Have you ever said a word so many times in one day that it no longer seems right and just sounds like nonsense? I did that a while back with the word 'bug'. I ended up asking my wife, "That's the right word, isn't it, for those little multi-legged things that scurry around?" She looked at me like I'd gone insane. I knew the word perfectly well, but I had simply become too familiar with it to have confidence in what I knew its definition to be. Some people have done a similar thing with the notion of truth.

We all know what truth is, but when someone starts splitting hairs with its definition, we start to question what we know the actual meaning to be. If this happens enough, we start to question the real definition of the word and ask questions like, "Can anything actually be true?" Just as I had become confused as to what the word bug really referenced, people can become confused about what truth really is.

An understanding of truth is fundamental to life. We, as individuals, look at the world around us and try to decipher truth from falsehood. Is the world flat or is it round? Is there life on Mars or not? Do I like chocolate ice cream or vanilla? The things we define as true we use to build our definition of the world. The falsehoods we discard. We keep the truths because they're reliable information, things not likely to change over time. We discard the falsehoods because they're unreliable. But how do we know which information to keep and which to throw away? How do we know what is true and what isn't?

One way of measuring the truth of something is to look at its source. If Uncle Nick, the con man, comes to you and says he has a sure bet on the races this afternoon, you're likely to classify that information as unreliable and not act upon it. But if a police officer comes to you and says your son got in a wreck this morning, you're more likely to believe what you've heard. The source of the information has a lot to do with its reliability. But the source isn't the only requisite for something to be true. I'm sure not 100% of everything Uncle Nick says would be false. But the source of the information is frequently the first filter we apply to try and separate a truth from a falsehood.

Another means of determining truth is a simple test: Does it agree with other things I already know to be true? If the police officer tells you that your son wrecked your private jet, and you don't own a jet, then it probably wasn't your son and the information probably isn't true. But if the officer references the type of car your son drives, then you have another reason to believe him, because the information he's giving you agrees with something you already know to be true. In this respect, our definition of what's true is sort of like a jigsaw puzzle. We start out with a few pieces that we're sure about and then add to them as we go through life, building a larger and larger picture of what we know to be true.

This is starting to sound like we decide what's true and what isn't. After all, didn't I just say that we're the ones who separate truth from falsehood? But in reality, we don't. What we're actually doing is building our perception of the truth. Our perception of the truth and the truth itself don't necessarily have to agree. Look at all the people who get swindled every year by con men. These poor folks loose their money because what they perceived to be true wasn't. Their perception of what was true didn't match the reality of the situation. So our perception of the truth (which bits of information we classify as true and which we discard as false) is critical to our ability to accurately identify truth itself. If we accept too many false pieces of information as true, our perception of what's true can become greatly skewed. So much so that every few years we hear of someone who declares that gravity isn't real and then jumps to their death. The distortion of truth can lead people to do some truly awful things (reference Adolf Hitler, Jim Jones, or Osama bin Laden).

So what is truth itself? What is this thing we're trying to separate from falsehood? Some say there's no such thing as truth - that it simply doesn't exist. Some say it exists but is different for each person. And yet others say that truth is an unchanging absolute. Which position is right?

We'll examine all three positions and in the end, you'll decide which definition you accept as true and which you discard as falsehood.

 

Truth does not exist

Philosophy scholars, when debating over a definition for truth, can not come to a single definition upon which they can all agree. Therefore, some say that truth must not actually exist (for if it did, we'd have surely found a common definition for it by now). Truth must simply be something we like to think exists because having something absolute in an ever changing world gives us comfort. They say truth is a man made concept and there really isn't anything independent to base it on.

Essentially that argument is saying, "Truth does not exist." So one has to ask, is that statement true? If it is, then the statement itself being true shows that truth does exist. If it's not true, then truth does not, not exist, which means it really does exist.

The position that truth does not exist is a hard one to cling to. 2 + 2 = 4 Show me a time or place when that equation isn't true. It doesn't matter what year you're in. It doesn't matter what country you're in. It doesn't matter what planet you're on. 2 + 2 does equal 4.

Another way to look at the existence of truth is through science. Science tells us that if things exist, they have properties. Simply having a property associates a truth with that thing; namely, that it has a property. (for example, a molecule of water contains both hydrogen and oxygen) So the existence of a thing assures the existence the thing's properties, which in turn assures that a truth exists about the thing.

So why can't scholars come to an agreement on a definition for truth? What they are arguing over is a matter of degrees. For example, do I call my child's ball blood red or tomato red? Some tomatoes are dark enough to be called blood red and some blood is thin enough to be called tomato red, so which red do I use to reference the ball? If I use one, the proponents for the other will say I'm wrong, and they'll have data to back up their claim. In short, it doesn't matter which one I choose, I'll always have one group saying I'm wrong. And so the philosophers continue their argument.

Common sense tells us that the ball is red. That's it. Move on. Arguing for hours and hours over the exact shade of red the ball has been painted is nothing more than splitting hairs. A shade of red may actually be decided upon during the argument, but it really doesn't matter, my son is still going call his ball simply red.

Arguing over the existence of truth is like arguing over the existence of definitions. If I define what I mean when I say the word definition, I, by default, create a definition. But if my position is that definitions don't exist, then I can't define something to explain what I mean by a definition because I'd be pre-supposing the existence of definitions. So I don't define what I mean and I claim that definitions don't exist. That's the type of argument some scholars use when saying there is no truth. Silly, isn't it.

The world we live in tells us that truth does exist. Just because we can tie ourselves into verbal knots arguing over the definition of it doesn't mean that it doesn't actually exist. Common sense tells us that it exists and science is totally dependent upon the existence of it. In a way, one could look at the advancements science has made throughout history as a proof of the existence of truth, since each advancement is built upon the truth of a previous discovery.

 

Truth is relative

I've heard people say, "Well, that may be true for you, but it's not true for me." Is truth really relative to the person believing it? To answer that we need to look at the two possible natures of truth: subjective and objective.

The word 'subjective' is defined as: belonging to the thinking subject rather than to the object of thought. The school of philosophy defines it as: relating to or of the nature of an object as it is known in the mind as distinct from a thing in itself. The key here is that subjectiveness comes from the mind, meaning our perception, and is distinct from the object of that subjectivity. To paraphrase, subjective means that it starts with me, something formed in my mind and based on my experiences.

So a statement like, "Chocolate is the best flavor of ice cream" is a subjective statement, a subjective truth if you will. That statement may be true for me and not for someone else. Or, "He is seated at the right end of the table." The person on the opposite side of the table would say "He is seated at the left end of the table." Both statements are true because both start from the speaker's point of view, i.e. both statements start from the speaker's frame of reference. This is the essence of something subjective, it has a starting point, and that starting point is usually the person uttering the subjective statement.

In contrast to subjective, the word 'objective' is defined as: not influenced by personal feelings, interpretations, or prejudice; based on facts; unbiased. The key here is that objectiveness is separate from the mind and therefore free from our perceptions.

A statement like, 2 + 2 = 4 is objective. It doesn't matter what I think or feel about the number 2, add two of them together and you'll get 4, period. Another example would be the statement, "The Catholic church is in almost every nation on Earth." It's simply a statement of fact. It says nothing about my opinion of the Catholic Church, whether I think they should be in almost every nation or not, nor my thoughts about the priest down the street. None of my experiences with the Catholic Church are reflected in that statement. The statement simply is.

One field that tries its best to be objective is science. A good scientist will try to obtain objective facts about the thing he's studying. He cares nothing about the political ramifications of his findings; he's simply after the cold hard truth about what he's studying. That's why scientists frequently setup double-blind experiments. It's an attempt to remove all outside influence from the results of the experiment, even the influence the scientist himself may have on it. It's an attempt to obtain the objective information he seeks.

So, is truth subjective or objective?

Things that are true are true whether I believe them or not, like the existence of gravity. That makes truth objective. It's independent of my experiences about it. It doesn't matter if a child believes that fire will burn him or not, prolonged exposure to flame will indeed burn him. Therefore, truth is objective in nature.

But, there's the truth and there's our perception of it. Now our perception of truth is subjective, and this is where I think many people get confused. I can choose to accept something as true or not. That doesn't change the truth of it, but it does change my perception of it. Take a con artist, for example. He paints a story so convincingly that his mark believes it to be true. Now there's the truth of the situation and there's the perception of the situation. By getting his mark to focus on the perception instead of the truth, the con man gets away with his con. The truth of the situation never changed throughout the whole scam, only the mark's perception changed. If the mark knew the actual truth up front, the con man would go broke.

So why do some say that truth is relative? I think a couple of factors are at play here. First, we get so much information thrown at us today that we have to weed out for ourselves the true from the false, so we are used to deciding for ourselves what is true and what isn't. That makes truth feel like it's subjective, i.e. relative to the speaker. Couple that with the human tendency to believe a comforting falsehood over a discomforting truth and it's easy to see why some people claim that truth is subjective. It takes a lot of courage to look at the world (and especially at one self) objectively and simply accept what is seen. Sometimes the truth isn't pleasant. But discomforting truths should spur us to action to correct whatever is making us uncomfortable about that truth. But for some, it's simply too difficult to accept the fact that they've been conned or that they have a flaw, or whatever, so they simply say it isn't true for them and avoid the discomfort of facing the cold hard truth. They are doing themselves a disservice, but it's often a difficult thing to get them to see it.

 

Truth is an absolute

The third position is that truth is an absolute. That means that if something is true, it's true for everybody, everywhere, at all times. Now some would argue that an absolute truth would also need to be true if it were outside of time. But since none of us can place ourselves outside of time, we'll just leave the definition as "at all times" for simplicity sake.

The previous section talked about the subjective and objective natures of truth. 'Truth is absolute' is a concept that says that truth itself is objective. That is, truth is an inherent part of the thing being believed, totally separate from, and not influenced by, the person believing it. This position also makes truth a black and white issue, without any shades of gray. Either something is true or it's not, period. Somewhat akin to the concept that something either exists or it doesn't, i.e. something can't partially exist. Even with things made from pieces, either it exists (has all its pieces) or it doesn't (it only has some of its pieces and therefore isn't complete and thus isn't the thing in question, yet).

In this day and age we're not comfortable with the concept of absolutes. We like shades of gray. We like things that allow me to be right and you to be right simultaneously. We say this is what allows us to get along. But we only take this idea to a certain level. We don't allow our children to put their hands on the hot stove because we know the truth of what will happen. Cold blooded murder is something else we say is always wrong. We can kill in self-defense, but not in cold blood. We also don't push our kids towards drugs. The truth there is all too evident. So we don't argue the truth of some situations, but in others we're not so sure. So is truth always an absolute?

One way to look at this position on truth is to check if absolutes even exist in the world, which, of course, they do. The easiest way to see this is with the statement, "There are no absolutes in the world." If this statement is false, then there are absolutes in the world. If this statement is true, then the statement itself becomes an absolute, making the statement false once again.

Or you could look at this, again, with science. Science is the systematic examination of the world we live in. It learns about something and then builds upon that knowledge to learn more about it, or perhaps about something related to it. If there are no absolutes, then all of science becomes unreliable because what we learn about one atom of hydrogen might not apply to the next atom of hydrogen. Previous knowledge wouldn't be useful in discovering more knowledge because the truths we've learned may not be true the next time around. But I think we can all look at what science has achieved (medical advancements, exploring Mars, etc.) and see that science is indeed reliable, and thus absolutes must exist.

So, since there are absolutes in the world, is truth one of them? Its very definition would say that it is. Webster's defines truth as: Being consistent with reality or fact¹. That's a very black and white statement. Either something is consistent with reality or it's not. Since truth is also objective, it would appear that truth is indeed an absolute in the world.

 

Summation

What is truth? To answer that, let me ask you a simply yes or no question. Is the world flat?

Nowadays we'd say no, but a few hundred years ago, scientists were saying yes. So which is it? Which answer is true, yes or no?

Today, we have proof that the world is spherical. So did the world change shape over the last few hundred years or did our perception of that "truth" change? That is, did the earth change shape or did the conclusions we made, based on the few facts we had, change? The reality is that the world was spherical even when the scientists were claiming it was flat. Man's knowledge finally grew enough to allow him to perceive our world truthfully, i.e. to adjust his perceptions so that they match reality, so we now say the world is round.

The bottom line is this: our personal definitions of truth are dependent upon which facts we accept as true and which we reject as false. This is why some people claim that truth is subjective, because they reject the facts they don't like and simply claim that they aren't true for them. That doesn't change the inherent truth of the fact, but it does change that person's perception of the truth. Columbus rejected the common perception that the world was flat and proved the world to be round.

Truth stands alone; separate from our perception of it. Our perceptions may change over time (like thinking the earth is flat) but the truth is the truth, always. It may not be pleasant, it may not be popular, but the truth is the truth whether we accept it as such or not.

 

Footnotes

1 - This is a paraphrase of the Merriam-Webster's definition: 3a: the property (as of a statement) of being in accord with fact or reality