TRUTH, JUSTIFICATION AND KNOWLEDGE: A REVIEW


The correspondence theory says that truth is that which corresponds with reality. Relativism equates truth with mere belief and uses prepositions and pronouns with truth. Truth is only truth for a person or society, according to relativists. A thing may be true for me but not true for you.

Truth is a quality which applies to beliefs, statements or propositions.

A true belief is one that describes reality the way it actually is.

A false belief describes reality in a way other than it actually is.

People living in the Middle Ages thought the sun revolved around the earth. Even thought there was a consensus on this belief, it has never been true. Truth does not depend on consensus. Truth depends on reality. Reality never included the sun revolving around the earth.

Beliefs are mere subjective mental representations of the world. They are only true when they match up with the objective world and false if they don’t.

The statement “There is no such thing as absolute truth” is contradictory, if intended as a statement about the nature of truth itself. If the statement is only intended in a relativistic sense (it’s just “true for you,” i.e. about you), then it has no relevance to the question of the nature of truth itself.

Just because there is a disagreement, doesn’t mean truth is relative. Two people may have different beliefs about reality, but only one thing is true about reality. They can’t both be right, but sometimes they can both be wrong and some third alternative is the truth.

All good philosophers accept the correspondence theory explicitly. Some bad philosophers attempt to deny it, but accept it implicitly when they try to convince others of the objective truth their beliefs.

Using pronouns with the “truth” is conceptual confusion. It is also a micro-aggression against philosophy, as it puts someone’s sacrosanct beliefs or personal agenda above the truth about reality. When people say “my truth” or “her reality,” what they mean is “my belief” or “her belief,” because truth and reality are not personal and thus do not take personal pronouns. Truth and reality are objective, not subjective. Putting personal attachment to one's own beliefs above discovering objective truth may also be seen as a sign of intellectual and emotional immaturity, intellectual laziness, bias, prejudice, ideological blindness, psychological obsession, hysteria, or, in some extreme cases, diagnosable mental illness.

Do we Create Our Own Reality?

If we are creating our own reality, that means that each person lives in her own world and there is no objective world which constrains, determines or affects it. Have you ever thought one thing and found out reality is otherwise? Then you don’t create your own reality. Has anything ever happened that you didn’t want to happen? Did you “create” that or did it happen to you because there is an objective world that doesn’t care about what you desire or believe?

People have differences in subjective personal reactions to the objective world. This can include what temperature of a room you find comfortable, what kinds of food you like, what kinds of activities interest you and emotional reactions to a bouquet of flowers, an action movie, a political speech or a religious testimony. These are affective (attitudinal or emotional) differences, based on differences in physiology, personality and individual experience and psychological associations. But attitudes or feelings are different from objective facts. The correspondence theory accepts that people have different physiology, personal tastes, attitudes and preferences and personalities. That is an objective fact of the world. In fact, when critically thinking, it is crucial to distinguish personal taste, preference and cultural norms from objective truth. This doesn’t mean that some truths are relative and others are not. It means that some things aren’t “truths” at all. They are subjective. Truth is objective and open to disputation and debate; matters of personal taste are not. Matters of individual tastes and preference are about you. They can be used with personal pronouns because they’re personal. There are your tastes, my preferences, his attitudes or her feelings. Belief and reality are not like that. According to the correspondence theory, you should never use a personal pronoun with words like “truth” or “reality” because they are personal or subjective; they are impersonal and objective.

Sometimes people make mistakes. They believe their actions will lead to one result, and then they lead to another. Sometimes people form negative beliefs about themselves which turn into a “self-fulfilling prophecy.” These are facts about human psychology and the way personal attitudes or beliefs can affect behavior and in turn affect objective outcomes. They are very different from saying you are actually creating your own reality. Is the glass half empty or half full? The level of water is a fact about the objective world. Whether you interpret or think about the glass as half-empty or half full has to do with the way you frame it in your mind and the attitude you have about it. That doesn’t mean the level of water depends on your thoughts about it or make how full (or empty) the glass is relative.

Are Beliefs "Based on Your Perspective"?

Students often say that people base their beliefs "on their perspective," their belief system or "what’s true for them." But what is a perspective or belief system but a collection of beliefs? Since what’s true are beliefs, isn’t "what’s true for them" also just more beliefs? So they base their beliefs on their beliefs? This doesn’t seem to make much sense. It seems circular and at odds with experience.

If you think about how you form your own beliefs, you’ll see they come from your experience of the external world, about which you form beliefs. Your beliefs are not about other beliefs. Your beliefs are about the external world, about reality. Not “your reality” or “my reality,” but reality itself, the reality of which we are all a part.

Now of course people remember their past experiences and draw general conclusions about why things turned out the way they did and attempt to explain them and predict the future. That’s part of critical thinking and the basis of science. But these higher level beliefs we use to evaluate new beliefs trace back to observation and interpretation  - or should do so.

Sometimes people simply adopt the beliefs of their parents, peers, community, culture or political leaders. Merely accepting a belief without questioning whether it represents reality is the opposite of critical thinking. Critical thinking implies skepticism about claims. Skepticism assumes the correspondence theory. When you are skeptical, what are you skeptical about? You are skeptical about whether a claim actually represents reality, that is, whether it’s true or not.

Most of the time you don’t base your beliefs on a perspective or belief system; you have a perspective which is made up of these higher level beliefs and may rely on it to help you decide about new beliefs. But don’t confuse a belief system or perspective with reality. A belief system ought to be a means to an end - the end of having true beliefs - not an end in itself. A rational person will revise a belief system in the light of internal inconsistencies or as soon as she discovered it is at odds with reality.

Does the Existence of Bias Prove Relativism?

Think about it for a moment. Most of the time don’t you at least try to base your beliefs on objective reality? If you're wondering whether you'll be able to find a job with the major you've chosen or whether drinking coffee is bad for you or whether you should wear a mask to the grocery store or get a VPN to protect your online privacy, you're trying to figure out the truth about objective reality and the risks and rewards of various courses of action. But why do the hard work of searching for and weighing evidence or try to avoid bias if your beliefs are already true for you? What if you don't have any beliefs on these issues? Isn't it because you haven't investigated them?

But what about more ideologically and emotionally charged issues like global warming, the safety of vaccines or GMOs, or whether President Trump colluded with Russia or Joe Biden acted corruptly in his dealings with Ukraine as Vice President? Don't believe decide these things according to their political and ideological biases? Of course our perspectives are influenced by our subjective experiences, and these can often be predicted in groups (but not individuals) based on demographic data such as age, sex, race, where you were raised and currently live, etc., but that does not make truth relative. Social scientists use these objective facts about people to make predictions about human behavior and social and political change, many of which are extremely accurate, indicating a correspondence with reality. These predictions are made based on an acceptance of the objective world and data which helps us understand human behavior, which is a part of the world.

Suppose that a person’s belief on the future outcome of an election is based on who they want to win, who he hopes will win or who he thinks “deserves” to win. Is that belief just as good as a sociologist or political scientist making a prediction based on demographics and polling data? Interestingly, some of the spectacular failures of political scientists ( who should have known better), on predicting the outcome of the 2016 presidential election, seem to have been caused by such political prejudice. Why is that a bad thing? It led to false predictions. After the results were in, pollsters and pundits went back to try to figure out where they went wrong. And of course, after the results were in, they all changed their beliefs about who would be the President. None of them insisted that Hillary won based on their predictions; they changed their beliefs according to the evidence that Trump won.

Watch Your Language (and Other Tips from Analytic Philosophy)

Sometimes people speak in a loose fashion. When someone says that a belief is "my truth" or “her reality,” what he may really mean is “this is what I believe” or “she believes that so strongly that it’s like she lives in her own little world.” This may seem innocuous, but the words you use matter and using terms in a misleading way like this can lead to conceptual confusions. In this case, it’s a confusion between the fundamental concepts of subjectivity and objectivity, which are crucial to critical thinking and doing philosophy. Philosophers of the analytic school, which traces back to Socrates, the father of philosophy, see language as very important. In the Socratic dialogues, the search for truth is couched in terms of a search for the definition of a word, such as piety, virtue, justice or knowledge. It is only after understanding what these words mean that can answer questions such as “Can virtue be taught?” or “Is justice good in itself or a means to something else?” or “What would a completely just state look like?” Answering these questions means grasping the essence of fundamental concepts, and that means having rigorous definitions and using language in precise ways. Do you really live in your own reality? Then how is it you're interacting with others and affecting them through your actions? Do you create your own reality? Then why do you get sick or have to pay bills or suffer any kind of pain or deprivation? Are you a masochist?

Usually when faced with these kinds of questions, people will retreat to a more restricted claim that our beliefs can affect our behavior and that this can in turn affect the outcome of events in the real world, but this is quite different from the claim we create our own reality. They may also point out that people with different sets of preexisting beliefs may interpret objective events differently or have a different subjective experience than another person, but again, this is a claim about the objective world. If you believe you have no shot at getting a job, that might result in a lackluster interview after which you indeed wouldn't get the job, even if your chances of getting it were objectively quite good. If you think no one likes you and you ask a clerk for assistance and receive no response, you are likely to believe they intentionally ignored you when they may simply be daydreaming after a long day or hard of hearing. These are well-documented facts of human psychology, but none of them imply anything about truth or reality being subjective.

What is a Question?

Let’s try to step back to the most fundamental level of intellectual inquiry. What is a question? That which is in search of an answer. What distinguishes one question from another? The particular answer for which it searches. What is an answer? An answer represents a state of affairs in the world, conceptual or empirical. An answer is a proposition. What is a proposition? A simple declarative statement about the character or nature of a thing, or the state of affairs of the world. Some answers are about definitions and concepts, such as the answer I just gave to the question "What is a question?" These are conceptual propositions. Some answers are not about concepts but about what exists, what is real or is the case, such as "Is it raining?" These are empirical propositions. When a proposition describes the world as it is and corresponds with reality, we say that it is true. If it describes the world in a way other than it is, we say that it is false. When we ask a question, we evaluate answers based on how likely they seem to match up with reality. We thus assume the correspondence theory of truth by the very act of questioning. If what I believed was already automatically true for me, what need would I have for questions? Why would I need to ask anyone else, think, ponder or read a book? I would already have "my truth."

What Are Beliefs? What Are Beliefs About?

Propositions must be given concrete expression to be understood and communicated. A belief is a mental representation, a propositional attitude such that the subject views a given proposition as true. The belief is subjective, but what the belief is about is not subjective. A belief is not about itself or (typically) about other beliefs. A belief is the world, about reality. Whether the belief is true or false does not depend on the subjective mental state of the believer but rather the state of affairs of the world referenced in the proposition the belief is about. "It is raining" is not about the believer's subjective mental state; it is about the external world. If the world is otherwise, the belief is false, regardless of how convinced the believer is of its truth.

Don't Confuse Truth with Rational Justification ("Proof")

Whether you can prove a belief is irrelevant to whether it is true, though using evidence and logic is the only way to discover whether or not a belief is true. A belief is true depending on whether or not it corresponds with reality. Even though we may lack the evidence to tell whether a well-specified, non-ambiguous, meaningful belief is true or false, we know that it is either true or false. There is no third (or fourth) choice. This is known as the Law of Excluded Middle. When there is insufficient evidence, the rational thing to do is to withhold judgement, as W. K. Clifford suggests in his famous essay, "The Ethics of Belief." Clifford also suggests that it is your moral duty as a human being and a member of the human community to do so, and that not doing so can lead to disastrous consequences for yourself and others.

When people evaluate beliefs to see whether they are true, they look for justification for them in terms of logical arguments and empirical evidence (evidence of the senses (direct or based on testimony), photographic records, scientific studies, etc.). They don’t consult their “personal beliefs.” They look for reasons and evidence from the external world to see if the belief matches up with reality. To the extent that they allow prejudices, biases, desires or emotions to get in the way of forming accurate beliefs about the world they are acting irrationally.

Example: The CIA didn’t consult their “personal beliefs” when trying to discover whether or not Saddam Hussein had stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. They looked at satellite photos, his shifty behavior and testimony from defectors. Despite their best efforts to form accurate beliefs (and due perhaps in some part to the influence of bias), their belief turned out to be false. A trillion dollars and countless lives were lost as the result of a false belief. False beliefs have consequences! This is why it’s important to rely on evidence and logic for our beliefs and not think of them as an extension of our identity, biography, personality, desires or preferences.

Rational justification, that is, having logical reasons and empirical evidence for our beliefs, is not guarantee, but it is the best way we have to make sure our beliefs are true.

This weapons of mass destruction example also illustrates the difference between truth and justification. Even though the CIA had ample justification for their beliefs that Saddam had WMDs, their beliefs did not match up with reality and thus turned out to be false. This is an example of a justified but false belief.

Another example of a justified but false belief is the one from Chapter One in which a man was accused of rape, identified by several victims, had scratches on his face that matched testimony of one of the victims and had a blood profile matched that of evidence at the crime scene. If you were on the jury, you would have (and should have) convicted the man of being guilty of the crime. However, as it turned out, he had an identical twin brother he did not know about. The two were separated at birth and adopted, and the twin had randomly entered town and began committing these crimes. Before this fact came to light, you would be justified in believing the defendant was guilty but would still have had a false belief.

So, a belief can justified but not true. A belief can also be true but not justified. You could have a true belief by accident. A stopped clock is right twice a day and occasionally a blind squirrel finds a nut. If I predicted Donald Trump  would win the Presidency based on a superstition (a flip of my lucky bicentennial quarter) or a misunderstanding of policy (e.g. I mistakenly thought he was for open borders and “green energy” to fight “climate change” and believed these to be “winning issues”) or I thought he was the Democrat in the race, running against Republican Mike Pence). My belief turned out to be true, but had no justification. My prediction was based on false beliefs. I didn’t have objectively good reasons or evidence for it.

If, on the other hand, suppose I pointed out that polling showed Trump was popular among blue collar voters in rust belt swing states who were adversely impacted by globalization, our eroding manufacturing base, lop-sided trade deals and illegal immigration, against which Trump was campaigning. Suppose I further argued that voters are likely to favor an experienced businessman who would be good with the economy after eight years of economic stagnation under Obama. I might add and that, after eight years of any President, voters usually choose a candidate from the other major party. I might further add that key polls are over-sampling Democrats and that Hillary didn't even bother to visit key states Trump was campaigning hard in. Suppose further I pointed to the "enthusiasm gap" and the fact that Trump's huge rallies were a likely indicator of greater voter turnout on his side, and that internal polling there showed that attendees included many independents and heretofore politically inactive people, not just the traditional Republican base. All of these would be good reasons to suppose Trump would win. If I made these arguments before hand (and I did), then I could properly claim to have known he would win. Note that it would be these objective facts and reasons, not my subjective feelings of confidence, which would justify my claims to knowledge. Also note that these arguments would have nothing to do with who I was or who I planned on voting for. These arguments could just as easy be made by a partisan Democrat who favored Hillary, an independent with a history of swinging back and forth between the major parties, or someone who favored a third party candidate. Unfortunately, people often let their desires or what they wish or hope to be true govern their beliefs instead of the objective evidence.

Admittedly, knowledge of the future poses special problems because the future is indeterminate. The future has not yet occurred; it does not yet exist. A statement about the future is nevertheless either true or false; we just don’t know which it is until after the fact. Suppose a friend warns you against marrying your sweetheart, predicting disaster if you tie the knot with this person. We may not know until a few years down the line whether you should have heeded their warning. If you listen to them and scuttle the marriage, you might never know.

Only when a belief is both true and justified does it count as knowledge. Knowledge is true justified belief. The goal of philosophy is to have knowledge of reality.

Truth and knowledge are different. Since the solar system was formed, Pluto existed, but we were only able to prove Pluto existed in 1930 based on telescopic images. Before 1930, the statement “There is a ball of ice and rock in a semi-regular orbit around the sun beyond Neptune” was true, even though we didn’t know it was. The reality of the solar system always included Pluto; we just didn’t know that it was there.

When discussing Descartes' dream argument in  Chapter Two, a student objected that the correspondence theory of truth assumes that life isn’t a dream. But consider the question, “Is life a dream?” The question assumes two possible answers “Life is a dream” and “Life isn’t a dream.” Life cannot be both a dream and not a dream in the same sense, according to the same meaning of the terms. A contradiction can’t be true. That a contradiction can’t be true is a fundamental truth on which all rational thought is based. It can only be shown through example. If I say I am never late but then admit I was late yesterday, that is a contradiction. One of those statements must be false. Even the the concept of the "counter-example" assumes this principle.

If you object that the correspondence theory cannot be proved because it relies on the unproven assumption that life isn’t a dream, you are assuming that a contradiction can’t be true. Rational argument isn’t possible without this assumption. This question also assumes a fact of the matter about reality, an objective truth, namely whether life is or is not a dream and whether it can be proven. Note that the question about whether it may be proven is different than the question as to whether it is true. Truth has to do with correspondence with reality. Knowledge has to do with whether something may be proven, that is, whether there is sufficient justification (reasons, evidence) to know a belief is true.

Does A Lack of Consensus Mean Truth is Relative?

Widespread disagreement does not indicate the truth is relative; it indicates a lack of sufficient evidence available to some or all parties or perhaps that various forms of bias are at work. The proper attitude in these circumstances is extra caution and skepticism, not concluding that in the absence of consensus that one belief is as good as any other (relativism). There is always one right answer to any question. That right answer will be the one which corresponds with reality, which describes the world as it is. This right answer not defined by your subject feelings or decided by some external authority. It is defined by the way the world is and is to be discerned, if at all, through dispassionate, rational argument, that is, through critical thinking, which is the foundation of knowledge.

Truth and Knowledge

To sum up, truth is correspondence with reality; beliefs may or may not correspond with reality. When a belief does correspond with reality, it is true. When a belief describes reality other than it is, that belief is false. The way we figure out whether a given belief is true or false is through the use of empirical evidence and logic, but whether we can prove a belief or not is different from its being true. Evidence and logic are how we prove a belief is true but that’s not what makes it true, i.e. what its being true means. What makes a belief true is that it corresponds with reality. When we have sufficient evidence that a belief is true and it is in fact true, then we know it to be true.