Particular Truth

There is a definition of particular truth that will be accepted as … well, true. Perhaps accurate or correct would be better terms. Let us consider when someone is talking, and we deem the person is “telling the truth” or “telling a lie.”

When we speak what we know to be true, we mean that our words accurately represent the thoughts that are in our minds. If a thought is and we say that it is, then we are speaking the truth. If a thought is not but we say that it is, then we are speaking non-truth. For instance, if I am asked where I was yesterday at 1pm, and I say that I was home reading a book and I was in fact home reading a book, then I am telling the truth. My words correspond with my thoughts which correspond to my experience. In contrast, if I say I was taking a walk when I was indeed reading the book, then I am telling a non-truth.

We must take a brief walkabout here. Some of you might have wanted to say that I was lying if I said I was taking a walk when I was actually reading a book. Not necessary. Let me illustrate. If you ask a young child, “What is 2x3” and the child answers “5,” is your first thought, “This child is lying to me?” Probably not. Perhaps the child thought you said “2+3.” Perhaps the child has not had simple multiplication. Perhaps the child struggles with multiplication. Perhaps the child said five to tease me or frustrate me or … mislead me. As we move through the scale from teasing to misleading, we move from non-truth as lack of correspondance to non-truth as a lie. Deliberate intent has to be a root element of lying, or we will end up categorizing all verbal misstatements and mental confusions as lies!

In the earlier paragraph I stated that my lack of correspondence between thought and fact is non-truth, but it is not necessarily a lie. Ignorance, imagination, confusion, forgetfulness, mental inability, emotional instability, coercion and other factors can be the culprits that lead a person to verbally state what does not correspond to fact or to reality. We must keep before us that the definition of truth when words are being spoken is whether the words correspond to fact, to what actually happened, is happening, or will happen. Our verbal “is” corresponds to the factual “is,” and our verbal “is not” corresponds to the factual “is not.”

We intuitively recognize this as being correct. If I know something is brown but I say it is red, I know I have spoken a non-truth. When we say, “That isn’t true,” we are saying, “Your words do not correspond to what is fact, to what is real, to what happened.”

The framework of correspondence is the support for a universal definition of truth. The examples given in this article have been particular, subject to one person’s actions and preferences. We understand that what is true for one person may not be true for another. But what about things and events outside a person?

The next article will discuss the universal definition of truth.

V. L. Vawter 

Objective versus Subjective

Truth is bandied about with such subjective relish that the majority of people in our culture really do not believe there is such a thing as objective truth … except in certain areas of mathematics and physics. Subjective truth is clothed with such expressions as “You have your opinion, and I have mine … If believing that makes you feel good, then that’s fine … Everything is relative; you have your truth, and I have mine … That may be true for you, but it isn’t true for me.” How many times have we heard or stated ourselves after making a statement, “Well, that’s my opinion,” usually accompanied with humbled eyes and a sense of apology? The moment we made that statement is the moment we unconditionally surrendered to subjective truth.

Subjective truth is that which is true to the subject, the person thinking, saying, or acting on his truth. Objective truth is that which is true apart from a person. Let me illustrate. The moon’s soil is composed of oxygen, silicon, iron, calcium, aluminum, magnesium, and a small percentage (3%) of other elements. A child or an uneducated person may say, “The moon is made of cheese.” That is a subjective statement. It is true to the child. In a word, it is his opinion. The objective truth is that the moon’s soil is comprised of the elements previously listed. It is truth regardless of who believes it. It is truth regardless of where they believe it. It is truth regardless of when they believe it. Regardless if a person says the moon is made from cheese or salami or toe jam, ultimately we know it is all bologna regardless how it is sliced because we know the moon is comprised of oxygen, etc. Subjective statements uttered prima facie or screamed from the depths of the soul do not undermine or support an objective truth. All subjective truth is irrelevant in regard to any objective truth.

As a child I heard the following question: If a tree falls in a forest and there is nobody there to hear it, does it make a sound? Though I goofed off as much as any child, the question did bother me when I was alone with my thoughts. I truly puzzled over the question. I did not understand the difference between objective and subjective truth. I really thought that somebody had to be there for sound to exist. If someone did not hear it (a subject perceiving and believing it), then it simply did not exist. But we know that is nonsense. Do animals exist in the Siberian boreal forests only if someone perceives them? If a deaf person makes an utterance (the subject cannot hear it), did a noise exist or not? When I look at the lamp table in my living room, does motion not exist in the table because I cannot see it, whereas I know the atomic world comprising the table is in constant motion? Of course a sound exists when a tree falls in an empty forest because sound waves exist objectively without the necessity of a subject perceiving those sound waves.

Several years ago I was surprised by a remark from a person who was highly educated and who walked comfortably arm-in-arm with common sense. I primed the conversation with the comment, “How do we help people understand what Truth is?” His reply was, “No one has agreed on what truth is.” Actually that is not accurate at all. Surprisingly, with all the disagreement in philosophy over the centuries, 99.9% agree on what truth is! What is the consensus? More than that, what do we intuitively recognize as truth? I will continue that in my next posting.