Nature of Truth PDF

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The Nature of Truth

By George Matwijec Ph.l

What is the truth? This question that Pilate asked Jesus 2000 years ago can still be asked today. I am sure that at some level we have all asked that question and come up with our own little answer. What answer would you give if you had to define the truth? Philosophers have studied this question for the ages and the answer given has interpreted their whole vision of reality. If truth is nothing more than logical ideas that make sense, then my view of reality is very distant and I can’t know objective reality because it is not immediately known like the ideas of my head. If truth is nothing more than objective fact, then concepts like justice, love and equality are meaningless, who would define a nation according to equality of its members if equality has no reality and can’t be known as truthful? I am going to bring to light some of the qualities of truth which can be easily deduced when thinking about everyday uses of truth in our lives. First truth is a correspondence between our words and our thoughts. I think if you reflect about what a liar is you can come to this conclusion. A liar is thinking of one thing and saying another. There is no correspondence between thoughts and words. He may be thinking about the 20 dollars that were stolen from the cash register but his words are professing that he doesn’t know what happened to the money. This lack of correspondence between our ideas and thoughts with our words is a lack of truth.

Second truth is a correspondence between our words (or thoughts) and objective reality. This is a perceptual type of truth. I am talking about a book that is front of me, my words correspond to that book and my statements are said to be truthful. Sometimes my words and thoughts may profess a truth but they do not correspond to an objective truth. This can be deliberate or not deliberate; either way my truth statement becomes a false statement. I may say that I see a deer in the bush, I believe my statement is backed up by the objective image, however, there is really a man dressed up as a deer. I am seeing a deer, but deer is simply a costume. From observing that sometimes our objective truth statements have been wrong certain philosophers have concluded we can never know the truth. Well this is taking the exceptions and blowing them way of proportion. Every ordinary life is based on the assumption that our words have meaning and correspond to an objective truth. Try living your daily life where you assume every statement is a lie and you have to verify it. Life would be impossible and it is impossible to verify every statement. People expect words to correspond to a reality, and when it doesn’t they get upset. Societies live and believe they know the truth and live according to these truths.

How is truth determined? As we have been touching upon before, truth is determined by objective evidence. This evidence speaks to us and informs our judgments. Second, truth is also determined by reason. The first determinant of truth is pretty obvious; it is the second that is not so obvious. For example, if you left your house neat and orderly and came home to find that the house was dirty and items were over turned, you would conclude that someone perhaps a thief was in the house. Did you see the thief?, no. You have no perceptual evidence, but reason tells you that things and items don’t turn over by themselves. From the effect you know the cause. You made a basic deduction which allowed you to formulate a truth statement that someone was in the house, without ever seeing that person. This is an example of how truth can be determined by reason as well as objective data. Furthermore, don’t ever let any one tell you that there is no truth; that person contradicts himself with his very words because the first statement that

comes out of his mouth is his “truth” that “there is no truth”. There is truth and it is a correspondence between our words and thoughts as well as our words and reality. It may be a struggle to attain sometimes however, it can be attained. Now that we have established that truth exists, and everyone lives and behaves as if truth exists, we turn to the question of knowledge and opinion. What is the difference? Knowledge is a body of statements that are supported by evidence and reason. The key word is evidence and reason. Evidence would be the objective data which backs up the statement. Reason is the rational behind the statements. When a person is said to be knowledgeable about a subject matter, they are thought to know numerous statements of truth about the subject, their relation to each other and the objective data which supports their statements. If I knew just one true statement about music theory for example I would not be said to be knowledgeable. Opinion on the other hand is a statement in which the person is not quite ready to say they have knowledge. There is an element of doubt about their statement because they are not sure. All the evidence or objective data has not been weighed, all the relations have not been figured out, the reasons have not been taken into account. An opinion is a weak statement of knowledge that leaves room for further statements, whereas a person who is knowledgeable is thought to already possess the truth. Opinions often are stated in matters of personal likes and dislikes whereas knowledge is not attributed to that subject. What’s your opinion of dinner, was the steak good and tasty? In my opinion would be the beginning of the response, not I know that it was great. Unfortunately philosophers in history have focused on anomalies or irregularities and built up whole constructions that don’t jive with ordinary understanding. Descartes is the prime example who says that our words do not correspond to a reality. He had trouble with the issue of error and therefore concluded that there is no correspondence. He was left with absurd conclusions like reality is an

illusion. From his philosophy many others came down the line stating that a person could only know their ideas, and these ideas and thoughts did not correspond to reality. All of these philosophies contradict what our every day experience tells us and they should be rejected because of that. As you can see many of these qualities of truth can be easily determined when we think of ordinary use of truth that a person uses every day in business, education and human relations. This ordinary use of the truth is the basis for the definition of truth. The simple definition of Thomas Aquinas stands today as the most logical. Truth is the correspondence between words and reality....