Philosophical Detritus IV: Truth

"I swear by Almighty God to tell the truth,
the whole truth, and nothing but the truth."

—Traditional British courtroom oath

In this series of essays, fuelled by questions on the Quora website, I have been questioning the value of the legacy of certain abstract concepts in philosophy. I've argued for an epistemic-nominalist approach to abstraction, i.e. abstractions are ideas about things; they are not things in their own right. And I've tried to show that this means we have to reconsider the value of traditional metaphysics generally. No one has privileged access to reality; i.e. there is no epistemic privilege. And in view of this, I have explored how a pragmatic approach can at least net us a useful concept.

So far, I have applied this to the major concepts of "consciousness" and "reality". I have tried to show that commonly used definitions, including "common sense" definitions, are hopelessly confused and unhelpful. This is fueled by the long-standing, active, and growing dissensus on these abstract concepts, amongst professional philosophers. Philosophers not only lack agreement, but on these topics, they actively and vociferously disagree and are constantly coming up with new ways to disagree. Not only is the goal of a universal definition difficult, but the methods adopted virtually guarantee failure. Hence, we often fail to agree on important matters even after thousands of years of argument.

In this essay, I will tackle another legacy metaphysical concept from philosophy: "truth". Yet again, there is a profound and ongoing dissensus about what "truth" means and what value it holds. It seems obvious to us to ask, "What is true?" and "What is the truth?" But it is surprisingly difficult to answer such questions in a satisfying way. Beware, we are in deep, shark-infested waters here. There is a serious risk of drowning or being eaten alive. Let's dive in!

Truth

"True" is used in several senses, but the underlying sense of the word is "firm, reliable, certain, trustworthy." We are particularly concerned with the idea applied to statements and propositions; i.e. with telling the truth, or veracity.

When trying to define "true" and "truth", we immediately run into the problem of epistemic privilege. No one is in a position to state the truth with absolute certainty, because no one can possibly know what it is. And, if we don't know what truth is, then we don't know if any given statement is true or not. And yet we constantly make confident pronouncements on the truth of statements. I went most of my life not realising how utterly weird this situation is. Now I cannot unsee it. But I do think I can unfuck it, to some extent.

There are numerous competing definitions of "truth" that do not converge (this is always a bad sign). For example, we might invoke:

1. Correspondence Theory: Truth is a statement's accurate representation of objective reality.
2. Coherence Theory: Truth is the logical consistency of a statement within a larger system of beliefs.
3. Pragmatist Theory: Truth is what is useful, reliable, or works successfully in practice.
4. Consensus Theory: Truth is what is agreed upon by a specified group, often through ideal discourse.
5. Deflationary Theory: "Truth" is a redundant or logical concept that adds no substantial meaning beyond disquotation (e.g., " 'Snow is white' is true" just means snow is white).
6. Performative Theory: To call a statement true is to perform an act of endorsement or agreement.
7. Semantic Theory (Tarski): Truth is formally defined for a language by satisfying conditions like " 'Snow is white' is true if and only if snow is white."
8. Epistemic Theories: Truth is what is knowable or justifiable under ideal epistemic conditions.
9. Pluralist Theories: Different domains of discourse may require different truth properties (e.g., moral vs. factual truth).

All of these approaches have pros and cons. However, note that all the metaphysical definitions have the problem of epistemic privilege. For example, how can anything be said to represent "objective reality" when no one can possibly know what objective reality is? (If this is unclear, refer back to my essay on reality.) Defining "truth" in terms of "belief" fails because belief is a feeling about an idea, and belief can be false. And yet throwing out the concept of truth entirely seems too drastic.

I think we need to go back to basics. "Truth" is not just an abstract metaphysical concept; it's also a moral concept. Thus, we need to start by thinking about what morality is and why it has a claim on us. However, philosophy's problems also plague this topic. If anything, even after thousands of years of intellectual effort, there is an even greater dissensus around the concept of morality.

I believe we can do better than the present flailing around. To my mind, the place to start is (the late, great) Frans de Waal's work on morality in animals. Especially, his book:

• de Waal, Frans. (2013). The bonobo and the Atheist: In Search of Humanism Amongst the Primates. W.W. Norton & Co.

De Waal's 2011 TED talk Moral Behavior in Animals is an excellent introduction to the main themes in the book and useful for the short videos of the relevant experiments. No one watching this can come away thinking that capuchin monkeys do not understand fairness, for example.

I've written at length about morality, in the light of reading de Waal:

• The Evolution of Morality. Introduction and Deontology. (18 November 2016)
• The Evolution of Morality. Two Pillars of Morality - Reciprocity (25 November 2016)
• The Evolution of Morality. Two Pillars of Morality - Empathy. (02 December 2016)

We begin with a simple fact that I highlighted in my 20th anniversary essay: humans evolved an obligatory social lifestyle. We evolved to live in communities, and rare outliers notwithstanding, humans are obliged by our nature to live in communities. And we are not alone in this. Chimps, bonobos, gorillas, and many other mammals are obliged to live in social groups.

A social lifestyle offers numerous evolutionary advantages. We are stronger as a collective than we are as individuals. Indeed, large-scale cooperation is our evolutionary superpower. I'm aware that I assert this in a general climate of ideological individualism and a hegemonic political ideology that despises collectivism and asserts slogans such as "there is no such thing as society". Nonetheless, Humans are social creatures who live in communities and form societies that have cultures.

In brief, de Waal identified two essential capacities shared by all social mammals (and some social birds, but I'll focus on mammals to keep it simple) that do a lot of work in explaining the evolutionary origins of morality: i.e. empathy and reciprocity. These capacities are minimally required for the social lifestyle of mammals. Note that social insects are a totally different story.

Empathy allows us to intuitively know how other individuals are feeling from interpreting (and internally modelling) cues such as posture, facial expressions, tone of voice, direction of gaze, and so on. This allows us to accurately judge the emotional impact of our actions on others. And their actions on each other. And this is the basis of moral rules about how we treat others. We don't need an external standard or judge to tell us that our actions resulted in happiness or hurt feelings. We simply know from observation. While the psychopath may not care, they still know.

Reciprocity involves responding in kind. If someone shares with us, we share with them. If someone is kind to us, we respond with kindness. Social animals keep track of what kind of relations they have with others, but also the relations of the rest of the group has with each other. It's vitally important—in evolutionary terms—to know how our community is functioning, what conflicts and alliances exist, and our place in all this.

Incidentally, this means that our sense of identity is not, and cannot be, only based on an autobiographical narrative (a story we tell ourselves about ourselves). Being obligatorily social, we also require a socio-biographical narrative (a story about our community and our place in it). While I arrived at this insight through reflecting on de Waal, ChatGPT tells me that it is similar to ideas found in Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor's Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (1989).

Empathy and reciprocity lead humans to live in networks of responsive mutual obligations. And this leads to a deontological view of morality as being based on mutual obligation. This does not preclude anyone from talking in terms of virtue ethics or consequentialism or whatever. Indeed, taking these other perspectives can be advantageous. Rather, it means that we define "virtue" deontologically: A virtuous person is one who meets or exceeds their obligations to the community. Notably, the most virtuous people are seen to help others. Similarly, we judge the consequences of a person's actions in terms of whether or not they support or undermine their obligations.

Since none of us is perfect, it makes sense to have some way to deal with breakdowns in this system.* De Waal notes, for example, that the leading male chimp is constantly called on to mediate between other male chimps. If there is a fight, he always intervenes on the side of the weaker male. He goes out of his way to console the loser of a fight and makes sure that the two get back into harmony.

* There's a potential digression into rules and rule-following here that I will pass up for now, but see also the last of my series of essays on Searle's "social reality": Norms without Conscious Rule Following. (Here, again, there is an unexplored similarity to Taylor's philosophy).

From reciprocity, we get the idea of fairness. Fairness is everyone fulfilling their obligations. Unfairness is a failure of reciprocation. And justice involves restoring fairness.

Of course, how these basic elements are elaborated into systems of morality is wide open and dependent on many factors, including the local environment. Moral rules also get mixed with etiquette to make for complex mores, even without elaborate technology.

This brief outline is probably enough to be getting on with. But check the earlier, more extensive essays if things are unclear.

Truth is Both a Metaphysical Concept and a Moral Concept.

We now have two ideas to try to integrate:

1. My critique of metaphysical concepts applies: truth is a metaphysical concept, and no one has epistemic privilege. "The truth" as a metaphysical absolute is unknowable. And yet most people still see value in truth as a moral concept.
2. My view of morality as essentially deontological (deriving from mutual obligation).

The first idea means that, if I am ever called to give testimony in court, it will be interesting because I cannot make the traditional oaths (including the modern secular varieties). The lack of epistemic privilege means that I cannot promise to "tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth." This would imply that I know "the truth" and that I'm capable of communicating it. While I might have a belief about the truth, no matter how sincere I might be in holding this belief, I can always be wrong. In which case, my belief is not the truth. And after all, belief is a feeling about an idea (and an involuntary feeling at that). Which raises the question: If belief is not a reliable guide to truth, why do we privilege it?

Rather ironically, given their role in justice and history, eyewitnesses are notoriously unreliable. It is common for several people to witness an event and for them all to tell different stories about what happened. What the court really wants is not that witnesses "tell the truth", since this is an unreasonable expectation of anyone who lacks epistemic privilege. The court wants to ensure that we do not set out to deceive the court. That is to say, the court wants us to be honest. And this lesser goal turns out to be a more straightforward proposition.

One day, it might be interesting to look at how we managed to put so much emphasis on knowing the unknowable, but I want to stay on the track of extracting something workable from the existing mess.

A functioning community requires that we trust the other members of the community to fulfil their obligations. If we are standing shoulder to shoulder, driving off a leopard, for example, it only works if enough of us stand our ground. A leopard will easily kill a lone human or chimp. But a group of us is much more intimidating. Five chimps, or humans with sticks, can easily drive a leopard off if they work together. Trust requires that we not deliberately try to deceive others.

No matter how honest I am, my view could be incorrect, inaccurate, or imprecise, and I might not know it. All I can promise is that I'm not deliberately trying to deceive you. And, morally, that is all you can ask of me. So if I appear in court, the only oath I could take would be to promise to be honest. It's up to the jury to decide if what I say is salient to assigning blame for a transgression.

I think this generalises. My moral obligation is not to "tell the truth", but to refrain from deliberate deception. Or, more positively, my obligation is for honesty rather the truthfulness. This makes allowance for my "knowledge" to be imperfect or even incorrect, it allows for the vagaries of memory, it allows for unexamined bias, and so on. Being honest does not guarantee accuracy or precision.

Something we need to be wary of is the relativisation of truth, which I see as a function of ideological individualism. We see this in the idea of a "personal truth". This is something that one person believes and asserts to be true. But when contradicted, they simply assert, "that's your truth", and "my truth" is unaffected by your truth.

While the standard metaphysical definitions fail to be meaningful or useful, the idea of a "personal truth" is catastrophic. Equating opinion with truth only creates confusion and uncertainty. At least those people who try to define truth by some external standard have the goal of reducing uncertainty.

Note that, in the ideal, science is not concerned with "truth" as many lay-people imagine. Rather, scientists examine phenomena and compare notes to produce heuristics that make predictions to some arbitrary level of accuracy and precision. It's not that Newton's laws of motion are untrue and that Einstein's are. Rather the situation is that, under such conditions as we encounter here on Earth, Newton's laws are sufficiently accurate and precise for our purposes. We can predict the future with confidence. But when we start to look on larger scales of mass, length, and energy the accuracy and precision of Newton's laws declines. And we find that Einstein's laws of motion provide better accuracy and precision.

Scientists make and test inferences about phenomena by close observation and comparing notes. While such inferences are incredibly, almost miraculously reliable, we still cannot claim that they are true in any deeper sense.

Conclusion

Thousands of years of documented arguments about "truth"—from a variety of cultures—have left a legacy of dissensus and confusion. Something that seems so straightforward as "telling the truth" turns out to be impossibly complicated. Not only do we not know the truth about anything, but we cannot even agree on how we would know it if we came across it.

Questions such as "What is true?" or "What is the truth?" can never be answered in a way that will satisfy everyone.

"Truth" is another legacy of philosophy that does more harm than good. Since metaphysical knowledge requires epistemic privilege that no one can possibly have, telling "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth" is an unattainable goal.

Morality does not arise out of metaphysics or commandments from some supernatural being. It emerges pragmatically from evolving to live in social groups that require cohesion to function. Evolution equipped us to live in societies bound by mutual obligations. And the moral obligation that emerges from this is not to "tell the truth", but to be honest. That is to say, we do not deliberately set out to deceive.

The problem of the zeitgeist is less that we live in a "post-truth era" and more that we live in an era characterised by dishonesty.

Pragmatically, honesty is attainable because it only requires that we not set out to deceive. This allows that our beliefs about what is true can be sincere but mistaken.

Honesty is a virtue because it promotes the trust and cooperation necessary for a group to fulfil its evolutionary function. The consequence of dishonesty is a breakdown of trust and cohesion.

However, all of the above notwithstanding, the idea of truth and the many discourses centred on it are deeply ingrained and unlikely to change. So expect confusion to reign.

~~Φ~~