TRUTH, REALITY AND KNOWLEDGE - PART 2


To 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 who 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.

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 a 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.

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 or your culture), 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.

Statements about the future might seem problemaic because they’re indeterminate. The future has not yet occurred. A statement about the future nevertheless is either true or false; we just don’t know which it is until after the fact. If someone plans to  get married and his best friend warns him against the idea with this particular woman, we may not know until several years later whether his choice was a good one or not.

It was objected by student in a previous class that the correspondence theory assumes life isn’t a dream, and we can't prove that. 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. 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.

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 a case where 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.

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.