TRUTH

truth:  conformity with fact or reality  

Truth is one of the most sought after and prized values in human history.   Truth in speech was taught by Buddha, Jesus, and Mohammad.  It is hard to imagine a moral code that would not value truth.  And yet when confronted in a practical circumstance, truth is often elusive.  What follows describes some of my own ongoing search for the truth about truth.

Let’s start the search for truth with the very well known Liar’s Paradox.  A man says “I am lying.”   Is this statement a lie or the truth?   This statement can’t be true because if it is true, then we accept that he is lying, which means this statement must be a lie so the statement can’t be true.  On the other hand, the statement cannot be a lie, because if he is lying the statement itself is true and not a lie.   The point we might take from the Liar’s Paradox is that some things are neither true nor false.  In other words we cannot assign the true/false value to some things.  It doesn’t apply.  Although this conclusion has been drawn based on purely logical considerations, I think we will find that it also applies to many other situations for reasons that spring from the practical rather than the logical. 

But for now let’s consider something very precise:  pure mathematics. Mathematicians love to prove theorems, which means that they prove mathematical statements true (or false).  They do this in the context of some mathematical system, which has  some assumptions (axioms, which are assumed to be true).  A theorem once proved is probably the closest thing there is to an absolute truth.  Mathematical proofs use deductive reasoning (logical rules).  But even here there are some significant limits on this truth. First, the theorem is only as true as the assumptions (postulates, axioms and other theorems that we’re used in the proof).  Second, the truth embodied in the theorem is only useful or meaningful to the extent that there is some application for the theorem that is consistent with the assumptions used to prove it.   Third, sometimes previously accepted proofs turn out to be false, so the theorem is not necessarily true at all!  Mathematicians have even had to admit that there are some mathematical statements that are true but can never be proved as true within a given mathematical system.  So even within mathematics (and logic) we find that there are limits to the truth.  And things get a lot murkier as we consider other realms of truth. 

Science has some surprising limits to its truths.  Looking back at the history of science we find it a story of imagined theories, not proven by logic, but supported by some evidence that was convincing at the time.  These theories may survive to this day as approximations or models of the physical world, still not proven, or they may have been falsified by some experimental evidence that failed to support them.  Science for the most part uses inductive reasoning (based on experimental evidence). The greatest scientific truths are probably the falsifications of theories (i.e. proving that this or that theory is not true).  The falsification of a theory establishes the truth of the falsification by deductive reasoning. In the late nineteenth century, scientific consensus was that time was absolute.    But it’s not.  Einstein posited that time is relative to the observer and experiments have shown that to be correct.  In another case, Sir Isaac Newton’s theory of gravity proposed that there was a gravitational force between objects proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them.  That’s almost true, but Einstein came up with a better model that said gravity was the result of the warping of space-time itself by the masses of objects.  So far Einstein’s relativity theories seem to be holding up on a large scale but don’t seem to apply on microscopic scales, where quantum theory now holds the consensus.  As it stands now, it is absolutely true that Newton’s gravitational theory is not absolutely true.  One more thing can be said about most scientific theories: they are not really explanations of some underlying truth in the universe, they are simply models that predict the outcome of experiments.  And no one knows how long these models will continue to be consistent with experimental results or when (or if) they will be falsified by some new experimental result.  Absolute, undeniable scientific truths are in a lot shorter supply than we would like them to be.

Consider now the past, the present and the future.  When we add the dimension of time, truth becomes even more elusive.  If we make statements about events in the future, is there any way we can know in the present moment that they are true or false?  Suppose we say, “Next year at this time I will be on vacation in Paris.”  There is no way that we can know that this statement is true until a year has past and we can test it’s veracity at that time.  So in the present moment there is no such value as “truth” about a future event like “I will be in Paris a year from now.”   What if I say something like, “In a year from now, if I drop a ball it will fall to the ground.”   Or more generally, “Today’s laws of physics, whatever they truly are, will still apply a year from now.”     Scientists are considering the answer to this question, and right now they don’t think the true laws of physics are changing, but that’s just a theory, of course!      What about events in the past?  Unless we can refute a statement about a past event with a test in the present, the ”truth” of a past event can get very murky.  So if the statement is “Bob killed John last year,” the fact that John is still alive in the present will refute that statement and we can label it false.  Otherwise, in most cases, considering past events, we quickly get into the issue of evidentiary sufficiency rather than logical impossibility.  So I’m tempted to say, “Bring in the lawyers.”  What is the evidentiary standard….. possibility, probability, preponderance of the evidence, beyond a reasonable doubt, positive proof, or whatever?    Are there degrees of certainty that mark where the truth stops and a falsehood starts?  Shouldn’t there be some range of uncertainty between True and False, like Maybe?  If the truth of a statement about a past event can change as the evidence available changes about that event, we have to be very careful about what we label as true and false.  

The dictionary definition of truth, ‘conforming with fact or reality,’ seems somewhat circular to me.  What is a fact?  Well, it’s something that is true.  So defining truth as conforming to a fact seems equivalent to saying that truth is something that is true, which is saying nothing more than relating a specific noun to its adjective form.  The argument over truth is just pushed to an argument over fact.  What about the conformance of a statement with reality as a meaningful definition of the the truth?  This definition immediately raises the question of what is reality?  So let’s consider reality for a moment.  Is there an absolute reality, or is reality relative to the observer and the situation the observer finds herself in?  The answer to this question of reality will essentially answer the question of whether a particular truth is absolute or relative.  My essay on Imagination, Belief and Faith argues that “what we call reality is only a version of our external world as we imagine it based on our limited senses and previous experiences. What we know as true reality is imagined in our minds.”  Our human reality is so much tied to our human senses, our human minds and bodies, our physical world, our culture, and our society that we almost certainly must conclude that our version of reality is relative to those factors.  Change any one of those factors and some portion of our reality  changes.  Can anyone come up with a truth related to reality that is inarguable, absolute and not relative?  Only if that truth conforms to a reality that is absolute and not relative. 

Does truth have any application to religious beliefs or faith?  Well let’s see how what we have already discussed above applies to religion.  First, religion is definitely not mathematics or logic and  doesn’t have a systematic framework that is conducive to deductive reasoning.  So we won’t find many absolute truths based on deductive reasoning, with the possible exception of some falsifications.  Presumably the inductive reasoning of science has some application to religious morals that can be tested by experience, but religion has none of the precision of science.  A scientific experiment can be repeated over and over with the same result, but a moral dictum such as “turn the other cheek” could yield different results every time depending on the people involved and the extenuating circumstances.  Religious facts, such as the Buddha said this or that, suffer from all the problems of determining the truth of anything said 2,500 years in the past.  Likewise religious predictions about the future (e.g. your own life after death ...  or not) can not be verified in the present just like any other statement about the future.  Religion often has beliefs in the supernatural.  Is truth an attribute that applies to the supernatural?  Some might argue that the supernatural defines the ultimate truth.  But how can we relate to that truth?  By definition the supernatural is outside the realm of our natural world and we are unable to experience the supernatural in any way except by our natural senses, which means that we cannot know reality from the supernatural’s perspective.  (See my essay on spirituality and the supernatural.)  So it seems unlikely that we could know what a supernatural being’s truths are since we do not know its reality.  Similarly, there appears to be no way that we could actually know the truthfulness of the statement “There is a single supernatural God,” because this statement does not relate to our natural reality or knowable fact.  The existence or non-existence of God has to be taken on faith.

I’ve spent most of the paragraphs above pointing out the many limitations of truth.  Mathematics and logic seem to have the greatest claim on the truth.  Science has some claim on absolute truth but mostly through the falsification of its theories.  For everything else it would seem that the truth is often elusive, and that the usefulness of applying the value “truth” is very limited in lots of situations.  So why has truth been raised to the status of a prized value when it is not applicable to many situations (e.g.  the future) or it is so hard to apply in so many real world situations?  Maybe it is because the concept of truth seems so valuable, even though truth in practice is elusive.  Being personally truthful and honest is seen as desirable trait even if actually identifying the truth is often hard to do.  The fact is that you don’t need to know the actual truth (if there is one) to be honest.  You only need to speak the truth as you perceive it.  In light of the uncertainties associated with the truth, to be perfectly honest, you need to caveat your honest statements with characterizations of these uncertainties when appropriate.  And you can and should live true to your personal reality and personal beliefs as they exist in any present moment.  What else can you do?  Just don’t label your personal beliefs as the truth.  You may be assigning a value (truth) to your beliefs that cannot be true.

Finally, consider this poem:

I searched for the ultimate truth,
    but does such a thing exist?
I found no truth in the past,
    which is lost in forgotten mist.
I saw no truth in the future
    ‘cause it has yet to come to be.
Only in the present have I found some truth,
    ‘cause it’s here for me to see.
In the present I see love and acceptance
    fill my life without fiction.
But is this a universal truth
    without any contradiction?
Don’t hate and rejection find a way
    to dwell in the present as well?
So if there are truths from God, 
    it is hard for me to tell.
Nevertheless, are not my truths
    pearls of wisdom most fine?
Then how do I treat another’s truths
    that seem to compete with mine?
Mustn’t I be open-minded
    ‘cause my own beliefs demand it?
Mustn’t I examine another’s belief
    enough to understand it.
Mustn’t what I hold true be questioned
    to sustain my open mind?
So perhaps my ultimate truth
    is to be open to all living kind.