Yeah, I'm not arguing that it is easy to know the truth, but the issue I take with many modern philosophies is that they argue it is impossible to know the truth. Which to me is a self-defeating argument.
I have had plenty of interesting discussions with people at dinner-parties/gatherings that start out on the surface as being a disagreement over morality or a different political leaning, but then once you get right down to first principles they admit that actually they think it's impossible to know the truth, so what does it matter anyway? This is always so frustrating, but it's important to get to this point so that you can debate the real issue, rather than going back and forth on the surface level issues that ultimately don't address the underlying disagreement.
1. Knowing that truth exists but we won’t ever know we found it or be 100% sure that we did
2. Knowing that there is no truth
In both cases we are stuck not knowing what we know. Furthermore, #2 may only apply to only subsets of truths. Ie., this book is real. This iPhone is “true”. Yet not knowing what’s outside of the universe or knowing it can’t be known does not seem to influence the day to day.
My perspective, is truth as a goal in itself is not useful. An interesting way to talk to people is see the consequences of their beliefs on them, not on the theoretically world where everyone does or doesn’t believe as they believe.
I’ve met too many good Christians who acted poorly. I’ve met many asshole non-believers. In the end their faith or lack their of doesn’t appear correlated with how they treat their mother, their father, or others. In the short time we have on this planet I emphasize how I’m actually being treated.
> then once you get right down to first principles they admit that actually they think it's impossible to know the truth
I've heard somewhere that one can bootstrap from this point by making contingent statements since logical consequence is something that can be known with reasonable certainty. I freely admit that I'm getting out of my depth here. I just mean that if you can find a point of agreement with your interlocutor you may be able to build from there by referring to that with your next statement and so on.
Its also the case that science has done a great job of finding a way (Popperian falsifiability) to get asymptotically close to truth in my opinion.
I have had plenty of interesting discussions with people at dinner-parties/gatherings that start out on the surface as being a disagreement over morality or a different political leaning, but then once you get right down to first principles they admit that actually they think it's impossible to know the truth, so what does it matter anyway? This is always so frustrating, but it's important to get to this point so that you can debate the real issue, rather than going back and forth on the surface level issues that ultimately don't address the underlying disagreement.