Philosophy of Truth: Empiricism, Paradigms, and Power

Introduction: The Spectrum of Certainty

One of the most intriguing and long-standing debates in philosophy is exactly what is worthy of philosophical consideration and debate, and what should be dismissed as futile and meaningless sophistry. For skeptics of both the rational and empirical schools, true and certain knowledge — in the traditional senses of these words — can never really be attained, and metaphysical pursuits that attempt to determine the degree of certainty available through human thought are largely pointless. Positivists lie at the other extreme, believing that certain truths can be considered absolute and that other conjectures built from these truths can also be established with certainty. There are many philosophers and a wide range of philosophical views on the nature and achievability of truth that lie between these two extremes, however, and this is the true ground of the ages-old debate regarding knowledge and certainty.

For many, the study of epistemology — the branch of philosophy concerned with discovering and explaining the nature of knowledge and the ability of humans to achieve an understanding of truth — consists of answering the essential questions of philosophy; it explains the ability, or lack thereof, for other philosophical inquiries to arrive at objective and meaningful conclusions. Few thinkers have seriously put forth the idea that all thinking and inquiry is entirely pointless simply because absolute certainty is unachievable, as that assertion defeats itself along with the rest of human knowledge. This has made the grey area between absolute skepticism and absolute positivism a place of extraordinary nuance and careful categorization for many philosophers. An examination of some of these prominent philosophers reveals a general belief that the framework within which a "truth" is derived is essential to understanding the concept itself.

James, Peirce, and the Pragmatist Tradition

Philosopher William James was among the first thinkers to frame the issue in ways that would continue to define the quest for the nature of truth throughout much of the twentieth century. He made a distinction between knowledge derived through volition, or will, and through passion, or desire. Volition led to knowledge based on facts and relationships between discrete pieces of knowledge — facts that could be objectively observed. James argued that knowledge obtained through the desire to believe, however, was equally valid when intellectual knowledge was unavailable. He even argued that refusing to make a decision on matters that do not have intellectual answers — such as most religious questions — is itself a passional decision, just like deciding yes or no, and is attended with the same risk of losing the truth.

James also considered himself an empiricist, believing that observation led to the greatest degree of certainty but that there was no such thing as true objectivity, and therefore no single "true" perception of reality. He cites several examples of opposing "certainties" that could not both be true and yet were both asserted as absolute fact by their proponents. This is compelling evidence to James that truth and certainty are essentially subjective. This view ties closely with his beliefs concerning passional knowledge: if there is no certain truth in any instance, then there are certainly instances where believing in a truth without proof can be beneficial — even in science, with the application of what he called "coercive evidence." James does not mean that truth is purely in the eye of the beholder, but rather that pure truth can never exist in the human mind.

Charles Sanders Peirce, who wrote at approximately the same time as James, had a very different and more pragmatic approach to truth and knowledge. Essentially, he believed that knowledge should be approached from the negative: when a doubt or uncertainty existed, investigation leading to knowledge and understanding was the simple required response. Though he engaged with metaphysics and the underlying nature of reality to some degree, he believed "that the whole meaning of a (clear) conception consists in the entire set of its practical consequences." As a practicing scientist for most of his life, such practicality is not surprising.

Kuhn's Paradigms and Scientific Revolutions

Thomas Kuhn, who — unlike James and Peirce — was firmly planted in the twentieth century, began his career in physics before moving into philosophy. It is perhaps unsurprising, then, that he recognized two distinct and largely incompatible ways of viewing the world and the issues of certainty and truth. In his most famous work, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Kuhn lays out the basic mechanisms by which science — and thus the pool of human knowledge — is able to grow and progress. The first is through what he termed "normal" science: what most people traditionally think of as the practice of science — repeated trial and error, careful measurement, and the adjustment and addition of known facts, with occasional correction of error. The great advances of knowledge, however, occur quite differently.

In order to understand Kuhn's claims regarding scientific revolutions, it is necessary to understand his use of the word paradigm. For present purposes, a Kuhnian paradigm can best be understood as the basic framework of knowledge and assumptions — which are often treated as essentially the same things within many paradigms — within which a certain pursuit of knowledge or scientific inquiry is being conducted. It is Kuhn's contention that the history of science is punctuated by revolutions that cause a massive shift in the overall scientific paradigm, rendering previous conclusions moot and potentially changing the very standards of truth and knowledge within a particular science. Kuhn also observed that this could, and often did, lead to incompatibilities between scientists and their assertions during periods of paradigm shifts. As Kuhn puts it, "practicing in two different worlds, the two groups of scientists see different things when they look from the same point in the same direction." Clearly, an understanding of one's paradigm is essential to understanding transient truth in Kuhn's framework.

Conclusion: Truth, Progress, and Contingency

There are very few prominent philosophers in the modern world who believe in absolute and certain truths. Oddly, most of the philosophers who propose more transient and subjective understandings of knowledge and truth necessarily make allowances for frameworks of contingent certainty. That is, knowledge and truth could once again be defined in terms of absolute certainty, depending on a change in paradigm or discourse. The progression of knowledge, in both science and philosophy, is not nearly as linear as it is often taken to be. The very idea of progress when it comes to knowledge may prove oxymoronic — at least, for a time.

Works Cited

Burch, Robert. "Charles Sanders Peirce." Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2006. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/peirce/#dia.

Kessler, Gary. Voices of Wisdom: A Multicultural Philosophy Reader, 5th Edition. New York: Wadsworth Publishing, 2003.

Pinter, Harold. "Nobel Lecture: Art, Truth, and Politics." 2005.

Thornton, Stephen. "Karl Popper." Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2009. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/popper/.