APOLOGIA
By Hendrik van der Breggen
The Carillon, April 27, 2017
About truth
“Is Truth Dead?” asks Time
magazine’s recent cover. Apparently, in view of our so-called “post-truth”
culture, this is a rhetorical question.
But before we pronounce on the death of truth, perhaps we should
identify the alleged victim. Our first question should be “What is truth?”
Two thousand years ago, the Roman procurator Pontius Pilate
famously asked this question of Jesus of Nazareth. Pilate, however, didn’t seem
interested in waiting for an answer.
Without entering into the deep theological/ philosophical waters
of what Jesus meant by claiming to be The Truth (let’s call this
capital T truth) it might be helpful today to get clear on the
ordinary notion of truth: truth with a lower case t.
When contemporary philosopher Francis Beckwith was asked “What
is truth?” he promptly replied: “Do you want the true answer or the false one?”
Beckwith’s answer is both humorous and insightful. The humor in
Beckwith’s answer disarms us while revealing, almost glaringly, that we already
know what truth is. Truth is telling it like it is. (Yes, journalists and
politicians, please take note.)
The concept of truth Beckwith helps us intuit isn’t anything
new. Aristotle understood truth similarly when he wrote, “To say of what is
that it is not, or of what is not that it is, is false, while to say of what is
that it is, and of what is not that it is not, is true.”
Read Aristotle’s words again, slowly. Don’t let the fact that
none of Aristotle’s words has more than five letters escape your notice, and
don’t let this fact take away from the profundity of the words. The
commonsensical, garden-variety understanding of truth that Beckwith and
Aristotle set out is what philosophers call the Correspondence View of Truth.
In other words (longer words I’m afraid), on the correspondence
view of truth, truth is a condition or state of affairs that exists when a
statement of what is the case is the case. That a claim or proposition
is true means it corresponds with or accurately represents what is the case in
reality.
Falsity, on the other hand, is a condition or state of affairs
that exists when a statement of what is the case is not the case. Lies
are deliberate falsehoods, that is, lies are falsehoods intentionally presented
as truths.
A corollary of the correspondence view of truth is that, as contemporary
philosopher J. P. Moreland points out, “Reality makes thoughts true or false.”
I would add that reality can also make feelings true or false. For example, when an all-too-thin woman
with anorexia nervosa feels she is fat and requests liposuction, we rightly
think she is mistaken in fact. (Also, I dare say, when a man feels he is a
woman and requests sex-change surgery, we can rightly think he is mistaken in
fact, too.)
Sure, we don’t know everything (we are not God) and our
knowledge of the things we know isn’t exhaustive or infallible (again, we are
not God).
And sure, we are sometimes or even often deceived.
Nevertheless, to know we are sometimes or often deceived
requires knowledge of sometimes or often not being deceived.
Happily, by careful examination of evidence and careful reasoning
therefrom we can know when a claim is false or someone is lying.
Truth is not dead, folks. Rather, we have to liven up our investigative
efforts to pursue it.
Perhaps the love of truth is dead.
(Hendrik van der Breggen,
PhD, is associate professor of philosophy at Providence University College.)
Further reading on truth:
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