In the above, I said "that the words or gestures used by the truth conveyor are meant to communicate a real state of affairs" and a key word here, is the word meant. In every attempt at conveying the truth, there are human motives - human needs, wants and desires - to be considered. These needs, wants and desires tend to delineate the boundaries of the area we want to deal with truthfully - they set the parameters, so to speak. This is not to say that Truth involves invention (in the sense of fiction) but merely that what is communicated is picked out from a mass of data, and this choosing is done by a human being. It therefore follows that the truths selected will be selected in line with human needs, wants and desires. However, this element of subjectivity does not necessarily have to be a great obstacle to truth generation. We are all human beings. Truth comes about through human beings communicating with human beings, and human beings can be aware of the motives of human beings, because we all share a common condition.
This is not to say that the term cannot simply be misused - it obviously can. Because of the power of the term, it is very often misapplied in an effort to convey a strong commitment to a belief or opinion - usually a belief or opinion concerning something where there's little or no evidence, and perhaps no future possibility of access to any evidence. However, calling a banana a carrot does not make it so.
What is far more dangerous is when a potential conveyor of a particular truth finds that the boundaries of the truth he or she intends to convey are simply rejected or not recognised. It is as if the agenda cannot be agreed, the parameters cannot be set, and therefore no truth can be determined. For instance, if a physicist were seeking to show me some proof concerning the nature of atoms through a complex mathematical formula, I would be unable to understand, not being versed in complex mathematical formula. I would be forced to confess my ignorance and suspend my judgement. Of course, as an alternative, I can have faith in the judgement of other respected physicists. If I know all physicists agree concerning the proof offered by my physicist, I can make a "leap of faith" based upon this inter-subjective agreement. Of course, any leap of faith is a gamble and therein lies the danger.
In areas more subjective and speculative, such as political ideology, the disagreement regarding truth can be fundamental, because truth-claims tend to be based upon a commitment in advance of evidence. The supporter of an ideology must have the faith to make the thing happen. In other words, politics is the art of persuading enough support to make something become reality, in accordance with a predetermined political program.
From this, it will be evident that I believe Truth to be a process intimately bound up with human needs, wants and desires. For example, it cannot exist as an entity apart from a human mind. This is not to say that the universe would not follow its laws if no human mind existed to observe those laws: it simply means that without a human mind to observe and reflect there can be no existence for Truth. Truth is a human concept; an ongoing mental strategy which must reside in human minds. It is not an objective, pre-existing, transcendental thing which somehow floats above the world of reality, like one of Plato's forms. It is an abstract term for an essential of societal existence at the mental level of The Human. It involves accurate observation and careful examination, and is generated through an exact use of terms whose meanings are accepted and understood by all parties involved. Even granted all this, misunderstanding can easily arise if the recipient of a particular truth finds the particular truth unpalatable or is unable to grant the agenda carried in the particular statement which partakes of the process.
Indeed, truth becomes a complicated concept when we have to make judgements as to the accuracy of a particular statement, because truth only exists in a human context, and can only be expressed by human beings, who have motives, which other human beings tend to guess at. Where a communication deals solely with a physical reality, which can be confirmed empirically, many of these problems of motivation can be quickly eliminated. However, there are other kinds of claim (as said in the paragraph above, concerning politics), which are contingent, such as the statement "I will now raise my arm" which can be followed by my raising my arm, thus defining the statement as true, or by my not raising my arm, showing the statement to be a lie. Of course, if I fully intend to raise my arm, but you physically restrain me, this also complicates matters. Contingent truths like this are difficult to deal with, because they rely both upon human sincerity and the built-in uncertainty which is the process of reality. (I might be struck by lightning before I can raise my arm). The accuracy of such statements is undecided, unless we place them in the past. Strictly speaking, they are promises rather than truths.
The temporal nature of contingent truths is paradoxical, in that, when such a statement refers to the recent past, it becomes more reliable (if you just saw me raise my arm, for example) but the further into the past that the confirming action recedes, the more difficult confirmation becomes. The witnesses to the confirming action die off, and only their written statements and remembered words remain, which are judged according to the repute we accord the witness (and the number of witnesses whose statements concur). The human memory is known to be fallible, and the importance of the action (its historical context) also gains an influence on our judgement (for example, if the raising of my arm results in the death of someone by firing squad). Of course, with the advance of technology, we now have means of recording reality in ways not available to our ancestors, but we have also learnt that even the camera can lie.
Appearance And Reality [Top of the page]
This brings me to the matter of appearance and reality. Some philosophers have proposed that since all we can deal with is sense data, all we know about the world is uncertain. A division is proposed between sense data and matter. There is no sense data which can be fixed as the "real" thing observed (the thing in itself ). A changing point of view changes the shape of the thing and the colour of the thing (as the observer moves in relation to the object the light reflecting from it is differently ordered). The texture changes according to how near we are (unperceived imperfections appear great with magnification). Which of these appearances is the "real" object? The sensation of hardness doesn't change, but the sensation we obtain depends upon how hard we press and what part of the body we press with. Which of these appearances is the "real" hardness of the object? We cannot say that the object is the sense data.
In fact, we can push this to its logical conclusion, and ask how we know that there is a thing at all. Isn't the existence of a "real" thing, a thing prompting the sense data, simply inferred from our sensations? And if we assume that there is a "real" thing producing our sensations, what can we possibly know of it, seeing as we cannot "get behind" the sensations to investigate the nature of the thing in itself?
How can we talk of a correspondence with reality, if the only reality accessible to us comes through the fallible senses and has this uncertain nature? Well, the thing in question does not change randomly, but in line with the rules of geometry and perspective. When we experience reality, we are not at a loss, because reality has pattern, in spite of its unexpected turns. Our brains have an inbuilt appreciation for this pattern. It is the action of reality which has built in that respect, through the forces of evolution. Because we all share this innate appreciation, inter-subjectivity is possible, and this gives us knowledge regarding the objects of reality, as they relate to the human condition. The knowledge we gain is human knowledge, which is as certain a knowledge as is possible for human beings.
Of course, we can, like Descartes, posit a demon who sets out to fool us with appearances. But to posit this demon, it seems to me, we must make an assumption of the reality of the supernatural before the natural has been established. Indeed, to doubt the Natural one must posit the Supernatural. To make the world "appearance," one must make another "reality" which is never to be proved by the fallible senses. One must assume sense data (as a category) is untrustworthy (as regards the thing in itself) before one can assert an explanation for sense data being untrustworthy (as regards the thing in itself). But why should we make such an assumption, save as an exercise? It appears to offer complication and demand faith, in the place of simplicity and common sense. After all, it's the most natural thing in the world to assume that there is a world. It's not something we have to be taught. Our ability to deal with reality has been hardwired into the brain by evolution, all we need to do is move off into the world, interact with it, and we begin to deal with it and learn particulars from it. Evolution has shaped our brains and bodies through reality's power to kill selectively. The only reason to posit the supernatural is a thirst for pattern, for structure and purpose, when living within an socio-historical context which can provide only crude and limited means of investigation into the nature of reality. The technology of such a context can only produce vague and unsatisfactory answers when compared with the purposefulness of a fictional and aesthetically pleasing universe ruled by gods or spirits. Beside this technological consideration, of course, we must also remember that we all have a knowledge of the inevitability of death and a concomitant fear that death is the end of the individual we know and love the best.
I confess that I tend to agree with G E Moore (on this subject of philosophical doubt regarding "the thing in itself"). Moore maintained that it is a proof of the existence of physical objects external to the mind if one such object can be indicated. He claimed that he could prove that his two hands exist by simply gesturing with his right hand and saying "here is one hand" and then gesturing with the left hand and saying "here is another". I tend to agree, that all the words and arguments that philosophy can offer, appear less convincing than my experience of my hands. (This argument was presented in Moore's paper entitled Proof of an External World, which was read to the British Academy in 1939). Moore's contention is that the only proof to be offered to the doubter is Reality. To demand we go beyond this, is to demand proof beyond any evidence we can obtain. After all, how do we know that the senses are unreliable? Save through the senses?
In my opinion, knowledge of the thing in itself (the thing which lies behind and prompts the sense data which we perceive) may well vary according to the senses which are dealing with the data. Richard Dawkins provides an apt illustration of my meaning in his book The Blind Watchmaker, where he examines the bat. He points out that the primary sense for many bats is aural, and it is therefore reasonable to suppose that the bat could be experiencing a mental picture of the dark interior of its cave in much the same way as humans visualise the world using light. The bat builds up a picture of the world using sonar, we use sight. To say, because we do not primarily perceive the world using sound, as the bat does, that our knowledge of the world is uncertain, is to represent the meaning of Knowledge as being a complete and perfect knowledge of all things everywhere at every time, using all possible means of perception, human and non-human. If this sort of perfection is used as the standard, then, yes, all our knowledge of the world is uncertain. But if we accept the common sense view that the knowledge we acquire is human knowledge based upon human perception, then the knowledge we gain is true knowledge. We just have to admit that it is not as complete a knowledge as is theoretically possible. The senses which deal with the objects of perception impose limits to our knowledge. However, through the use of imagination, inter-subjectivity and the use of tools which extend our range of perception beyond the unaided senses, I think we can claim to be constantly striving to make our knowledge of the world more complete.
In fact, the whole problem of "the thing in itself", might wholly arise, it could be argued, from our use of logical fictions. The thing in itself is not an Absolute - not a fixed, unchanging, discrete "Event" - it is an ongoing process - a part of the ongoing process which is reality. Obviously, as we move about the object, its appearance changes: this is because there is no preferred absolute event with which we can match the object; because events are discrete, but the object is a process, a part of the continuum of reality. Events are logical fictions, while reality is real. Left to itself, any object would eventually break down and disappear. We observe the object as it endures through a time which we limit by our observation. We control its aspect through our position in time and space. Since we can move through time and space, we can change the observed object's aspect for our own frame of reference. What kind of reality would we inhabit if this were not so? It would have to be a frozen reality, without movement and without time or space.
Although the perception of the object is limited by the senses available to the perceiver, certain qualities in reality, at least, are common to all forms of perception. The simplest qualities of the object are shared in the perceptions of all living things, regardless of the life form. For example, an object which is solid will be solid and will have extension. It will also have limited endurance, and will be subject to change through time, either in the form of growth or decay (or the one followed by the other). Objects, therefore, according to a limited spatial and temporal frame of reference, have Presence, regardless of the perceptions of the perceiver.
I introduced this "Appearance and Reality" subject with a comment about the camera and its ability to lie - but it might be useful to remember that one thing the camera does not lie about is the continued existence of something apart from any perceiver (a camera can be set to capture images automatically). Such technology proves (at least, to my satisfaction) that some thing very like the thing we see with our eyes continues to exist apart from any perceiving mind, and can be recorded by a device which has no mind to influence or order the recorded impression. I bring this up, because some philosophers (following Berkeley) have gone so far as to say that things only have existence in the mind (as ideas) and therefore we cannot know if anything exists apart from such ideas, whilst there is no perceiver. No doubt they would counter the camera argument with the thought that the perceiver of the captured image does have a mind, and that the proposed proof here offered is therefore ruled out, but this appears to me to be absurd. Of course, an alternative is Bishop Berkeley's own suggestion that God continues to perceive, thereby keeping all creation in existence continuously. This appears to me to be one of the strongest philosophical arguments for the existence of God ever put forward.
Perception, then, is an interactive process; the senses and mental abilities available to the perceiver, as well as the object perceived (and its environmental context), must all be taken into account.
Taking the frame of reference from the human, I believe Truth is a real process with real results - namely, a human knowledge of the world. This human knowledge is as real a knowledge as we can know. It is as certain a knowledge as we can obtain, although we can continue to strive towards further clarification. To make the division between sense data and the thing producing the sense data can be a fruitful path for philosophers, but it is a logical fiction with limited application. Even philosophers proclaiming such beliefs, go about their normal everyday lives in accordance with the appearances they profess to distrust. At the end of every debate, they still go home to eat and sleep, just like the rest of the human race.
Mind And Body [Top of the page]
This long epistemological detour leads me finally to say a word regarding the mind/body question, which has troubled philosophers since Descartes. We have looked at appearance and reality, and how Truth is related to perception, but what is the nature of the thing which perceives? Is there a ghost in the machine? And if we say that there is, how do we account for the influence of a immaterial substance on a material one? How can insubstantial mind or spirit cause a solid to move?
It appears to me that Mind is an experiencing of the functioning of an organ of the body: the brain. The thing we call "Mind" is what it is to experience a functioning brain from the inside. It is still a mystery as to how the brain actually works - but why should we replace this potentially solvable natural mystery with a supernatural one? A supernatural explanation for the mind simply moves the mystery one step further back, covering a mystery with a mystery. This looks like a candidate for Occam's Razor.
It may be that we will never fully understand all the complexities and subtleties of the brain's operation: it may be that our best understanding of the mind will always remain our own personal experiencing of it from the inside; perhaps the "Why?" of consciousness is consciousness. The experience is an end in itself. However that may be, spirit or soul or ghosts all appear to be redundant concepts.
In other words, the crux of the mind/body problem (how does the incorporeal soul/mind/spirit, influence the corporeal body) does not exist, unless one posits a separation between the organic brain and that insubstantial thing which we conceive of as "I". I suggest this separation arises from our foreknowledge of death, and an understandable desire to continue to exist beyond that physical ending.
Perception is a complex concept, involving subtle mental processes - involving imagination and creativity - not to mention assumptions concerning pattern, coherence and consistency. It involves taking sensations and making something of them. My proposal then, is that these assumptions concerning reality are shaped by reality. Which means that our expectation of pattern is what we use to predict, define and classify, and not simply our senses. In fact, to claim that knowledge is built upon sensations is to put the cart before the horse. I believe we have an expectation of finding pattern in reality which is built into the very structures of the brain, and therefore we cannot help but look for pattern. This is not to say that our senses are not important in developing our perceptive powers and in confirming our expectations or falsifying them. For example, for many thousands of years we believed the way to have some control over reality, was through piety of one form or another. Until something better came along, we convinced ourselves that the propitiation of fickle gods was preferable to believing in nothing at all regarding the universe and its workings. Only a careful investigation of our sensations allowed a gradual move away from superstition and a belief in supernatural patterns, to methods which promoted real understanding and a knowledge which worked with the patterns of physical reality.
The innate capacity for appreciating pattern is made a capability through experience. I must make it plain that I am not suggesting that we have anything innate in the way of distinct "ideas": we do not have ideas of individual colours, for instance, but we do have the capacity for "Colour", not as an idea, but as a feature of reality with which we can deal (granting normal physical development). We also have a capacity for emotion, which prompts us with feelings of satisfaction or distress. Such capacities are reality-developed strategies for dealing with reality. Their application, I believe, has provided us with the ability to discern pattern. By "Pattern", I mean occurrences or objects which show some type of regularity. These innate, emotion-backed capacities have often been applied towards the development of sophisticated causal chains of events, but would probably first have been applied in a more practical fashion (to discover the prevailing direction of the wind from the slope of trees or the patterns made in dunes, or to predict the weather from certain cloud formations, for example). The same (though apparently more limited) capacities appear in other animals, although other members of the animal kingdom have evolved to rely more on other survival strategies - such as the capacity to deal with reality and control the body almost from the moment of birth, so as to avoid predators. We have the maternal and paternal instinct, and babies that cry and smile, expressing simple emotions which find an echo in us.
Our growth does not end when we exit the womb. Perhaps, just as the rest of the body changes, so does the brain's physical arrangement evolve, so that these capacities emerge. It may be that, just as a mature adult's arm is stronger than a baby's, so a fully grown individual has mental capacities which have developed as the brain has followed its own physical growth pattern. These mental capacities may not be in the brain from the very first moment of birth (after all, why should they follow our arbitrary definitions of events?), but they appear to inevitably grow in the normal course of human physical development. Some, like simple emotions, appear to be there from the first (as demonstrated by crying, for instance). Perhaps, just as the embryo, in its gene-controlled progress towards the human, goes through stages which resemble our animal ancestors, our growing body, through our infancy, develops the gene-activated capacities which have been handed down to us through evolution, and which appear as we progress. This is not to say that the capacity to appreciate pattern does not appear early on. It seems likely to me, that we begin to pick out patterns as soon as our eyes can focus and begin to express our knowledge of them as soon as we can talk.
The problem is, these capacities are of no more use than a spanner in a world where the nut has not been invented, if they do not receive stimulus, in the form of data. It is the transition from a capacity to a capability - the application of the capacity to the data of reality - which confuses the argument. Again, this confusion arises from our habit of applying logical fictions, which result in the creation of Events rather than processes.
A further complication is our use of language to speed up our acquisition of knowledge. This has set up an artificial evolution, as opposed to the evolution we find in nature. Our artificial evolution works over or alongside the evolution of nature, making it difficult to discriminate between the two.
However this may be, some capacity to deal with reality must be innate, or reality could not be dealt with.
One might say that reality fills our a priori mental structures as does a hand a glove. Before the hand, there is just an empty glove, but afterwards, there is a confirming reality which fills the mould. What I am talking about in my Proposed Solution To Induction article is the mental framework which promotes our certainty regarding coherence and repetition. I am attempting to pin down the source of this human certainty.
Conclusion [Top of the page]
My conclusion is that the brain has an innate preference for consistency, which has been built into us by evolution, evolution being the natural forces of the universe working on a particular sort of matter within the universe over a period of time (a long period in human terms). This appears to bring us to solid ground regarding rationality. Because the universe has logically discernible laws, we might claim that it has built into us the assumptions we express and employ through human mental and physical activity. This is where the feeling of satisfaction comes from when we establish logical consistency, and is what rationality is.
If the roots of everything in the way of intelligence lie in this predisposition to discover pattern, it can only be because the predisposition has developed through the workings of the blind forces of nature which result in evolution. If we accept this, then it gives an unshakeable pragmatic basis for the assumptions upon which all human knowledge rests. They are an expression of the nature of reality, because that's how they were built into the structures of the brain. Such a claim makes our intelligence a reflection of the nature of the universe.
This is why it is possible to apply the human truth process to an examination of reality, and thereby to discover a human truth concerning the nature of reality. In such a case, the communication involved is a logical fiction, in that there is no interlocutor. We mentally abstract from the context of reality that which is to be examined and analyse it into "Events" which can be compared and contrasted, fitted together or broken apart, in an effort to mentally justify the sought for patterns which signify the discovery of a truth. The focus we bring can broaden or narrow, according to the demands of the analysis. We may begin with a sweeping generalisation, which is broken down into smaller and smaller elements, until the factual atoms are all that remain - or we may approach from the opposite direction, beginning with the smallest details and building up a whole. In a way, we are interrogating the universe through this process - yet even interrogation can be seen as a form of communication. In a sense, it could be claimed that we are reality's way of discovering itself.
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