Understanding Truth as the Standard
Recently, I wrote a piece about truth and lies and our relationship to each. I began by focusing on lies and then went back and explained that to understand what a lie is, we must first understand the concept of truth. The reason I chose to start by focusing on lying is because one of the main points I wanted to communicate in that post was that too many people seem to be comfortable nowadays living a lie. In terms of setting the stage for my main point, it was entirely appropriate to open up by discussing the concept of lying and then taking a step back and discussing truth.
The step back from lying to truth is actually a move towards something more fundamental and foundational. There’s a reason why I stated in my earlier piece that to understand lying, we must first understand truth. In order of precedence, truth comes before falsehood. This isn’t merely a moral order of precedence but also an ontological one.
Let’s look at an analogy that may help clarify this point. In science class we all learned at some point that light and dark are NOT truly opposites. In reality, darkness is the absence of light. The two concepts do not lie in opposition to one another as two poles on an axis. If viewed on an axis, dark isn’t on the negative side of the axis per se, but rather exists at the origin of the axis (point 0) whereas light exists along the positive side.
The same can be said of heat and cold. They are not opposites. Cold is merely the absence of heat in the same way that darkness is the absence of light. In this regard, heat is something but cold is not something*, or perhaps a bit more accurately, it is the absence of that something.
*I refrain here from parsing out the potential differences between nothing and not something. Exploring their possible distinctions is outside the scope of this piece. Therefore, let me simply state that I am using the two categories, or sets, of something and not something rather than something and nothing.
Now let’s look at truth. Ontologically, truth precedes falsehood. Falsehood is merely the absence of truth and consists of deviations therefrom. In this case, they aren’t exactly opposites of one another though we often refer to them that way much in the same way that, in everyday parlance, we also refer to heat and cold (or light and dark) as opposites.
Were we to approach truth and falsehood from a dualistic perspective, we would grant ontological equality to each. We would then view each as the opposite pole of the other. This is problematic because it fails to grasp the primacy of the one (truth) over the other (falsehood).
In my mind, this is why it is essential to understand truth and its relationship to Truth as I explained in my previous posting. This establishes truth — as a manifestation of Truth —as the standard. It serves as the ultimate measuring stick.
The question then for us is how we measure ourselves against this standard. How do we seek to align ourselves with truth, live in accordance with it, and seek to promote it?
I’m interested in your thoughts as to what truth means and how we align ourselves with it.
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Self-interest being so dominant in motivating our reasoning I think the first step towards truth is a priori acceptance that knowing the truth is always best. There are plenty of specious arguments to the effect that some truths are better not known, in other words consequentialist bullshit. After you internalize that pursuit of the truth is consistent with your long-term self-interest, then some combination of logic and empiricism guides the way towards building the most accurate map of reality you're capable of drawing. Retaining epistemic humility allows that map to be refined over time with the recognition that this map will never perfectly align with Truth, but can at least move ever closer.