As humans, we seek to uncover the meaning to everything in the universe, and this is the kind of motivation that has lead us to make discoveries such as cures or vaccines. When asked if a particular vaccine prevents small pox for example, a doctor who has done the research and has factual truth would respond with yes, it’s true, it does prevent it. This reflects on the definition that we have for ‘truth’, the Cambridge dictionary dictates that truth is fact based, it’s the contrary to false or wrong and it’s also not imaginary but real and actual. However we have created a massive problem around the word ‘truth’, making what we can fit into this category, just as abstract as the noun.
We consider something to be true if it’s believed by someone, and if it’s believed by someone, then the explanation given must have been good. The Cambridge dictionary defines ‘good’ as “of a kind that is pleasing or enjoyable, or of high quality”, the problem evolves with the different options that exists. From the simpleness of the quality of a dish, to the explanation behind the universe. People have different views, they find varying and opposing meanings, and in our society, we have created a space where they are all considered to be true, because we have taken the ‘universal’ sense out of the meaning of truth, and substituted it for ‘personal’.
Which begs the question does the ‘truth’ really exist, or is it just an abstract term we have created to help us achieve a better understanding but which no longer holds any “real” or “actual” value.
We can clearly see this in the different religious belief systems taking the example of the hug question, How was the universe created?. If read, all the explanations can be characterised as “good”, as they all have followers, which vary in sizes but nevertheless, the meaning used to convey the start of the universe has been mapped. But not all can be true, because it only happened once therefore only one of them if any can hold the actual definition of “truth”. But as the right of free speech was developed, none of as has the power to state that one’s truth is the solid answer. We have christianity arguing that the bible holds the real explanation, similarly Islam, saying that the universe was created by their own God Allah. To the other end of the spectrum, we have Hinduism who doesn’t even believe in a start, but rather describes it as a cycle. There is also science, arguing with the winning theory of the Big Bang. Therefore we have to look at the ways in which something can be considered ‘true’.
In a world full of truth-claims, how can we determine which one holds any value. All the explanations have pleasing reasons behind them, so we usually chose the one that makes us the most comfortable, which majorly comes from custom, the one we find the most pragmatic, and we chose to believe in it therefore making it true to us and those with the same beliefs. The big problem with good explanations in religion, is that essentially they never become false or can be proven wrong. For the sciences, the truth is based on cold hard evidence, with no feelings or emotions attached to it. We use to believe the earth was flat, but then we discovered it wasn’t and changed our beliefs, we use to believe we knew the way blood pumped through our system, and then we realised it wasn’t true.
In the sciences, all ‘truths’ are tentative, is based on facts and figures which can always be overturned, new evidence comes out everyday dismantling an old theory, creating a new one. Imagination is used to create new theories and new ways of looking at a problem, it acknowledges that the explanation ,might be false, assumptions are made, imaginary models are created to explain it. However this doesn’t take away how ‘good’ the explanation is. On the other hand, in religion one must follow blindly and without reason. A priest can explain the creation of the universe, or the afterlife via the bible, and all those who believe will make that their truth, because they agree with it and they believe the bible shows facts and real events which they use to justify their beliefs. However they can never be proven wrong, simply because we cannot test historical proof, there is no way for us to travel back in time to see it happening, there is no way for us to recreate what God presumably did or didn’t do, because following their teachings, he is superior to us and we can never aspire to be like that. In science an experiment and its results to be true, their method has to be available to recreate.
Therefore we can take two points of view when looking at religion and truth. On one side we have to believe, therefore consider that one of the explanation is true and use it to find a meaning to life and everything around us and as a result believing everything else is false and considering it a bad explanation as it doesn’t satisfy us. This is for example if we believe in the bible and think it should be the universal truth for everyone. On the other hand, we can accept all the explanations as good, and be able to step back and look at it objectively considering that all the explanations cannot be true, but are rather opinions which seem to please some people. This relates to the commonly used phrase “Beauty lies in the eye of the beholder”, what we believe to be beautiful and therefore true, is an opinion.
With Literature we can see a similar pattern, we cannot prove that something happened, and some pieces are essentially just fiction, however we still consider them great works of writing which qualify them for good explanations.
Take the famous novel by Jonathan Swift, ‘Gulliver’s travels’. Throughout the novel Swift is able to explain to us the different lands Gulliver discovers, is able to entertain and engage us, making us use our imagination and even reason to justify why this could be true, if we are able to accept that not everything has been discovered. Nevertheless, the people the main character encounters, however well written the novel is, they are still not true, they are not real outside of the novel, but isn’t it still a good explanation?
Shakespeare with Winter’s Tale, describes Bohemia to have a seacoast, however in reality the town has none. Therefore to a geographer this has no truth, but it still holds value as an explanation of the surroundings and environments in the novel.
Art can also provoke contrasting emotions in people which causes us to interpret it in a different way. This is seen in abstract art, as the viewer is not told what they are looking at, but rather left with an ambiguous title that could mean anything. This can be called non-objective art, as it holds no universal meaning, or at least the artist’s message is not specified. This therefore creates various possible truths, which develop from your background and society as they all have an important influence in how you think. The only real ‘truth’, or the explanation that would be considered the best ‘truth’, would be the one given by the artist himself, but if there is none, then all explanations may be good although not necessarily true.
However, we could say that explanations could be true but bad nevertheless, for example a maths teacher might explain the stages of solving a problem, and they are true because they give you the right answer, however the explanation could have been terrible and you wouldn’t have understood a single part of it. We all have different values, different ways of learning, we prioritise things differently and our basic obdurate animal instinct, is to put our selves at the top, therefore we believe what we desire to, what seems the most convenient at that point. We must take into account, that the ‘truth’ sometimes doesn’t exist, and it cannot be used to describe a sentence simply because of its subjectivity and low reliability. As well as the adjective ‘good’ itself doesn’t hold much value, again because of how biased it is.
Overall, it’s difficult to draw a conclusion for the question, as our understanding and sue of the word ‘true’, has become to vague and has gotten lost within different concepts. However, if we take the word ‘true’ out of the equation for a moment, and we look at what we consider a good explanation, which is objective, we would consider if it’s believable, if it correlates with our own knowledge and if it’s pragmatic to us. Depending on our answers, we would then believe or not, if we do chose to believe it, then we would say it’s a good explanation and therefore as we believe in it, it would be ‘true’ to us.
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