What is truth?

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07 April 2022

What is truth?

George Rebane

Contrary to common wisdom, in addition to your opinions you can also have your own facts, history, science, logic, sense of justice, fairness, equity, evil, beauty, and, of course, truth. Rebane Doctrine

Two friends of ours tackled the notion of ‘truth’ in recent issues of The Union. Jan Tannarome (‘Facts vs Beliefs’) and Terry McLaughlin (‘What is truth, exactly?’) in which each argued the existence of propositions that are universally and unambiguously assessed as being true. Ms Tannarome leans to the left, and Ms McLaughlin is a conservative.

Tannarome harbors the pejorative view of ‘belief’ as being inimical to a kind and just society. She writes, “And no matter who is using belief as a weapon or as a shield, this is unforgivable. It is unforgivable on a scale of such magnitude that I can’t think of anything worse at this juncture in our human evolution. I will borrow a phrase from a frequent contributor to this newspaper’s pages and say that using belief as a shield or a weapon is the mother dog of all political mischief, all social and cultural malfeasance, all justification for hatred and its many offspring.”

McLaughlin, while never actually defining ‘absolute truth’, believes it to exist and goes through a litany of misguided notions about truth ranging from relativism, through pluralism, to beliefs. She writes, “Why is it important to embrace the concept of absolute truth? Because life has consequences for being wrong. … Today, many people seem to fear publicly and honestly stating facts and truth. … If we wish to heal the present divides within our country, our neighborhoods, even our families, we must be willing to share in truthful and honest discourse.”

From my perch (see also my credo) I join with those who have a more precise and, perhaps, technical understanding and definition of belief. The commonly accepted definition of ‘belief’ is a faith-based proposition. (Here a proposition is a statement or assertion that expresses a judgment or assessment.) As such, a belief requires no reasonable basis.

A more nuanced, and technically correct definition, holds that there are two kinds of beliefs – faith-based and falsifiable. In that sense a person’s worldview or ontology consists of a set of propositions or beliefs which may all be falsifiable or also include some that are faith-based and beyond the pale of reason. Over the years RR readers who have followed my sermons on Bayesian inference and non-monotonic reasoning know that I and most people of my ilk and background embrace an ontology that consists wholly of potentially falsifiable beliefs.

For the more technical/philosophical reader, the Bayesian measure of verity of a proposition is its probability of being verifiably true. This measure ranges between zero (impossible proposition) and one (axiomatically true). Verity measures between zero and one may be updated (by Bayes theorem) with the introduction of new evidence. Faith-based verity measures at zero and one are immune to new evidence and the ministrations of Bayes. (more here, here, and here)

Unfortunately, as beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so is belief in the mind (heart?) of the believer. The pithy shibboleth at the top summarizes the realworld basis for our nation’s polarization, and its negligible prospects for restoring e pluribus unum. IMHO too many of us paint our views of the world with faith-based colors. Such people believe in absolute truths beyond those immediately subject to multi-party verification.

An example of such an absolute truth is the proposition that 2+2=4 which can be immediately verified during an ongoing discourse by everyone present who can count. Claimed absolute truths that are limited to citations of past third-party verifications are immediately open to contention which cannot be resolved in the moment, and therefore give rise to the above pithy shibboleth. And it is in the moment, that is ripe for taking decisions, that one must accept or reject available paths forward when multiple contending truths (beliefs) do battle – absolute truths have no place is such arenas. It was ever thus.

With this understanding one can appreciate why appeals based on Rodney King’s ‘Why can’t we all just get along?’ fail to unite us.

A better course to resolve disputes would be to admit the pithy shibboleth and focus on discovering common aspects in the differing utilities held by contending factions. Without such a basis for dispute resolution expect no light, only heat. (more here and here)

Posted at 11:05 AM in Critical Thinking & Numeracy, Culture Comments, General, Glossary & Semantics, Rebane Doctrine | Permalink

Comments

I think your exposition is missing some cogent points. Beliefs often start with values. Most people have a rank order of values although most are hard-pressed to articulate them. The values often lead to a belief system of how the world works, free enterprise vs socialism, property values vs. human rights, etc. Once a person sorts out their values and beliefs, they are inevitably attracted to Political groups that share the values and pander to approaches aimed (supposedly) at protecting those values and reinforcing the associated beliefs. Many values and associated beliefs are formed at an early age through religion or upbringing. These are not based on facts. Other values in areas of commerce, economics, or science are more amenable to fact gathering, cause-effect hypotheses, and results from quantitative analysis, etc. It's not simple, that's why one can find a Noble Economist that verifies their beliefs no matter what they are. Values held dearly are protected with passion, often irrationally, at all costs. Data gathering and analysis are more objective and persons prone to preferring that approach (I believe) are less likely to go out and visit violence (verbal or physical) against someone who disagrees with them. Most of the political discourse today is driven by a difference in rank order of values camouflaged as disagreements about how the world works and what methods will best protect those values. This brings extreme passions to bare. I believe the country has a greater agreement in values, patriotism, family first, national security, efficiency in the marketplace, than is exposed in the current political discourse, which focuses on trashing the opposition, rather than offering an even-handed evaluation of alternative methods for maximizing commonly held values. A good example is border security. I get frequent texts and emails every week to "build the wall." I disagree with the approach, I don't think there's a business case for a wall, I don't think walls have been proven to be effective in diminishing the flow of illegal aliens, etc. But if I disagree with building a wall, I never get to why I think it is an inefficient approach, I'm immediately branded as a liberal who favors an open border (whatever that is) and people stop listening to anything I have to say for I have been branded as the enemy. It's sad to me that, through the internet leveraged by political charlatans, we can't search for a commonly acceptable approach to our critical challenges with open minds.

Posted by: Gary W Irving | 07 April 2022 at 04:08 PM

GaryI 408pm - Thanks for the thoughtful comment. Re "open border (whatever that is)", we can resolve to everyone's satisfaction immediately. Take a sample of the porosity of international borders over which illegal crossings are recorded/estimated. Compute the mean and variance of that sample. Any border, the porosity of which is more than, say, +3-sigma, may be accepted by any reasonable definition as being 'open'. I would venture to say that our border porosity is beyond 6-sigma.

Re beliefs starting with values, I think a revealing test of this proposition would be to ask a large sample of Americans to first list some beliefs about a certain issue, and then ask them to reveal the values which sustain and support their beliefs. I would bet the ranch that less than 5% of the sample could give what you would consider as a cogent answer, thereby denying support to your proposition and assertion that I am "missing some cogent points." But, of course, that is only my belief ;-)

Posted by: George Rebane | 07 April 2022 at 06:00 PM

Gary I. - nice try, dude.
"property values vs. human rights..."
Wut?
I can put my address into a search engine and Zillow will happily pop up with a value for my property.
How is this in opposition to human rights?
"I don't think walls have been proven to be effective in diminishing the flow of illegal aliens, etc."
Since the wall hasn't been completed, how do you 'prove' your point?
"I'm immediately branded as a liberal who favors an open border (whatever that is)..."
So - you complain about being 'branded' as a liberal over something that you admit you don't even understand?
"But if I disagree with building a wall, I never get to why I think it is an inefficient approach..."
We're all ears - entertain us.
And finally -
"It's sad to me that, through the internet leveraged by political charlatans, we can't search for a commonly acceptable approach to our critical challenges with open minds."
No one is stopping you here, dude - go for it.

Posted by: Scott O | 07 April 2022 at 08:41 PM

Sounds like the ponytail of ignorance-