"The Beginning is the Most Important Part of the Work"

Many philosophers debate the true meaning of knowledge. “The beginning is the most important part of the work.” (Goodreads). Why is it so important for philosophers to figure out if something is true? Philosophers have to go through a process called conceptual analysis. Has anyone asked you to define what water is? Well, you may not have been asked that question but I have been asked that question by my philosopher teacher. Conceptual analysis is essentially a way to analyze different ideas and definitions to determine if they are true.

A really good example of this is the word water, water is a clear liquid substance which is the criterion. (Cullison). The analysis is the actual definition of water which is H2O. It is also important when you are going through the process of conceptual analysis just as a philosopher would, you need to cover all grounds. For example, without the analysis, the criterion of water could also pertain to another drink that is also clear and a liquid substance.

The alcoholic beverage vodka. This is why the analysis is important because it helps differentiate between different subjects. Belief, truth, and justification are all vital parts of concluding knowledge. The first part of the tripartite theory of knowledge is belief, meaning a person needs to believe it for it to be true. For instance, it is believed to be an apple tree because apples grow on it. Truth is knowing a thing hence why it must be true unless it is proven otherwise.

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An example of this would be the infamous Santa Claus, a child believes in Santa Claus because they know and believe that Santa Claus is real because parents feed them this myth. This truth is proven false once a child grows up and figures out that it was indeed their parents behind this master plan and not Santa. The final piece to this theory is justification, which is collaborating good reasonings behind your belief. A prime example of this would be knowing that there is something wrong with the vehicle that a person is driving, the justification would be the check engine light turning on in the vehicle. Typically when this happens a person should get it tested and the results will tell them what’s wrong. The test results for this vehicle will show that there are indeed some internal issues that need to be taken care of. This is why the justification that something is wrong with the car was correct with all the reasons presented above. Often it is necessary to determine what conditions are indeed the most important to reach the proper application of a concept.

So for a condition to be a necessary condition for the proper application of the concept, it must be a must-have. For example, if A is a necessary condition for H then if A were not the case neither would be H. But if this were to be for a condition to be sufficient, then if A were the sufficient condition for H, if A were made the case, H automatically became the case as well. H took upon its separate identity unlike in necessary condition. However for conditions to be jointly sufficient they must all correlate in some type of way. For example, if A is a sufficient condition and so is B, they both serve as a pair and they both serve as a sufficient condition together. There are many strategies that philosophers use to conclude what is knowledge. What is the truth?