Truth? One Cannot Simply Define

¶ … Truth? One cannot simply define the meaning of truth because it is so ambiguous. The word "truth" differs greatly from a word like "apple" that has an immediate visual connotation, and is easily and unequivocally defined. "Truth" however, is an intangible and equivocal concept with inanimate and ineffable traits. So in order for one to define truth, one must first incontrovertibly accept that truth is not limited to one simple definition.

Due to its ambiguity, truth has a versatility to it that can be applied in various scenarios rendering its meanings to be relative to context. Truth is a concept comprised of two fundamental facets; the universal truth, and the individual truth. Truth, then, is the only "current" possibility of view that is logically or empirically uncontested with absolute certainly -- something that, of course, does not exist since objectivity is an illusion in and of itself (Pojman, 2008).

Additionally, we can also infer that there is no such thing as absolute truth since we are bound by our senses. It must be noted that a universal truth is also subjective because it is simply a unified truth contingent on the senses (which are subjective). Since truth is often subjective, it is therefore mutable and is thus subject to change.

This ability to change creates a living paradox within the context of truth, because in essence there is no absolute truth in what is true when truth can contradict itself. Some have said that there is no certainty in life and. In essence. Without certainty there can be no absolute truth just universal and individual truth. Two contrasting views can both be true, and the contradictory truths are rectified by the fact that truth is subjective.

Truth is relative to time, and once something has been invalidated it is no longer true. However, that falsification does not render the thought or concept to be untrue at the time that it was conceived. From the future point-of-view the belief is not true, but is that to say that at the time that the belief was uncontested it was not true.

Certainly the concept of truth has been at the forefront of philosophical debate for centuries, and still remains one of the seminal questions under the rubric of philosophical inquiry (Gould, 2008). For the purposes of this essay, we will concentrate on the manner in which truth is defined in the argument of deductive vs. inductive certainty, specifically using the works of James, Pierce, Popper, Kuhn, Descartes, Al-Ghazali, Foucault, and Pinter. Is truth relative? To Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn, the debate becomes one of scientific realism vs. antirealism.

Scientific realism is a view that reflects the truth and helps humans explain or understand the world. Realism gives a better understanding of the world, because it makes the one more optimally aware. For example, the E = m * c2 equation - it focuses on the speed of light and its relations with m and c. It provides knowledge about the real world, and is tangibly usable. Such scientific equations and theories give something real (true) about the universe, imparting reality.

Furthermore, according to realism, science displays a process of discovery -- all things exist and are discoverable that have not been realized prior. Therefore, science is objective; as science only uncovers reality. Karl Popper, a realist, tells us that there is progress in science. Popper says that this scientific process is cumulative, and by that process the people can reach the neutral truth. Realists believe that progress in science is motion toward a more accurate representation of the workings of nature.

Popper uses the method of falsification, thus improving theoretical knowledge of truth. Falsification is not a way to reject the original; instead it is for developing and improving the theory itself, it is the evaluation of the theory which becomes form -- or truth. According to Popper, for instance, Newton's theory is the more cogent "truth" because it is more universal and contains more information. Einstein, on the other hand, is useful regarding higher velocities, light, etc., and becomes true less in the universal and more in the situation (Popper, 2002).

White Karl Popper's method is deductive, Thomas Kuhn as an anti-realist believes that science does not supply correct, or truthful, information about the real world, and therefore one cannot understand the universe through the sets of statement that comprise the tool of science. In fact, there is no single truth; science sees a partial truth, uncovered only as humans are able to comprehend that knowledge. Each individual, though, creates their own tools to understand the universe, and to give it a private, personal, and variable content.

Thus, science is individualistic, dependent upon non-epistemological factors, and quite subjective. Using a similar example, Kuhn, the language used in Newton and Einstein's theories do not come close to representing the same thing, so they are completely incompatible (Kuhn, 2002). Kuhn rejects progress in science and the method of falsification. To Kuhn, science is made up of paradigms (instead of smooth developments), and scientific communities gathers around those paradigms. He denies scientific progress and claims that science has breaks, opposing the continuity ideas of realists and Popper.

For Kuhn, as well, there is not a single truth, or ultimate goal, but differing -- dependent views, that are not cumulative, but remain valid for that individual and point in time. If two "truths" are unmeasurable, they become falsehoods and incompatible (Ibid). William James, in his work "The Varieties of Religious Experience," argued that there is no validity in the claim of rationalism to assert the existence of only one consciousness (truth).

He based this on the notion that humans perceive reality through the senses, and that the human intellect arises only after the individual believes an experience (or truth, again), exists. James attempted to expand his argument through objectively drawing factual evidence from what he referred to as a "mystical state of consciousness," in order to bring about a broader realm of truth outside of rationalism.

Through logic, James concluded that there were three statements of authority: 1) that mystical states have authority over those individuals having the experience, 2) that no authority could come from the mystical experience of the individual, and 3) that the mystical state shattered any rationalistic claim that held objectivity to be the sole revealer of truth. The first statement of authority is founded upon the cornerstone that the humans gather facts through senses.

James stated that rational and mystical beliefs are based upon "evidence exactly similar in nature." Thus, logic would permit James to find that facts gathered through objective means have no authority over the facts gathered from mystical means. James stated that the most an individual can ask of a rationalist is to see his faithful assumption.

In this latter statement James supported his second main point of authority, that there is no requirement for the rationalist to accept the individual's personal testimony of the mystical experience as factual, for faith is based not on fact, but on experience. Ruling out the individual's assumption as a logical means, James turned to the argument of "appealing to numbers," showing that there does not necessarily have to be a logical foundation beneath majority thought (Richardson, 2007).

James asserted that the mystical state shattered the rationalistic claim to be the only consciousness humanity possessed. The reason for the option to lay claim to a consciousness beyond the non-mystical was based on the commonality of the lack of authority that both beliefs shared. James asserted that due to both schools of thought perceiving through the senses, there was not a higher ground to hold authority over one another. Thus, the search for truth remains unending as James took the first step in approaching the human perception of truth.

He did not, however, include the human intellect as a major factor in his approach. He stated that once again, one perceived truth first through the senses, calling it a draw between mystical findings and non-mystical findings, without regard for the intellectual process. It is the very contradiction between the conscious truth and the unconscious idea that form the basis of James' view- categorizing ideas and placing them into codified, but organized, "experience" (Ibid).

It is quite often said that Pontius Pilate, the man who asked: "what is truth," never stayed for an answer. And no wonder -- for there has been no definitive "answer" to Pilate. Charles Pierce, for example, developed pragmatism, and claimed "Belief is what we accept as truth." In order to understand what the "acceptance of truth" means, we first must look at another definition of truth. Today truth is mostly regarded to as a statement that accurately tells a state of affairs.

Then we must consider how close the language, and state of mind, is to the universal truth. A different view is then provided by the pragmatists who claim that truth is but a claim providing a solution to a problem, and, according the Pierce, different beliefs are disguised by the different modes of action to which they give rise. Two belief systems, then -- true believe, and justified true belief (Hauser, 1992). Humans, however, according to Pierce, turn justified true beliefs into true beliefs by converting them into axioms.

Once we have proven something there is no need to prove it again, and we use the part that was proven before to further extend our study and the inquisition of knowledge. And so it becomes necessary to accept things as the truth without proving them at every single moment. However, does not mean that the belief is an unjustified belief, for it again is the conflictual nature of justified against unjustified that, for scholars like Pierce, outpours a reality he can view as "true" (Ibid).

Rene' Descartes' purpose was to make humans analyze the introspective nature of being, and to postulate on the veracity of truth as a nature of thought -- if we think it, it is, and for the individual then, positing a thought removes it from the ethereal and into the realm of truth, or reality; thus providing a circular argument for not only human ability to think, but to find truth and knowledge as part of our being (Cottingham, 1992).

Cogito Ergo Sum (I think, therefore, I am), is Descartes' way of unlocking the doors of truth for humanity. He finds we may not trust our senses, for they often deceive us based on our own individual characteristics, and the complexity of nature, which constantly change. Humans cannot even be sure of the reality of their own bodies; perhaps we are dreaming that we have bodies. How can we know whether we are dreaming or awake? We may be entirely mistaken in believing what we see.

Perhaps the world is only in the mind, in imagination. Everything may be doubtful. The only certainty seems to be that there is nothing certain. He then discovered that though all things may be doubtful, the fact that we doubt is not negotiable. The basis of doubt cannot be disputed. If thinking is the process of doubt, then thinking is a certainty (Ibid).

and to change his desires rather than the order of the world, and that the only power that we as Islam's major struggle was with their expansion to other cultures and geographic areas, which were already occupied by Christianity and Judaism. During the first centuries of Islam its law and theology, the basic orthodox Islamic disciplines, were developed.

The 700s and 800s saw the emergence of the first major Islamic theological school, called the Mutazilites, who stressed reason and rigorous logical rationalists, they maintained that human reason is competent to distinguish between good and evil. By the 900s a reaction had set in, led by philosophers who maintained that moral truths are established by God and can be known only through revelation.

In the 11th century, attacks on philosophy by orthodox Islamic thinkers, notably the theologian al Ghazali, had much to do with the eventual decline of rationalist philosophical speculation in the Islamic community. For al-Ghazali, the idea of truth is constructed on a pattern of prophetic knowledge, since the intellect can, and will, often err. Behind every perception is the intellect of another -- an arbiter, if you will, who could immediately invalidate that particular position.

Knowledge and truth, then, occur more through inspiration from outward (God) than any looking inward (Descartes and others), since the answers are all predestined and all knowledge transcendent (Ormsby, n.d.). For David Hume, knowledge and truth is gained only through experience, and it is experience that exists only in the mind as individual units of comprised through. Skepticism is the belief that people can not know the nature of things because perception reveals things not as they are, but as we experience them.

In other words, knowledge is never known in truth, and humans should always question it. David Hume advanced skepticism to what he called mitigated skepticism. Mitigated skepticism was his approach to try to rid skepticism of the thoughts of human origin, and only include questions that people may begin to understand. Hume's goal was to limit philosophical questioning to things that could be comprehended (Ayer, 2001). Empiricism states that knowledge is based on experience, so everything that is known is learned through experience, but nothing is ever truly known.

David Hume called lively and strong experiences, perceptions, and less lively events, beliefs or thoughts. Different words and concepts meant different things to different people due to the knowledge, or experiences they have. He believed, along with the fact that knowledge is only gained through experience, that a person's experiences are nothing more than the contents of his or her own consciousness. The knowledge of anything comes from the way it is perceived through the five senses. Hume began to distinguish between feelings and thoughts.

Feelings are only impressions made upon the body, and thoughts arrive from impressions; for nothing can be thought that has not been experienced. The meaning of ideas is more important than their truth. Belief results from ideas and assumptions, which are recollected from previous knowledge. Hume's analysis of causal relation is that everything that happens beyond what is available to memory rests on assumption (Ibid).

Michael Foucault identifies the creation of truth in contemporary western society with five traits: First, the centering of truth on scientific discourse - Foucault explains that, "Science..

is, literally, a power that forces you to say certain things, if you are not to be disqualified not only as being wrong, but, more seriously than that, as being a charlatan"; second, the accountability of truth to economic and political forces - "Truth' is linked in a circular relation with systems of power which produce and sustain it, and to effects of power which it induces and which extend it..

A 'regime' of truth"; third, the "diffusion and consumption" of truth via societal apparatuses; fourth, the control of the distribution of truth by "political and economic apparatuses"; and fifth, the fact that it is "the issue of a whole political debate and social confrontation," that it can never be reconciled (Owen, 1997).

Very much a follower of Friedrich Nietzsche, Foucault agreed when Nietzsche defined truth: "What is truth? A mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, anthropomorphism's, in short, a sum of human relations that were poetically and rhetorically heightened, transferred, and adorned, and after long use seem solid, canonical, and binding to a nation.

Truths are illusions about which it has been forgotten that they are illusions, worn-out metaphors without sensory impact, coins which have lost their image and now can be used only as metal, and no longer as coins." Nietzsche confronts the ideal in his abstract perfection and the ideal as he is inside a soul. The result is leads to disillusion. "Where you see only ideal things, I see human, unfortunately only human ones.

The supreme values presented to mankind are called "goodness," "devotion," "generosity," "heroism," and "asceticism." Deep down, there is nothing more immoral than the moral, more irreligious than religion, more selfish than the goodness. Virtues are made from the same material like the sins they are claiming to fight: they differentiate only by the lie." For Nietzsche, the highest human values are lies. He throws his discovery like a bomb into the world. "My truth is terrible because up until now one has called with the name of the truth.

.My destiny wants me to be the first honest man. I have been the first to discover the truth. because I was the first to sense that lie was lie." Nietzsche and Foucault consider truth to be a social construct that has somehow been deified and is now something valued above regular discourse, but is really worth no more than regular discourse (Ibid). Another modernist, Harold Pinter, used prose and the theater to illustrate the struggle for truth in contemporary society.

Reacting to events like McCarthyism, the Korean War, tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union, and the climate of the Cold War, Pinter became convinced that individuals have an obligation to subject each individual action (truth) to an equivalent critical and moral scrutiny. It is both this introspection and deconstructionist thought that drives the concept of what humans do to search for their own view of the truth (Billington,.