Finding Truth In Apology By Socrates

In a day to day sense, most people jump to conclusions about whether or not something is true, before they even have a chance to examine the idea and make a decision about it themselves. That means that the ideas they are agreeing with may not be true because they did not actually think about the different sides of the idea. And, what one person sees as justifiably true, another person may see the same idea as a false opinion. But what causes each person to decide that the idea being presented is something they know? These ideas are separated by the process of determining whether the idea is justifiably true.
One way that something can become justified is by possessing evidence that “consists of perceptual, introspective, memorial, and intuitional …show more content…
In “The Apology,” Socrates tries to disprove the claim that has been made that he is the wisest and “might go to the god with a refutation in … hand.” (***) His theory of finding truth is through questioning an idea to see if any part of it is untrue. If he is able to find something that disproves a truth that has been presented, then it must no longer be true due to the fact that it has mistakes. This speech also shows us that the previously mentioned ideas of justifying belief may not always work. When Socrates provides his counter examples to what the oracle has said, and proves that it must be true, the people of Athens still do not believe him. Going off of the idea that belief is justified by evidence that we have experienced, these people should take the evidence that Socrates presents and use it to confirm his claims and ideas. However, they do not do this and therefore are not only going against his process of finding truth, but they also go against the method of comparing one’s past thoughts and experiences. This means that they must be using some other sort of system to determine what is true and false. Now this story may only be an anecdote, and Socrates did not actually question all of those people, but it still illustrates an important point. If an idea cannot be disproved, then what is to say that it is not true. This method does not include any emotion in the decision, which can also be important in deciding what is true. On the opposite side of the spectrum, however, that doesn’t mean that our beliefs should be based solely on our emotion, because then we could just believe what makes us happy, and not necessarily what is