Etymologically speaking, reason comes from ratio. ‘Reason’ in Latin but also having to do with ‘reckoning’. With dividing the ‘big picture’ into easier to understandable slivers. Slivers meant to be analyzed and later assembled back into meaning. Into ‘truth’.
Now, which of the two reasons gives birth to the ‘genuine’ truth?
The analytical/synthetic one which attempts to develop reality into meaning or the one which defends and embellishes the already known truth? The revealed truth?
The whole thing depends on the “ends” of the reasoning agent?
Reason, hence truth, depends on the intention of the individual performing the act of reasoning?!?
Quite unreasonable, don’t you think? Truth was supposed to be anchored in reality, right?!? Not on ‘intention’….
Truth as unhiddenness… is a concept developed by Heidegger. Basically, this whole thing is about individuals being unable to discover nor formulate the ‘entire’ truth so a ‘bigger’ truth may be reached only through cooperation. Everybody ‘says’ – unhides – everything they know about a subject and that’s how the most complete truth available at that moment is ‘uncovered’.
‘But this means the Truth becomes fluid. No longer ‘fixed’. Unreliable!’
I’m afraid you’re right! Except for the ‘unreliable’ part. As long as enough people do their part, and honestly speak up their minds, the most reliable truth knowable at any given moment will become apparent to everybody. To everybody who cares to look for it! To everybody who accepts that their reason, while imperfect, can and should contribute to the common effort to get closer to truth. To everybody who accepts that other people’s reason, while imperfect, can and should be listened to in the common effort to get closer to truth. To everybody who accepts to continue this effort knowing very well that no matter how hard they will try, people will never find the entire truth
‘Exploring the consequences of our limited consciences‘
A truth is, first and foremost, an expression. A message, formulated by an observer, describing a portion of what the person expressing themselves considers to be a ‘portion’ of ‘reality’. Being a message, any truth is formulated by means of a language.
Does anybody know everything about any subject? About anything, actually? No, nobody knows everything about anything. Hence there is no such thing as a complete truth.
Furthermore, being expressed by means of a language, a truth – any expression, actually – will never be able to convey to the person receiving the message everything the transmitter intended to say. The transmitter is never able to cram ‘everything’ inside an inherently limited message, no language is absolutely ‘precise’ and no receiver will ever interpret any message the way the transmitter intended it to mean. Hence even if anybody will ever learn everything about anything, that person will never be able to convey that knowledge to anybody else. Let alone to everybody else…
What next? ‘Never ever believe anything? Anymore?!?’
Is it possible for us, humans living in concert, to cooperate in this manner? Knowing that nothing which is being said, one way or another, is ‘true’? Completely true?
Well, we did get this far, didn’t we? We’ve been expressing ourselves, in the imperfect manner I described above, since we’ve learned to use language. Since we’ve learned to speak…
70 000 years ago, give or take a few millennia, is when some scientists believe we’ve started to communicate more or less like we do now. The people living then had the same genes we have now and the bones they have left us to dig up and stare at are similar to ours. Hence the only thing which differentiates us from our ancestors is our culture. A treasure of knowledge which has been noticed – bit by bit, formulated using language – message by message, and remembered, one way or another. Hence the only difference between us and our ancestors is a collection of incomplete – and imperfectly interpreted – pieces of truth.
Then again, is it possible for us – humans living in concert – to cooperate by means of incomplete and ‘misinterpreted’ pieces of truth? Well, we came this far going (up?) this way, didn’t we? It seems that as long as we do it ‘in good faith’ things will, eventually, ‘mesh up’ just fine!
Which leads us to ‘the truth’. ‘The’ as different from ‘A’ truth.
While a truth is a message, the truth is a state of mind. The understanding of the fact that what we call ‘reality’ can be learned only ‘in concert’. Only as long as we help each-other along the process. Only as long as each time we formulate ‘a message’ we do our best to ‘speak the truth’.
Can’t argue with Sowell… he’s right, right? As usual!
But there’s problem! For me, at least…
According to Orwell, there are people who refuse to acknowledge the truth. Which doesn’t bother the truth, of course. But it bothers us…
If there are people who refuse to acknowledge the truth, then truth isn’t self evident. There isn’t an immediate and direct ‘relation’ between not acknowledging the truth and ‘retribution’.
And for good reason! Truth is extremely elusive. And complex. Impossible to find, actually.
All we can lay our hands on is ‘relative’ truth. A truth we have all labored to find and which continues to remain ‘incomplete’. Against our best efforts! And which, from time to time, is found to be completely false.
Remember how so many of our ancestors were convinced that the Sun was circling around the Earth? Which Earth used to be flat?
Which Flat Earth brings us back to Sowell. I basically agree with him.
“If you want to help somebody, tell them the truth. If you want to help yourself, tell them what they want to hear…”
But do I know what the truth of the matter really is? Do I actually know what they really want to hear? And what if/when they find out? My strategy?
That I was telling them what they wanted to hear in order to help myself?
Sowell didn’t mean this as an ‘advice’? Only as a warning?
Well, I don’t dispute his intentions. Only the underlining assumption. That truth is accessible.
That we can reach it! And manipulate it according to our wishes….
The first reaction, for the ‘average person’, is to ‘love’ this post.
The ‘normal’ reaction, for the ‘fact-checkers’ among us, is to ask ourselves:
Is this actually true?
Heidegger has something really interesting to say about the subject. I’m gonna put it succinctly and bluntly.
None of us knows everything about anything. Not even about the most trivial thing. Because the very nature of our knowledge and of our manner of expressing it – language, none of us is able to ‘put together’ even the simplest ‘absolute’ truth.
Hence, according to Heidegger, we have as many truths as there are people interested on the subject.
‘Then the African Proverb is a ‘lie’?’
Nope.
The African Proverb pictured above is a meta-truth. Heidegger’s truths, as well as those discussed by Popper, all converge towards the ‘absolute’ one. As each of the ‘people interested on the subject’ dig deeper, each of them gets closer to the kernel. Probably none of them will ever get exactly ‘there’ but their respective positions will become ever closer.
Meanwhile, there’s nothing like a ‘meta-lie’. As we had ‘truth’ and ‘meta-truth’. A lie, any lie, is also a meta-truth.
We know – we are under the impression, more exactly, that we’ll never reach ‘the absolute truth’. About any subject, let alone the ‘absolute-absolute’ one. But we can conceive that there is one. Somewhere. At least about individual points of interest.
Do we even have the concept of an absolute lie? What would that be? How could that even be expressed?
This being the reason for some of us being able to come up with so ‘plausible’ lies. They put so much truth into their words that it becomes harder and harder for us to notice that the ‘proposed conclusion’ is misleading.
That, in fact, they are lying through their teeth.
A. A proposition is ‘true’ if what’s being said there is in perfect correspondence with reality. B. A proposition is ‘true’ if the proposition encompasses everything the ‘communicator’ knows about the subject at hand.
‘OK, you promised us a discourse about science and here you are babbling about truth…’
Impatient as always! How do you determine whether something being said, a proposition, is in (perfect) correspondence with the reality of the fact described there?
To be able to do that, you need first to determine the reality itself. You know what’s being said – more about that later, and, if you are to determine whether what’s being said is true, you now need to know the truth itself. How are you going to do that? You either know it already or you proceed to determine that particular truth.
I’ll leave aside the ‘already known truth’ and proceed towards the ‘future truth’.
A particular individual has two possible approaches towards finding out a ‘new’ truth. A piece of ‘true’ information which is new for that particular person. Consult a reliable source or investigate the reality.
‘Consulting a reliable source’ brings us back to square one. How do you determine whether a source is reliable or not…. ‘Investigate the reality’… Easier said than done!
How do you do that? How do you investigate the reality in a reliable manner? How do you determine the truth of the matter when ‘things’ are a tad more complicated than touching a stove to determine whether it’s hot or not?
You use the scientific approach? Start from the scientific data base which already exists on the subject(s) closer to your object of interest then proceed using the proven scientific method of trial and error? Emit a hypothesis, try to prove it, formulate a theory and then challenge your peers to tear apart the results of your investigation?
Results you have chased being convinced from the beginning that you’ll never reach the ‘pinnacle’? Convinced from the beginning that the ‘absolute truth’ – even about the merest subject, is out of reach? For us, mere mortals, anyway?
‘But if ‘absolute truth’ is out of reach, then how can we determine whether the simplest proposition is actually true? And why continue to bother about the whole subject, anyway?!?’
Before attempting to find an answer to your question, let me formulate another one.
Let’s consider that you have reached a conclusion about something. That you are in possession of ‘a truth’. How are you going to share it? With your brethren/peers? I must remember you at this stage of our discussion that language is beautiful but rather inexact. Are you sure that you’ll be able to communicate everything you want to say? To cover every minute aspect of the truth you have just found? So that the proposition you are about to put together will be in absolute correspondence with the piece of reality you have just discovered?
You are not going to use language at all? You’re just going to point to your discovery? And let everybody else to discover the truth for themselves? And how many are going to take you seriously? To pay attention? To what you have pointed? And how many are going to suspect that you just want to take their focus off what’s really important? To lead their attention away of what you want to keep under wraps?
I’ve got your head spinning? Then you must understand my confusion. I’m so deep in this that I have to go back and read again what I’ve been writing…
So. ‘Science’ tells us that the ultimate truth is out of our grasp, linguistics/theory of communication tells us no messenger will ever be able to be absolutely precise nor convey the entire intended meaning … what are we going to do? Settle down and wait for the end to happen to us?
OK, let me introduce you to an absolute truth.
WE ARE HERE!
Who is here? ‘Us’. We are here.
What are we doing here? ‘Are’. We are here.
Where are we? ‘Here’. We are here!
I’ve been recently reminded that mathematics, the most exact language we have at our disposal, is based on a number of postulates. On a small number of axioms – pieces of truth we consider to be self evident, which have constituted a wide enough foundation for mathematics to become what it is today. But mathematics is far more than a simple language. It is also a ‘virtual space’. A space where special rules apply. A space where our thoughts move according to certain and specific ‘instructions’. A space where we enter holding our arms around a problem we need to solve and which we exit, if successful, with a solution inside our head.
A little bit of history. Our ancestors had a problem. A class of problems, actually. How to build something – a house, a temple, a boat, and how to ‘manage’ property – arable land, in particular, but also crops and other ‘stocks’. Problems easier to formulate, and solve, using numbers. To solve this class of problems, some of our ancestors have invented ‘mathematics’. Had ‘discovered’ the self evident truths – axioms, and then ‘carved’ an entire (virtual) space using the axioms as the foundation upon which they, and those who have followed in their steps, have built – and continue to build, the scaffolding of rules which keep that space ‘open’.
Through thinking, our ancestors have carved a space in which to solve some problems they have encountered in the ‘real’ world…
‘Please stop! I don’t understand something. Do you want to say that mathematics is not real?’
To answer this question, this very good question, we need to settle what ‘real’ means. To us, at least…
Let’s examine this rock. Is it real? Why? Because you can feel it? If you close your eyes, I can make it so that you experience the same feeling by touching something else to your stretched out fingers than the original rock. In a few years, I’ll be able to produce the same sensation in your brain by inserting some electrodes in your skull and applying the ‘proper’ amount of electric current. What will ‘reality’ become then?
Forget about that rock, for a moment, and consider this table.
Is it real? Even if it’s not as natural as the rock we were analyzing before? ‘Artificial’ – as in man made, starting from natural ‘resources’, might be a good description of the difference between a table and a ‘simple’ rock. Both ‘real’ in the sense that both imply consequences. Your foot will hurt if you stumble in the dark on either of them. Regardless of the rock being natural and the table happening to be artificial…
‘But what about things which are not of a material nature? Are they real?’
Are you asking me whether ‘metaphysical’ objects – God, for instance, are real? Then how about ‘law’. Is it real? As an aside, does law belong also to the metaphysical realm? Alongside God? Who determines which thing belongs there?
Or have you glimpsed the fact that ‘truth’, the concept of truth, is a metaphysical ‘object’? Something which, like God, has a ‘real’ side but makes no sense (to us) unless we think about it? Something which we have extracted – someway, somehow, from the surrounding reality – where else from? – then ‘carved’ a virtual space around it? So that we may examine it without the distractions of the rest of the ‘real’ world?
Or have you glimpsed also that even the concept of ‘reality’ is a figment of our self-reflecting conscience?
Then what? Stop talking? Or assume personal responsibility for everything that leaves your lips?
As soon as a person achieves a certain level of self-awareness, they realize there’s more in life than mere survival. As soon as their consciences bloom – in concert with the accrued influence exercised by the ‘environment’, individuals set goals for themselves. Which goals become integral part of the ‘ongoing project’. Of the self-actualizing conscience. Achieving, or failing, each of those goals leaves an indelible mark on the conscience itself. On the manner in which each individual relates to their environment. Since achieving is far more ‘satisfying’ than failing, conscience is naturally biased towards ‘achieving’. If the ‘environment’ ‘allows’ it, the bias becomes more and more ‘slanted’. The messages used by the individuals – by their conscience, to be more precise, will increasingly serve the purpose of achieving goals rather than the purpose of ‘honest communication’.
As soon as a person achieves a certain level of self-awareness, that conscience wants to survive. Mind you, not the person but the conscience.
‘?!? Conscience cannot exist without the mind/body which supports it….’
OK, tell that to people who believe their souls are going places after their mortal bodies expire. Then try to demonstrate to yourself, honestly, that those people are wrong. That there’s no chance for their belief to be ‘true’.
But metaphysics are hard. Let me give you a far lighter example. Smoking. Or drinking. Driving fast. Eating that extra piece of chocolate… Don’t tell me you never did anything ‘foolish’. That you never lied to yourself: ‘This cannot happen to me. Chances are so small that … Only this time….’
‘But otherwise nobody would ever be able to ‘leave their houses’. We’d be all completely paralyzed with fear…’
Yeap! That’s exactly what I mean. Conscience needs to lie to herself in order to remain functional. Otherwise she would not allow the physical body who sustains her to assume any risk. They would both suffocate.
In these terms, science must be deterministic. No systematic study of anything might ever be made if not starting from the conviction that a given set of causes will produce the same results, over and over again. No laws attempting to describe any facts in general terms might be formulated unless starting from the same premises.
On the other hand, it was science itself which had taught us that:
And there are countless other examples of ‘in-determination’ which have been documented by scientists during their search for the ultimate truth.
Any chance of reconciliation?
Well… To start, I’ll note first that ‘determinism’ is a concept which had started its career in philosophy while ‘science’ has a more ‘complex’ origin. It might have been initiated by Christian theologians trying to ‘guess’ God’s will only they were attempting to fulfill that task by closely watching Nature – which was seen as the very embodiment of God’s intentions. In this sense, scientific determinism can be understood as the conviction that Nature must make perfect sense – must be completely explainable, simply because God’s creation – which includes Nature, must be perfect. OK, and since all theologians agree that no human will ever be able/should ever pretend to know God, what’s the problem in accepting that Man – collectively speaking now, will never learn enough to find a complete explanation for everything?
‘And what about the atheists?’
What about them? Oh, you mean the people who are sure that God doesn’t exist? Who are just as sure that God doesn’t exist as the staunch believers who are perfectly confident that God not only exists but also micro-manages everything? Under the Sun and beyond? I’ll just leave it there…
On a deeper level, there is no contradiction between ‘determinism’ – philosophically speaking, and scientific thinking. As long as we keep these two ‘apart’, of course…
‘So you are going to accept that science will never ‘know’ everything AND that ‘everything is a consequence of the previous state of affairs’ ‘ ?
Specially since entertaining a truly ‘scientific attitude’ means, above all, to be prepared, at all moment and without any notice, for all your previously held convictions to be contradicted by new evidence…
‘What are you trying to say here? That everything revolves around the manner in which each of us relates to the meaning of his own interpretation of each concept? That truth itself is relative?’
‘That man is the measure for everything?’
Yep! AND that man is also responsible for the consequences his own actions! In front of his own children, before everything else. For no other reason than it will be his own children who will bear the brunt of his own decisions.
– History is the story of what we remember of what had happened, right? Based on our shared individual recollections, the ‘written sources’ we have at our disposal and our interpretation of any other material traces we might have found… and properly preserved…
– Yep!
– Then no history, no matter how diligent and well intended the historian, will ever be the actual representation of what had really happened, back then!
– Well, you seem to be quite familiar with Heidegger’s work.
– I can’t say that. Popper’s injunction that science is more about being prepared to acknowledge your ignorance than about really knowing is enough for me.
– Then we might be soon delivered from History, after all. When enough people will share your attitude/paradigm – that no matter how hard we’ll ever try we’ll never know anything for sure… it will be impossible for any would be dictator to pretend they have the ‘right’ answer for any problem we might encounter.
Language is the tool we use when we consciously transmit, receive or glean information.
While the ‘transmitting&receiving’ part is rather simple, ‘consciously and ‘glean’ might need some explaining.
You’ve all heard about ‘body language’.
Actors use it consciously to convey emotion and sometimes even meaning while profilers use it to glean information unconsciously distributed by their marks.
Artists use specific ‘modes of expression’ – language, actually – to convey emotion/subliminal meaning to sometimes unsuspecting audiences.
Skillful ‘communicators’ have learned how to chisel a message – using most common words, printed or spoken – to obtain ‘maximum impact’.
By now I’m sure you’ve already gleaned what I meant by “‘consciously’ and ‘glean'”.
Contrary to popular belief, only one half of those ‘immersed’ in communication need to be conscious of what is going on in order for language to be in use.
Actors can influence their audience without the audience being privy to acting tools.
All of us freely distribute a lot of information about ourselves – through walking, eating, manner of speaking, etc., etc. – which can be ‘deciphered’ with ease by those knowledgeable in this trade.
All of us are inundated by all kinds of advertisement – commercial, political, religious, you name it – but very few of us are aware of the full picture which is being played for us.
In a sense, those of us who can sense anything are like any device connected to the internet.
But nothing’s as bad as it seems.
Devices can be plugged off or fire-walled while we can stop watching crap.
And, of course, we can put our brains to work, in earnest, before buying into anything which is hurled towards us.
I had spent the first 30 years of my life under communist rule and I’ve witnessed, first hand, the debacle produced by a bunch of people trying to transform the world according to their own liking. And it’s not only that they had brought a lot of misery to an awful lot of people but they also brought it upon their own heads. They, and their families, have been indeed living a lot better than the rest of the people but a lot worse than the ordinary people living in the free world. Not to mention the fact that many of them ended up really bad, some of them at the hands of their own insatiable, Minotaur-like, leaders and some others during and immediately after the regime change.
The point of Haidt’s conference being that each university should clearly declare its ‘telos’ as belonging to one of these two clear cut options:
Don’t bother to search the quote attributed to John Stuart Mill.
It is only an interpretation belonging to Haidt himself, who had inferred it from one of Mill’s famous quotes excerpted from “On Liberty”:
So, what should it be?
Change or Truth?
Before proceeding any further I strongly suggest that you take some time and listen to Haidt’s excellent arguments.
Now I’d like to discuss a little about ‘Change’ and ‘Truth’.
What both Marx and Haidt have in mind when they speak about ‘change’ is both ‘purposeful’ and ‘centralized’.
When they say ‘change’ they mean an ‘effort towards increased social justice’, effort whose parameters would be determined by the wise men (and women) delving in the depths of the University’s libraries and which would be implemented without fail, preferably with a sanction from the higher authority.
I had already mentioned, at the beginning of my post, where such ‘change’ would lead anyone attempting to put it into practice.
And Haidt gives us an excellent explanation for why anybody who will ever attempt such a thing would eventually fail. (I told you to watch his conference…It may be long but every minute of it is packed with very interesting things!)
So why is Haidt challenging us to make this choice instead of giving us a clearer piece of advice?
Well… maybe you should ask him that… I’d hate to believe that he, in his own words, ‘has become afraid of that too many of his students might feel that he is so distanced from what is generally accepted that too few of them would follow him’.
So what should we do?
Some of us should embark on a ‘sterile’ search for the (absolute) truth and then, after eventually finding it, nurse it quietly in our lap but refrain from an even minutely more drastic action while others should attempt to implement change based on already ‘over the hill’ principles?
I’m afraid that would be a dangerous road to follow.
There is no such thing as an ‘absolute’ truth that might be nursed in our lap and even if there was such a thing we are not able to find it – individually or even as a group. There’s plenty evidence about that in Haidt’s discourse.
And then what would be the use of the whole enterprise if we are not planning to use the results of our quest, whatever those might be?
And here lies the crux of the matter.
I’m sure Haidt knows what I’m going to tell you now and I’m very sorry that most of your teachers have never mentioned at class this very interesting story.
Well, the problem with this line of thought is that it doesn’t work.
Again, Haidt has already presented a solid case about this and I’m not going to re-count his arguments.
So, since there is no such thing as an absolute truth to be discovered, one way or another, and no priest-kings on any white stallions that might come to our rescue, what shall we do?
Simple.
Follow Haidt’s, and John Stuart Mill’s, advice and take it one small step further.
We need to understand, and accept, two things:
Change has to be allowed to come naturally, not pushed forward simply because we are momentarily convinced that ‘The Truth’ had downed on us,
And that (social)justice is a process which has to be implemented on an ‘as needed’ basis, not an independent goal?
And this is why Haidt is absolutely right when he tells us that we need to expose ourselves to a lot more than what we are already familiar, and comfortable, with.
And this is why Heidegger kept warning us that truth as conformity between our words, or even our understanding, and the reality of the fact that we try to understand, and describe to others, is a Fata Morgana which consistently eludes us and that the only way to get any closer to her is ‘unhidennes’.
In this sense there is nothing better than an open mind, both towards our innermost thoughts and to the people living, and thinking, around us.
A mind open enough as to be able to simultaneously attempt to implement whatever changes become necessary in the light of the newly discovered truths AND accept the possibility that those ‘newly discovered truths’ might be incomplete or even altogether false.
Does all this seem rather schizophrenic?
Then let me rephrase the question I started with.
What’s the use of ever trying to understand anything if we’re not going, ever, to change our behavior as a consequence of anything we might come to figure out and on what basis is anyone to attempt any change if he never tried to understand anything above what he already knew long before he even started to think about any change?
As I was ready to close this post I stumbled upon the thought that maybe Haidt meant to apply in the academic world a principle that has been proved invaluable in the political life.
‘Separation of powers’.
Some universities would busy themselves with finding ‘the truth’ while others would attempt to find ways to put ‘it’ into practice.
Leaving aside the fact that this would smack too much of Marxism for my taste I’ll have to remind you that the separation of powers has become necessary in the political realm only because the government has an effective monopoly on power and we need to make it so that it cannot abuse this situation.
No university has any monopoly on truth and/or change.
Furthermore, not even the Academia, as a system, has been able to implement such a monopoly. Not for lack of trying, but that’s another subject.
So, instead of acquiescing to such efforts – by accepting certain universities as official ‘truth seekers’ and others as ‘path finders’/’change implementers’, we’d better ask each and all of them to clean up their acts.
nicichiarasa 