        There is a parasitic view of theology which considers it to be essentially confessional in character. Theologians are held to be expositors of the faith of a particular historic community and their work is validated by its accuracy to express that faith in the most coherent language available. Theologians are to see themselves as ‘spokesmen of their community’ charged with a special responsibility within it and they are not, as theologians, supposed to express ‘private’ opinions. This quite common view of understanding theology accounts for the indignation sometimes expressed by members of the community of faith towards theologians who present – so they claim - distorted expositions of the faith in order to render it more intelligible.
        This view of theology as purely confessional is to be fundamentally questioned. One of the main reason is that theologians should be concerned about truth as much as about the contents of the faith of a given community. To the extent that they are committed to a particular faith, it is presumably because they regard it as containing the truth about God, the world and human being. If their investigations into the contents of faith show that it is making false claims, it would be odd to hold that they must see their role as one of trying to hide the truth and bolster error. Such a view of their role would not only undermine the general credibility of their work but also be a denial of the primary object of faith, God who is Reality and Truth. If the recognition of truth requires a revision of faith’s position, then the theologian must accept the responsibility to urge such a change. Theological work must abandon its confessional character and chose to be revisionary as well as descriptive in relation to a community of faith.
        One must recognize that a theology that is essentially related to a given faith must present the two criteria of ‘appropriateness’ and ‘credibility’. Its interpretation of a given faith must be appropriate to the content of that faith. But it must also be an interpretation that is credible to human existence as judged by common experience and reason. That means that the theologians’ responsibility is to provide an understanding which may justifiably be regarded as true.

* Pailin David, Groundwork of Philosophy of Religion, Epworth Press, London,1986, p. 38-42

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PANIKKAR Raimon *

(Indian Spanish philosopher of religions, b. 1917)

Truth is pluralistic because reality is pluralistic
and human knowledge is necessarily perspectival.

        1. Pluralism versus relativism and exclusivism.
        How should one avoid the Scylla of mere relativism (giving up our deepest convictions) and the Charybdis of exclusivism (harbouring dangerous fanaticism)? In today’s world we are forced to understand each other. But how?
        The attitude to adopt stands between the extremes of relativism and exclusivism. Panikkar suggests that it should be pluralism provided the term is properly understood.
        A number of pluralisms are accredited today: philosophical, theological, cultural. Religious pluralism is the most difficult to understand. But what is meant by religious pluralism?
        Pluralism is not plurality. Plurality is the recognition of a multiplicity of different ways and moods. It is a quantitative notion. Pluralism is not pluriformity, a qualitative notion pointing at the variety of ways and moods. Pluralism goes further than the recognition of differences (plurality) and varieties (pluriformity): it has to do with radical diversity.
        Pluralism is linked first to perspectivism, the common sense acknowledgment that every one sees things from different perspectives and, second, to relativity – not to be confused with sceptical and agnostic relativism – through which absolutistic claims are excluded.
        The essential characteristics of pluralism are as follows:
        - It is neither the acknowledgment of the fact of plurality of religions, nor the mere wishful thinking of unity.
        - It recognizes the irreconcilable aspects of religions without being blind to their common aspects. It does not consider unity as an indispensable ideal, It does not foster the eschatological expectation that at the end, all religions shall become one.
        - It does not allow for a universal system. A universal system is an impossibility. This impossibility (or incommensurability) must not be seen as an evil, but rather as the revelation of the nature of reality.
        - Pluralism makes us aware of our contingency and the non-transparency of reality. If it tries to reach the highest intelligibility, it does not need the ideal of a total comprehensibility of the real.

        2. The pluralism of truth
        Truth is beyond Unity and Plurality. Pluralism affirms neither that truth is one, nor that it is many. For if truth were one, the pluralist atttitude would be a connivance with error. And if truth were manifold, pluralism would stand for the plurality of truth which is contradictory.
        Pluralism adopts a non-dualistic, “a-dvaitic” attitude which defends the pluralism of truth because reality itself is pluralistic, that is incommensurable with either unity or plurality.
        Truth has no centre. It is often assumed that to reach intelligibility one has to reach a centre. Truth must have one centre, it is the convergence of all views, so we think. But pluralism thinks in a different way in recognizing the mutual incommensarability of human atttitudes and the incompatibility of ultimate beliefs.
        Solomon’s wisdom is most appropriate to understand the case. Our many solutions want to cut the child in two. Truth, like the child, is ours. But to keep the child alive, to keep the polarity of human realities alive, we cannot judge by Reason alone. Salomon shows that, because love intervenes, when the child is ours, we prefer to lose so that the child may live. The problem of truth requires love, dialogue and the human touch. We belong together, even if our views are incompatible. Pluralism belongs to the human condition.
        To conclude: the pluralism of truth is necessary on account of our contingency and the perspectivism of our knowledge; nobody has a 360 degrees vision. Secondly truth itself is pluralistic because reality itself is pluralistic, not being an objectifiable entity. As subjects we are parts of it, not just spectators but co-actors. This is our human dignity. The unity of truth must not be an obsession. We have to accept our human condition as well as the nature of reality.

* Panikkar, Raimon, The Pluralism of Truth, World faiths insight, New Series 26, October 1990, p7-16

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PANNENBERG, Wolfart *

(German theologian, b.1928)

Until the eschaton all truth claims are contestable and provisional:
the truths of (Christian) faith are still in the making.

        The Western view of truth is rooted on two different concepts of truth: the Greek and the Israelitic. The Greek word for truth, aletheia, consists in letting something be seen as it is, not to conceal anything. This truth is not subject to becoming and change, it is not historical but timeless. The Hebrew word for truth is emeth, that is, reliability and faithfulness. A person’s words are emeth to the extent that they prove to be reliable, time and again. Emeth is not timeless truth but historical truth that will show itself in the future. True being proves its stability through a history whose future is always open. The constancy of the biblical God is not available in advance, but from time to time is disclosed in retrospect in a new way at every historical stage. One can be certain of the future only in the trustful self-surrender of faith, grounded in the experience of the past faithfulness of God.
        In the modern history of Western thought, two fundamental changes took place in the conception of truth. Firstly, the knowledge of truth came to be regarded no longer as a matter of consent and passive reception, but as the creative act of man. The subject is the source of truth. The new conviction about the creative character of thought inaugurates the ‘subjectivization’ of truth. Secondly, the conception of truth in the West came to be affected by the rise of historical thought. It became clear since the age of the great journeys in the seventeenth century that truth has another form for different peoples and ages. If reference to the unity of everything real is essential to truth, then it cannot simply deal with the present world but embrace other cultures of distant times and places. The unity of thought now can only be thought of as the history of truth, and that means that truth itself has a history and that its essence is the process of that history. Historical change itself must be thought of as the essence of truth.
        It is Hegel that gave the most significant attempt at a solution of this problem. According to him truth is not to be found already existing as a finished product, but instead thought of as history, as process. The truth of the whole will only emerge at the end of history. According to Pannenberg, Hegel’s thesis comes close to the biblical understanding of truth in two respects. First, by the fact that truth is not timeless and unchangeable but a process, second, by the fact that the unity of the process will become manifest only at the end. The trouble with Hegel is that he undertstood his own position as the end of history. He had no longer an eschatology before him. In “contemporizing” eschatology he destroyed it.
        It is Pannenberg’s conviction that the Hegelian turning point in the historical and eschatological conception of truth is of great importance for the understanding of truth in Christian theology. Not only does it re-actualize the biblical concept of historical truth, it shows that it is inadequate for Christian theology to regard itself as the unfolding of a truth entrusted to it in advance as complete. The truth of the faith is not given to theology in advance for the simple reason that it is still in dispute in the history of Christianity and so it is the object of Christian theology. The historicity of Christianity affects its content. Its theology is not the unfolding of a truth already there. The truth of faith is still in the making, still in dispute. because truth is eschatological. Until the eschaton, truth will by its own nature always remain provisional and truth claims contestable.
        Therefore, theology. like all human knowledge, is provisional. It simply cannot pack into formulas the truth of God. The future alone is the focal point of ultimate truth. As a result. all dogmatic statements are hypotheses to be tested for coherence with other knowledge. This, Pannenberg claims, is in accordance with the Scriptures, which declare that only at the end of history is the deity of God unquestionably open

* Pannenberg, Wolfart, Basic Questions of Theology, SCM Press, London, 1967, p.1-25, 1992, p.40-74

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PARAIN Brice *

(French philosopher,1897-1971)

The betrayal of truth by language

Parain’s work is a denunciation of the deep perversity of language which distracts man from reality. He treats language as a metaphysical problem: is our language the instrument of lie or of truth? He notices that whenever one speaks one gives privilege to one particular possibility of asserting something against the multiplicity of other possibilities. Everything we say and think is limited, finite and set apart from all other possibilities. Only one possibility is kept and the others are removed or postponed. The chasm between language and reality is so deep that any affirmation scarcely amounts to one.
Parain denounces the unfortunate duplicity of language. No doubt language allows us to communicate but in uniting us it also betrays us. It gives us the illusion that we deliver some truth, whereas we deliver to others the part of us that is most impersonal, which is the only part that can be said. Language does not express the self but submits it to its order. Language belongs to another order than reality. The rift between language and reality renders the correctness of speech most improbable. Language is made more for fictions and lies and for competing with reality through simulations, rather then reflecting truth.
Still Parain thinks that this state of affairs is inadmissible because language exists for the institution of truth and justice. His basic position is : it is impossible to say everything. Each of us, taken apart, is unable to say all what he should say. Nonetheless it is necessary that all be said. After all one can\'t live without words, explains Parain, because talking equals thinking, and thinking talking, and there is no life without thought. It is not a question of speaking or not speaking, but of speaking well. Speaking demands an ascetic discipline, detachment. One has to understand, for one thing, that there is no going straight at the truth. One needs to pass by error to establish a rapport with the world in order to rehabilitate the notions of purpose and truth.

* Parain Brice, Recherches sur la nature et les fonctions du langage, Gallimard, 1942

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PARMENIDES *

(Greek philosopher, early 5th century B.C.)

Truth belongs to the intelligible sphere of Being.

        It is in the famous poem of Parmenides that for the first time in Greek thought truth emerges as a central philosophical topic. He presents his teaching as a divine message that carries one beyond the views of ordinary mortals. Truth is contrasted with the opinions of human beings who rely on sense experience.
        Parmenides’ Aletheia (truth) is the manifestation of the presence of Being, the mirror of Being in knowledge. Being is a radiating light and this radiation, in so far as thought and expressed, is the truth. Truth is shrouded by mythological chimera, as well as by the phenomenal appearances of sense experience. The truth of being is hidden; it needs to be unconcealed. The truth-searcher must reject the sensible world of experience and common opinion, in which everything is submitted to change and becoming and to the contradictory mixture of being and non being. The way of truth, opposed to the way of opinion, leads to “what is”, to Being, the foundation of the phenomenal world. Only the logos or rational thought has access to Being in its unconcealedness. For most interpreters of Parmenides, truth and what-is are equivalent: both names of Reality and therefore truth shares with Being the fundamental characteristics of unity, wholeness, eternity, unchangeability, perfection.
        Parmenides does not explain further: is the deceptive world of appearances distinct from the intelligible Being? Are they two different worlds as Plato’s dualism admitted in ‘reifying’ the intelligible world? Parmenides seems to have placed truth in the human mind, the immanent logos and not in another world.

* See Quilliot , Roland, La VÈritÈ, Paris, Ellipses, 1997, p. 30-33; Stevens, Bernard, Une Introduction Historique ‡ la Philosophie, Pris, Artel, 1999, p.75-77

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PASCAL Blaise *

(French mathematician and apologist, 1623-1662)

The truths of the heart, more important than the truths of reason

        1. Pascal is often taken for a sceptic who takes refuge in faith. Man, according to him, is naturally subject to errors. It seems that there is nothing to show him the truth. Pascal was sceptical about†both empiricism and rationalism. He considered them flawed epistemological understandings of reality because they are both lacking in foundations. He claimed that†the two classical sources of truth, reason and the senses, besides being both wanting in sincerity, deceive each other in turn.†The senses mislead reason with false appearances, and receive from reason in their turn the same trickery which they apply to her.
        However such a confession of scepticism is only a moment in Pascal’s dialectic. He wants to stress that reason does not have the monopoly of truth. The alternative epistemological approach he proposes to rationalism and empiricism is one that recognizes a form of knowledge in addition to sense perception and reason, namely the knowledge of the heart, which he takes to be the epistemological source of foundational truth.† It is by this means that people are able to understand their relationship with God and their relationship with the other.
        Pascal’s “way of the heart” is a complex notion, biblical in origin. It comprises instinct, feeling, will, love but it is also a function of knowledge opposed to discursive reason in that it is intuitive. Through it one obtains an immediate, direct perception of the truth. The heart deals with the primary knowledge of first principles. This knowledge which is the foundation of rational truths is immediately intuited, and evident without the need of proofs and demonstrations. When the heart is illumined by grace, it is faith. Pascal writes:“ This is what faith is: God sensitive to the heart, not to reason”.

        2. In a famous fragment Pascal distinguishes three orders: the order of bodies, the order of minds and the order of charity. “The infinite distance of bodies to minds reflects the even more infinite distance of minds to charity, because it is supernatural”. The bodily greatness is the proper of kings, people endowed with power and riches; the greatness of the mind belongs to scientists and philosophers; the greatness of charity is the proper of Christ. Pascal forcefully stresses the absolute separation, the radical discontinuity that divides the three orders. From the sum of all bodies, not a single thought can emerge; from bodies and minds together no movement of charity is possible. The access to the truth is possible only through the order of charity. Charity is the key that unlocks the door of Truth. “Truth outside charity is not God”. Pascal agrees with St Augustine’s idea: “Non intratur in veritatem nisi per caritatem”

        3. Pascal’s wager and truth.
        Pascal’s wager deals with the Catholic Church’s doctrine of eternal salvation for the believers and eternal perdition for the unbelievers. Pascal’s argument may be sums up as follows. ‘You have everything to gain in accepting the Church’s doctrine, for if it true, you gain eternal life and if it is false, you lose nothing. On the contrary if you are an unbeliever and if the Church is right, infinite misery will follow. So better not to take the risk and choose to be a believer.’
        Behind Pascal’s wager (concerned only with the salvation doctrine of the Catholic Church) there is a broader notion of the wager that can apply to belief in God in general or even to belief in any live option. Certain decisions of momentous importance must be made in life but the fact is that there are insufficient grounds for discerning rationally where the truth lies. The attitude of the agnostic is untenable for one cannot simply avoid to make vital decisions which carry with them momentous consequences. Therefore it seems that the only possible solution is in Pascal’s “way of the heart” according to which where “the head cannot decide, the heart must take over”. Where the course one should follow in critical and indispensable options is unsupported by the truth of facts or the truths reason, an emotional decision about it is most appropriate. There is much to gain and little to lose.

* Pascal, Blaise, PensÈes, Paris, Garnier, 1964, p.147-148; see Gardner, Martin, The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener, Oxford University Press, 1985, p.217-219; Verneaux, Roger, Histoire de la philosophie Moderne, Paris, Beauchesne, 1958, p.37-50

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PATANJALI (Yoga) *

(Indian founder of yoga philosophy, c. 200 BC)

   The only dependence should be to the Truth, which is within every individual

Yoga Philosophy maintains that the human mind can be both a valuable tool and a source of suffering. Patanjali defines the Yoga state as having a mind that is satvic, stable, and able to focus. He chooses the phrase ‘Citta Vritti Nirodha’ (the cessation of mental turbulence) to describe the mind that can experience the truth, consciousness, and joy, (Sat-chit-ananda) which is, according to Yoga, our true nature. But because the mind is Prakriti, it can also be rajasic or tamasic. Such an imbalanced mind is prone to misperception, resulting in sorrow, discomfort and disease. And this pain is real. Unlike non-dualism, where separateness and sorrow are seen as illusory, Yoga sees everything as real. Suffering, sickness and sadness are true realities, which can only be replaced by other realities, preferably, comfort, wellness, and joy.

    The aim of the Yoga-Sutras is to achieve wholeness by refining the individual parts and clarifying their relationships. These parts are all inter-connected, so that refinement in one area will create improvement in the others. Therefore, mastering the body by using slow, deep breathing and comfortable postures (Asana), is essential to focus the mind and brighten the emotions.

    The practice of Yoga has been linked to the Indian philosophical system called Samkya Yoga. Thus while Yoga is the practice, Samkya is the theory. Though Yoga is linked to this philosophy, it is important to note that Yoga recognizes that there is Truth in each religious tradition and that each soul is where it needs to be to evolve. Yoga does not require submission to a set of doctrines or to a particular individual or temple. Instead, it strives to develop independence in the individual, rather than dependence upon something that is external. The only dependence should be to the Truth, which is within each and every individual. It is just eclipsed by our thoughts and emotions. One need to get the self out of the way in order to see our true Self.

* The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali with Commentary by Swami Venkatesananda", Swami Venkatesananda, Divine Life Society, India, 1998

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PATOCKA Jan *

(Czech philosophical phenomenologist, 1907-1977)

Truth is the correlate of freedom and freedom is the responsibility for truth

Patocka is a philosopher of freedom. Freedom, for him, is neither arbitrary action nor disinterest. Freedom is rather a function of truth. Yet truth is not a question of the merely theoretical order. Rather, truth is in turn the correlate of freedom: “Truth is the internal struggle of a human being for her/his essential freedom, for the internal freedom which the human as human possesses in her/his depth, independently of what she/he is at the level of facts. Truth is the question of the authenticity of human.” Understood in this way, human existence, in conformity to its essence, prescribes to itself the responsibility to search for truth; thus freedom is the responsibility for truth. That is why truth understood in its primordial sense is not theoretical contemplation, but an ethical relation to human freedom of the practical order: “Truth can only be grasped in action, and only a being who acts effectively (which does not simply ‘reflect’ an objective process) can enter into relation with truth.”

Truth is not passive contemplation but active search for sense and its first step consists of critical reflection on the situation where a human engages herself/himself. “We cannot attain truth on our situation except by following the course of critique, by way of critical reflection.” Thus a human’s responsibility for truth requires her/him to reflect on her/his situation in a critical manner such that she/he will be able “to modify, to transform her/his situation into a conscious and elucidated situation, which as such will be leading a way towards the truth of the situation.”

See Erazim Kohak: Jan Patocka: Philosophy and Selected Writings (Paperback), The University of Chicago Press, 1999

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PATTERSON Dennis *

( American contemporary legal theory philosopher)

        Law and truth: law makes things true in its own eyes

    1. Patterson argues that legal conventions create, inform, and support judgments of legal truth. Legal claims can be true in the eyes of the law even if they are not true in the eyes of the morally sensitive layperson or lawyer. The point of Patterson’s approach is not to deny the truths that law produces but to face them squarely, acknowledge them as real things with real consequences for human life. He takes a strongly conventionalist line because he deems important to understand the proliferation of the power of legal truths not as mere defect or imperfection extraneous to law but as a central feature of what law is and what law does. Law, he argues, is an interpenetrating set of social conventions, and therefore statements of law can be true by virtue of those conventions.

    2. One might think that the problem with law's power is that it compromises one's ability to understand what is true, because what is true from the standpoint of law is not really true. Therefore, when one sees things as law sees them, one is deluded or one’s perception is distorted in some way. But, argues Patterson, it is important not to reduce all of law's ideological effects to distortion or misrepresentation.

    Law exercises its power over people by creating reality and proliferating truth, not simply by misrepresenting reality and distorting truth.

    Of course it is obvious that the kind of truth and reality that law creates is not the only sort of truth, or knowledge, or reality that people care about or think important. There are many other forms of knowledge acquisition in the world, and many other conventions through which and purposes for which people try to determine what is true or false, try to gather and assess knowledge. These other forms of life also produce knowledge, and things that are true and false from their standpoint. Legal knowledge can come into conflict with these other forms of knowledge. One might ask: how is it possible that things can both be true and yet come into conflict? The answer is that things that are true from the standpoint of one set of social practices or social conventions are not necessarily true from the standpoint of another. The practices may be looking at very different things and they may be asking very different sorts of questions. The reason why law can come into conflict with other forms of truth and other forms of knowledge is that truth and knowledge are shaped by institutional purposes. Legal knowledge exists to regulate and declare what is legal or not legal. Medical or scientific or philosophical knowledge exists for other purposes. Therefore, it is possible for something to be judged true from the standpoint of law and not be judged true from the standpoint of other kinds of knowledge. All these practices may produce true statements, but these true statements may have no obvious connection to each other and they may even be in conflict. It is important to understand that the conflict between the truths of law and other truths, when it occurs, does not violate the laws of logic. It is not a logical contradiction but a clash of institutions and purposes.

* Patterson Dennis, Law and Truth, (Oxford University Press 1996).

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PEIKOFF Leonard *

(Canadian - American philosopher, b. 1933)

No truth can be synthetic

Objectivism – the philosophy that Peikoff shares with Ayn Rand - does not accept the analytic/synthetic dichotomy as valid. Peikoff argues that a concept means all the existents which it integrates. … It subsumes and includes all the characteristics of its referents, known and not yet known. He considers concepts to be open-ended, the meaning of a concept is all of the concretes it subsumes, past, present, and future, including ones that we will never know about.

    Peikoff argues that, because "the concept(s) designating the subject in fact includes the predicate from the outset", all sentences are analytic and hence that there is no analytic-synthetic distinction.

    The idea behind Peikoff’s claim is that to be is to be necessary; a fact which is true is true unconditionally, and there is no way it can be otherwise. Even though it is possible to imagine the facts as other than they are, the fact that one can imagine the facts as otherwise does not change that they are facts.

    Philosophers that try to talk about "contingent truths" are speaking implicitly from the standpoint of someone who thinks they can make reality other than what it is by wishing it so - they feel free to dream up "possible worlds" and thereby argue that ours wasn't necessary since they can imagine the facts to be otherwise.

    Peikoff ‘s attack on the analytic-synthetic distinction turns around his conception of "a concept". His position is that a concept of a thing (for example "ice") contains all the characteristics of that thing, in the case of ice all the physical and chemical properties of ice, even those that are still unknown. For Peikoff, a concept subsumes and includes all the characteristics of its referents, known and not-yet-known." He emphasizes the latter: "It is crucially important to grasp the fact that a concept is an 'open-end' classification which includes the yet-to-be-discovered characteristics of a given group of existents." Peikoff’s conclusion is then that it isn't possible to distinguish between analytical and synthetic statements, as any characteristic that is deemed a synthetic truth , is already part of the concept itself, so it follows logically from its definition.

    For many critics however Peikoff’s conclusion is fallacious. One may define ‘concept’ to imply all the characteristics, known and yet-to-be-discovered, but a definition necessarily gives only a few essential characteristics. Peikoff silently assumes that a limited definition of a concept automatically implies all the characteristics of that concept, even those that are still unknown. But a definition is not the same as the concept, it is only a label on a box, it doesn't tell us what is in that box. In order to equate the definition with the concept, one would have to state all the properties of that concept explicitly in the definition. In that case one could say that any characteristic follows logically from the definition. But it is of course impossible to give such a complete definition.

* See Rand, A., Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. New York, Meridian, 1990.

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PEIRCE C.S. *

(American philosopher, 1839-1914)

Truth is the ideal limit obtained by the agreement
and convergence of opinions of the community of qualified investigators.

        1. Peirce is a fallibilist: and that means that, for him,there are no self-authenticating items of knowledge. Knowledge is not based on direct and indubitable intuitions. We must begin with the beliefs we have and be prepared to criticize them, clarify and testing them. No single belief at any time can be regarded as wholly true. Conversely an ingredient of error and obscurity infects each and every one of our beliefs and judgments.
        However Peirce’s principle of fallibilism does not entail a denial of objective truth. Truth, for him, consists in the conformity of something independent of one’s thinking to be so. Truth is neither subjective nor identical to the verifiable. But how does one reach the truth? This is Pierce’s problem.
        2. Individual thinkers cannot hope to attain the truth; one can only seek it in the community of scientists and philosophers. Only such a process will generate a convergence of beliefs. The theorizing together will tend towards the ‘agreement’ with reality and this agreement is what Peirce calls the truth. The truth is therefore that which emerges from an intersubjective agreement arrived at by an indefinite pursuit of scientific method.
        3. However this criteria of truth seems to make truth inaccessible. One can never be sure to be in possession of the truth at any time. But then one should remember that Peirce has adopted a fallibilist standpoint. Nonetheless it does not prevent him to believe that if we remain faithful to sound, rational methods we are able to discover the truth about the universe. Pierce’s optimism inclines him to believe that there is a general drift in the history of human thought which will lead to one general agreement, one catholic consent, one final conclusion.
        4. For Pierce the Real is our own reliable interpretation of reality. We have no access to reality except by means of conceptual interpretation. Pragmatically the Real is what thought represents it to be. Reality in its uninterpreted nakedness, is for him a pragmatically meaningless notion, an unknowable. Hence the fundamental idea in Pierce’s theory of truth is that truth cannot be correspondence to a reality that is in any case unknowable. If one can speak of truth, it is about the Real, that is, our own conceptualisation of reality. The criterion of truth is not correspondence but consensus. Pierce’s well known definition of truth is: “The opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed upon by all who investigate is what we mean by truth, and the object represented by this opion is real.”(Pierce, Collected papers, 5, ß 407).
        5. Pierce thinks that truth can be defined by using the mathematical notion of a limit and the philosophic notion of a community of interpreters, inquirers and confirmers. His use of the mathematical notion of limit has been criticized as naive and unconvincing. Indeed it is difficult to hold that all investigations would necessarily lead to one unique conclusion, to one universal consent at the exclusions of all other views.
        Still Pierce has made himself clear: he only proposes a clarification of the concept of truth. He does not express the conviction that a final truth is attainable.” I cannot infallibly know that there is any truth; I only say that that alone is what I call Truth”. He wants only to provide a description of the kind of conditions to which the concept applies. In other words truth , for Pierce, is a “regulative idea”. His idea of truth represents the ideal of scientific progress, the ideal of finished scientific knowledge. The existing opinions and statements must be regarded as more or less approximations of these ideal conditions.
        6. To understand Pierce’s approach to truth, it is useful to contrast it with Descartes’s approach to the same. Whereas Descartes holds an intuitive, individual and isolationist approach of truth, Pierce’s view of truth has the opposite characteristics of being experimental, social and contextual. According to him:
        - a.We have no intellectual intuition of self-evident truths. Any truth must be verified by facts open to inspection.
        - b. Moreover truth must be established by public agreement rather than private insight. Truth must be subjected to social verification. “Truth is public”. It is the ideal limit obtained by the agreement and convergence of opinions of the community of qualified investigators.
        - c. Because thinking is fundamentally contextualistic, relative to specific socio-historical situations and conceptual interpretations, the provisional truth of statements is affected by this contextuality.

* See H.S. Thayer, Meaning and Action, The Bobbs-Merril C_, New York, 1968, p.120-130; Copleston F. History of Philosophy, Vol.VIII, Burns & Oates, London, 1966, p.304-310

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PELAGIUS *

( British (?) monk, 354-420)

Against the doctrine of “orignal sin”: the truth that

         humanity is born innocent of evil

    Pelagius taught that human beings were born without sin and with the freedom to choose to either obey God or disobey God. In his doctrine, Adam sinned, but there was no hereditary transmission of sin or a sinful nature. Each man is on trial himself. In response to the universal nature of sin, Pelagius replies that it is due to wrong education, bad examples, and mankind’s "longstanding habit" of sinning. It seemed to him essential to the very notion of morality that in all sin there is a personal assent, and that without this assent there could be no guilt.

    The central tenet of the Pelagian scheme is the affirmation of the self-sufficiency of man’s free will. The fact that men are prone to sin is not inherited from Adam and Eve, the so-called first parents: they acquire it by their own misdeeds. There is no room for original sin. Everything good, and everything evil is not born with human beings but done by them. They are procreated “neutral”, as without virtue, so also without vice, but with a certain capacity for either conduct.

    Pelagius did not claim that man cannot do evil, he declared that man is capable of good and evil; he merely tried to protect man from an unjust charge: man is not forced to do evil through a fault of his nature, he does neither good nor evil without the exercise of his will, having always the freedom to do good or evil. Thus man is good and has control over his own destiny.    For Pelagius it is impious to say that sin is inherent in nature, because in this way God, the author of nature, is being judged at fault. All sin is to be attributed to the free choice of the will and not to the defects of nature. Consequently he said that heaven is attainable by use of man’s natural faculties alone, since nothing but the free will is needed to practice virtue and keep out of sin. No special help is required to repair what Adam is - wrongly - supposed to have lost. Hence the role of Jesus Christ, as Pelagius saw it, is not in some salvific aspect of his sacrifice but in the example he set by it and in the principles of living which were part and parcel of his teaching.

Pelagius, Pelagius' Commentary on St Paul's Epistle to the Romans,. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1988

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PELL George *

(Australian R.C. Cardinal, b. 1941)

Conscience is not the arbiter of truth and has no primacy over truth

    According to Cardinal Pell the value of conscience lies not in conscience itself but in the objective truth to which conscience looks for answers. It is the truth that is primary, and it is from the truth that conscience takes its value. He has expressed concern at the misrepresentation of “the doctrine of the primacy of conscience.” He even went on to say that the concept “should be quietly ditched.”

    Conscience has no primacy, he writes, truth has primacy. The Word of God has primacy.   He believes that the mischievous doctrine of the primacy of conscience has been used to white-ant the Church, used to justify many un-catholic teachings.     Some have contrasted Pell’ thesis with the Second Vatican Council’s document on Freedom of Religion which states the following:

    “Truth is to be sought after in a manner proper to the dignity of the human person and our social nature. The inquiry is to be free, carried on with the aid of teaching or instruction, communication and dialogue. In the course of these, people explain to one another the truth they have discovered, or think they have discovered, in order thus to assist one another in the quest for truth. Moreover, as the truth is discovered, it is by a personal assent that we are to adhere to it. On our part, we perceive and acknowledge the imperatives of the divine law through the mediation of conscience. In all our activities we are bound to follow our conscience faithfully, in order that we may come to God, for whom we were created. It follows that we are not to be forced to act in a manner contrary to our conscience. Nor, on the other hand are we to be restrained from acting in accordance with our conscience, especially in matters religious.”

    Yes, writes Pell, we're always obligated to follow our consciences. But, if we're serious in our Catholic faith, we also need to acknowledge that conscience does not "invent" truth. Rather, conscience must seek truth out, and conform itself to the truth once discovered — no matter how inconvenient. Conscience is never just a matter of personal opinion or private preference. It never exists in a vacuum of individual sovereignty. It is not a pious alibi for doing what we want, or what might get us elected.    Pell affirms that our conscience must be bound to the truth. If we find that our opinions, our desires or our conduct are out of line with truth, then we have to take whatever steps are necessary to conform ourselves to that truth. We can view our own conscience as a source of truth about the world, but we can’t view it as the definer or arbiter of truth. Pell deplores that “For many people today, conscience suggests freedom to judge God’s law by our own personal resources and the right to reject the notion or reformulate this law as we think best.”

    Conscience looks for real answers to our questions; and where can it look except to the truth? But then the value of conscience surely lies not in conscience itself but in the objective truth to which conscience looks for answers. It is the truth that is primary, and it is from the truth that conscience takes its value. Why would we take conscientious belief seriously at all unless we believed it represented access to objective truth?

* Pell George (Cardinal), Newman and the Drama of True and False Conscience , Zenith daily dispatch, Chicago, 2005

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PENROSE Roger *

(English mathematical physicist, b.1931)

Mathematical truths are not inventions but discoveries of mathematicians
whose minds are guided by a "truth-out-there".

        How "real" are the objects of a mathematician's world? From one point of view it seems there can be nothing real about them at all. Mathematical objects are just concepts and mental idealizations that mathematicians make. Can they be other than mere arbitrary constructions of the human mind? At the same time there often does appear to be some profound reality about these mathematical concepts, going quite beyond the mental deliberations of any particular mathematician. In other words: is mathematics invention or discovery? When mathematicians come upon their results, are they just producing elaborate mental constructions that have no actual reality? Or are mathematicians really uncovering truths which are, in fact, already "there" - truths whose existence is quite independent of the mathematicians' activities?
        Penrose views the mathematical world as having an existence of its own, independent of us and timeless. Mathematics to him is completely clear-cut; the statements are either true or false. Whether one can see that they are true or false is a subtle difference, but the truth or falsity is absolute and independent of any formal standpoint we take.
        He is convinced that a coherent explanation of reality requires the existence of a timeless realm of eternal thoughts. The view that mathematical concepts could exist in such a timeless, ethereal sense was put forward in ancient times by the great Greek philosopher Plato. Consequently, this view is frequently referred to as mathematical Platonism. This is the reason why Penrose is sometimes called "a twenty-first-century follower of Plato". Now Plato spoke of truth, beauty and morality, but in Penrose's view, truth in its purest form tends to be mathematical truth. However, he is open to a broader form of Platonism in which morality and beauty have fundamental elements which are also absolute and independent of individuals or cultures.
        According to Penrose mathematical concepts seem to posses a deep reality, which reaches beyond the discussions of mathematicians. It is as if human thought is guided towards an external truth, a truth that has its own proper reality which is partially revealed to each one of us. People who feel that science is a matter of opinion and social construct don't understand enough of science to appreciate the question. Although there is an important influence from society, and although a lot of physical theories are tremendously fashion-driven, there is still a truth 'out there' and one needs sophisticated mathematics to get at that truth.

* Penrose, Roger, The Emperor's New Mind and Shadows of the Mind, Oxford University Press, 1990.

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PEPPER Stephen *

(American philosopher, 1891-1972)

     “World hypotheses” provide a framework for approaching the truth.

    According to Pepper, metaphysical theories are specific kinds of belief that attempt to embrace all facts and to organize them within a coherent system. He calls them ‘World Hypotheses’ or unrestricted hypotheses, as distinct from the restricted hypotheses characteristic of the special sciences.

    Pepper pins down four principal metaphysical systems or "world hypotheses,” designating them "formism," "mechanism," "contextualism," and "organicism." Organicism is idealism, mechanism is naturalism, contextualism is pragmatism, and formism is realism.   Pepper tried to show that each world hypothesis derives its organization and unity from a central guiding model or analogy that he called a "root metaphor," such as the idea of a machine for mechanism.

    A world hypothesis "is one that all the facts will corroborate, a hypothesis of unlimited scope". By "unlimited scope" is meant the capacity of the hypothesis to explain every fact, permitting no isolated fact to fall outside it. Each "world hypothesis" is autonomous, and, Pepper says, the interpretations of each make such a convincing picture that, if one hasn't compared them with parallel interpretations of rival hypotheses, one will inevitably accept them as indubitable and self-evident.

    He raises the question of whether a more adequate world theory can be developed by selecting "the best" in each theory and organizing these bits with a synthetic set of categories, and he answers that the eclectic method is mistaken in principle in that it adds no factual content; such mixing is almost inevitably sterile and confusing.

    In Pepper's view all knowledge begins with data -- observations that something is the case -- but must proceed to what he calls 'danda' or refined hypothesis which reveals why something is the case. It is in the field of ‘danda’ that world hypotheses apply. They do not apply to the mere data of common sense observation. We do not need a world hypothesis to know that the cat is on the mat but we do need one to understand why the lightning struck our neighbor's house, for example. The correspondence theory of truth applies to the domain of common sense observation -- to the basic data with which we must begin -- while the coherence theory of truth applies to our explanations and understandings (danda) as to why or how the data are what they are.

    Rather than drawing his epistemological line between an external, alien reality and human consciousness, Pepper draws it between the recognition that something is the case (data) and the explanation of why it is the case (danda). He includes the outer, the external world, as a part of the given data. So the explanation of the how or why of the data, though relative to a particular world hypothesis, is part of our cognition of the original object.

    Pepper is foundationalistic to the extent that he insists that we must begin with experience, the given, the data which is secure, what is real. But we may question any of its qualities and we must go on to ask how and why. In doing this we move into the rationalistic mode in so far as we adopt a world hypothesis.

    Complete certainty is not possible for statements in the "danda" category, statements that presuppose a world hypothesis. Each of the world hypotheses provides a framework for approaching the truth. Starting with our experience of something, a transaction with something external, the truth about that thing is achieved by successively applying the various world hypotheses to answer the how and why questions. When we have done this, looked at the object from all sides, we have come as close as we can to fully understanding it.

*Pepper Stephen, World Hypotheses: a study in evidence (U. of California Press, 1942

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PERELMAN Chaim *

(Belgian philosopher, 1912-1984)

Reasonable truth versus rational truth

        Perelman is the founder of the ‘new rhetoric’. His main idea is to deny to mathematics and formal logic their role of universal model for solving problems and reaching the truth. The most frequent use of reasoning has little to do with formalised logic but much more with the imprecision and vagueness of common sense notions and the presuppositions of language-users. Argumentative rhetoric, rather than logic, is the way used by speakers who endeavour to obtain the agreement of an audience. Their aim is to convince others about human options with human premisses and consequences and thus reach a certain amount of universality that Perelman calls the ‘reasonable’ in contrast with the ‘rational’.
        Perelman’s distinction between the terms ‘rational’ and ‘reasonable’ is central to his thinking. The rational and the reasonable are different on account of their relation to truth. What is rational seeks necessary truths and so favours demonstration, whereas what is reasonable aims for the probable, the acceptable and as such, requires argumentation. From a traditional point of view philosophical discourse is discourse addressed to reason, considered as an invariable, non-temporal faculty, common to all human beings. Understood in this way philosophical discourse aims at abstract, universal truths, apprehensible by all who possess the faculty. The rational corresponds to mathematical and logical reason which knows a priori certain evident and immutable truths. The necessary truths grasped by reason owe nothing to dialogue or to experience. They do not depend on either education, culture or epoch.
        Perelman assails this narrow idea of reason. He contrasts the rational which has self-evidence as truth criterion to the reasonable which has acceptability as truth criterion. He proposes an understanding of truth in terms of the probable in addition to the certain. Unlike reason that aims at absolute truth, the reasonable aims at a truth relative and acceptable to the community. Unlike abstract reasoning the reasonable depends on the time, place and context. It is an effort towards more coherence, more clarity and agreement. What is reasonable is not certain for it cannot be determined independently of context, of other minds and their belief systems. The reasonable is the field of argumentation and deliberation and by their very nature deliberation and argumentation are opposed to necessity and self-evidence, since no one deliberates or argues against what is self-evident. The reasonable corresponds to the truths obtained by the use of ‘rhetorical’ reason. ‘Rational’ reason is univocal, clear, compelling, as it has its root in the soil of eternal, transcendent and evident truths. In contrast ‘rhetorical’ reason provides a progressive access to truths acquired by human beings through dialogue, argumentation and deliberation. Much more than the abstract truths of rational reason, they are the human truths vital for the life of individuals and communities.

* Perelman Chaim, TraitÈ de l’Argumentation, P.U.F., Paris , 1958; Le Champ de l’Argumentation, P.U.B., Bruxelles, 1969

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PETERSON John *

(American philosopher, b.1957)

Truth is a conformity relation: either from thought to reality (logical)
or from reality to thought (ontological)

        1. For many philosophers, “true” applies strictly to propositions and judgments. Peterson does not agree. The concept of truth is as much applicable to things. This is the case because the concept of truth is not univocal but analogical. The truth of a proposition and the truth of a thing are not the same kind of truth, but there is a common element of meaning between a true proposition and a true thing, namely, the conformity to something. The same can be said of false propositions and false things: both cases have in common to fail to conform to something. True and false deal with the conformity between mind and reality.
        -In the case of true things (true friends), it is the conformity of a reality to a standard, an idea of the mind (the idea of friendship).
        - In the case of true proposition (John and Peter are friends) it is a conformity of the mind to reality.
        The conformity relation in which truth consists cannnot be said to go in one direction only, for truth is either conformity of reality to thought or of thought to reality.

        2. True and false are analogous terms. They apply to various things partly in the same sense and partly in a different sense. Unlike univocal terms, an analogous term refers to more than one sort of things. Of itself it has an incomplete and indeterminate sense which can be made complete and specific by the nature of its referent.
        In all cases ‘true’ expresses a certain conformity between mind and reality. This common, incomplete sense of true is made complete by the sort of things to which it refers in each case. When applied to ‘friend’, true means conformity of a reality to an idea. When applied to a proposition, true means conformity of thought to reality. In the first case the mode of thought involves an idea or standard, in the second case the mode of thought involves a judgment or a proposition. In the first case the reality is a concrete thing, in the second case, the reality is a complex situation.

        3. If truth is not only logical but also ontological, it follows that there are universals, transcendent ideas and abstract standards ( friendship, gold, etc.). This raises the problem: what is the origin of such standard-ideas? Are they “a priori”, independent of the mind and experience? According to Peterson, it is not sufficent to say that these ideas are grounded in the relation of similarity between things. We have to admit that the standards implied by ontological truth are a priori, having an existence independent of our minds. They are “universalia ante rem”.

* Peterson, John, True as Analogical” , in New Scholasticism, 1979, p.86 sq

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PHILLIPS D.Z. *

( British philosopher of religion, 1934-2006)

Religious truths belong to a context of confession

        Addressing the issues of truth and verification, Phillips challenges the assumptions that propositions are the basic units to which we assign truth or falsity and that verification consists in checking whether something tallies with the facts. In both cases he argues that our practices decide what talking about truth amounts to and that some questions simply become meaningless. We cannot meaningfully assign truth or falsity without reference to practice.
        He follows Wittgenstein's lead in construing theology as a conceptually autonomous language-game with its own rules. Wittgenstein was convinced that there are a variety of languages serving a diversity of human purposes and needs. Diverse conceptions of rationality and intelligibility are determined by diverse linguistic frameworks. What is taken to constitute reality will vary according to the universe of discourse. Assessment can occur within a linguistic frame, but the latter cannot itself be assessed. Evidence in theology and elsewhere can be assessed only within a given linguistic framework; no external justification is needed or possible. Religion is a practical 'form of life' with its own independent language and logic. That means that all criteria are internal to a language-using community. Believer and unbeliever don't play the same game or appeal to the same criteria. Seeking evidence in religious belief is a mistake.
        Phillips holds that religious statements matter; but they belong to a context of confession, and it is in this context that it is settled what it means to say that it is true, for instance, that 'Jesus is the Son of God'.
        He argues that there can be no theoretical knowledge of God, that coming to believe that God exists is not like coming to believe that an additional being exists. It is rather to adopt a new way of looking at the world, and a new meaning in one's life. He proposes a metaphorical view of all religious phenomena, for instance, a figurative view of prayer, arguing that praying to God means that we are giving ourselves strength to go on living whatever happens, not that we are trying to influence the will of a transcendent Being.
        Phillips' neoWittgensteinian view is also structured to be immune from criticism because his claims that the atheist who raises the issue of evidence for the existence of God misunderstands the nature of religious belief. The atheist as much as the theist thinks that God exists as an additional being, for which it might then be appropriate to ask for evidence, but God does not exist in this way. Pursuing this approach, Phillips holds that we can ignore the question of reasons, arguments, and evidence for our religious beliefs.
        Critics have raised strong objections to Phillips' avowal that all criteria are internal to particular religious communities. It is difficult, if not impossible, to reconcile his views with the fact that religious traditions do make conflicting truth-claims; they do not merely offer 'different pictures which regulate personal life'. If religion were a self-contained language-game, it would be impervious to philosophical criticism, isolated from all other intellectual disciplines, and irrelevant to other areas of man's life. Moreover no communication among different religious communities would be possible if the language of each were self-contained. The price of immunity to falsification would be the impossibility of discourse among adherents of diverse paradigms.

* Phillips, D.Z., Religion and Friendly Fire, Examining Assumptions in Contemporary Philosophy of Religion, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004

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PHILO of Alexandria *

(Hellenized Jewish philosopher, 20 BCE - 40 CE)

Only the allegorical sense of Scriptures leads to the truth

Philo included in his philosophy both the wisdom of Ancient Greece and Judaism, which he sought to fuse and harmonize by means of the art of allegory that he had learned as much from Jewish exegesis as from the Stoics. Philo made his philosophy the means of defending and justifying Jewish religious truths. These truths he regarded as fixed and determinate; and philosophy was used as an aid to truth, and as a means of arriving at it. With this end in view Philo chose from the philosophical tenets of the Greeks, refusing those that did not harmonize with the Jewish religion, as, e.g., the Aristotelian doctrine of the eternity and indestructibility of the world. Philo’s masterwork, On Allegory, explores the deeper messages buried in the Biblical text and transforms Moses from a political and religious leader into a philosopher. He rejects simple and literalistic interpretations of the Bible, including the creation story as told in Genesis 1. “It is quite foolish,” he wrote, “to think that the world was created in the space of six days or in a space of time at all…If Scripture is always to be understood literally, we will have to admit that sometimes it is greatly at variance with truth… Nevertheless, if we examine the account of creation from the point of view of its spirit--its symbolic meaning--we will discover an abundance of philosophical truths”. In his opinion the literal sense, the written word, is concerned with appearance, while the allegorical sense expresses only what can be seized by intelligence and leads directly to the truth.

* See Peder Borgen, Philo of Alexandria: An Exegete for His Time. Novum Testamentum, Supplements. Leiden: Brill, 1997

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PIAGET Jean *

(Swiss psychologist and philosopher, 1896-1980)

Knowledge is not the path towards a true understanding of reality,
but a tool of adaptation: "constructivism".

        Piaget's approach goes counter to well established philosophical ideas. Most philosophers consider knowledge as a static entity. The true knowledge of reality, for them, is there, ready to be discovered. Likewise science is the path towards a 'true' understanding of the real world and the result of discovery.
        Piaget rejects the realist approach for which the essence of knowledge lies in the collecting of 'objective' data which speak for themselves and automatically provide true explanations. Piaget's approach is 'constructivism', for which all knowledge is the product of a thinking mind's conceptualization. Knowledge does not 'represent' or depict an independent reality but is a collection of inventions that happen to fit the world as it is experienced. Knowledge is no longer seen as the path towards a 'true' understanding of the real world, but a tool of adaptation.
        Piaget endorsed Giambattista Vico's thesis on epistemology which claimed that rational knowledge does not concern what exists in a real world, but is the knowledge of how we make the world we experience. The focus, now, is on knowledge as an instrument of adaptation that enables the organism to steer clear of external perturbations and internal contradictions. Knowledge thus turns into a tool in the pursuit of equilibrium, and its purpose is no longer the representation of a 'real' world or the discovery of the truth about it, but rather a way of organizing experience.
        The essential functions of the mind consist in understanding and in inventing, in other words, in building up structures by structuring reality. He writes that 'to understand is to invent'. We ourselves build our picture of the world in which we live. Piaget portrayed the child as a 'lone scientist' creating his or her own sense of the world. He felt that biological development occurs through organization and adaptation to the environment, and the same occurs for cognitive development. Individuals can generate knowledge, and one can specify the processes involved in its production. This is the central idea of Piaget's 'genetic epistemology'.
        Adaptation does not require any knowledge of what really exists - it merely implies that whatever is functionally successful will live and reproduce itself. It is the result of trial and the elimination of what does not work. The fact that an organism is 'adapted' only shows that it has found a way of coping with the world in which it lives - it does not show what a world might be like before it has been perceived and conceived by a particular living organism.

* Piaget, J. (1950). Introduction à l'Épistémologie Génétique. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

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PICO della MIRANDOLA *

(Italian renaissance philosopher, 1463-1494)

                       Man’s unlimited freedom to express the truth

    Man is at the centre of Pic’s philosophy, in that God has endowed him with the will power, by which he is able to know and create himself. The diginity of man manifests itself through his freedom which is limitless. All Greek and Oriental wisdoms have been an expression of this unlimited power of the will to know oneself. They all contain parcels and sparks of the truth. Pic shows interest in all doctrines and systems of thought without belonging to any of them. Man’s greatness consists in the unlimited freedom he enjoys to express and formulate the truth and the power he has to take decision in his personal life.

    Pico located human dignity in our capability and freedom to be whatever we want to be. If you view the whole of human history, according to Pico, you'll find that nothing remains stable. No faith, no philosophy, no world view ever remains static; the only eternal thing is the human ability and freedom to change and express ourselves in different ways. The greatest dignity of humanity is the boundless power of self-transformation. The "truth" about humanity, then, can only be found in the sum total of the works, thoughts, and faiths of humanity. Above everything else, the greatest human capacity is to be able to express or understand the whole of the human experience; in this light, the principle freedom granted to humanity by God is freedom of inquiry.

    Pico believed it was possible to reconcile the seeming contradictions among the various systems of thought he had studied. Drawing out what he considered the best in each thinker and system he encountered, he developed a philosophy known as "syncretism." Syncretism holds that all schools of philosophy have some truth and so should be examined and defended; but no system of thought has all the truth, and so one must also expose the errors in each scheme. His larger project was the synthesis of all human knowledge into a single whole.

    One of Pico’s well known saying is that “Philosophy searches for truth, theology finds it and religion possesses it”.



* Pico della Mirandola, Oration on the Dignity of Man, translated by A. Robert Caponigri, Chicago: Regnery Publishing, 1956

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PIUS IX *

(Pope, 1792-1878)

The exclusive teacher of the truth: the Roman Catholic Church

In his encyclical letter Singulari Quidem, Pope Pius IX wrote: “There is only one true, holy, Catholic Church, which is the Apostolic Roman Church. There is only one See founded in Peter by the word of the Lord, outside of which we cannot find either true faith or eternal salvation....The Church clearly declares that the only hope of salvation for mankind is placed in the Christian faith, which teaches the truth, scatters the darkness of ignorance by the splendor of its light, and works through love. This hope of salvation is placed in the Catholic Church which, in preserving the true worship, is the solid home of this faith and the temple of God. Outside of the Church, nobody can hope for life or salvation...” Elsewhere Pius IX wrote: “Eternal salvation cannot be obtained by those who oppose the authority and statements of the Catholic Church and are stubbornly separated from the unity of the Church and also from the successor of Peter, the Roman Pontiff, to whom the custody of the vineyard has been committed by the Savior”. For “it is a sin to believe there is salvation outside the Catholic Church!”…. “ It must be held by faith that outside the Apostolic Roman Church, no one can be saved; that this is the only ark of salvation; that he who shall not have entered therein will perish in the flood.” ….“No one is found in the one Church of Christ, and no one perseveres in it, unless he acknowledges and accepts obediently the supreme authority of St. Peter and his legitimate successors.”

* See Internet, Speeches and encyclical letters of Pope Pius IX

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PLANCK Max *

(German physicist, 1858-1949)

The pursuit of science is intertwined with the search for truth

    Planck saw the physical world as an objective reality and its exploration as a search for truth. Philosophers have often questioned physical reality, but Planck, a well as Einstein, viewed the physical world as real and the pursuit of science as forever intertwined with the search for truth. He saw the search for truth as elevating humanity.

    Planck viewed science as the primary means of extracting the absolute truth. He believed that it was possible to move from the relative to the absolute. He thought that the Theory of Relativity itself promoted the absolute by quantifying in absolute terms the speed of light in a vacuum and the amount of energy within an object at rest. (E=mc2).

    In Planck’s words: "Science enhances the moral values of life, because it furthers a love of truth and reverence – love of truth displaying itself in the constant endeavor to arrive at more exact knowledge of the world of mind and matter around us, and reverence, because every advance in knowledge brings us face to face with the mystery of our own being".

    Planck had a deep love and respect for truthfulness. He regarded it as a central human virtue and as the most important quality of the scientist: truthfulness, this noblest of all human virtues, is authoritative even here over a well-defined domain, within which its moral commandment acquires an absolute meaning, independent of all specific viewpoints.

    He saw his quest for truth and the absolute as a never ending struggle from which he could take no rest. At the same time, Planck recognized that one could never arrive at the absolute truth. Yet this did not deter him.                                       Planck was a man of deeply religious outlook. His scientist’s faith in the lawfulness of nature was inseparable from his faith in God. He believed that "man needs science for knowledge and religion for his actions in daily life" For Planck: "religion and natural science are fighting a joint battle in an incessant, never relaxing crusade against skepticism and against dogmatism, against disbelief and against superstition..." .

See Rosenthal-Schneider, Reality and Scientific Truth: Discussions with Einstein, von Laue, and Planck (Wayne State University, 1980)

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PLANTINGA, Alvin *

(Dutch-American philosopher & theologian)

†

The truth of theistic belief is “basic”, in no need of proofs

        Plantinga is the propounder of what he calls “Reformed Epistemology”, a kind of epistemology at the service of Christian apologetics. However he does not try to make a compelling case that Christianity is true. He believes that it is true and that no objection against it can succeed. The competence of philosophy is to clear objections and obstacles to Christian belief. It cannot cogently support Christian truth. Philosophy’s role is only to show that Christianity is “warranted”, as he writes.
        Plantinga’s originality is found in that he claims that classical foundationalism fails in its attempts to prove God’s existence. Belief in God for him is a kind of belief that is basic. It is irrelevant to argue for God’s existence through differing forms of arguments – as is done by classical foundationalism. The belief in God is not based on any reasonings from premise to conclusion. As a matter of fact, it does not need any justification. Belief in God has “warrant” for a person whose belief is produced by ‘cognitive faculties functioning properly’. Because Christian belief is properly basic, it deflects all criticisms and does not have to play the evidence game.
        The “Reformed” epistemology of Plantinga is the simple idea that theistic belief can be, and typically is, justified without appeal to evidence. Just as perceptual beliefs, for example, are justified immediately by the perceptual experiences that produce them, so theistic beliefs are appropriately produced by certain experiences, and therefore justified.† This provocative idea is directed against the claims of natural theology and evidentialist apologetics according to which one can formulate proofs in favour of the truth of theism.
        Thus according to Plantinga we can know that God exists but we are unable to convince others about that truth. We know the truth but there are no proofs and there is no need of proofs because the belief in God is basic and that means that it precedes all efforts at rational justification.
        For Plantinga a belief is true if it comes from the proper functioning of man’s mental capacities. He thinks that God designed our thinking capacities to work in a certain way, which is the “correct” way for them to think. God has given us a natural tendency to respond to certain experiences by believing in other persons, the past and the external world. Our mental capacities function in the proper way, when it is in the way God intended. If God exists and has created human persons in His image, then it is natural to think that God desires us to hold true beliefs about Him. So He would probably create us in such a way that we can achieve this cognitive goal. Theistic belief is the product of cognitive faculties functioning properly according to a design plan successfully aimed at truth.
        An important motivation for Plantinga’s Reformed epistemology theory is the doctrine of the sensus divinitatis, introduced by the father of Reformed theology, the 16th century theologian John Calvin.† Calvin argued that human beings have a “sense of the divine” that enables us to perceive God in much the same way that our perceptual senses enable us to perceive the world around us.† While this faculty has been corrupted and tainted by sin, it nonetheless remains, and enables those willing to recognize its authority to be aware of the presence and work of God in the world.† Plantinga’s Reformed epistemology project is an attempt to give a philosophically sophisticated account of Calvin’s sensus divinitatis doctrine.

* Plantinga, Alvin, Warranted Belief, Oxford University Press, New York, 2000

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PLATO *

(Greek Philosopher, 427-347)

True knowledge is the knowledge of true Reality

        1. True knowledge, for Plato, is the knowlegde of true Reality. Only the ‘really real’ is true. Plato thinks of truth as fundamentally ontological – the truth of Being-, though with epistemological significance – true knowledge.
        He distinguishes four levels of knowledge – from the least true to the truest - (Book VI of the Republic) The lowest level includes images, shadows, copies, artistic creations of real objects. The next level is that of belief, which is the perception of real objects but does not grasp the abstract concept of these objects. It is not true knowledge but ‘opinion’ because its object is the world of multiple, particular things in constant change. The third level of the ladder of knowledge is the level of rational understanding, the intelligible world of abstract concepts which Plato calls ‘forms’ or ‘ideas’. These “forms” are not merely subjective mental realities, they are intelligible, eternal, immutable objects in the intelligible world. Concrete , particular changing objects are the shadows of the forms. True knowledge is knowledge of the forms because true knowledge must be immutable, unchangeable and be about what is real. This kind of knowledge characterizes mathematics and the natural sciences. However these sciences have their limitations: they rest upon unexamined first principles and they are tied to instances from the visible world. Finally, the fourth and highest level of knowledge uses the method of dialectic , the study of the forms themselves, their relationship and organisation into a single structural order. At the top of it all, is the Idea of the Good, the fulfilment for which everything exists. Plato compares it to the sun that illuminates and gives life to the world. So the Idea of the Good is the source of truth, intelligibility and values.
        To sum up: for Plato, there are four mental states: image-making, belief, reasoning and insight. The knowledge obtained at each level is commensurate to their objects. The more true the objects (eternal, immutable, intelligible) , the higher the quality of knowledge.

        2. Thus, for Plato, to know the truth is to know the ‘really real’, because only the ‘really real’ is true. Unfortunately the ‘really real’ has been obscured and lost from view. There is no truth because the really real is hidden to the mind of the unwise who take the changing multiple to be the only reality.
        Plato characterizes the philosophers as the “lovers of truth and Reality”. It is clear that he identifies truth and the really real. To know the really real is to know the truth. There is no truth when Reality is concealed but once Reality is manifest and revealed, there arises the knowledge of the absolute truth.

        Truth conceived as the unconcealment of the Real has the same characteristics than Reality itself. The really real is eternal and unchanging and therefore truth is eternal and unchanging. Like Reality, truth is timeless. Truth is also free from all relativity, it is perspectivally neutral. There may be relativity in human beings who seek the truth, but not in the Real which is its proper focus. Plato’s truth is the absolute, atemporal, universal truth, not the truth relative to individuals at a certain time. The human souls knew the truth in their state of pre-existence in the world of ideas, but in this world of shadowy realities the souls have forgotten the truth. However as knowledge is reminiscence, every soul carries within itself the capacity to re-cognize the truth that it contemplated in the world of ideas.

        Another characteristic of the Platonist truth is that it admits of degrees, in as much as there are degrees of realities. Reality is more or less obscured from sight, more or less manifest and revealed. Plato often uses the term “true” in a comparative and superlative form. The “truest” is the disclosure of Reality as it is. Things that are more real than others are said to be “truer” - like perceived physical objects, truer than poetic images of these objects. For Plato things that are incompletely real are ‘less true’. Only the knowledge that deals with the things that are eternally the same without change and mixture – the Ideas or Forms – reaches to the pure, unalloyed truth.

* Plato, The Republic, Book 6; See T.Z. Lavine, From Socrates to Wittgenstein, Bantam Books, New York, 1985, p.31-42; also Campbell, Richard, Truth and Historicity, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1992, p.40-74

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PLOTINUS *

( Roman Egyptian philosopher, 204-270)

Truth is the identity of the intellect and the intellectual realm

The truth Plotinus discusses is the eternal truth. He places the Platonic world of ideas within the divine Intellectual Principle (the second hypostasis).     He locates truth within this intellectual principle, the intelligible world of Plato’s ideas, and Being is identical with it. Truth is internalized within the divine intellect, which proceeds from the One. In this sense Plotinus relocates the conception of truth found in Plato: he ‘intellectualizes’ the Platonic concept of truth.

    Moreover he identifies the objects of the intellect with its act. Unless there were this identity, he argues, there would be no truth. The ‘realities’ which for Plato constitute what is for Plotinus the ‘intellectual realm’, are the locus of Truth. If intellect were not identical with the intellectual realm, Being would be conflicting with itself, since Plotinus contends that the act of knowing is the same as the act of Being; the act of being would not be the same as the realities comprising the intellectual realm. But something conflicting with itself cannot be truth. So unless Intellect is identical with the intellectual realm, there can be no Truth. Intellectual Beings are not outside the intellect but identical with it. If the objects of the intellect were something alien or external, there would be neither knowledge nor truth. Ideas cannot be independent of the intellect. Plotinus sees the consequences of this argument for the concept of truth: the veritable truth is not accordance with something external; it is self accordance; it affirms nothing than itself and is nothing other, it is at once existence and self affirmation.

    In arguing that truth required an identity between thought and thing, Plotinus moved beyond correspondence to an identity theory of truth.

*Plotinus. Enneads, 7 vols., translated by A.H. Armstrong, Loeb Classical Library. See Campbell Richard, Truth and historicity, Clarendon Press, Oxford 1992, p.8o-85

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POINCARE Henri *

(French scientist and philosopher of science, 1854-1912)

The element of “conventionalism” in scientific truth

        PoincarÈ is best known for having stressed the role of “conventionalism” in the understanding of science and mathematics. Axioms of geometry, he claims, are neither synthetic a priori intuitions nor experimental facts. They are conventions and this means that they are definitions in disguise. Still these conventions are not arbitrary. They are established on account of being more convenient (not “truer”) than other conventions.
        However PoincarÈ rejects the view of those who wish to reduce all the sciences to nothing more than conventions. To adopt such universal conventionalism would amount saying that science cannot teach the truth but serves only as a rule for action. PoincarÈ is not ready to admit that scientific laws are simply like the rules of a game which can be altered by common agreement. Empirical hypotheses and scientific theories are open to falsifications and thus they are not simply conventions or disguised definitions: they have a cognitive value and in some cases can attain a high degree of probability. PoincarÈ’s conventionalism is only one element in his philosophy of science. If he looked on mathematics as dependent entirely on conventions, he did not regard all laws of physical science as conventional.
        Though science, for PoincarÈ, rests on presuppositions and assumptions, it nonetheless aims at knowledge of the truth. The main presupposition is the unity and simplicity of Nature.
        The truth that science enables to know is certainly not about the essence of things. The knowledge obtained through science is the knowledge concerning the relation between things. The scientific theory of light does not tell what light is in itself but only the relations between the sensible phenomena of light. The harmony of the universe derives from these relations and that is the kind of true knowledge that science aims at.

* PoincarÈ, Henri , Science and Hypothesis, New York, Dover Publications, 1952; see Copleston F. History of Philosophy, Vol.IX, Search press, London, 1975, p.271- 276

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POLANYI, Michael *

(Hungarian born English philosopher, 1891-1976)

Truth is always personal truth, with universal intent.

        1. Truth is always personal truth.
        Polanyi rejects the objectivist definition of truth and falsity in impersonal terms. This is not meant to be a retreat into a subjectivist concept of truth. For in speaking the truth we are not only concerned with what is actually the case. The establishment of the truth takes place in a context of commitment to reality which governs the link between the person speaking and the objective pole to which his/her statement refers. Both poles of that link must be maintained in the assertion of a true statement.
        To say that “this is true” means “I believe that this is true”. In the assertion of truth a personal commitment is always involved. Such an assertion is an act of the person who says it. Truth is not a quality possessed by a sentence P. Truth must be redefined as the asseveration ( the declaration, the profession) of the sentence to which it refers. ‘P is true’ disguises an act of commitment in the form of a sentence stating a fact.
        There is no difference between saying” ‘Snow is white’ is true” and saying “I believe that snow is white”. Or “P is true” and “I believe P”. The difference is only of emphasis. When I say “I believe P”, the personal character of the assertion is stressed and when I say “P is true”, the universal intent of the assertion is stressed.
        Therefore there can be no impersonal allegations, no ‘blank cheques’. Allegations are always personal. We cannot justify impersonal allegations, but we can justify why we believe that P and justify our personal allegations.
        It is pointless to try to prove P, but perfectly legitimate for the asserter to explain why he believes that P. Consequently there are no objective criteria of truth because the personal coefficient is always a part of the knowing process.

        2. The personal and universal Truth
        For traditional objectivist epistemology, truth is taken for something universal, one and the same for all. Such epistemologies are keen to define truth in impersonal terms because they take for granted that only what is defined in impersonal terms can be universal. But then, if one follows Polanyi and maintains with him the view of personal truth, it seems that the universal character of truth is lost. For personal truth is particular truth. Hence the problem that Polanyi faces is : how should one solve the conflict between a demand for universality and the personal character of truth?
        It is undeniable that the outcome of a competent, responsible fiduciary act (“I believe P”) may vary from one person to another. However the difference may not be due to the arbitrariness of the asserter-believer. Polanyi’s main contention is that every responsible individual keeps always a universal intent., each one hopes that his/her finding will coincide with the findings of others. One may believe something different to be true, still there is only one truth. Each one affirms that P is true with universal intent.
        In fact the personal and the universal mutually require each other. The search for truth is a personal desire, but a desire for something impersonal. The personal motive has an impersonal intention. The impersonal is accepted as the universal term of the personal commitment. “Here I stand and cannot do otherwise” Luther’s saying expresses well how the freedom of the subjective person to do as he pleases is overruled by the freedom of the responsible person to act as he must.

        3. The subjective and the personal
        If to say that “P is true” is the same as “I believe P” , it seems that knowledge is only the expresson of one’s own belief and that the knower talks only to himself. But Polanyi is eager to show that the epistemology he defends is not ‘subjectivist’. To do so he further explains the concept of ‘belief’ and the correlative notion of commitment. The analysis of commitment discloses how one avoids two false claims : the claim of strict impersonal objectivity and the claim that our utterances are purely subjective.
        In his elucidation of the attitude of responsible commitment Polanyi stresses the important distinction between the personal and the subjective. In subjective states one merely endures feelings. But the concept of the personal is neither subjective nor objective; it transcends the objective as well as the subjective.
        On the one hand, it is clear that reality exists independently of our knowing it. An empirical statement is true to the extent it reveals an aspect of reality. So in trying to say something true about a reality that is believed to be independent of our knowing it, we assert something with a universal intent. Our commitment in making a factual statement has an external anchoring.
        On the other hand our statements are personal, though not subjective. What we say about an aspect of the hidden reality is personal. It is not a subjective state of mind because it is a conviction held with universal intent. We decide to believe this and that, but there is no arbitrariness in our decision. We arrive at conclusions with the utmost exercise of responsibility. We reached responsible beliefs , not changeable at will.
        This position is neither solipsistic, nor relativistic. We believe in external reality and acknowledge the existence of other persons who can approach the same reality. Truth is not relative to each person, there are not many truths according to each person. “P is true” means that I believe P and no one else in place of me but it means also that it is what the consensus ought to be. I hope that what is true for me is also true for others, because truth is one even if there is a plurality of convictions about it.

        4. No objective criteria of truth, but responsible commitment to the truth
        There can be no strict objective criteria of truth. How could it be otherwise since truth is a matter of responsible personal commitment? Every knowledge implies the passionate contribution of the person. This is not an imperfection but the very condition and a necessary component of any knowledge. To know is not a passive experience but a mental act that presupposes a knower, a person taking risk in asserting something about reality. Hence error is always possible. Every person may believe something different to be true, even though there is only one truth. Still the plurality of convictions about truth is not due to arbitrariness because every responsible person has a universal intent.

        Polanyi rejects the Cartesian approach of the ‘methodical’ doubt to arrive at objective evidence. The method of doubt in order to arrive at what is certain is the logical corollary of the objectivist standpoint. It trusts that the removal of all voluntary and subjective components of belief will lead to a residue of knowledge that is completely determined by objective evidence. It is Polanyi’s contention that this objectivism has falsified our conception of truth in that it exalts what can be proved. It restricts our mind to the few things that are demonstrable and indubitable. It has rendered us incapable of acknowledging vital choices.

        Moreover, according to Polanyi, the concept of personal truth is incompatible with the theory of truth as correspondence between our beliefs and the facts. The so-called ‘facts’, the bare facts independent and disengaged from beliefs, the facts as ‘not believed’ or the facts as unknown cannot be said to correspond with the facts as believed, the facts as known. There can be no correspondence between the known and the unknown. We cannot secede from our commitment-situation. We cannot compare our knowledge of the truth with truth itself. Truth can be thought of only by believing in it. Polanyi does not accept the notion of a truth as something that exists by itself, independently of the person, the asserter. The objectivist theory of truth as correspondence is precisely based on that wrong assumption.

* Polanyi, Michael, Personal Knowledge, Routledge & keegan, London, 1958, p.255-317

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POLKINGHORNE, John *

(English theologian, b.1930)

The truth of theological statements

        Polinghorne adopts a position intermediate between the propositional-cognitive and the cultural linguistic views of theology. He does not sympathize with the exclusively cultural linguistic approach because he detects there a dangerous hint of the Wittgenstein language game that those can play who choose to do. Those who adopt this view are coy about the truth content to be assigned to religion. The question of truth is bypassed in order to accomodate oneself to an ecumenical view which avoids pressing points of conflict between different traditions.
        For Polinghorne theological statements are both cultural and cognitive. He calls his position: the “critically realist” view. He admits that theological statements are always more culturally conditioned in their expression than is the case with scientific statements. Through a cultural envelope, religious theological propositions aim at expressing a universal truth-reality. Still, on account of the nature of that Reality with which it has to deal, theological statements have to be content with the status of ‘cognitive but not descriptive’.
        But to maintain cognitive claims, theology must be an empirical discipline to the extent that its assertions are related to an understanding of experience. Theological statements unrelated to experience amounts to arid dogmatism. However the experience considered by theology has its own particular character, and discourse about it will need to employ its own particular modes of expression. Observer and object are linked in a mutual relationship. The nature of the object controls what can be known about it and the way in which that knowledge must be expressed.. Theology’s necessary conformation to its Object implies that it must operate with an open epistemology. Failure to acknowledge this is the opposite of rationality. God is an altogether different kind of being from any finite existent. He stands in a different relationship to his creation than does any creature to each other. The One who is the ground of all beings is bound to be more elusive in his omnipresence than contingent beings of whom one can say ‘Lo, there’. In consequence of divine uniqueness, theological language is an object language that exhibits peculiarity and logical impropriety. Even with such licence for linguistic manoeuvre, the success of theological language will always be strictly limited. There is no formula guaranteed to produce God for inspection. Theological discourse neither despairs of any true utterance about the Infinite nor does it claim privileged access to otherwise ineffable knowledge. The theological grasp of truth stands between the “gnostic” and the “agnostic” approach.

* Polinghorne, John, Reason and Reality, London, SPCK, 1991, p.10-17

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POMPONAZZI *

(Rennaissance Italian philosopher,1462-1525)

Truth is the object of philosophy, not the object of religion

Pomponazzi asserted the absolute truth of philosophy while paying perfunctory obeisance to the "truth" of revelation. He concerned himself for instance with the question of the human soul to prove through philosophical arguments and natural reason that it is mortal, not immortal. Nonetheless in some of his works he said that the findings of natural reason must be suspended by faith. The Christian religion teaches immortality: we must accept this as true, rejecting the conclusions of reason. Although not demonstrable by reason, the truth of faith is superior to the findings of reason.
However a closer examination of his writings reveals that Pomponazzi proclaimed that "truth is the end of philosophy while the end of the religious lawgiver is neither truth nor falsehood but to make men good and well-behaved." He takes the precaution of associating these views with Averroës, and to protect himself he pretends to reject them. The fact is that there are striking instances of Pomponazzi's acceptance of philosophy as absolute truth and rejection of the supernatural origin of religious doctrines. Immortality, he comes to state, is an invention of religious lawmakers who proclaim this doctrine "not caring for truth." Clearly the truth they do not "care for" is the doctrine of mortality as proved by philosophy.

*Pomponazzi, On the Immortality of the Soul, English trans. W.H. Hay II, in E. Cassirer, P.O. Kristeller and J.H. Randall, Jr. (eds.)

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POPPER KARL *

(Austrian born English philosopher of science, 19O2-1994)

The approach to objective truth by verisimilitude

        1. The search for “verisimilitude”
        Popper’s starting point is the common sense theory that truth is correspondence with the facts. A theory is true if and only if it corresponds with the facts. Popper has no objection to call it an objectivist or absolutist notion of truth, but he does not take absolutist in the sense of allowing us to speak with absolute certainty and assurance for the very reason that it does not provide us with a criterion of truth. All along we must remember that we are seekers of truth and not its possessors. Popper is a realist and for him what is attempted in science and philosophy is the description and the explanation – as fas as possible – of reality.
        His main concern is not the definition of truth but the search for truth. This is achieved with the help of conjectural theories, that is, theories we hope are true or near the truth or nearer to the truth than those of our predecessors. Popper prefers to call this endeavour the search for verisimilitude, a clearer and more realistic aim than the search for truth. Still he specifies that truth is not the only important property of our conjectural theories; for we are not particularly interested in proposing trivialities and tautologies. We are not simply looking after truth, we are looking after interesting and enlightening truths, after theories which offer solutions to interesting problems.
        According to Popper the quest for certainty, for a secure basis of knowledge, is delusive. We must abandon the quality of certainty which common sense assumed as essential to knowledge. It is enough to adhere to the possibility of the growth of knowledge, and therefore of knowledge itself. In a certain way Popper agrees with the sceptics: there is no sure source of knowledge, no absolute criteria of truth. The quest for certitude is vain. Knowledge progresses only by the elimination of the false. Still behind Popper’s apparent epistemological pessimism, one discovers also a solid faith in the power of the human mind. If Popper abandons the dream of certitude he does not abandon the norm of truth. Popper is a realist. He is convinced that the viewpoint of common sense is right, that there exists a reality independent of the mind. For him to believe in the growth of knowledge is enough for not being counted a sceptic. The sceptic is obsessed by certitude, but this is a wrong obsession. The tabula rasa theory of knowledge to solve doubts and reach certainty of knowledge is absurd, because all human knowledge is theory-laden. All acquired knowledge and learnings consists of the modification of some forms of knowledge or disposition, which were there previously. All growth of knowledge consists in the improvement of existing knowledge which is changed in the hope of approaching nearer to the truth.

        2. The locus of truth: the “third” world
        Popper distinguishes between three worlds: physical reality (the first world), subjective knowledge of reality (the second world), objective knowledge of reality (the third world). Most philosophers take for granted that there is only one kind of knowledge: knowledge possessed by some knowing subject or ‘subjective’ knowledge (second world). But there is also knowledge in the objective sense, which consists of the content of hypotheses, theories, conjectures, published in essays, articles, books, stocked in libraries (third world). Contemporary epistemology deals with the second world of subjective knowledge., that is, with justifiable belief. This approach is irrelevant and useless for the theory of scientific knowledge in which Popper is interested. All scientific works are directed towards the growth of objective knowledge. The subjective approach of interpreting knowledge as a relation subject-object (the second world of traditional epistemology) should be subordinated to the consideration of the world of objective knowledge (the third world) which, though obviously created by man, exists autonomously.
        The study of objective knowledge consists in the analysis of the products of human activity (books, essays, articles, etc.), that is, with effects rather than causes. This objective knowledge constantly grows through the endless accumulation of informations. It exists always to solve problems. For life is problem-solving and the discovery of new solutions and possibilities. This trying out is done almost entirely in the third world, by trying to get nearer to the truth relevant to our problems. What Popper calls the second world is only the link between the first and the third world: all human actions in the first world are influenced by the second world grasp of the third world. This is why it is impossible to understand the human mind without understanding the third world.
        Through his distinction of the three worlds Popper expresses his favourite claim that in the progress of knowledge subjective thought processes are of little importance, compared with objective thought-contents. Subjective thought processes do not grow but are stagnant, while objective thought contents constantly evolve for a better understanding and progress towards the solution of problems. Popper is not interested in the psychology of knowing, subjective knowing and experience but in the logic of knowledge, how it is generated by critical reason. He is interested in knowledge without a knower, without subjective knowing. He is convinced that the progress of knowledge towards more and more truth occurs in the third world while it is stagnant in the second world.

        3. The meaning and function of truth
        We should not ask “what is truth?” for this is an uninteresting verbal question. What we are interested in are factual problems and their theories and how they stand to critical discussions and our critical discussions are controlled by our interest in truth. The real question is whether one can speak meaningfully of correspondence between a statement and a fact. Tarski (see Tarski) has shown that to establish the correspondence between a statement and a fact one must do that in a ‘meta-language’ in which both reference to the statement and the description of the fact are present. In that meta-language we can speak of correspondence between statement and fact. Without the help of such a ‘transcendent’ language one could not speak of correspondence. Wittgenstein was right in saying that a language cannot speak about itself (“What I say is true”) but another language ( a meta-language) may be able to speak of the first language and justify the correspondence theory.
        This being admitted, says Popper, we can replace the words “correspondent to the facts” by the words “is true”. Nothing more important can be added about the word “truth”. This is the ordinary sense of the word “truth” which points at a realistic theory. A theory is true if it corresponds to the facts, false otherwise.
        However the notion of correspondence is not intended to yield a criterion of truth. Coherentists and pragmatists wrongly assume that a serious theory of truth must present us with a method of deciding whether or not a statement is true. These philosophers believe that any notion, here the notion of truth, is logically legitimate only if a criterion exists which enables us to decide whether or not an object falls under that notion. According to Popper the notion of truth is meaningful even in the absence of criterion of truth. And there is no criterion of truth because there is no criterion of correspondence. It follows that for him the concept of truth plays only the role of a regulative idea. It helps us in our search for truth. It indicates that there is something like truth and correspondence, but it does not give us a means to find the truth or to be sure that we have found it. Let no one ask for a criterion of truth and let every one be satisfied that truth means correspondence.

        4. Coming to the truth by trial and error
        Knowledge is a growth in getting nearer to the truth. The history of human ideas is a history of irresponsible dreams, of obstinacy and error. In science more than any other branch of knowledge, errors are systematically criticized and fairly often corrected. Scientists learn from their mistakes and that is why there is more progress in their field of knowledge than in any other. In science we have a criterion of potential progressiveness: a theory is preferable if it tells us more, if it passes certain specified tests that show that it has more truth-content and less false content than another.
        The formation of theories is not worked out inductively from experience. Experience comes after the test. Knowledge does not begin with observation but by the encounter of problems that one tries to solve in proposing various hypotheses by an effort of imagination. Popper agrees with Kant that knowlegde is constituted mostly in an a priori way but Popper disagrees on this that it is not a priori valid.
        One must renounce to the dream of a final empirical verification of theories. One must choose the best of available theories. Some philosophers of knowledge are verificationists in that they demand that we should accept a theory only if it can be justified by positive evidence, only if it is shown to be true. Such people are obsessed by the quest for certainty.
        Popper rejects verificationism in favour of falsificationism , the critical approach for which the aim is not to establish secure and certain scientific theories but to criticize and test the existing theories hoping to find out where they are mistaken, to learn from these mistakes and from there proceed in the search of better theories.
        Fallibilism or Falsificationism is thus the first principle of the Popperian philosophy. It is the conviction that error is normal. There are no sure methods to be sheltered from the possibility of error. Error is not the sign of lack of rigour or attention - the classical view of error. One must accept the fact of human fallibitiy and learn to use it positively in detecting them and eliminating them. All knowledge is conjectural, it is constituted by the methodical elimination of error. The only thing we can do is to ask: “How can we hope to detect and eliminate error?”. How can we make our theories the least resistant to falsification? Instead of seeking to justify them, we must accept the conjectural character of all statements, theories and hypotheses.

        5. The myth of the doctrine of the “manifest” truth
        For many philosophers, truth is manifest. Nature is an open book. Truth is only to be unveiled by our eyes, our senses and the light of reason. This optimistic epistemology has its foundation on the truthfuness of God (Descartes) and the truthfulness of Nature ( Bacon). Knowledge is the natural provider of the truth. If we fall into error, it is due to our sinful refusal to see the evident truth, because our minds are full of prejudices. Popper calls it the “conspiracy” theory of ignorance and falsity. He finds instances of this view first, in Socrates’ maieutica, the method of removing all prejudices to see the manifest truth within every human soul, second, in Descartes’ Cogito and his method of systematic doubt to obtain truth and certainty, third, in the Marxist theory of capitalist perversion of the truth, fourth, in Foucault’s political use of the truth, and fifth, even more in the religious concept of heresy. All such views have the same foundation, namely, if the manifest truth does not prevail, it must have been maliciously suppressed.
        For Popper this optimistic epistemology of the “manifest” truth is a myth. It ignores that truth is hard to come by. Erroneous beliefs can survive for hundreds of years, even in defiance of experience. This epistemology is the basis of all kinds of fanaticism: those who do not see the truth must be possessed by a devil! The allegedly manifest truth is in constant need of re-affirmation and therefore an authority is necessary to pronounce what is that manifest truth. In the past these authorities were God, religions, cultures and traditions. But in modern times, new authorities have ermerged to supplant the old ones: the authority of the senses (empiricism) and the authority of the intellect ( rationalism). Still the fact is that with senses and intellect we still are capable of erring. Our fallibility is evident. We have to recognize that knowledge is always exposed to the possibility of error and in doing so we do not take side with the advocates of a pessimistic epistemology. On the contrary, our view implies that there is an idea of objective truth, otherwise we would not know that we err. It implies also the fallibilism of knowledge according to which we seek for the truth but more often than not we miss it by a large margin. We search for the truth by persistently searching for our errors through criticism and self-criticism.
        This being the case, our question should not be: “what are the sources of true knowledge? Senses, intellect, or both? rather than traditions and beliefs?”. One can begin knowledge anywhere, from any point. What is important is to see the problems. With a problem to face, we become conscious that we need to formulate conjectural theories. The clear starting point is the problem and not experiences and observations etc., which in any case are all theory-laden. The only relevant question is : “ How can we hope to detect and eliminate error?” And the answer is: “By criticizing the theories and guesses of others and criticizing our own theories”. The question of the origin or source of knowledge or its purity is not important in the problem of truth. Never mind the source of an assertion, whether it is observation or inference or anything else. That has nothing to do with the question of truth. But if you are interested in a certain assertion, you may help the asserter in criticizing his view as severely as you can. If it is proved false, you will have to look for another conjectural hypothesis.

        6. To sum up Popper’s views
        - There are no ultimate sources of knowledge. Every source is welcome, but all are open to critical investigation. Neither observation, nor experience, nor reason are authorities. They are the indispensable means to form our theories and conjectures. Most of our theories may be false. Observation and intellect help us to criticize our theories.
        - The proper epistemological question is to know if an assertion is true, that is, corresponding to the facts. But this does not mean that there are criteria of correspondence.
        - The advance of knowledge consists mainly in the modification of earlier knowledge.
        - Pessimistic as well as optimistic epistemologies are to be discarded in favour of fallibilist epistemologies. There is no criterion of truth (no optimism) but we possess criteria to detect and recognize error and falsity (no pessimism). Our own errors are dim but essential lights that help us out of the darkness.
        - Truth is above human authority. We have to accept our state of learned ignorance. All sources of human knowledge are mixed up in errors, prejudices, dreams and hopes. All we can do is to grope for truth even if it be beyond our reach. But we can find out that a theory is false. A false conjecture may be nearer or less near to the truth. We arrive at the idea of nearness to the truth, better or lesser good approximation to the truth, Popper’s central idea of “verisimilitude”.

* Popper, Karl, Objective Knowledge, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1971, p.45-81; 309-318; Unended Quest, Fontana, Collins, 1978, p.140-150 ; Conjectures and Refutations, Routledge & Keegan, London, 1963, p.3-30, 216-228

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POUIVET Roger *

(French philosopher, )

The inadequacy of all “deflationist” theories of truth

Theories of truth that are “deflationist” are those which minimize or even cancel the metaphysical bearing of the notion of truth. They reject the substantial concept of truth understood as the property of relationship between the real world and thought (or language). Deflationism reduces truth to a simple linguistic function. It abandons the idea to determine what truth is in order to insist only on the semantic (or linguistic) functioning of the predicate true. The question is not “What is truth”, but “When can we use the predicate true ? ”.
The semantic deflationist solution to the problem of truth is that no natural language can be its own “referee”. To say the truth of a proposition of a language L can be determined only by the use of a “meta-la

PAILIN, David *

To be true, theology must abandon its confessional character