Truth

What is truth?

Truth is the essence behind what people strive for when they believe and say they are right.  When two people, litigants, politicians or regular citizens argue over  which one of them is right, they are both claiming to have a lock on the truth, to be closer to the truth than the other side.  When a person really believes his or her version of reality, and tries to convince others that his or her reality is supreme, that person is motivated by his or her version of the truth, his or her version of what is right, what is best. The belief in the superiority of truth often motivates acts of kindness and charity.  However, it also motivates conflict, war and suffering. Similarly, the quest for  knowledge is a quest for truth.  Thus, truth is what motivates all learning, all conflict, all senses of righteousness, all that is good and a lot of what is bad.  

Thus, what is truth?  It is the essence underlying a great deal of human behavior.   It is an ideal. It may cause the pursuit of an illusory position.

But it also, at times, has an objective existence.   There are mathematical truths, which are knowable by logic, but need not have any objective existence out there.  Generally, there is no room for doubt as to the validity of these truths which are largely axiomatic.  Partly because of this, Platonists placed the value of these truths, and their pursuit, on a higher level than the pursuit of other types of truths.  There are scientific facts (and let us assume that there is a physical reality and that there are laws of nature, something that some philosophical skeptics were unwilling to do in the past.)  Of course, scientific models are always changing.  But it is generally agreed that these models continually edge closer to reality. Thus, there is a scientific and probably objective truth.  Aristotleans placed the pursuit of scientific truths on the highest level, probably higher than that of mathematical truths, because it is based on what is actually out there.  Thus, it has a more objective basis. There are value laden truths, which are less provable, or unprovable, such as different political or judicial philosophies, or different economic theories.  These do have an objective basis; they are based on certain objective facts.  However, the weight given to different facts differs according to the views held by the pursuer, whether he or she is a Marxist, monetarist, liberal, conservative etc.  Further we have literary truths.  These are based upon imaginary facts, memoirs aside. The imaginary facts are generally based upon the author's objective experience.  And from the imaginary facts, the author attempts to convey a message about how we experience the world.  If there is a hero or a protagonist, the author will attempt to convey an inspiring message about how we can and should experience the world. Then we have religious truths, which have the least basis in cold hard facts and are almost completely dependent upon how much weight the believer ascribes to them.

Thus we have mathematical: no doubt, abstract, not objective.

Scientific: some doubt, objective but a certain but ever decreasing portion of objective reality remains undiscovered

Economic, political sociological: Some objective basis but dependent upon the weight different facts are given by the individual.

Literary: Imaginary facts based upon writer's subjective experience of objective facts. Deeper meaning, inspirational. How we should live.  When a person reads, besides passing time, the reader is trying to experience the truth the writer hopes to convey.

Religious: Almost wholly dependent upon weight given to certain facts, inspirational. How we should live.

Musical: Based upon subjective synthesis of objective sounds. How I feel. Have the listener feel the way I feel.   

Thus, the pursuer or dabbler in each of these activities is motivated, in different ways, by the pursuit of truth.  It is important that I use the word dabbler, because at different times of the day we are engaging in many of these activities.

And all of us, all the time, when we argue or disagree about anything, are motivated by the pursuit of truth.

Thus, is truth a meaningless word, the problem underlying all philosophy, as a logical positivist would say?  Is it an illusion I (and others) am creating by synthesizing what I want to synthesize?  Is it one thing, or many things? Well, at least we can say it's one word.