Custom
Most people consciously or unknowingly employ custom as a criterion of truth, based on the assumption that doing what is customary will prevent error. It is particularly applied in the determination of moral truth and reflected in the statement "when in Rome, do as the Romans do". People stick closely to the principle of custom when they use common vernacular, wear common fashions and so forth; essentially, when they do what is popular. Custom is not considered a serious, or valid, test of truth. For example, public opinion polls do not determine truth.
Read more about this topic: Criteria Of Truth
Famous quotes containing the word custom:
“Custom calls me to’t.
What custom wills, in all things should we do’t,
The dust on antique time would lie unswept,
And mountainous error be too highly heaped
For truth to o’erpeer.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“The imagination of man is naturally sublime, delighted with whatever is remote and extraordinary, and running, without control, into the most distant parts of space and time in order to avoid the objects, which custom has rendered too familiar to it.”
—David Hume (1711–1776)
“Parents fear lest the natural love of their children may fade away. What kind of nature is that which is subject to decay? Custom is a second nature which destroys the former. But what is nature? For is custom not natural? I am much afraid that nature is itself only a first custom, as custom is a second nature.”
—Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)