Discussion

Description

Case Study: Epistemology

Suppose you are a scientist who specializes in time travel. You have been countlessly researching ways to create a time machine that can transfer a person to the future. After 30 long years of meticulous research, you can conjure up a working time machine. To test your machine, you send your very brave and curious friend Maria to try it out. She steps right in, the machine turns on, and she disappears after a couple of seconds. After her disappearance, the machine breaks down and is never operative again. For fear of guilt and sadness, you decide to keep this experiment secret, never revealing what transpired to anyone.

Two years later, while watching online videos on the internet, you notice that there’s a highly disliked video about a girl claiming to be the daughter of your friend, Maria, and that she has come from the future to warn people about an impending world war. The comments listed with this video are full of negative, skeptical people who think this girl is crazy because time machines are not considered as a possible invention.

Questions:

1) Would you believe the girl’s story or would you chaulk this up as coincidence? If you do believe, how would you justify to yourself that she is speaking the truth. If you don’t believe, how would you justify to yourself that she is making up this story? Use one or more of the following theories of truth to support your conclusion: correspondence theory, coherence theory, or pragmatic theory.

2) Would you take action and try to convince others that her news of an impending world war is true? If so, how would you go about it? Would you use the same reasons you used to convince yourself, or would you change your plan knowing that less people would believe you. If you would not take action, explain why you wouldn’t. Give specific reasons why you wouldn’t.

3) What is your opinion of the relationship between belief, truth, and fear? Do you believe that truth and emotions have a tight connection or are they seperate from each other? For instance, would you be fearful of the impending news, even if