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 that human language is a unique form of communication in the animal kingdom. For one, language allows humans to share information with each other on a scale that dwarfs our animal cousins. This is the first hint of the need for truth.
Presumably, animals may need to communicate in order to avoid danger, find food, and find appropriate mating opportunities. To do this, animals vocalize, they express various physical states and perceptions of events by uttering cries. Much of this is instinctual and non voluntary. Laughing, crying, and screaming are human analogues. Because they are instinctual, to some extent non voluntary, and directly representative of physical states and perceptions, animal vocalizations are a close measure of reliability. The roar of a big lion is hard to fake by a small lion. (See Zahavi, 1997 for more on this)
The human invention of language completely changed this situation, and here is why: as Zahavi points out, language, unlike animal vocalization, has no direct means of demonstrating reliability. In effect, by sharing a syntax and a vocabulary of interchangeable words, humans came up with a means of communication that was infinitely generative. This was like opening Pandora’s Box - now, unlike other animals, humans had an infinite supply of deceptive and false utterances at their fingertips or vocal chords, and there was no way to close that lid.
Enter truth. Unlike other animals, language-using humans need a way to regulate communicative behaviour in order to combat the ease of deception that language can facilitate. Truth is that regulative concept. Simply put, we do not tolerate lying. Liars are shamed and shunned. And we, if we are normal people, generally tell the truth and avoid lying.
The most important thing that distinguishes humans from other animals is morality. Humans live in and operate moral systems. Moral systems protect and sustain human groups by regulating human behaviour. We can debate whether morality requires language from the first (I say language isn’t possible without morality, but that’s another story) But it seems obvious that moral systems cannot work properly if lying is not under sanction. Otherwise wrongdoers can always get away with wrongdoing by lying or by intimidating witnesses to lie. From this it follows that once we invented language we were also forced to invent truth.
But, you see, truth is a complex indirect concept that requires the use of our imagination. Every time we state something or hear someone else state something we need to be able to imagine how that utterance corresponds to a mind-independent reality. This is not a direct thing, it’s not like an animal reacting to an alarm cry by fleeing the scene. It’s using more imagination. And that is where the metaphors come in: truth is “correspondence to reality”, truth is “coherence with an exhaustive inquiring system”, truth is “endorsing an assertion”; all of these can be useful ways of conceptualizing truth, but the actual work that the concept of truth is doing is in working as an ideal that guides or regulates human behaviour in order to prevent or diminish deceptive forms of communication. Everything else, the many forms of truth, are all derivative from this original basic social need to control deception.
Truth is an ideal - we seek the truth in order to know more, we avoid it when we don't want to know, and we generally wish to be guided by the truth rather than guided by illusion; but we never quite know if we ever reach the truth - it is an ideal, after all.
Lying is an action, we know and understand it in a more direct way. Lying, we can understand from a natural perspective, because we understand it directly when we lie or witness others lying. In contrast, we don't seem to be doing much more than making an assertion when we tell the truth, a fact that deflationary theories of truth capture nicely. But then, the maddening thing about deflationism is that it capitalizes on the fact that most everyday communication assumes truthfulness from the beginning. The work that truth is doing as an ideal is in our social regulation of lying and other forms of deceptive behaviour. If we didn't do that job, we wouldn't have society. You can't come around after that and claim that truth isn't doing anything. Truth is making society possible. We can't see that because we are standing in the middle of it.
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 that human language is a unique form of communication in the animal kingdom. For one, language allows humans to share information with each other on a scale that dwarfs our animal cousins. This is the first hint of the need for truth.
Presumably, animals may need to communicate in order to avoid danger, find food, and find appropriate mating opportunities. To do this, animals vocalize, they express various physical states and perceptions of events by uttering cries. Much of this is instinctual and non voluntary. Laughing, crying, and screaming are human analogues. Because they are instinctual, to some extent non voluntary, and directly representative of physical states and perceptions, animal vocalizations are a close measure of reliability. The roar of a big lion is hard to fake by a small lion. (See Zahavi, 1997 for more on this)
The human invention of language completely changed this situation, and here is why: as Zahavi points out, language, unlike animal vocalization, has no direct means of demonstrating reliability. In effect, by sharing a syntax and a vocabulary of interchangeable words, humans came up with a means of communication that was infinitely generative. This was like opening Pandora’s Box - now, unlike other animals, humans had an infinite supply of deceptive and false utterances at their fingertips or vocal chords, and there was no way to close that lid.
Enter truth. Unlike other animals, language-using humans need a way to regulate communicative behaviour in order to combat the ease of deception that language can facilitate. Truth is that regulative concept. Simply put, we do not tolerate lying. Liars are shamed and shunned. And we, if we are normal people, generally tell the truth and avoid lying.
The most important thing that distinguishes humans from other animals is morality. Humans live in and operate moral systems. Moral systems protect and sustain human groups by regulating human behaviour. We can debate whether morality requires language from the first (I say language isn’t possible without morality, but that’s another story) But it seems obvious that moral systems cannot work properly if lying is not under sanction. Otherwise wrongdoers can always get away with wrongdoing by lying or by intimidating witnesses to lie. From this it follows that once we invented language we were also forced to invent truth.
But, you see, truth is a complex indirect concept that requires the use of our imagination. Every time we state something or hear someone else state something we need to be able to imagine how that utterance corresponds to a mind-independent reality. This is not a direct thing, it’s not like an animal reacting to an alarm cry by fleeing the scene. It’s using more imagination. And that is where the metaphors come in: truth is “correspondence to reality”, truth is “coherence with an exhaustive inquiring system”, truth is “endorsing an assertion”; all of these can be useful ways of conceptualizing truth, but the actual work that the concept of truth is doing is in working as an ideal that guides or regulates human behaviour in order to prevent or diminish deceptive forms of communication. Everything else, the many forms of truth, are all derivative from this original basic social need to control deception.
Truth is an ideal - we seek the truth in order to know more, we avoid it when we don't want to know, and we generally wish to be guided by the truth rather than guided by illusion; but we never quite know if we ever reach the truth - it is an ideal, after all.
Lying is an action, we know and understand it in a more direct way. Lying, we can understand from a natural perspective, because we understand it directly when we lie or witness others lying. In contrast, we don't seem to be doing much more than making an assertion when we tell the truth, a fact that deflationary theories of truth capture nicely. But then, the maddening thing about deflationism is that it capitalizes on the fact that most everyday communication assumes truthfulness from the beginning. The work that truth is doing as an ideal is in our social regulation of lying and other forms of deceptive behaviour. If we didn't do that job, we wouldn't have society. You can't come around after that and claim that truth isn't doing anything. Truth is making society possible. We can't see that because we are standing in the middle of it.
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