Deciding What's True
What I read: How to think about truth by Jeremy Wyatt and Joseph Ulatowski.
Liberalism is more morally correct than conservatism. There is a God. To optimally manage a company, regularly cut the bottom performers. Kylie Minogue is a superior pop star to Madonna. Polyamory is a better approach to relationships than monogamy. The Colosseum in Rome is the greatest architectural achievement of all time.
People consistently say those things are true along with a whole bunch of other things they’ll steadfastly claim to be true. But are they? How do you decide if something is true or not?
I consider the philosophical discussion about what is true or not, the nature of truth itself, and how one arrives at truth, to be among the most important debates we can have. It’s also vital we understand the many nuances of truth if we’re to get along as a collective humanity.
Jeremy Wyatt and Joseph Ulatowski’s article starts off with a common debate about truth – what happens to us when we die. One person believes we simply cease to exist in any form. Another person believes in a soul reincarnated into different physical forms. Yet another person relies on their Catholicism to believe that the dying person is reunited with their body on Judgment Day.
A fourth person interjects by asking why each of those three people believes as they do. Using this example, Wyatt and Ulatowski point out that various factors will be at play such as each person’s cultural backgrounds. How we answer such questions about immortality, and indeed many similar questions, is affected by our unique individual backgrounds. The landscape from which we arrive at our beliefs won’t all be the same. In this sense, we’re all travelers from different lands and the sooner we accept this reality the better will be our discussions about what is true or not.
In this Guide, we’ll cover five ideas about truth that you should consider if you want to think about this topic in a philosophically informed way. Philosophers have wrestled with questions about of truth for a long time. Debates about truth have occurred, and continue to occur, in philosophical traditions from all over the world. They impact many other philosophical debates, and they also intersect in fascinating ways with contemporary scientific research. Understanding philosophical ideas about truth won’t necessarily provide you with a straightforward recipe for how to arrive at true beliefs. It will, however, help you to think more clearly about humans’ relationship to the world that we inhabit, the commonalities and differences in our ways of representing the world, and why it matters whether our beliefs are true or false.
That’s a perfect synopsis of what the article is about and how it might improve your thinking and judgment about the nature of truth and whether something is true or not. In this highly polarized world of ours, whether the topic is politics, religion, or cultural norms, taking a pause to consider such things can lower the heat while giving us a better appreciation for why some truths aren’t as starkly evident as we might believe.
Why does this matter? I’ll discuss the article out of order here by jumping to the final section. It matters because accepting the often-variable nature of truth can help us better grapple with the complex issues of the day. Arriving at a common definition of what is truth can give those participating in the discussion a better foundation from which to begin their debate.
Let me also say here that respecting the nuances of arriving at truth or untruths will make us respect each other more. If I am having a discussion with someone entrenched in a pure free-market capitalist mindset while I might err on the side of a more regulated and socially-conscious style of capitalism, mutually acknowledging the intricacies and pitfalls of arriving at truth can make the discussion more fruitful and calm. We need a lot more of that these days.
Wyatt and Ulatowski offer their readers an excellent discussion of various ways to think through what we should believe about truth, how to arrive at the best truth, and how having a philosophically informed perspective about truth results in better outcomes for everyone.
I’ll let you read the article to dive into the robust explanation of how you might do that, but here are the five high-level ways one might approach thinking about truth.
“Before accepting or dismissing the idea of objective truth, ask yourself what ‘objective truth’ is supposed to be.” What is objective truth? How do you define it? What are the various ways we can understand the idea of objective truth? Can we entertain a number of plausible ways to define objective truth?
“The ideas of ‘your truth’ and ‘my truth’ may be self-undermining, and they’re hard to spell out.” Wyatt and Ulatowski give the example of Oprah Winfrey’s 2018 Golden Globes Awards speech to point out the tension that can exist between absolute and relative truths. They butt heads and certain views of truth can undermine each other, relativism being one example. Each of us may have different truths, but truth can’t be both absolute and relative. This reminds me of something I say often, that I am nothing if not a living contradiction.
“Truth may be one of the most basic concepts that we have.” Frequently I toss around in my brain the concept of basic life principles, principles so obviously true that they serve as the building blocks for other truths. In mathematics, an axiom is one such basic building block truth, a mathematical principle so clearly obvious and true that mathematicians can use them to build more complex mathematical arguments. The article refers to these concepts as primitive, not depending on other concepts. They stand alone on their own merit. Is truth such a primitive concept? It appears 40 years of developmental psychology research supports that it might be.
“Someone from another culture may think differently about truth than you do.” Where we’re raised, the languages we speak, the surroundings in which we live, and the social circles in which we navigate form our cultural underpinnings. What we consider to be true is heavily influenced by varying cultures. A clear example today in the United States is the urban versus rural divide. Those of us who live in dense urban cities reflect that culture into what we consider to be true, and so do those who live is less populated rural towns and countryside.
“Truth’s nature may be simpler than you think.” Maybe the nature of truth is actually quite simple and not as complex as some of the philosophical arguments contend. Maybe true claims simply tell us what the world is like. And some truths are indeed verifiable. The article uses the ivermectin as a covid cure example. We can look to good sources of information to verify that it is not a cure, or we can look to bad sources of information to justify believing that it is.
If the entirety of humanity could agree upon the occasionally tenuous nature of truth, perhaps we would all get along better. Maybe as Ryan Holiday writes about in If You Want to Be Smart, You Must Do This, you might better be able to have “the mental fortitude to be able to entertain multiple contradictory ideas in your head at the same time.” As I said, I’m a living contradiction and I think most people would say the same if they were honest.
Let’s keep pursuing truth to the best of our abilities, but let’s also have the humility to accept that it’s not always as starkly evident what is true or not.
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