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Showing posts from December, 2019

Not "Truth" Again!

From an outsider’s point of view, this whole philosophical  edifice of  “theories of truth” looks an awful lot like a Tower of Babel, rather than the furtherance of knowledge.   I think I have a remedy for all this  disparate theory building - what philosophy needs to do with the concept of “truth” is to go back to basics.   The problem with contemporary philosophy is that it is too fixated on the meaning of philosophical concepts, and truth is the number one example of this. For what we get in this Babel of truth theories is a circle of metaphors representing all the different meanings that truth has for us.    Presumably, truth comes from somewhere, it has an origin, just as language has an origin.  We, of course, have little or no evidence of this origin to go on.  Perhaps anything I say concerning this origin is baseless speculation owing to  the paucity of evidence.  Perhaps, but in my optimistic way of  approaching this, I believe there is a way. We can start with the fact

"Truth" - The Movie

Charles Justice, Truth Investigator.  I’m a PA , a Philosophical Anthropologist and I study Truth full time so the rest of you don’t have to.  “Truth” -  What is it?  How does it work? Where did it come from?  - Lately I’ve been particularly motivated to answer these questions because of the events and circumstances surrounding the  2016 U.S. Presidential election.   Exhibit A:  Kovitch and Rosenstiel, 2014, The Elements of Journalism , third edition:  " The desire that information be truthful is elemental…. the evidence suggests its innate...Out of necessity, citizens and societies depend on accurate and reliable accounts of events.   They develop procedures and processes to arrive at what might be called  “functional truth”.   Police track down and arrest suspects based on facts.  Judges hold trials.  Juries render verdicts.  Industries are regulated, taxes are collected, and laws are made.  We teach our children rules, history, physics, and biology.  All of these truths