GUEST POST from Geoffrey Moore
This is the second in a series of responses to the MSN post “20 Philosophical Questions That Are Hard to Wrap Your Head Around.” We are on Question #2: Is there a truth? Here’s the MSN blurb:
This inquiry challenges the concept of truths, versus realities prompting introspection on the nature of knowledge and certainty. Many philosophers consider truth to be a concept that cannot be fully explained in terms other than truth itself. The accepted perspective is that truth relates to how well our language or thoughts align, with a world that exists independently of our minds. This theory is known as the correspondence theory of truth.
There is a fundamental premise stated here that needs correction, namely that “truth relates to how well our language or thoughts align with a world that exists independently of our minds.” The correspondence theory is indeed one understanding of what constitutes truth, but there are two others that are equally well-accepted perspectives—the coherence theory and the pragmatic theory. Thus, while correspondence is indeed a measure of how well our language and thoughts align with a world that exists independently of our minds, coherence, by contrast, is a measure of how well any given claim aligns with all the other claims we take to be true, basically our body of understanding of how the world works. Pragmatism provides a third perspective on truth, taking it to be a measure of how well any claim we make aligns with the results we get from acting out that claim in the world.
All three of these perspectives are useful, and the good news is they are not mutually exclusive. The way we normally test for truth is first through coherence theory. That is, when we hear a claim, we check to see if it aligns with our existing understanding of things. If it does, we are likely to just accept it and move on. If it does not, however, then we are moved to investigate whether it corresponds to what is actually the case, doing so by examining evidence for or against the claim. If the evidence does indeed warrant the claim, then we are moved to modify our body of beliefs to absorb this new bit of understanding into a revised coherence model, what we normally call learning or gaining in experience.
Pragmatism overlays another layer of interest, namely, does this claim enable us to have more success in whatever efforts we have underway? Successful outcomes, in other words, are a form of evidence for the validity of the claim. We have to be careful here, however, for the outcome’s success may be due to some factor other than the one claimed. Nonetheless, when things do work, and especially when this applies to things that traditionally have not worked anywhere near as well in the past, it sends us a strong signal to update our coherence and correspondence models accordingly.
Another challenge that pragmatism poses to our understanding of truth is that lying can also deliver successful outcomes. Lying may often defeat itself in the long run, but in the short run, it can be very effective. How we address lying, however, is normally more of a social issue than a philosophical one. For it to be philosophical, one would need to make the case that lying is foundational to wellbeing, and while such an argument is not unimaginable, it carries with it enough problems that we can safely ignore it for the time being.
What we cannot ignore, on the other hand, is the political use of lying. This is foundational to all authoritarian regimes. In order to stay in power, they must continually maintain a heightened sense of fear and anxiety in the population they govern, at a level sufficient to gain its acquiescence to their corrupt and self-serving ways. How citizens can respond to this challenge is something we will address in a moment.
The core question people want answered about truth, though, is whether or not it is a thing. That is, is truth a force in the world, the way love is or the way beauty is? Historically, the answer to this question was yes because truth, like love and beauty, is taken to be an attribute of the divine being that governs all human experience. In a secular world, however, that answer needs to be revisited. When we do so, we see that the desire for love, beauty, and truth still abides. They do indeed exert a force on us. So, if they are forces in the world, where are they to be found?
My answer is that each one is anchored on a different stair in the Infinite Staircase. Love is grounded on the stairstep of values, an inherent part of our mammalian heritage of nurturing the young. Beauty is grounded on the stairstep of culture, a learned appreciation for esthetic experience. Truth, in this context, is located on the stairstep of narrative, subject to verification delivered from the stairstep of analytics.
Narrative, in other words, is the force in the world that mobilizes the power of truth. True narratives are foundational to both personal and social wellbeing. False narratives undermine these same foundations. Let’s look at examples of both.
The power of true narratives manifests when people act in service to their narrative, even at a cost to their personal self-interests. We call this form of truth integrity, and it is genuinely inspiring because it cements the meaningfulness of their commitments. Existentialism represents an entire philosophy based on this core idea. Its life goal is to be authentic, with authenticity defined as behavior aligned with and in service to whatever life narrative you have chosen for yourself. Truth, in this sense, really does make you free, whereas falsehood imprisons you in narrative contradictions that ultimately destroy your wellbeing, a state that is termed bad faith.
False narratives pose a different problem. The power of truth to combat them depends upon the principled deployment of analytics. Unfortunately, the hold of any narrative on the personality, whether true or false, is frequently stronger than analytics can dislodge. As a result, regardless of how strong the evidence is for falsehood, it is simply denied, allowing bad faith and lack of wellbeing to spread pervasively and sustain their position of power far longer than one might imagine. This is the condition of life under an authoritarian regime.
To dislodge such a regime requires going below the stairstep of competing narratives down to the stairstep of core mammalian values and resurrecting those values that the regime is violating. This is dangerous work, for the regime is well aware of its vulnerability to this tactic and will aggressively punish any signs of it. The prospects for success in the short term are not good, and support from entities outside the regime are likely be necessary to dislodge it, so we should not be surprised to see societies continue to persist under painfully oppressive circumstances.
That said, when the global cannot be addressed, we must retreat and draw in the boundaries to find a local that can be. At the extreme, this would be oneself, although as social creatures, we need the help of a community of others to stay the course, family being our most obvious opportunity. Whatever its nature, that community becomes our reason for being, and it is here that we must use truth to establish the relationships of trust that hold us together. Truth in this context looks more like the medieval troth, a term for fidelity and faithfulness, a kind of integrity that is anchored in our pledge to others to be there for them and with them. Keeping faith is a form of integrity that is well suited to coping with adverse circumstances.
So, is there a truth? Well, in this last sense, there certainly is, as people have proved the world over. As we expand outward from our local scenes, and as we raise the level of abstraction, there will be truth as long as, to borrow a phrase from Yeats, “the center holds.” At some point, it will not, and we must reconcile ourselves to the limits of our mortal perspective, embracing humility and foregoing the kind of righteousness that seeks to impose an answer by force.
That’s what I think. What do you think?
— Image credit: Unsplash
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