More About Truth

I thought the last post was a bit messy, a bit personal, not that great. Essentially it started at the end of a discussion about truth rather than the beginning. So, I will start at the beginning.

All we know as certain truth is that there is something, anything much beyond that requires assumptions, which are defined as "things accepted to be true without proof." We know that there is something because here I am doing/being something.  If you accept that your present experience is real, in that you know for certain that you are having this experience, but believe that everything else is in doubt, you are a solipsist. If you think rationally it is very hard to not be a solipsist, but we don't like it much and it is an essentially useless position. even while being the most True of positions.

What assumptions should we make?  I suggest we go with the assumption that everybody makes at a certain level, that there is actually something that corresponds  to an extent with our experience, our perception.  Everybody eats because they assume that they and the food are real.  Now, this assumption does not say that everything that we experience is truth, after all, we can have contradictory experiences about the same object (illusions).  So, the assumption is that there is a something independent from our experience, but about which we can derive knowledge.  The nature of this independent reality is Truth, things are a certain way regardless of what you think.  Unless you are stuck in solipsism , or think you are infallible, you believe that this is Truth.

For me the next portion of truth comes in at the level of perception. For a start it is very hard to get beyond believing that we are perceiving what we are perceiving (see the first paragraph) even if that perception is "untrue" in that it does not faithfully represent the underlying reality.  Since our perceptions are limited to certain ranges, such as seeing only a small portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, all our perceptions are untrue, at least to the extent that they are incomplete. Still, our perceptions correspond to reality.  If you see a wall and try to walk through it the chances are enormously high that you will bash into a wall.  In the vast majority of situations our perceptions are True in that they correspond to reality.

The next level is actually tied up in at least the previous paragraph, and it is quite reasonable to think it is tied up in the whole subject of truth, and that is meaning.  Human beings operate largely through meaning, deeper than consciousness, at the very base of our experience.  When we look around we see trees, walls, people, green, but we don't see a range of the electromagnetic spectrum.  What is a tree?  A tree is an object, but the concept of "object" has meaning, a tree is a category of thing which we associate with a number of qualities, and these qualities are not only perception, but emotion, memory, etc..  The concept of "tree" has meaning, and so does every other concept, and we only think in concepts.  It is impossible to operate as a human without meaning.  We rely on meaning to such an extent that we attempt to impose meaning on perceptions that don't easily fit a concept (we see faces in all sorts of things that aren't faces.)  For humans meaning is True as it is the only way our minds correspond to reality.

Beyond general meaning is intellectual meaning.  Intellectual meaning I define as a meaning that does not directly correspond to a material reality.  Examples would be "Justice" "Physics" "Purpose."  You can't point at a justice but justice has a profound meaning. This is the area of what people think of as higher level of meaning.  Art and philosophy.  It is one thing to know the truth that you are hungry and want to eat that apple, it is another to portray the emotional suffering built upon the ethical dilemma of eating a forbidden fruit, using a novel series of metaphors to establish a different meaning about the meaning of the situation.  Intellectual meaning is Truth in that it explores reality and attempts to explain it in terms we can understand.  Justice is a truth in that we understand the meaning of justice, and justice corresponds to reality to an extent.  It is true that justice was done when a criminal was punished even though "justice", "criminal", and "punish" are all meanings we have made up in our heads.

Finally comes emotional truth.  We yearn for things that aren't "real", such as purpose.  We become insane when we fall in love, believing that the other is perfect, meant for us.  We feel lucky.  We feel that the universe has a point.  We feel a connection with other people.  We feel we are meant to do something.  There are the "eternal truths of the human condition" that "speak directly to our hearts."  A poem can be literally nonsense, and yet have a true meaning which we understand.

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.          - Dylan Thomas

It isn't a "good night" it is dying.  Old age can't burn or rave.  The light doesn't die.  Yet, we understand the truth of the terror we have towards dying and non-existence.  Great art provokes emotional meaning in us, literally producing emotions shared throughout humanity on the basis of us simply being human.  You have a cold heart if you cannot feel the truth of what it is to be rejected as Hal rejects Falstaff in Henry IV part 2.

These are what I consider to be the layers of truth., starting with what we are certain about through to a universality of human experience.  As we move through these stages we move from what is more fundamentally true in that it corresponds the closest to reality.  However, humanity spends most of its time in the area of emotional meaning.  We worry about our place in the universe.  We ask "what it is all for?" We search for a purpose.  We try to understand those around us. We search for a sense of understanding, or rightness, or truth. As a result of these obsessions, and the elusive nature of any answers, people tend to think of the answers as "higher" or :greater" truths.  The further away from truth we get, the more people look for Truth.