Overview about the concept Truth

[gL.edu] This article gathers contributions by Stefan Wolf, developed within the context of the Conceptual clarification about "Information, Knowledge and Philosophy", under the supervisión of J.M. Díaz Nafría.

Truth is one of the most, maybe even the most, important concepts of our society. The daily live is built around it. Economics, science, religion, and a lot more is based on it. Us as human beings, we crave for consistency. Our hole live is built on trust, the trust we have in believing others. This trust is built on our expectancy that the words and gestures of the opposite are true. If you conduct a small mind experiment, imagine you expect everything what is said to you, is false, or not true. Just try to glimpse, how difficult your live is going to be if you’d have to recheck everything what is delivered to you. It’s just impossible.

But in any case, it’s not hard to see that truth is consistently changing. What was declared true only a couple decades ago, is verry wrong nowadays. But how? If you look on the phrase, “The earth is the center of the universe” you’d say without hesitation “Well that’s obviously wrong” but not verry long ago that was considered true in the whole western World. Therefore, it is easy to see that truth is an important but not an absolute construct.

Principal Problem

Before someone can declare something is true, Truth itself needs to be classified. During the past there have been several attempts to do so. It started around 600 BC. with Thales who was a mathematician, astronomer, and thinker in Europe and with Confucius in Asia. Thales didn’t have any major theories about truth himself but somehow contributed with his work. The first ones who really “try to solve the problem truth” were Socrates Aristotle and Plato around 350 BC. Yet, the quest for truth has not ended. It seems the urge to find, to rewrite and find new truth is within our nature. The whole raison d'être of science basically is, to reshape our idea of truth. It also seems to be the nature of us humans, to never stand still in live and always move on. Our desire to advance all the time is built on the trust that was invented, found, and conducted earlier is true. We built on the truth, and we try to generate new one for others to build on.

On the other hand, we try to extinct all mistakes we ever wrote down and consider true. All the time true believed truth is declared wrong. Ether through new discoveries in science, or due to the fact that we can built advanced tools to conduct finer measurements, and therefore reshape older assumptions.

But how is truth acknowledged? “I only can see further, because I am standing on shoulders of giants” Newton once said. We can count on truth that was proven convincingly to extend and reproduce it, because we trust in truthbearers. But what are truthbearers? One might think, a wise person is one. Another might say old books are. A third one may suggest that new books are even mor trustworthy then old ones. If you look at it in a philosophical way you see, that truthbearers are two things at a time. It is binary.

Sentences

Sentences are used to bear truth. They carry it. Due to our ability to write, we contain that knowledge and save it for someone else to read. A wise person could also do that someone might argue, but the difference is that it is hardly reproducible if it is not written down. This person might pass on his knowledge, but it will change if this progress is repeated. But if something is written it can be reproduced countless times, word by word without changing a little bit. Ever since humanity was able to write down knowledge and therefore truth, it was not necessary to study from the beginning again or rely on memory. A problem which occurs, that someone could write something down wrongly. Another difficulty is, that someone might copy a text wrong. The huge difference to that is, that it can be referred and reconducted to the point where the mistake took place.

Propositions

The proposition bypasses this problem. It is not necessary to worry about the fact if a proposition is true or not. It is only based on physics and logic. The answer to a problem or a question which is solved with a proposition will always be the same. Because there is only one logical and physically correct answer. To phrase it differently:

The rock is hard. (English)

Der Stein ist hart. (German)

หินแข็ง (Thai)

This sentence was written in three different languages. Someone might consider, those three things would be differently and consider one thing to be wrong. Maybe just because of the fact, that the alphabet which is used is not understandable for us. However, the information is always the same. It is just not possible for us to interpret it in the appropriate way. The huge downside of this approach is, that you need to reproof all your problems again by yourself. It is not possible to refer to something else then logic and physics.

Theories about truth

Throughout history philosophers try to solve this problem and therefore come up with various theories to somehow solve this Problem. There are a lot of different approaches on the try to define truth, but all of them can be broken down to some major theories, which are:

Correspondence theory

This Theory is rooted in ancient Greece and was mentioned in Metaphysics from Plato and Aristotle. It says that something is true if there is a proposition with a correspondent fact. A fact is a thing that is known to be true. Truth is a special relationship between proposition and a fact.

Problems

A problem with this theory is, a fact, which is already considered true is needed, to verify another truth. To phrase it differently, you need truth to proof that something is true. This problem is found in other different situations. One example is the axiomatics of math. They built a fundament on Mathematics. It is expected to be true therefore it’s not necessary to prove it. Someone needs to belief in something true to reproduce another truth. Later in the 19th century Bernhard Russel, consider facts to be mind-independent. “But regardless of their mind-dependence or mind-independence, the theory must provide answers to questions of the following sort. “Canada is north of the U.S.” can’t be a fact. A true proposition can’t be a fact if it also states a fact, so what is the ontological standing of a fact? Is the fact that corresponds to “Brutus stabbed Caesar” the same fact that corresponds to “Caesar was stabbed by Brutus”, or is it a different fact? It might be argued that they must be different facts because one expresses the relationship of stabbing but the other expresses the relationship of being stabbed, which is different. In addition to the specific fact that ball 1 is on the pool table and the specific fact that ball 2 is on the pool table, and so forth, is there the specific fact that there are fewer than 1,006,455 balls on the table? Is there the general fact that many balls are on the table? Does the existence of general facts require there to be the Forms of Plato or Aristotle? What about the negative proposition that there are no pink elephants on the table? Does it correspond to the same situation in the world that makes there be no green elephants on the table? The same pool table must involve a great many different facts. These questions illustrate the difficulty in counting facts and distinguishing them. The difficulty is well recognized by advocates of the Correspondence Theory, but critics complain that characterizations of facts too often circle back ultimately to saying facts are whatever true propositions must correspond to in order to be true. Davidson has criticized the notion of fact, arguing that “if true statements correspond to anything, they all correspond to the same thing” (in “True to the Facts”, Davidson [1984]). Davidson also has argued that facts really are the true statements themselves; facts are not named by them, as the Correspondence Theory mistakenly supposes.”

Semantic theory

The semantic theory of truth was introduced by Alfred Tarski and is a theory that is based on mathematical logic. It is one of the most influential ideas in contemporary analytic philosophy.

Problems

This theory is verry theoretical, it is hard to describe everything mathematical. Especially human nature, flaws, and irrational behavior of any kind. “How can the semantic interpretation of a formal symbol system be made intrinsic to the system, rather than just parasitic on the meanings in our heads? How can the meanings of the meaningless symbol tokens, manipulated solely on the basis of their (arbitrary) shapes, be grounded in anything but other meaningless symbols?”

Coherence theory

The coherence theory tries to explain everything. Form physics over beauty in nature to success of people on its own. It goes away from the word “facts” and focus on another principal to determent truth. The coherence theory puts our beliefs together into a coherent system. It means, an information is getting disassembled into its verry parts. After disassembling them we analyze each of those parts and judge based on experience and the surrounding to see if this claim could be valid and therefore right.

The snow is red and 30 cm high.

Disassembling

The snow

is red

and 30cm high

Afterwards each part is analyzed.

The snow

We know it is December and winter. There is a chance that there is snow. (Possibly true)

is red

Snow isn’t red, it is white. Are there any possibilities that the snow is red? Maybe some color? But if you put paint on the snow it is going to melt due to the solvents in the paint. Maybe he used a spray can and only the top layer appears to be red. (Possibly true but unlikely)

and 30cm high

It is December but I know that it was about 7 to 10 degrees the last couple days. It is possible that it snowed during last night, but I am certain that it is not possible that it snowed 30cm overnight. (wrong).

We for ourselves decide now that the sentence “The snow is red and 30cm high” cannot be true based on our experience.

Problems

This theory can explain everything. You, yourself can break everything down if you understand what is talked about and therefore analyze it. However, it is possible to have a wrong understanding about the situation. Simply if you are misinformed about a certain circumstance. Or if the event is unexpectedly against your convictions true or wrong (it snowed 30cm last night).

Pragmatic theory

The pragmatic theory aforesaid, that something is true if it is convenient. Truth is defined in creating the best outcome possible. It creates a situation where everyone is profiting in the best way possible, even when it means truth and facts are not combinable anymore.

“I cannot come to your birthday party because I am sick”. (I am not sick, but I don’t want to attend the party)

You tell someone this truth to avoid hurting the person and do not feel uncomfortable. At the same time, you avoid being to be rude and discomfort the other person because you decline the offer. Truth in this situation means that you and your opposite have a different truth. The fact that this is wrong/not true doesn’t matter because the purpose of true is to be most pleasant and beneficial to all.

Problems

What someone is saying is not true. It is a lie. It creates a possibility, that you misjudge the other person (Maybe the host of the party would appreciate to know if you don’t want to come because you don’t want to). Another hazard is, that everyone individually decides what is the right time to be “pragmatic”. Other persons might perceive your pragmatic truth as a lie and feel offended. It creates a verry dangerous opportunity that some people are just exploding others. It is easily to claim, this “truth” is necessary just to keep you comfort, but at the same time pursue my own ambitions and set back others.

The Responsibility of truth:

Epistemology

“Knowledge is justified true belief”. Plato wrote in his dialog Theaetetus about the definition of knowledge. Due to his approach to define knowledge he came up with that theory.

Truth is pictured as one essential Part of Knowledge. It is the counterpart towards the beliefs. A belief only regards the person itself. You can belief everything you want. The problem is, to merge it with justification and truth. Truth can be debated and refuted. Yet truth is something verry unique to all of us. What appears to be true, can seem utterly wrong to others. Especially when it comes to morals and values. Cultural differences sometimes appear bigger or smaller. Something someone in Europe would consider right and true seem in Asia completely wrong or just the other way around.

The only possible way to deal with those difficulties is to never stop rethink and requestions your values and therefor YOUR truth.