(English philosopher, b.1945)
Haack's thesis is that there is one truth, but also many truths: i.e., one unambiguous, non-relative truth-concept, but many and various propositions that are true.
1. There is one truth-concept: to say that a claim is true is to say simply that things are as it says - not that anyone, or everyone, believes it, or that it follows from this or that theory, or that there is good evidence for it. Any plausible definition of the truth concept must simply take for granted the Aristotelian insight that "to say of what is that it is, or of what is not that it is not, is true".
2. But there are many propositional truths: particular empirical claims, scientific theories, historical propositions, mathematical theorems, logical principles, textual interpretations, statements about what a person wants or believes or intends, statements about grammatical, social, or legal roles and rules, etc., etc.
Therefore one should say that there are truths of many kinds; but of course there are not rival, not incompatible truths. Haack's thesis is that the heterogeneity of true propositions doesn't require a plurality of truth-concepts.
She argues against those who think that there is more than one truth-concept because they think that "true" must have different meanings as applied to different kinds of proposition, the empirical, the mathematical, the ethical, etc. She refutes the view of those who think that truth is relative to the individual, or to culture, community, theory, or conceptual scheme. Even more she rejects the opinion of those who profess that the concept of truth is nothing but rhetorical or ideological humbug (Rorty).
Haack rejects also the view of those who deny that there are many different kinds of true propositions. Most often those who apparently deny that there are many true propositions are really maintaining that there is only one kind of true propositions. This may be the case with idealists - like F. Bradley - committed to an idealist picture according to which the only genuine truth is about the Reality behind the Appearances. It is also the case with those who are committed to a strong reductionism according to which the only true propositions are found exclusively in their particular and exclusive field of knowledge such as science only, or religion only, etc.
*Haack, Susan ,Evidence and Inquiry,?Towards Reconstruction in Epistemology,,Basil Blackwell, 1993
(German philosopher, 1929- )
A “realist” consensual notion of truth
1. Habermas is known for having worked out what a consensus theory of truth involves: the claim of truth can only occur in a social setting which is also characterized by freedom and justice. According to him truth is a social construct that must be explicated by reference to the social circumstances under which assent is justified. Truth may be ascribed only to those statements and theories capable of commanding unforced consensus. “Truth means the promise of attaining a rational consensus.”
He makes the distinction, important for him, between life-praxis and discourse. In action-contexts, experiences of the world are shared with others through statements in which the truth-claims are taken for granted. Truth is not the explicit topic of such statements. In discourse, on the contrary, there is no sharing of information but arguments about the validity-claims of world-views. It is in the sphere of discourse, outside the context of action and experience, that Habermas locates the truth of statements. Experiences can only support truth-claims, but a truth-claim can be established only through argumentation. Experience alone can never be the ground of truth. Truth cannot consist in the agreement of a statement with a corresponding fact. Habermas rejects the correspondence theory of truth.
It is only in discourse that the validity-claim of an assertion can be debated and found redeemable. Statements are true if we are able to substantiate them in argumentation with others. It is sociologically only that truth can be justified. The condition for the truth of statements is the potential agreement of everybody. But as such a situation can never be realised, Habermas endorses the ‘fallibilist’ view according to which one can never be certain to have attained the truth.
From all this it is clear that Habermas is not so much concerned with the meaning and definition of the word “true” than with the pragmatic meaning of the act of making truth-claims. He is more interested with the method for arriving at true statements. What he proposes is not so much a theory of truth as a theory of justification.
2. But this is not the whole story because Habermas has made many significant modifications to his considered views on epistemology during the last three decades. His main new contention is that the pragmatic approach of his consensual theory does not require an anti-realist understanding of knowledge. If he rejects the correspondence theory of truth (because in any case one cannot get “outside of language”), he insists that the correspondence theory of truth is able to retain a fundamental aspect of the meaning of the truth predicate, and that is the notion of ‘unconditional validity’. Habermas wants to keep the idea of unconditionality that is part of the correspondence idea of truth. He admits now that one cannot simply identify truth with justifiability or rational acceptability. Reaching understanding cannot function unless the participants refer to a single objective world. Habermas does not want to obliterate the distinction between the intersubjectively shared lifeworld and the objective world. Habermas rejects a non-realist understanding of knowledge in maintaining a notion of truth that transcends justification.
• Habermas, The Theory of Communication Action, Beacon Press, Boston, 1984; see Campbel, Richard, ibid., p.349 sq.
(Canadian philosopher of science, b.1936)
‘Entity realism’: agnosticism about the truth of scientific theories
The ‘entity realism’ of Hacking (who is its main proponent) is a philosophical position within the debate about scientific realism. Whereas traditional scientific realism argues that our best scientific theories are true, or approximately true, or closer to the truth than their predecessors, entity realism does not commit itself to judgments concerning the truth of scientific theories.
For Ian Hacking it is essential to make a distinction between entity realism and theory realism. Entity realism asserts the reality of unobservable entities discovered by science. Theory realism asserts that scientific theories may be true or have a truth-value. Traditional scientific realism combines entity realism with theory realism. However, Hacking notes that the two doctrines are logically distinct. The entity realist may allow that there are unobservable entities of which scientists possess knowledge, but of which no current theory provides a correct description. By contrast, the theory realist may assert that a theory is true though none of its terms denote unobservable entities, but refer instead to logical constructions out of experience.
Hacking claims that one can be a realist about entities without being a realist about theories, similarly, one can be a realist about electrons without believing that any of our present theories of electrons are true. He contends that while we have good evidence that many of the entities discussed in science are real, we do not necessarily have the same kinds of evidence for our theories. Hacking contends that while there are different theories that all claim to aim at the truth, there is no such thing as a theory of electrons. As he states, "There are a lot of theories, models, approximations, pictures, formalisms, methods and so forth involving electrons, but there is no reason to suppose that the intersection of these is a theory at all." His point is that while we know many of the properties of electrons, there is no single theory that captures all of this information.
Hacking contrasts the situation of theories with that of entities. Hacking claims that for entities, we can have clear and convincing evidence that they exist. He contends that the threshhold of evidence for claiming that an entity exists is a demonstration that we are able to manipulate the entity in a systematic, predictable manner. He claims that in the case of electrons, this test has been passed because scientists have repeatedly constructed instruments that rely upon the existence of electrons to function. The reality of an entity is assured, he claims, when we are able to manipulate that entity to alter the causal processes in which it exists.
*Hacking, Ian, Representing and Intervening, Cambridge University Press 1983
(German zoologist and philosopher, 1835-1919)
Truth unadulterated is only to be found in 'the temple of the study of nature', and the only available paths to it are critical observation and reflection - the empirical investigation of facts and the rational study of their efficient causes . He writes: "The goddess of truth dwells in the temple of nature, in the green woods, on the blue sea, and on the snowy summits of the hills - not in the gloom of the cloister, nor in the clouds of incense of our Christian churches. The paths which lead to the noble divinity of truth and knowledge are the loving study of nature and its laws, the observation of the infinitely great star-world with the aid of the telescope, and the infinitely tiny cell-world with the aid of the microscope - not senseless ceremonies and unthinking prayers. The true revelation - that is, the true source of rational knowledge - is to be sought in nature alone. Every intelligent man with normal brain and senses finds this true revelation in nature on impartial study, and thus frees himself from the superstition with which the "revelation" of religion had burdened him".
Haeckel argues that pantheism teaches that God and the world are one. The idea of God is identical with that of nature or substance. This pantheistic view is sharply opposed in principle to all possible forms of theism, although there have been many attempts made from both sides to bridge over the deep chasm that separates the two. There is always this fundamental contradiction between them, that in theism God is opposed to nature as an extramundane being, as creating and sustaining the world, and acting upon it from without, while in pantheism God, as an intramundane being, is everywhere identical with nature itself, and is operative within the world as "force" or "energy". The latter view alone is compatible with our supreme law - the law of substance. It follows necessarily that pantheism is the world-system of the modern scientist. There are still a few men of science who contest this, and think it possible to reconcile the old theistic theory of human nature with the pantheistic truth of the law of substance. All these efforts rest on confusion or sophistry - when they are honest.
The truth of pantheism lies in its destruction of the dualist antithesis of God and the world, in its recognition that the world exists in virtue of its own inherent forces.
* Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919) The Riddle of the Universe, 1900.
(German theologian-philosopher, 1730-1788)
All scientific and philosophical systems are a distortion of the truth
Hamann began as a disciple of the Enlightenment, but, after a profound spiritual crisis, turned against it. He is first in the line of thinkers who accuse rationalism and scientism of using analysis to distort reality. His theses rest on the conviction that all truth is particular, never general; that reason is impotent to demonstrate the existence of anything and is an instrument only for conveniently classifying and arranging data in patterns to which nothing in reality corresponds.
Hamann glories in the fact that Hume has successfully destroyed the rationalist claim that there is an a priori route to reality, insisting that all knowledge and belief ultimately rest on acquaintance with the data of direct perception. Knowledge is direct perception of individual entities, and concepts are never, no matter how specific they may be, wholly adequate to the fullness of the individual experience.
Scientists invent systems, philosophers rearrange reality into artificial patterns, shut their eyes to reality, and build castles in the air. "When data are given you, why do you seek for ficta?" Systems are mere prisons of the spirit: they lead to distortion in the sphere of knowledge.
What is real is individual, that is, is what it is in virtue of its uniqueness, its differences from other things, events, thoughts, and not in virtue of what it has in common with them, which is all that the generalizing sciences seek to record. Hamann took little interest in theories or speculations about the external world; he cared only for the inner personal life of the individual, and therefore only for art, religious experience, the senses, personal relationships, which the analytic truths of scientific reason seemed to him to reduce to meaningless ciphers.
* The Magus of the North: J. G. Hamann and the Origins of Modern Irrationalism , Berlin, Isaiah, New York: Farrar Straus and Giroux, 1993
(Contemporary Dutch economist and philosopher of science)
According to the African traditional culture, all things in the universe are forces. They exert power over other things. You have: non living forces, living forces, formerly living forces. Everything has power and is more or less active. The African question to any unknown object is not: what is it, but: what does it. Every force has something you may call a "meaning", an "intention", an "aim", a "function".
All knowledge acquisition is to discover the power of a force. To discover what a thing "does". What the force is for. For instance, the grass is "what greens" or the water is "what cools".
The community is a force, and knowledge itself is a force, transmitted to the living by the ancestors. Within the community all force, all truth comes up from the roots of the family tree, the dead ancestors, the elders, and passes up to parents and children. The general rule always to agree with everybody holds most emphatically with respect to authorities. In the clan context, the elder's opinion is truth.
This casts a light on the Western strategy to convince with arguments. From the traditional African point of view, arguments are a sign of weakness, of lack of power and vitality. A good, forceful truth does not need arguments. Arguments are crutches only invalid opinions need. And truth is felt as a force coming from the speaking human. A strong man has strong truths. As far as truth is concerned, strength is not measured in muscles but in age and wisdom. Wisdom does not exist of stockpiles of arguments. It consists of wider and deeper understanding of the universe. Wisdom is felt as a force.
Truth to the African tradition is intimately associated with personal advantage in the strife for survival and which of the religions enhances power most depends on the circumstances, that is, on what these religions have to offer in a given time at a certain place. For leaders, it is a matter of which foreigner has the highest power to add to his interests. Advantages depend on circumstances.
It is not proper to doubt or discuss the following evident truths: The clan or tribe (not the individual) is the knowing subject - All knowledge is power - All knowledge is about forces and their power - The world is the total of forces - God is the total of power. No need is felt for inter-community pooling of knowledge. Every tribe has its own ancestors with the knowledge relevant to this particular tribe. Tribes have become different in procreation, so did their knowledge. Knowledge is not considered generally human, but community-specific. Nobody feels uncomfortable with the idea that one tribe's truth is different from another tribe's truth. Nobody feels the need for intertribal accommodation of knowledge.
* Hamminga, Bert (ed.), Comparative Western and African Epistemology Amsterdam/New York, NY, 2005, 147 pp.
(English moral philosopher, 1919-2002)
In the field of moral philosophy, some systems are called ‘cognitivist’. They assume that moral judgements make assertions which are either true or false and therefore are, if true, contributions to knowledge. Hence the term of ‘cognitivism’. But the traditional assumption that moral claims are true or false has come under attack by a group of philosophers who came to be known as ‘non-cognitivists’. Non-cognitive ethicists believe that moral claims are not about matters of fact and that therefore there is nothing for them to be called true or false. They believe that morality is something entirely of human making. They focus their attention on the use to which moral language (“good”, “just”) is put, rather than its meaning. R.M. Hare advocates such non-cognitivist ethics. According to him moral claims are neither true nor false. He thinks of moral language as an implicit form of imperatives. For instance, saying “theft is bad” is simply a way of saying “Don’t steal” or “You ought not to steal”. Moral judgements serve the function of suggesting to others particular courses of action. They are assimilated to imperatives. Any reason given in favour of them are reasons for action, not reasons for believing something. That is why one does not describe imperatives as true or false. Their success does not consist in fitting to the world; it consists in making the world fit to them. They are not descriptive – they say neither “is” nor “is not” – but prescriptive – they say either “ought” or “ought not”. The gap between “is” assertions and “ought” imperatives is enough for R.M. Hare to imply that actions do not follow from beliefs and therefore have nothing to do with true and false.
* Hare, R.M., Sorting out Ethics, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1997
(German philosopher, 1881-1950)
Some philosophers - such as Brentano and Husserl - defend the thesis that evidence is a guarantee for infallible truth. For Brentano, evidence is absolute correctness, and has nothing to do with a feeling of compulsion. Evidence is part of the definiens of the concept truth. According to Husserl evidence is experience of the truth. Both Brentano and Husserl hold that error is excluded in the case of an evident judgement. If a certain judgement is evident, no one else can judge the opposite with evidence.
Hartmann does not agree with such views. For him knowledge is fallible; there is always the possibility of error. He questions the role of evidence as a criterion for truth. According to him the term 'evidence' is ambiguous. It may mean objective evidence: evidence as a guarantee for the truth of a judgement, the absolute ideal of certainty. Objective evidence contains no error. But the term 'evident' may also mean subjective evidence: evidence that is nothing but the conviction of the knowing subject that his judgement is certain, without the guarantee for truth. Subjective evidence is a mere phenomenon of consciousness, that may accompany both real insight and apparent insight.
Now objective evidence is never as such presented to consciousness, and that means that it cannot function as a criterion. In fact, we need a criterion to determine whether we have objective evidence and we have none. Subjective evidence, on the contrary, is easy to determine; it is the phenomenon of conviction itself. But conviction, being merely a state of consciousness, cannot function as a criterion for truth. Therefore, subjective evidence cannot function as a criterion for truth, either.
The idea that evidence may function as a criterion for truth is especially tempting in the case of judgments about ideal (mathematical) objects. It is thought that the ideal structures are nothing but structures of intentional objects, that are internal to consciousness. According to Hartmann, such a view subjectifies the realm of ideal objects, where, in fact, ideal objects for him are as transcendent to consciousness as real objects.
Therefore for him knowledge of ideal objects is as liable to error of evidence as knowledge of real objects. Possibility of error is not only present in our logical and mathematical axioms, and also in insight into essences. Hartmann accuses the phenomenologist of believing that this insight into essences is infallible, that it is objectively evident .
Hartmann, Nicolai, Les principes d'une métaphysique de la connaissance. Paris: Aubier 1946. Translated and with a preface by Raymond Vancourt
(American philosopher of religion and metaphysics, 1897-2000)
The universal truth of creative becoming. If there is novel reality, then to that extent the truth also must be novel.
The starting point for Hartshorne’s ‘Process Theology’ is that there is no such thing as a "thing." Objects are illusions. All "things" are continually moving from the past into the present and then into the future. All of existence is rushing along in the river of time and space, constantly moving, never stopping. And always in the process of becoming. Science has shown us that what we think of as objects are in actuality force fields that are constantly vibrating and moving waves of energy. If there is any absolute truth about the nature of being it is that the world is constantly and eternally in the move. The concern for the dynamics of the physical universe and of human personality, the social nature of man and his organic relation to the universe in which he lives, and the interpenetration of mental and physical in human experience, have led Hartshorne and process theologians to assert that it is in 'events', rather than in 'things' - in action or activity, rather than in 'substances', in creation as a continuing process, rather than in creation as a finished product, that we may best interpret the order of nature and human life. The earliest great tradition which has espoused this philosophy of becoming was Buddhism – and Heraclitus, but little is known about him. The followers of Buddha produced a great literature expressive of the doctrine that becoming is the universal form of reality. In contrast most Western philosophies have dealt with ‘Being’ and characteristically treated becoming and change as unreal. For them, reality consisted essentially of beings, not happenings or events. If a being is not of the highest kind, it shows this deficiency by undergoing alterations. So the highest being is changeless, but the others keep changing, apparently in the vain effort to make up for their imperfection. It is with Spinoza that this ‘eternalist’ bias came to its last great triumph in the West. Not only God, but the world, too, was to be made safe from accident or genuine alteration. But for Hartshorne, immutable omniscience, implying the immutability of all truths, is incompatible with the view that becoming is real. The truth, the reality, is eternally there, spread out to the divine gaze, though our present experience, being localized in the eternal panorama, cannot behold most of it. Consequently – as Hartshorne contends - if there is novel reality, then to that extent the truth also must be novel.
* Hartshorne, Charles, A Natural Theology for our Time, La Salle: Open Court, 1967
(American Methodist theologian, b. 1940) Without witnessing, Christian truth is unintelligible
Against all forms of modernist foundationalism, Hauerwas contends that the plausibility of Christian convictions cannot be established by appeal to metaphysical and philosophical principles extrinsic to the word of God. Christian orthodoxy cannot be Christian truth without living Christians. The truth of Christian convictions requires witnesses.
That is what it means to say that truth involves the heart as well as the mind. If the truth of Christian convictions could be known without witnesses, then that truth would no longer be the work of the Trinitarian God, and those who espoused it would no longer be Christians.
The role of the Christian community is to bear witness, because the very fact that the community exists counts as evidence that the claims of Christianity are true. Hauerwas argues that Christianity is unintelligible without people whose practices exhibit their committed assent to a particular way of structuring the whole. These practices can and must have a positive effect on those outside the community, “…for the only truthful way of making Christianity attractive is through witness.” Thus, the job of Christians is not to convince but to witness. The purpose of the church is not to prove that Christianity is true, but to demonstrate what the world is like if it is true. Christians who argue for the "objective" truth of Jesus are making a tactical mistake. Jesus did not arrive among us enunciating a set of propositions that we are to affirm. There is no point at which Jesus says, "You need to believe certain propositions about me”. Jesus never asks us to agree; he asks us to join up, to follow and be his witnesses. He did not call for cognitive assent; he asked for a life of discipleship involving the whole self, not just the mind.
Yet Hauerwas is no fideist. He does not think that the primary task of witness-bearing somehow exempts Christians from the obligation to give a reasoned account of their faith. Rather, he thinks that witness-bearing is the distinctively Christian form of rational argument, or at least the indispensable prerequisite for it. To show the truth of the Christian story is not merely to proclaim it, but also to give it dramatic display in well-lived lives.
* HAUERWAS, Stanley: With the Grain of the Universe. The Church's Witness and Natural Theology. Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2001.
(English philosopher of religion, b,1939)
The criteria of truth in Religions
The problem of truth in religion cannot be sidestepped. The phenomenological bracketing of questions of truth and reality – the exclusive consideration of phenomenal appearances – can only be a provisional, temporary step in the analysis of reality. The suspension of judgment on the issue of truth, particularly in the field of religion, in the attempt to be ‘objective’, becomes a prejudice in favour of a purely humanistic interpretation of religion. An unbeliever studying religion is like a tone-deaf man studying music. Phenomenological reductionism has nothing to offer in the evaluation of truth in religion.
Hebblethwaite is just as much critical of the suggestion made by J. Hick, namely, that theologians of particular denominations are able to transcend their own specific standpoint in seeing their own traditions as one concrete embodiment of the divine-human encounter, which has taken different forms in different historical contexts. Hick’s idea of a global, all-embracing theology does not correspond to the claimed insights of the different world religions. The conflicting truth-claims between religions cannot be written off so easily; they are genuine. However Hick’s ideas have the merit of raising the question of relating the apparently rival truth-claims of religions. How can one test the adequacy of each religious view? It is the difficult task of comparative theology to find the criteria by which the truth of any one religious view might be established.
Many people reject the view that is is possible to establish such criteria. For if the participant is a believer, he is bound to be biased in favour of his own religion. If he is an unbeliever, he is unqualified to pass judgment on any religious truth-claims.
Hebblethwaite agrees with A. Christian and N. Smart to say that in a model dialogue situation between religious believers it is possible to formulate a number of ‘soft’ criteria that might commend themselves to all participants, whatever their religion. Appeals to sacred scriptures and revelations, as well as to personal religious experiences (‘hard criteria’), are out of place in the model dialogue as there can be no agreements on them between the participants. Rather, one has to turn to the consideration of ‘soft’ criteria, such as: coherence, simplicity, comprehensiveness, ethical and spiritual profundity, ability to cope with boundary situations (evil, suffering, death), historical considerations and the aesthetic criterion.
* Hebblewhaite, Bryan, The problems of Theology, Cambridge University Press, 1980, p.31-43; The Ocean of Truth, Cambridge University Press, 1988, p.102-133
(German Philosopher, 1770-1831)
Truth is the whole, the totality of thought 1. Hegel rejects the Aristotelian tradition of taking judgements and statements as the locus of truth. He returns to the Platonist and Augustinian concept of ontological truth. Truth, for Hegel, does not consist in some sort of correspondence between thought and reality. For this view implies that thought is something over against reality and he cannot accept that thought is not itself part of the reality. Truth as correspondence implies the dualism and confrontation of mind and reality, subject and object. But for Hegel, the mind-reality relationship is not dualistic but participatory and monistic.
On the other hand he does not agree with the Kantian concept of knowlegde as subjective projection. The human mind does not produce and impose its own conceptual order on the noumenal world. Rather, the world’s truth realises itself or expresses itself through the human mind. It speaks its meaning through human reason. The evolution of human knowledge is identical with the evolution of the world’s self-revelation. It is the same evolution – objective and subjective - that takes place in history. The world’s truth comes to birth in the human mind. Thus Hegel replaces Aristotle’s correspondence-dualism and Kant’s projection-dualism by his own view of participatory monism with important consequence for his idea of truth.
2. Truth is both historical and eschatological. It is at the same time the growing realisation of the absolute Spirit and the absolute Spirit itself. Truth is engaged in historical development. Only through development can the True arrive at comprenhension of itself and become what it essentiallly is. That is why Hegel writes that “Truth is the whole”, and the whole reaches its completeness only at the end of a long process of development.
Thus before it reaches its eschatological perfection, truth is living, growing and changing, it is the truth of the human spirit as it has dialectically developed over the centuries through all the philosophies in the history of the human spirit. The truth of the Absolute unfolds itself, reveals itself in time to finite spirits. Thus history has a rational and teleological structure. Reason , which is the unfolding truth of the Absolute, rules the world. The new task of philosophy is to bring together all the changing atttitudes, religious beliefs, philosophical paradigms in the long history of the human spirit in its quest for truth, and to unify them into a single organic totality. For Hegel all systems of thought are true and none false because they are all stages of the progressive historical unfolding of Reason.
The implication is clear: the partisan of Truth must never rest content in the most irrefutable principles and conclusions which he or his school has uncovered. He must not stand in an aloof and aristocratic way, outside the mainstream of thought. Rather he must awake to the internal negativity and contradictions existing in his own principles. He must be ready to enter into the contest with other participants without demanding any special privileges for himself.
3. Hegel has no doubt about the ultimate intelligibility of the real. There is no place for scepticism in his system. Truth finds its elan in the succession of apparently contradictory world-views and paradigms. Only a static understanding of truth can lead to scepticism. The false is always a partial, momentary and isolated truth, unrelated to its eschatological movement. A particular, historical world-view considered as a phase of the evolutionary process participates to the movement of truth, but if taken for final and unrelated to the whole it is false. For “Truth is the whole”. In a way, truths are everywhere, the problem is to unify them and that can occur only at the end in the absolute Spirit.
* See Souche-Dagues,D., Vérité et Absolu: La Vérité selon Hegel, in Quilliot, La Vérité, ibid., p.65-73; Tarnas, Richard, The Passion of the Western Mind, Ballantine Books, New York, 1993, p.433-440
(German philosopher, 1889-1976)
1. Truth as disclosure rather than correspondence.
It is usually said that truth is correspondence of mind with reality and that one expresses this agreement in correct judgments. Heidegger does not reject this traditional approach. However he considers it superficial. One needs to reach a deeper notion of truth than the truth of judgments and propositions. He leads us away from the usual preoccupation of the correctness of assertion. He is interested in something more fundamental, more primordial than the epistemological problem of truth and to do so he turns his attention to an ontology of truth.
According to Heidegger, truth is disclosure. There is truth when what is hidden is disclosed, revealed, uncovered. Truth is manifestation, unconcealment, discovery of an open field, the "clearing in the forest”. Most of the time reality is undisclosed, everything is in darkness, but then a light surges to illumine the concealed reality: truth is born. Thus Heidegger’s concept of truth implies a primordial ontological agreement of things and thought which takes place before any of its verbal representation and expression in judgments and propositions.
The classical theory of truth as adequation is thus less false than derived. It presupposes an original truth understood as unconcealment, apparition, revelation. Without it, how can the judgments be formed, on what basis? There must be first a revelation, an appearance of a reality that cannot escape us: this is truth. Truth does not belong first to the logical sphere of the judgment. Truth is not just a matter of correct and right judgment; it addresses itself to the whole human being to disturb him.
2. The locus of truth
The locus of truth is not the judgment, the locus of truth is Dasein, that is, man himself. Dasein is the discoverer, the light that illumines the world. Truth is constitutive of the human essence. Truth comes to the world only through Dasein. Therefore all truth is relative to Dasein's being. However this does not mean that truth is subjective, it does not mean that truth is a matter of believing what one likes. There is a universal validity and objectivity of truth in that it is rooted in the fact that Dasein has the ability to uncover entities in themselves. Dasein does not invent or create the truth, truth is disclosure of an objective reality. Besides we cannot choose to disclose or not. We must presuppose truth, because we exist and we are the foundation of truth. We are thrown into existence and therefore truth is there with us. Being and truth are equally original.
Still if Dasein is always in the truth, it does not mean that Dasein is in possession of all truths. It means only that disclosure belongs to the essence of Dasein and that truth is entirely human. There is no truth outside human subjectivity, no absolute truth. Truth is the authentic way of being of Dasein. But it has to be a conquest, a struggle. One does not find the truth in a passive way . Being-in-the –world is most of the time “being-in-untruth”. The common man , the “one”, lives in untruth. Truth is the mode of being of Dasein who lives in authenticity and opennesss. This is what makes Heidegger say that “the essence of truth is freedom”. Authenticity is the fruit of freedom and thus it is “freedom that makes you true.” (rather than “truth that makes you free”). For Heidegger, freedom is neither caprice nor absence of constraint but engagement in and exposure to the disclosedness of beings as such. Freedom is ‘letting beings be’, not in the sense of neglect and indifference but rather the opposite of engagement of oneself with beings. If he states that the essence of truth is freedom, it is to convey the idea that man can also, in the letting beings be (that is freedom), not let beings to be the beings which they are. Then beings are covered and distorted.
3. The intersubjectivity of truth
Truth is constantly ‘happening’ with each discovery we make. My world is constantly enlarged and enriched. But every discovery is inescapably partial, because it is relative to my subjectivity. As my modes of discovery differ from all other modes, I do not live in “ the same world” as others. But we can communicate and share our discoveries with others. We achieve this mainly by language and also through art. A perfect sharing and coincidence of our worlds would amount to the reaching of a universal truth, but that would presuppose the perfect identity of all our modes of existence. The more the various subjective disclosures cohere with each other, the more they unify experience. On the contrary when the truth-disclosures overlap, then there is confusion and obscurity and lack of truth. Incoherence creeps in when the disclosures contradict each other.
4. What is untruth?
In every presence, every manifestation there is also absence, hiding, concealment. Absence and presence are given together. Untruth is concealment, the opposite of disclosure. It occurs when we cover up certain modes of Being and this may happen at every disclosure. Disclosure is always partial and therefore it contains an element of concealment. Nothing is ever absolutely true or untrue. Everything is true and untrue at the same time. Indeed there are only limited, partial, relative truths and untruths. Disclosure becomes error when we are not aware of its necessary limits. That is why the possibility of speaking or saying the truth requires a struggle to defend what has been uncovered against semblance and disguise.
5. The language that reveals the truth
Conceptual language is not the language of Being. The language that reveals the truth of Being is poetic language and art. Art allows us to understand the real beyond science and the common utilitarian use of language. Common language, as well as any form of conceptual language, remains on the surface of reality. The poet on the contrary sings the true reality, the truth of Being. It is only in art that the primordial ontological agreement of Dasein with reality can be lived authentically.
* Heidegger, On the Essence of truth , in The Nature of Truth, Ed. by Lynch, Michael, Bradford Book, Cambridge , Massachusstes, 2001, p.295-316; See Kockelmans, J., Martin Heidegger, Duquesne University press, 1965
(German physicist, 1901-1976)
In the field of quantum physics: the truth of indeterminacy, i.e. the falsity of causality
Most of us believe that events don't occur without being caused to occur. And outside quantum mechanics, every other branch of science shares that assumption. Einstein too believed that this assumption was justified. He believed that every event that occurs is caused by other events in such a way that the causing events bring about their effects, or in other words, "determine" the effects they will have. The foremost example of the deterministic world-view is Newtonian physics. Newton's laws of motion provided causal explanations for the behaviour of all physical objects in the universe. Newtonian mechanics was, and still is, highly successful when it comes to describing the mechanisms governing the behaviour of "macrophysical", objects. But early in the 20th century, physicists investigating the behaviour of extremely small objects, such as subatomic particles, found that they could not apply Newton's laws to the description of what was going on at this "microphysical" level. Thus was born the new physical theory known as quantum mechanics. It claims that experimental results in quantum mechanics imply that nothing exists unless it is being observed by a conscious human being, so it agrees with the claim that these results imply that the so-called "deterministic" philosophy of Newtonian mechanics is false. Werner Heisenberg gave this discovery a name. He called it "The Indeterminacy Principle", or sometimes "The Uncertainty Principle". And he, along with the majority of quantum physicists - those belonging to the so-called Copenhagen School - concluded that the behaviour of the fundamental constituents of matter is therefore not deterministic but indeterministic. In their view, events at the microphysical level occur "randomly", "by pure chance" - meaning that they aren't determined by any causes whatever.
However other scientists (such as De Broglie) claimed that the concepts of randomness and chance are purely epistemological ones, having to do with our knowledge - or, rather, our lack of it - and should not be taken as having ontological import, i.e., as having any implications for the nature of the world itself. They held that the idea of chance has to do with our ignorance of how things really are rather than a failure of causality in the world itself.
Heisenberg, in defense of quantum indeterminacy, held that the estimates of chance that are reflected in the probabilistic mathematics of quantum mechanics are due to a failure of causality in reality, not just a failure in our knowledge. The concept of chance, in his view, is an ontological one, not just an epistemological one. In effect, he was saying that the way the universe itself behaves at the atomic level is as if there were ‘a god who was playing dice with it’. This was what Einstein was denying when he said that ‘God does not play dice with the universe’. He would argue that the uncertainty involved in Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle is simply a result of lack of knowledge. In identifying knowledge and reality, Heisenberg seems to have wrongly assumed that what is epistemologically true must be also ontologically true.
* See David C. Cassidy: Uncertainty: The Life and Science of Werner Heisenberg, W. H. Freeman and Company, 1992
(British essayist and philosopher, 1911-1990)
Truth must be embodied in external reality
Heller’s project in The Disinherited Mind is to analyze the disappearance of Truth from the immediate environment of man, and the ensuing compulsions of Art to fill the void. Such an intervention on the part of Art, in the circumstances, results in the impoverishment of the world, not in its enrichment. It entails the loss of ‘significant external reality’.
For Heller, Truth must be embodied in external reality. Heller saw Truth as the first casualty of the mechanistic theory of nature, set on its course by Darwin and others, which in alliance with applied sciences roots out the intrinsic meaning of things in favour of the 'how?' of their causal interrelatedness. The thing in itself is forgotten, and with it the meaning of Reality as such. Such theories succeed merely in feeding 'the body of superstitious beliefs that had grown rampant ever since medieval scholasticism suffered its final defeat at the hands of Francis Bacon'.
This process of Reality's being, eviscerated of deeper meaning in the course of being 'explained' by modern science, constitutes the main charge that Heller lays against supporters of what he calls 'the Creed of Ontological Invalidity'. The practical result of its implementation is that nothing can exist in and of itself: things' scientific explanation deprives them of their individual being as entities. This state of affairs leads to spiritual perdition whereby man's own true significance as a higher being (his 'ontological mystery') is obscured, and whereby any attempt at a meaningful response to the world is stymied. For such a response can only take place vis-à-vis the question of what the world fundamentally is, not simply how it works.
In the turn away from a correspondence version of truth Heller believes that Nietzsche and Wittgenstein share a similar nihilism which "one day will be seen as an integral part of the tragically self-destructive design of European thought". They share an all important "creative distrust of all those categorical certainties that have been allowed to determine the body of traditional thought".
*Erich Heller, The Disinherited Mind (Harmondsworth, Penguin Books, 1961)
(German philosopher 1744-18O3)
1. Herder holds the central tenet of pluralism - namely, that there are many objectively valid ends and ways of life that people can pursue, no one of which can be ranked as intrinsically better or worse for mankind as such. Each is an expression of a people living a particular time and place, and each springs from its whole "form of life". Herder's pluralism describes a world in which this is the natural state of affairs, with each particular culture happily believing in the truth of its own meaningful and purposive norms, practices, and beliefs.
2. But in addition to holding that each culture has its own standard of goodness and truth within itself, Herder also maintains that each of these cultures must be understood as contributing to the realization of a higher good that comes to light in the whole of world history. He views the plurality of norms, practices, and beliefs in human history as constituting a larger, purposive whole, with each of those norms, practices, and beliefs serving as a means to realizing a divinely ordained end. Herder seems to have maintained this view because he was convinced that a complete pluralism teaches a truth about mankind and the world that is incompatible with the necessary conditions of human happiness as he understands them. Man can only experience happiness when he understands himself to exist within a unified, monistic whole, a cultural constellation of norms, practices, and beliefs in which he can find meaning and purpose.
In fact, Herder thinks that, experienced in and of itself, pluralism leads to a psychological abyss. He was convinced that only by combining his pluralistic insights with a modified form of monism could the apparent arbitrariness of history be redeemed and happiness be possible for the pluralist, because only the existence of such a trans-cultural whole could show that the events of history take place for a reason - as a means to fulfilling a higher purpose. A radical form of pluralism would lead to relativism and have the effect of showing that each culture lacks a larger whole to bestow meaning and purpose upon it - something that would undermine the necessary conditions of human happiness.
* See Herder’s Social and Political Thought, F.M.Barnard, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1965
( German born Americam Jewish theologian, 1907-1972)
Abraham Heschel offers a very insightful explanation of the basic differences between theology and philosophy. The differences described by Heschel seem to boil down to that of attitude or methodology. In philosophy, the questions are commonly more important than the answers; indeed, even when it seems that we have arrived at answers, we also have arrived at new and perhaps more interesting questions that allow us to begin again. Philosophy is a quest or process that never ends and never needs to end.
Theology, on the other hand, typically starts out "knowing" the most basic answers (whether God exists, what God is like, what God has done, etc.). These are the dogmas of the religious tradition with which theology is concerned. At this point the purpose is not to arrive at answers but to better understand why these answers are true and what those answers are supposed to mean for us.
Given the premises of theology — that is to say, if we grant the truth of the answers a theology presupposes — then this methodology would make sense. Given the premises of philosophy, however, the theological attitude is completely backwards. It makes no sense to start out assuming the truths of basic points and merely seek to understand them. Granted, all philosophy assumes some things as truth, but the point of philosophy is to challenge assumptions and find new questions. The point of theology seems more to be to find ways to accept assumptions and put questions to rest.
Theology, at its heart, tends to be apologetical in nature. It is committed to the defense of particular religious positions. Theology relies upon religious scriptures (like the Bible or the Quran) as authoritative while such texts are simply objects of study in philosophy. It is not that theology is not searching for any answers; rather, the case is that theology is not searching for enough questions!
* Heschel, Abraham God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism (1955)
(Dutch mathematician and logician, 1898-1980)
Truth in intuitonist mathematics: by "constructive verification"
It seems that Heyting may be rather unhelpful in the case of the notion of truth, for according to him, the notion of truth makes no sense in intuitionistic mathematics. This is the case, of course, if one understands 'truth' exclusively in the classical correspondence sense: 'One can only speak of genuine mathematical truth if there is a mathematical reality to which it is related, but to me personally the assumption of an abstract reality of any sort seem meaningless', he writes.
Heyting first attacks the classical notion of 'p is true' for implying the idea of transcendent existence. He next criticizes the suggestion of replacing 'p is true' by 'p is provable'. One does not, according to Heyting, thus escape the criticism, for 'p is provable', being equivalent to 'there exists a proof of p', implies again the idea of transcendent existence. Instead, one must replace the classical notion with 'one knows how to prove p' . This means that, although Heyting prefers to avoid the notion of truth, he nevertheless clearly rebuts here the possibilist notion ( it can be proved) in favour of the actualist approach (it is proved). 'We simply cannot speak about the truth-value of a proposition which has neither been proved true nor proved false'.
For Heyting, however, intuitionistic and classical logic do not as such conflict, for they concern, according to him, wholly different issues; he called the former the logic of knowledge and the latter the logic of being, i.e. the former express, in his view, what is known as true, whereas the latter what is true. There is as such no disagreement here between intuitionism and realism, for even a hard-core Platonist agrees that not every statement is at present known to be true or known to be false. In any case Heyting condemns the logic of being (or truth, i.e. classical logic) as meaningless, leaving the (intuitionistic) logic of knowledge as the only access to genuine mathematics. Like all mathematical intuitionists, Heyting do not subscribe to the law of the excluded middle . If, ontologically, one rejects the law of the excluded middle, it is impossible to say anything about the truth or falsity of a declarative sentence before its truth or falsity has been verified in some epistemologically acceptable manner. Just as classical mathematics is based on an epistemology of classical logic, intuitionistic mathematics is based on its own system of intuitionistic logic. Intuitionistic logic defines what constitutes a valid proof, i.e. it defines its epistemology. A valid proof defines something as being true. In this case, the truth status of a sentence is conditional on the testing of the assertion that sentence makes using the epistemology of intuitionistic logic. Prior to a properly constructed verification of that sentence's assertion, the sentence has no truth value ascribed to it. It is neither true nor false but has simply the status of indeterminate truth. Thus the ontology of intuitionistic truth is that of 'truth by constructive verification'. It is a pragmatic theory of truth, based on the work of the philosophers of pragmatism.
* HEYTING Arend, Logic and foundations of mathematics, Groningen, Wolters-Noordhoff, 1968
(English philosopher of religion, 1922)
The truth of religious knowledge: the pluralism of religious truths
1. Truth and verification in religious knowledge
For some, religious faith is a purely subjective way at looking at and interpreting the world (a “blik”). Being neither verifiable nor falsifiable, religious assertions, they say, are meaningless. For others, religious faith is established on pragmatic usefulness for social and psychological reasons. Hick does not agree, he is a realist, for he considers religious faith as a genuine mode of cognition: it could be true or false. Therefore it is open to verification and falsification. But the question is to know what type of verification ought to be obtainable in the field of religious knowledge.
Hick rejects Flew’s contention that what cannot be falsified - the unverifiable - is meaningless. This is not applicable to religious knowledge. For instance , life after death is not verifiable, still it could be true. Such a proposition – like all religious assertions – is about a factual – not logically necessary - statement: it can be true or false but certainly not empty and meaningless. The question for Hick is not so much to prove the truth or falsity of religious assertions but to show that they are not meaningless. If they are not capable to be verified at present , they are at least verifiable because, according to Hick, they are open to “eschatologial” verification. If not verifiable now, they could be verified at the end of time.
2. The pluralism of religious truths
Religious cognitions are always interpetative. Religious traditions offer their own particular interpretation. It is not possible to say that any particular tradition contains more truth than another. But, according to Hick, they have in common to be ways to salvific relationship with “the Real”. Religious truth cannot consist in the professing beliefs and doctrines they offer because it is not possible “ that our final destiny should depend upon our professional beliefs concerning which we have no definitive information”. Truth lies in soteriological effectiveness and on that issue all the great traditions are more or less equally effective.
Ineffability is a common characteristic of the ultimately Real. There is one wholly unknowable Real, perceived in different and equally adequate ways in the world religions. They may be all authentic expressions of the one unknowable Real. The differences and apparent contradictions that they display is explained by the fact that the religious experiences they propose are subject to various conceptual interpretations. No interpretation is adequate to the richness and complexity of the religious object. Each interpretation may be more or less adequate on account of an object that transcends any of them in some respects. Characterisations of the ineffable Real should be termed ‘mythologically true’, rather than ‘literally true’. A statement is said to be mythologically true if it tends to evoke an appropriate dispositional attitude to the unknowable Real.
Well aware of the fact that religions make truth-claims which are in contradiction with each other and in order to justify his pluralistic hypothesis (that all religions are true), Hick makes use of the distinction between beliefs that may well be true or false myths from beliefs that may be true or false factual assertions. Pressed with the problem of conflicting truth-claims, he interprets religious beliefs mythologically to avoid potential contradictions. For instance the concepts of the personal and the impersonal faces of Reality are mythologically true but the assertion of the Real itself is literally true. Hick makes use of myth to soften the conflicts between religious traditions. What all religions have in common, mostly the concept of absolute Reality and the notion of salvation/liberation belongs to what is in them literally true. What makes them differ and conflict with each other, may be true but only mythologically true. In this way Hick intends to justify his thesis of the “pluralism of religious truths”.
* Hick, John, Faith and Knowledge, Collins, Fount Paperbacks, 1978; God and the Universe of Faiths, Nat Book Network, 1993; Interpretation of Religion, Yale University Press, 1989
(French theologian, 315-367)
The logic of truth versus the logic of prejudice Hilary of Poitiers is regarded as the champion of the Nicene faith. He wrote extensively to denounce the heresy of Arianism. In his De Trinitate, he has this to say on the problem of truth: “It is manifest that there is nothing which men have ever said that is not liable to opposition. Where the will dissents, the mind also dissents: under the bias of opposing judgment it joins battle, and denies the assertions to which it objects.... For decisions once formed cling with excessive obstinacy: and the passion of controversy cannot be driven from the course it has taken, when the will is not subject to the reason. Enquiry after truth gives way to the search for proofs of what we wish to believe; desire is paramount over truth. Then the theories we concoct build themselves on names rather than things; the logic of truth gives place to the logic of prejudice, a logic which the will adjusts to defend its fancies, not one which stimulates the will through the understanding of truth by reason. From these defects of partisan spirit arise all controversies between opposing theories. Then follows an obstinate battle between truth asserting itself, and prejudice defending itself: truth maintains its ground and prejudice resists. But if desire had not forestalled reason, if the understanding of the truth had moved us to desire what was true instead of trying to set up our desires as doctrines, we should let our doctrines dictate our desires. There would be no contradiction of the truth, for every one would begin by desiring what was true, not by defending the truth of that which he desired.”
* See C.F.A. Borchardt, Hilary of Poitiers' Role in the Arian Struggle. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1966.
(German mathematician, 1862-1943)
The foundational philosophy of formalism, as exemplified by David Hilbert, is based on axiomatic set theory and formal logic. It contends that all mathematical theorems can be formulated as theorems of set theory. The truth of a mathematical statement, in this view, is then nothing but the claim that the statement can be derived from the axioms of set theory using the rules of formal logic.
Formalists assert that mathematics must be developed through axiomatic systems. They don't recognize an external world of mathematics. Formalists argue that there are no mathematical objects until we create them. Humans create the real number system by establishing axioms to describe it. All mathematics needs is inference rules to progress from one step to the next. The Formalists try to prove that within the framework of established axioms, theorems, and definitions, a mathematical system is consistent.
The problem is that formalism does not explain several issues: why we should use the axioms we do and not some others, why we should employ the logical rules we do and not some others, why "true" mathematical statements appear to be true in the physical world, and so on.
The Austrian logician Kurt Gödel deduced a fatal flaw in Hilbert's reasoning. You can't find a system to prove all mathematical truths, Gödel discovered, because some true statements can't be proved. For example, "this statement can't be proved" is true, but you can't prove it, because then it would be false. Gödel's reasoning showed that no axiom system could be complete - it would contain true statements that are not provable within the system. He proved (using math) that there are things in math which, even though we might believe that they are true, we can not prove them to be true. In a poetic sort of way, we can interpret this result to say something like "Truth is greater than proof."
* Hilbert, David, Foundations of Geometry, Open Court Publishing Company, 1971
( Greek physician, 460 - 375 B.C)
The true basis of medical knowledge
Hippocrates, a physician from the island of Cos in ancient Greece is known as the “Father of Medicine.” He is credited with turning away from divine notions of medicine and using observation of the body as a basis for medical knowledge. Prayers and sacrifices to the gods did not hold any place in his theories, but changes in diet, beneficial drugs, and keeping the body "in balance" were the key.
He pointed out the means whereby medicine became a science. He argued that disease is naturally caused, not smote upon people by the gods. Observation and prognosis are methods by which we can combat them. He recognized, for instance, that epilepsy was a brain disorder, and he spoke out against the ideas that seizures were a curse from the gods and that people with epilepsy held the power of prophecy. Hippocrates is traditionally the personified expression of' medicine which becomes "rational" and takes its place in the wide movement of the "philosophy of nature". In this case what is meant by philosophy is the "desire to know": the whys and wherefores of illnesses, their cure, of the effects of the therapy and so on. Hippocrates, in making the great effort to free medicine as a science from "priestly" influences, did not neglect philosophy, however, and in fact used it widely: but related to experience, not outside it. To investigate is recognized as a fundamental part of medical art, and investigation is carried out both through passive observation of phenomena and through the observation of provoked phenomena. From the study of particular cases, conclusions of general significance are reached in a rational way.
* See Boylan, Michael (2006), Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2006
(British philosopher, 1588-1679)
The conventional view of truth provides theoretical support for Hobbes's political absolutism
Hobbes’ ultimate goal in the Leviathan is to provide a justification for political absolutism, a political system in which there is a unified sovereign with unconditional and unlimited authority. He argues that political absolutism is the only system which can be expected to avoid a state of war.
A conventional view of truth provides theoretical support for Hobbes's political absolutism in that it explains the causes of political disorder as arising from an incorrect attribution of words such as “truth”, "justice" and "good" and it justifies instituting an absolute sovereign who will be the final definer of such terms in the commonwealth. Hobbes has political reasons to advocate a conventional theory of truth.
Truth and falsity, for him, consists in either affirming or denying the connection between two names, and thus, "where speech is not, there is neither truth nor falsehood”. Hobbes argues that we cannot rely upon nature to reveal the truth about reality because the only way we can experience the world is through our senses, so "though the nature of that we conceive be the same, yet the diversity of our reception of it, in respect of different constitutions of the body, and prejudices of opinion, gives every thing a tincture of our different passions". Instead, Hobbes suggests the establishment of first definitions by the sovereign, upon which all members of society must agree. All conclusions that ensue follow from logical syllogisms based upon these first principles. Thus, Hobbes provides a deductive grounding for knowledge, much like in geometry, which Hobbes praises as "the only science that it hath pleased God hitherto to bestow on mankind" where everyone has accepted certain definitions and basic principles, after which geometric truths logically follow. When philosophical reasoning is thus reduced to mathematics, all truths and knowledge derived from these accepted first definitions become irrefutable, in the same way geometric proofs are irrefutable. In this manner, Hobbes boldly bases the entire nature of truth and epistemology upon language, a human construct.
Foreshadowing his argument for an agreed-upon sovereign, Hobbes claims that establishing sovereignty by consent is the only way to establish the truth and thus avoid conflict among people. * See: Robinson, Dave & Groves, Judy . Introducing Political Philosophy. Icon Books, 2003
(American sociologist and philosopher, 1902-1983)
The emotional needs of the ‘true believer’ are stronger than the need for truth
Hoffer was among the first to recognize the central importance of self-esteem to psychological well-being. While most recent writers focus on the benefits of a positive self-esteem, Hoffer focused on the consequences of a lack of self-esteem. Concerned about the rise of religious sects and totalitarian governments, he tried to find the roots of these "madhouses" in human psychology. He postulated that fanaticism and self-righteousness are rooted in self-hatred, self-doubt, and insecurity. As he describes in The True Believer, he believed a passionate obsession with the outside world or with the private lives of other people is merely a craven attempt to compensate for a lack of meaning in one's own life.
Hoffer claims that it is futile to judge the viability of mass movements by the truth of their doctrines and the feasibility of their promises. What has to be judged is their corporate organization for quick and total absorption of the frustrated. Where new creeds vie with each other for the allegiance of the populace, the one which comes with the most perfected collective framework wins. “All mass movements generate in their adherents a readiness to die and a proclivity for united action; all of them, irrespective of the supposed truths they preach and the program they project, breed fanaticism, enthusiasm, fervent hope, hatred and intolerance; all of them are capable of releasing a powerful flow of activity in certain departments of life; all of them demand blind faith and singlehearted allegiance.”
Hoffer calls this phenomenon the ‘true-believer syndrome’ in which the belief satisfies an emotional need that is stronger than the need for the truth. The less justified a man is in claiming excellence for his own self, the more ready he is to claim all excellence for his nation, his religion, his race or his holy cause. The ‘true believer’ or the fanatic feels perpetually incomplete and insecure. He cannot generate self-assurance out of his individual resources -- out of his rejected self -- but finds it only by clinging passionately to whatever support he happens to embrace. This passionate attachment is the essence of his blind devotion and religiosity, and he sees in it the source of all virtue and strength. He easily sees himself as the supporter and defender of the holy cause to which he clings. And he is ready to sacrifice his life. ‘True believers’ want to give up all personal responsibility for their beliefs and actions. They want to be free of the burden of freedom.
The passionate hatred of the true believers can give meaning and purpose to their empty life. Haunted by the purposelessness of their lives they try to find a new content not only by dedicating themselves to a holy cause but also by nursing a fanatical grievance. A mass movement offers them unlimited opportunities for both.
It has often been said that power corrupts. But it is perhaps equally important to realize that weakness, too, corrupts. Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many. Hatred, malice, rudeness, intolerance, and suspicion are the faults of weakness. The resentment of the weak does not spring from any injustice done to them but from their sense of inadequacy and impotence.
* Hoffer Eric, The True Believer, Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements, HarperCollins, 1989 reissue.
(Greek poet, c.850-800 BC) Truth: a matter of personal relationship between speaker and hearer
The word aletheia is used by Homer to signify truth. Truth for him is always something that some one tells to another. Truth has to do with the reliability of what is said by one person to another. Often Homer uses the term to mean “the whole truth”, not just to utter some sentence which is true, but to give a whole account, to tell the entire narrative. The account given by the speaker has to be complete with nothing held back and without deception. The Homeric notion of aletheia is precisely the same, with the same force and flavour, as that enshrined in the traditional oath or solemn affirmation required of a witness in court proceedings: to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Thus Homer’s aletheia is a matter of being truthful and open in one person’s dealing with another. What is said can be taken by the hearers as trustworthy. The truth-teller does not hide or conceal anything from his hearer. Thus Homer’s aletheia is not presented as a relation between reality and thought, but as a personal relation between a speaker and a hearer. It does point at a relation between statements or judgments and the world. Rather it means the truthfulness and openness of a person who does not lie but speaks reliably. Truth-telling is the personal virtues of openness, honesty, and truthfulness. It has to deal with interpersonal dealings. The first Greek philosophers after Homer, notably Parmenides and Plato, will take a mighty step towards depersonalising the truth. Aletheia will be loosed from the context of speaking and telling, to describe the unchangeable Reality and be identified with it.
(American philosopher, b. 1948)
Truth in any discourse is determined jointly by the world and the semantic standard of the discourse. Truth is said to be semantic correctness. Semantic correctness is a realist notion of truth, since it involves a type of correspondence with the world: it is never exclusively epistemic. Nonetheless the type of correspondence can vary according to the context and what we are talking about.
One should therefore adopt a pluralist view of truth. The matter of truth is often a matter of indirect, rather than direct, language/world -correspondence. Horgan favours what he calls “indirect-correspondence metaphysical realism”. It stands as an intermediate between “referentialism” (truth is direct language-world correspondence) and “neopragmatism” (truth is radically epistemic, internal to the knower with no outside reference). Truth is “semantic correctness” but the semantic standards are not monolithic within a language. Instead, they vary somewhat from one context to another, depending on the specific purposes our discourse is serving at the time. Contrary to referentialism (direct correspondence), our discourse often employs semantic standards that are not ‘maximally strict’. Even though truth does typically depend upon how things are with the world, often this dependence is not a matter of direct correspondence between words and objects. When the semantics standards are not ‘maximally strict’, the dependence is indirect.
There is a whole spectrum of ways in which statements can correspond with the world. On one end of the spectrum are statements governed by maximally strict semantic standards. Such statements are true when they directly correspond to mind-independent objects (empirical statements). On the other end are statements whose truth is determined almost entirely by semantic standards alone (logical statements). In between sits the majority of the statements we make in life, which indirectly correspond to entities that are in many cases mind-independent.
* Horgan, Terence, Contextual Semantics and Metaphysical Realism: Truth as indirect Correspondence, in Lynch, M.P., The Nature of Truth, Bradford Book, Cambridge, Massachusset, 2001, p.67-102
(German socio-political philosopher 1895-1973, Frankfurt school)
The modern ‘eclipse of reason’ : calculability has replaced truth
Horkheimer's book, Eclipse of Reason, deals with the concept of "reason" within the history of Western philosophy. He details the difference between ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’ reason and states that we have moved from objective to subjective. He compares and contrasts the roles of rational, objective morality, and the subjective understanding of an individual situation in relation to social norms. Objective reason deals with universal truths that dictate that an action is either right or wrong. Subjective reason takes into account the situation and social norms. Actions that produce the best situation for the individual are said to be "reasonable" according to subjective reason. The movement from one type of reason to the other occurred when thought could no longer accommodate these objective truths or when it judged them to be delusions. Under subjective reason, concepts lose their meaning. Because subjective reason rules, the ideals of a society, for example democratic ideals, become dependent on the "interests" of the people instead of being dependent on objective truths.
Horkheimer complains that without the existence of an essential truth of things, reason is stripped of its objective heritage which stretches back to the Greeks, and is made to apply strictly to means and not ends. Philosophy, which now finds its best expression in Positivism – so claims Horkheimer - ceases to be the science which contemplates existence or analyzes the past, but rather becomes "an outlook upon future possibilities with a reference to attaining the better and averting the worst". However, "better" and "worst" are understood entirely subjectively, which is to say, as conforming to the arbitrary wishes of an individual. Thus devoid of all objective content, Positivism is prevented from discerning any inner logic which might, by its following through, lead to the existence of a better reality. In Horkheimer's own words, "calculability replaces truth".
The eclipse of reason occurs with the transition from a reliance on objective rationality to a subjective or relational understanding of individual and social conditions. Modernity, instead of fulfilling the promises of the Enlightenment (e.g. progress, reason, order) has sunk into a new barbarism. Horkheimer explains how the Enlightenment's modern orientation towards rational calculability and man's domination of a disenchanted nature evinces a reversion to myth, and is responsible for the reified structures of modern administered society, which has grown away from truth to resemble a new enslavement.
Horkheimer believes that the ills of modern society are caused by misunderstanding of reason: if people use true reason to critique their societies, they will be able to identify and solve their problems.
*Horkheimer, Max, Eclipse of Reason, New York, Oxford University Press, 1947
(British analytic philosopher, b.1947)
Horwich does not propose a theory of truth as such but but a thesis about the truth-term which he calls 'minimalist'. Like all deflationists he does not treat the predicate 'true' as a normal descriptive (genuine) predicate. A genuine predicate extends to a unified class of objects that share common features. For instance the predicate 'blue' unifies the class of all 'blue' objects. But the predicate 'is true' is not like this. There can be no unified account of why any given sentence should be called true.
Horwich defends the thesis that the truth term involves nothing more than what is called the 'equivalence schema'. Consider a biconditional such as: " 'Snow is white' is true if and only if snow is white". This biconditional is an instance of what is called the 'equivalence schema': "p is true if and only if p". All such biconditionals need no justification for our acceptance of them: they are obvious, evident and immediately known.
Horwich argues that our readiness to accept the evidence of these biconditionals is the source of everything else we do with the truth predicate. No further fact about the truth predicate - nothing beyond our allegiance to the equivalence schema - is needed to explain any of our ways of using it. Horwich concludes that the meaning of 'true' is determined by that schema.
This minimalist proposal is not intended to provide a definition of the word 'true'. It is not a 'theory of truth'; its immediate concern is with the word 'true' rather than with truth itself. Although Horwich calls his minimalist theory a 'deflationary attitude toward truth', he remains neutral on the issue of whether truth is a genuine property, declaring: "Minimalism does not involve, in itself, any particular answer to this question. For it may be combined with a variety of different conceptions of property, some of which will yield the conclusion that the truth predicate does stand for a property, and some that it doesn't."
* Paul Horwich, Truth. Oxford: Basil Blackell, 1990
(American philosopher, 1918)
The difference between “P is true” and “I believe that P is true”
1. Truth is a property of propositions.
A true proposition is one that describes a state-of-affairs that occurs, has occured or will occur. This is the best definition of truth that can be. The concept of state-of-affairs is essential to that definition. It means anything that occurs or exists in the world even if no one reports its occurrence in language. Its existence is independent of language, but we can describe it by means of language. A statement is true if it reports an actual state-of-affairs.
The traditional account of the nature of truth states that truth is correspondence of statements with fact. If “fact” is used to mean the same as “actual state-of-affairs”, there is nothing objectionable. The objection turns around the use of the word correspondence, which suggests the idea of resemblance or copy. But there is certainly no resemblance between a proposition and a state-of-affairs. There is no gain but only confusion in using this term of correspondence. On the contrary it is clear to express that a true proposition is one that describes an actual state-of-affairs.
The other theories of truth, coherence and pragmatism, do not throw light on the nature of truth but at best provides with criteria of truth for particular situations.
2. Truth and belief.
“P is true” and “I believe that P is true” are two propositions with different meanings. To be true, our beliefs must accord with the facts of reality. The facts of reality do not accomodate to our beliefs. This is clear, still there is a lot of confusion about the matter.
a. Some people do not believe a proposition until it has been proved true; others do not disbelieve a proposition until it has been proved false. In fact the degree of one’s belief has nothing to do with its truth. Both beliefs have a degree of irrationality. One’s belief should be proportioned to the evidence. So the proper attitude in both cases should be:” I believe that it is probably true (or false)”.
b. Another misleading expression is: “As far as I am concerned, it is true”. What does that mean? Either “it is true” or “I believe it is true”? Which of the two? If it is only a matter of belief, the belief may be false. If the person wants to say “it is true”, what does “as far as I am concerned” add to it? Is it a precautionary measure in case the statement turns out to be false?
c. “To me it is true, to you it may not be” is another confusing way of speaking. Either you mean that you believe it is true, in which case you have to admit that it could be false. Or you mean that it is true, but then why should you add "To me it is true" ? In both cases it is an open question which of the beliefs is true. "To me and to you" leaves the central question unanswered: is it true or is it not true?
d. Truth is not relative to individuals, even though there are truths about individuals. When Peter says “I have a toothache”, his statement is true for him. Of course one should not infer that the statement is false for John who has no toothache. We must remember that the word “I” refers to a different person each time it is used by a different speaker. When Peter says “I” he means Peter and not some one else. The sentence “I have a toothache” expresses a different proposition when Peter utters it from when John utters it.
e. Assertions of belief are different from assertions of truth. “P is true” and “P is not true” are contradicting propositions. But if one says, “I believe P is true” and another says, “I believe P is not true”, these assertions of belief do not contradict each other for both beliefs may be true as beliefs.
f. It is also misleading to say that a proposition is true at one time or place and false at another. “P is true now (here) but it was false before (there)”. The failure in such cases is one of incompleteness of specification of meaning. Once the meaning of the sentence is completely spelled out (time and place) it will be apparent that the truth of the proposition is not relative to time and space. A true proposition does not cease to be true with the passage of time. But the time when the state-of-affairs occured or existed must be specified in order to make the statement complete. When this is done, the truth is independent of changes in time and place. In order words, what is true always will be true. States-of-affairs come and go, but truths are eternal.
* Hospers, John, An Introduction to Philosophical Analysis, Prentice-Hall,Englewood Cliffs, 1953, p.114-123
(French bishop and philosophical skeptic, 1630-1721)
In its search for truth, philosophy must yield the way to faith
In his Traité philosophique de la faiblesse de l’entendement humain Huet holds that philosophy is the “search for truth” but is unable to reach some truths with certainty; philosophy must then yield the way to faith. “Man cannot know the truth with perfect certainty if he relies upon his Reason alone,” because the senses deceive him, the intellect is fallible, and self-evident truth itself is frequently deceitful. For all these reasons one must admit that human reason is not capable of “true knowledge,” insofar it lacks a “certain rule of the truth,” that is, a procedure that would allow to distinguish truth from falsity in a definite way. Bishop Huet was motivated by the good intention of humiliating human reason – so prone to pride – by inducing it to submit itself to the authority of Tradition.
Huet was convinced that Cartesian reason, instead of being ‘auxilium fidei,’ constitutes a hardly surmountable obstacle. “In reassessing the boundaries between faith and reason, wrote Huet, it is necessary to bring that ‘superbe raison’ back… to the limitations of its own constitutive weakness, so that it can accept sua sponte the submission to revealed truth. Skepticism seemed to be a suitable instrument for that end, because it is able to show reason’s insufficiency already in the natural sphere…” The originality of Huet’s strategy was in his apologetic use of classical skepticism, modernized through elements taken from Gassendi, and from Cartesian philosophy as well. He attacked the Cartesian pretension of the ‘self-evident truth of the cogito’, showing that it is impossible to reach it in any domain, and justifying at the same time the need of returning to tradition and authority.
Huet saw the foundation of Revelation in the reassessment of the historical facts related to Christian revelation, which according to him deserved a better reception by Christian theologians and philosophers – who, due to the popularity of rationalism in the interpretation of Christianity, preferred to follow instead other paths.
*Pierre-Daniel Huët, Traité philosophique de la faiblesse de l’entendement humain , Amsterdam,1723
(Scottish philosopher, 1711-1776)
We have no knowledge of truth but only beliefs that we feel are true.
Besides the aim of human life is happiness, not the knowledge of the truth.
1. There is only one kind of knowledge and that is by sense perception. We do not even know the cause of our sense perceptions. We think erroneously that reason can discover the nature, purpose or plan of things. Human understanding is limited to the phenomena, that is, what appears to us in sense-perception. The only way we know is either by impressions, which are the immediate data given by our five senses, or by ideas, which are the representations of these ideas in the mind. Our experience is made of these two kinds of atomic elements that we constantly relate and associate with each other, for instance by the cause-effect link. But, says Hume, these associations are superimpositions. For there is no rational proof whatsoever of the causal principle: “If we believe in the causal principle, it is only by habit or custom”. Such is the main tenet of Hume’s radical empiricism or phenomenism.
2. According to him, philosophers in search of truth have gone too far, too deep. Wanting to find reasons, explanations and causes, they have neglected to look into what things really are and into what happens to hearts and minds that look at reality. All our knowledge about the real world is made of facts and the contrary of a fact is always conceivable. We take some facts to be probable because we believe, nothing more. We believe in the probability of certain facts more than others on account of the central faculty of the mind, which Hume calls habit. Human beings are capable to learn always more and more, that means, capable of forming new habits of belief. What seems to us absolutely evident – such as the link of cause and effect or the moral values - is so because we have learned, acquired, assimilated them and formed the habit to take them so. We believe that they are true, but we cannot prove that they are.
Belief – a central concept in Hume’s philosophy – is not a mental act, but a part of our sensitivity. We sense that we believe this or that, we passively accept it. We do not decide and act in a rational way. In other words, belief is a deep-rooted instinct.
3. Therefore there is nothing else to do, intellectually, than to record facts with no possibility to go beyond that. Our task is to observe and describe the facts, and not to explain and search for a ‘truth’ behind them. The need felt by many for truths and certainties is a weakness that should be overcome. The interest of life is not in searching what is true, but rather in accepting the ambiguities, contingencies and uncertainties of existence.
Pure philosophical reflection may lead to total scepticism. But then one should remember that happiness is not found in the futile philosophical search for truth. One should turn to Nature to find the joy of life. For the aim of human life is happiness, and not the knowledge of the truth.
* See Lavine,T.Z. From Socrates to Sartre, Bantam Books, New York, 1984, p.159 sq.; Puech, M. La Philosophie en Clair, Paris, Ellipses, 1999, 55-68
(German philosopher, founder of phenomenology, 1859-1938)
1. Husserl, a mathematician like Descartes, is obsessed by a search of indubitable certainty for philosophy. He considered that the dominance of the natural sciences and of its corresponding philosophy of naturalism is responsible for the disastrous reduction of human consciousness to being merely a part of nature. Conscious being, says Husserl, is completely different from matter and nature studied by the sciences. Moreover the ‘naturalist’ approach has brought the present crisis of the loss of belief in any absolute certainty. Husserl - like Descartes with his Cogito – wants to restore to philosophy a foundation in certainty. To achieve this project, he proposes to “bracket” the real existence of the outside world in order to know with absolute certainty the essential structures of our conscious acts.
Thus Husserl’s phenomonology adopts the approach of transcendental idealism. It is not concerned with the objective reality as such, but only insofar as it appears to our constitutive consciousness, which is the source of meaning. His phenomenology has no ontological claim - even though it never denies the real existence of an outside world.
Husserl makes the important distinction between ‘being as lived’ (Lebenswelt) and ‘being as thing’. The being of things appears to us always in ‘sketches’, partially hidden, never in its totality. The ‘Lebenswelt’, on the contrary, is present to our conscience in its totality. Whereas things and objects are by essence ‘transcendent’ because never integrally accessible to our conscience, the ‘Lebenwelt’ is immanent to our conscience, coinciding with our experience. Therefore the Lebenswelt , which gives itself fully and totally, is the object of certain evidence, whereas the things of the world which present themselves always in ‘sketches’ are never the object of such an evidence. Phenomenology, which restricts itself only to the Lebenswelt, is thus an absolutely evident kind of knowledge which does not presuppose anything and is the foundation of everything else. It deals with the truths of essences which contain no assertions relative to facts.
2. The consequence of the phenomenological approach on the problem of truth can now be drawn. Let us compare the natural approach to true and false and the phenomenological approach to the same.
- The natural approach considers truth as the adequation of mind and reality. Various theories of truth have been proposed around this basic assumption: some to defend it and some to refute and replace it by other theories.
- Phenomenology restricts itself to the analysis of appearances in the Lebenswelt of experience. Its view of truth is pre-theoretical, and thus pre-interpretative. It is a truth immediately intuited, which need no theoretical construction. It amounts to a visual model of truth. Indeed it employs words such as ‘seeing’, ‘perspectives’, etc., which are pre-theoretical notions. Phenomenology deals only with the truth of appearing. There are two different things we might mean by "truth": apprehensive truth and propositional truth. For Husserl truth is apprehensive truth, not propositional truth.
Husserl’s phenomenology is not interested in explaining or theorising but only in ‘seeing, grasping’. Being pre-theoretical, it accepts the given as given and does not submit the data to any theoretical system. A theory explains the appearances but phenomenology restricts itself to the description of what appears. And what appears is immediately self-evident, it is ‘true’. Truth is simply an event which occurs and which the subject seizes as occurring: it is a mode of givenness. Truth is presence to experience, the evidence of the Lebenswelt. Truth is primarily in pure intuition, not in judgement.
* See McCluskey, F.B., Phenomenology and the Paradox of Truth, Philosophy Today, Summer 1990, p.133-145; Lavine, ibid., p 393 sq.
(English biologist, 1825-1895)
Agnosticism or the truth and wisdom of not resting one’s life on the unknowable
The term ‘agnosticism’ has been popularized by T.H. Huxley in 1876. It means : without (a) knowledge (gnosis). The truth about a specific subject (specially God’s existence) is unknowable: hence one should adopt the agnostic attitude: “I do not know”. For Huxley agnosticism is not a creed but a method, the essence of which lies in the application of single principle: “Do not pretend conclusions are certain that are not demonstrated or demonstrable”. Agnosticism for him is not a “negative” creed, nor a creed of any kind except in so far that it expresses absolute faith in the validity of this one principle: ”It is wrong for any one to say he is certain of the objective truth of a proposition unless he can produce evidence that justifies it”. Agnosticism for Huxley was a position which rejected the knowledge claims of both ‘strong atheism’ and traditional theism. Some people are quite sure of the truth of God’s existence, others quite sure of the truth of his non-existence. Both are certain to have attained a certain “gnosis”, an absolute truth about the problem of existence. But Huxley confessed that he was quite sure that he had not solved the problem and had the strong conviction that the problem was insoluble. Therefore he adopted the method (not the ‘doctrine’) of agnosticism which consists in not concluding anything when one has no good reasons to do so. His agnosticism is a theory about knowledge in general, not only about religion and the question of God’s existence.
* Huxley, Thomas Henry, Agnosticism and Christianity, Great Minds Series, Prometheus books, UK
(British philosopher, 1894-1963)
The eternal truth or ‘Perennial Philosophy’
'Perennial philosophy' is the term used by Aldous Huxley that refers to that thread of eternal truth that weaves through all religious truth and philosophy. Even though the externals of the various religions may differ, the essence or core truth is the same in each. He defines the philosophia perennis as follows: “the metaphysic that recognizes a divine Reality substantial to the world of things and lives and minds; the psychology that finds in the soul something similar to, or even identical with, divine Reality; the ethic that places man's final end in the knowledge of the immanent and transcendent Ground of all being. Rudiments of the Perennial Philosophy may be found among the traditionary lore of primitive peoples in every region of the world, and in its fully developed forms it has a place in every one of the higher religions”.
At the core of Aldous Huxley’s Perennial Philosophy one finds four fundamental doctrines:
First: the phenomenal world of matter and of individualized consciousness—the world of things and animals and men and even gods—is the manifestation of a Divine Ground within which all partial realities have their being, and apart from which they would be nonexistent.
Second: human beings are capable not merely of knowing about the Divine ground by inference; they can also realize its existence by a direct intuition, superior to discursive reasoning. This immediate knowledge unites the knower with that which is known.
Third: man possesses a double nature, a phenomenal ego and an eternal self, which is the inner man, the spirit, the spark of divinity within the soul. It is possible for a man, it he so desires, to identify himself with the Divine Ground, which is of the same or like nature with the spirit.
Fourth: Man’s life has only one end and purpose: to identify himself with his eternal Self and so to come to unitive knowledge of the Divine Ground.
* Huxley, Aldous, The Perennial Philosophy, London, Harper and brothers, 1945