Sometimes I annoy people by saying that truth is not important.
“Truth” is always either provisional, dependent on formal assumptions, or a matter of faith. It can’t be absolute, and therefore we shouldn’t treat it as an end in itself.
As sentient beings, we interact not directly with reality, but with representations and models of reality. More and more, in science, through sophisticated equipment, but at any time through our senses and brain processes.
Where our model allows us to interact with reality effectively, we call it “truth” … but it is a convenient leap rather than a logical one. Taken to an extreme, there is no way to prove that our whole experience of the universe isn’t a simulation being fed to us, including the most basic things we take to be self-evident. The fact that that’s unfalsifiable doesn’t mean that it couldn’t be true.
So when we say something is “true”, what we actually mean is that we have a rule that is consistently and exactly useful, given our experience of reality, NOT that it corresponds to reality itself, because reality itself is unknowable in principle.
Truth is at its most concrete in a mathematical proof, because we have definite assumptions, firm rules, and internal consistency. But even there, the truth is dependent on those, so it’s conditional on them. If anything, that should teach us to look for what anything else we consider “true” is conditional on.
What, you may ask, about when someone asks us about an event? We can tell the truth about that, can’t we? What happened, happened.
No. We don’t have access to the past any more than we have access to reality. We have our memory, which is another model. We have documentary evidence. We don’t have the reality itself. The same ultimate caveat applies – we can be mistaken or deceived. The evidence could be faked, however unlikely, and our memories can be mistaken. Often, this objection is trivial because it would be so vastly unlikely, and so we ignore it, but it’s there in principle.
The same rule applies throughout: what we call truth is something that proves to work and be consistent when we rely on it.
OK, OK, I admit it, this is pedantic.
Most of the time, in daily life, it’s completely obvious what we mean by “truth”, and pretty clear what is true or not. These objections in principle belong to philosophy.
The reason I annoy people by insisting on this at times is that occasionally it really matters that we remember we don’t ever have access to real truth. What’s more, we don’t necessarily know when that will be, and if we’ve become accustomed to assuming a truth then we’ll trip up.
“This ain’t the road, this is only the map,” as Tom Waits sang.
And maps are useful. What’s more, a good map, that better conforms to the landscape, is more useful. Sometimes people assume that because I cast doubt on the very idea of truth that I’m saying everything is equally unreliable, and I’m not. A good map is better than a bad map, or a map of the wrong place … I’m just saying that it’s still only a map. Even a theoretically perfect map.
At this stage, someone normally says “yes, but we can check the map against the landscape, so the landscape is our truth.” But that’s mistaking the metaphor for the thing. Our senses of reality are our map for a landscape we have no access to. It’s as though we’re sitting at home with the map, planning a journey, and that map has always been completely reliable, so we trust it. The map, though, can’t tell us that there’s been a landslide since we last went, and the road is no longer there. And we’re walking around this world with a map of it, a model of it, taking readings from our instruments to check we’re still aligned.
Yes, but SO WHAT?
Nobody cares, do they? This is a silly thing to talk about, let alone write a post of this length.
And that’s the truth.
So what’s the point?
Relativism, for all its flaws, has one massively important advantage: it encourages humility. Open-mindedness, but mainly humility.
When we assume there is “a truth”, the temptation to think we can reach it is very difficult to resist, no matter how we may protest that it’s just an abstract ideal. It becomes important in and of itself, not for any other reason. And then we need to ask “why”.
What do we want truth for?
Usually, it’s to be able to call something final. To win, or to stop. To say “this is it”. And that desire is dangerous, simply because it’s a wish for something impossible, so liable to bite us when it’s least convenient.
If it isn’t that wish for finality, then there can be no objection to doing away with the need for the idea of truth at all. If something is successful, consistent and reliable, we can be satisfied with its success rather than adding the leap that it implies a “truth” that doesn’t give us anything more.
For me, remembering that there IS no truth, practically, gives me the habit of always looking for the assumptions, the conditionals, which I feel is healthy. Almost always, once I’ve seen what they are, I can relax and feel OK with the implications. I’m not constantly flailing in a fog of uncertainty. Most assumptions are reasonable in daily life, and things are pretty certain. Certain enough, reliable, short of absolute. I feel more secure with an awareness of the edges of that certainty.
Essentially, truth is always a matter of faith. We say something is so because we believe it, and the belief is the important thing. Faith is not a bad thing – faith is fundamental to human existence. But it’s a better and more honest thing if we acknowledge it, and not try to wave it away.
And that’s MY truth.