TRUTH AND KNOWLEDGE


Is Truth Relative?

Is truth relative? If it is, then whatever you believe is true for you. Have you ever had a false belief? Have you ever had an expectation or prediction and been let down or surprised? When you’re trying to make up your mind about what is true, do you look inward or outward. Do you look at what’s in your mind or do you look for evidence and use reason to evaluates the various alternatives? If the latter, then truth isn’t dependent on the contents of your consciousness. Truth is dependent on reality. When people don’t adjust their beliefs in accordance with reality they are engaging in self-deception and rationalization or exhibiting irrational bias. People who never adjust their beliefs in accordance with reality are institutionalized as mentally ill.

If truth is relative, there’s nothing to “figure out.” Evidence from the world is irrelevant to your beliefs. They are already true simply by virtue of your having them, and there’s no reason to change them in the light of new evidence. Rather than being he sign of an open mind, doesn’t that sound like a license for intellectual laziness and a sign of arrogance and narcissism? Is such a person any better than the dogmatist who claims to know the absolute truth? Neither the relativist nor the dogmatist is willing to change their beliefs in the face of contradicting evidence. Neither are engaging in critical thinking. Note that the correspondence theory is not the same as dogmatism. A person who holds to the correspondence theory merely understands and accepts that there is objective truth, not that they or anyone else knows all truths or is infallible.

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 thing 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 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, 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? What are the beliefs that they base their beliefs on based on? More 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? Of course perspective is 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 or who he “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 know better, on predicting the outcome of the last election, seem to have been caused by such political prejudice. Why is that a bad thing? It led to false predictions. 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?

Some forms of bias are due to a limitation of our experience and knowledge, but many others due to psychological factors that are under our control. Being aware of bias in ourselves and others helps us have a more objective view of the world. If relativism were true, bias wouldn’t matter. You believe what’s “true for you” and that’s always just fine (or is if you believe it). Bias is bad because it skews our view of objective reality. Relativism renders the concept of bias and the fact that it is bad incoherent.

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. Philosophers or 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 assuming 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 forth) 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. 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.

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 but the way the world is and is to be discerned, if at all, through dispassionate, rational argument, that is, through critical thinking.

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 describe 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.