forum for week of 21 Nov: the appeal of truth relativism
I am puzzled when students are suspicions at at the mention of truth -
as in "to be known, a claim must be true" or "some beliefs are true and
justified, but not known". They ask "true for whom?" or "true
from whose perspective?" And when I say "neither, just plain
true" it is their turn to be puzzled: what could I mean by that?
I can think of several sources of the idea that when something is true
it is true for someone:
- When we find out something is true, we have to know it first. So it
is hard to find simple descriptions of things that are true that are
not believed true by you. (But still, you ought to be able to
convince yourself that there are more complicated examples.)
I'll talk about both of these on Tuesday. But do you think
either is a diagnosis of the puzzling but common belief that "true" is
always "true for someone"?
The reason I lean towards relativist ideas of truth is that there seems to be something intrinsically wrong with the notion of absolute truth. However it is difficult to articulate precisely what is wrong. The main problem I have is the way in which absolutists deal with the future. The example in class that was used is the flipping of a coin. It is either true or false in the present that the coin will land heads in the future, if it’s true then the coin will, in fact, land heads. But this argument seems to assert that the event is true before it even happens, without regard for other possibilities. I view this argument to be extremely close to determinism, and I don’t wish to conceptualize truth in this way. I want to be able to have the free will to influence which events will become truths in my life. Furthermore, I find relativism appealing because, as human’s we have defined the concept of truth. For instance, the universe would exist without us, but it would not be “true” in relation to us. There is an inability to get outside of our human experience, and therefore I think that truth is relative to humans.
If I recall correctly, I think Dr. Stephen Hawking uses the expression we [humans] create history in his application of Dr. Richard Feynman's quantum theory to the universe. I think history in this sense equates with truth.
"It is either true or false in the present that the coin will land heads in the future, if it’s true then the coin will, in fact, land heads."
This isn't right though in any theory. There is always an infinite number of possibilities to any action. Leaning towards the probable doesn't create truth.
"I view this argument to be extremely close to determinism, and I don’t wish to conceptualize truth in this way. I want to be able to have the free will to influence which events will become truths in my life."
I don't think you should shape your views on what you want to conceptualize as true but what is true. Besides, freewill has many levels but there is a fundamental flaw at the very idea of it so it seems irrelavent to truth.
I think that different experiences can create different schemes of interpretation, and therefore different foundational beliefs. For instance, conceptions of gender vary widely between cultures and periods of time: notions of man and woman are obvious to us, but potentially not for another culture, so a person can say, "I am a man" and be a woman and be speaking the truth, because to them man means all human beings. Or perhaps I can say, "I am a man" and to another person that is not true, because they don't have the same conception of gender. Or you could have two boys in Roman times and they both say "I am a boy" and for one it is true and the other it isn't, because one is a slave and therefore not a person at all.
I believe that there are fundamental truths. We make use of whatever "true" beliefs we have, and whenever more rational beliefs come along, we abandon our "true" beliefs and make use of the new ones. In this way, we constantly strive for the underlying truths. When someone believes something to be "true", it is purely arbitrary, it is only true to them. Knowledge is not arbitrary, it requires fundamental truths.
Truth, to me, seems to be a very relative term. Something can and is likely inevitably true for one person and not for another. When thinking in terms of truths as "true for someone" though, it would seem to me that that particular term or line of thinking is more attributed to opinions. For example, if someone believes that their favorite food is pizza, then this would be "true for them," while obviously not true for everyone. Addressing the second example, it does seem to be a conundrum that one would be able to have something be true for them without first knowing that it is true. Keeping with the examples of food though, say it is true for Fred that the most delectable taste to his pallet is that of pizza. But, Fred has never actually had pizza before. So, despite that it could be considered true for Fred that his favorite food is pizza, he still does not know nor believe this. At the same time, it could be just as easily argued that, since he has never actually tried pizza, the truth is not, in fact, true for him until he tries pizza. This creates a rather confusing conundrum and, unfortunately, doesn't really seem to further the discussion but simply add more debate. To be short, while both analyses may be used to diagnose the issue of something needing to be "true for someone" in order to be a "truth," it would seem that both have very recognizable flaws that can be easily debated.
I think that as well as the arguments that can be made for relativism in terms of there being relative truths from person to person at one time, there are even more simple arguments when you think about time. To say that Stephen Harper is the Prime Minister of Canada is true for anyone right now, to say the same thing a hundred years ago, this obviously would not have been true for anyone. It seems there are lots of transitory truths that are relative to groups of people as well as just individuals.
Important here to make qualifications though. Saying that pizza is my favourite food isn't only true for them, but objectively true, as the indexical "I" indicates the person speaking, which corresponds for everyone else to the sentance "your favourite food is pizza". Similarly for the Stephen Harper example, while it is an objective fact that he is Pm at this moment, it was also an objective fact that a hundred years ago, he was not. It depends completely on the moment of the utteration, but that input does nothing to alter whether Stephen harper is PM or not. The claim made is really that Stephen Harper is PM at the time at which the claim is made, so the complete thought would be drawn out as "Stephen Harper is PM of Canada in Novemeber 2011", which always will be true, regardless of the location of the speaker in time. So, in short, yes I believe truth to be objective.