
“Yes,” I said, “truth exists outside ourselves; it is objec-
tive. It is not something we make up but something we
find.” I encouraged her to become a seeker of the truth,
since there are real and objective answers to life’s great
philosophical questions, and it is in our best interest to
discover those answers.
Before I left the store, she asked me if I could give the
next questions to her ahead of time so she could be more
prepared. She wrote them down.
“
Truth is an idea or statement
that corresponds to reality.
Just believing something
doesn’t make it true.
True Belief
When I came back a few days later, she was ready with an
answer to my first question, “What is knowledge?” She said
that knowledge is things that we learn. Trying to help her
focus her definition, I drew a diagram that looked like this:
truth
beliefs
I explained that there are some things we might believe
that aren’t true. There are many things that are true that we
don’t yet believe. There are many things that are true that we
do believe. Knowledge is contained in the overlap between
our beliefs and the truth. Knowledge is the truth that we
believe, or true belief (technically, justified true belief). If we
don’t believe the truth, it is not knowledge for us, since we
don’t “know” it. If we want the overlap between truth and
belief to be greater, we need to discover more things that
are true (that match reality). The most important truths to
discover are those that relate to the great questions of life.
The Answer to the Big Questions
The second question I had Tatyana write down was, “What is
the basic message of the Bible?” The answer to this can also
be the answer to the three “great questions.” Once Tatyana
shared her thoughts on the Bible, I summed it up by drawing
out an illustration that shows how God created us [origin]
to have a relationship with him [purpose], but we broke that
relationship by our sin. This caused a gulf between God and
us, but Christ bridged the gap through his death and resur-
rection. If we turn from our sin and trust him for salvation,
we can go to Heaven instead of Hell [destiny].
Recently, I had a follow-up conversation with Tatyana. She
remembered how to define truth properly (she said the rain
illustration had helped a lot), and she gave a good answer
about the purpose for our existence! We plan to talk more.
Socratic Method
At a mall, I had another engaging encounter with a guy
I’ll call Scott, who was running a tablet repair kiosk. The
conversation went something like this. I asked, “How is
business?”
Scott said, “Slow. Real slow. This mall isn’t what it used
to be.”
Since he wasn’t busy, I chatted with him for a while about
his repair business, and then we talked about our respective
college experiences. “One of my favorite courses to teach is
philosophy,” I said.
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