Four Types of Truth
In 1995, The UN established a committee to discover the underlying reasons behind events that occurred in Bosnia and South African apartheid. The committee became known as the TRC or Truth and Reconciliation Committee.Amidst their voluminous 1999-2000 report was a new categorization and/or redefinition of “truth”. They presented four types of truth as:
1. Forensic Truth - What happened to whom, where, when, and how, and who
____was involved. Basically the TRC tried to define this truth along the lines of
____the United States justice phraseology of “the truth, the whole truth, and
____nothing but the truth.” But a certain leniency was applied to this definition
____because of the elusive nature of a truth not confined to the “strictures of
____science”
2. Personal or Narrative Truth - This is truth of personal recollection and
____memory. In the words of the TRC, “Memories of pain, however flawed with
____forgetting, indelibly scar the victims of unjust suffering inflicted by agents of
____the state...””Personal stories are not the whole of truth, but they are integral
____to the truth that leads to new justice.”
3. Social Truth - TRC jurist Albie Sachs defines this as “The truth of experience
____that is established through interaction, discussion and debate. Another
____member of the committee, Alex Boraine states, “the process of dialogue
____(among South African apartheid victims) involved transparency, democracy,
____and the participation as the basis of affirming human dignity and integrity”.
____Simply put when a number of stories of a given society are told publicly,
____together they form a “social” truth, or more aptly put, a “societal” truth.
4. Reconciliatory or “Healing” Truth - Also called “Public Truth” is the
____exposing of the past events in order to raise a public awareness of atrocity
____and to elicit a “never again” position toward such atrocity resulting in a
____“healed” or “reconciled” society.
Alex Boraine, in his book “A Country Unmasked: Inside South Africa’s Truth and
____Reconciliation Commission”, further expounds on the “truth” findings of this
____commission. Much of this is re-digested in an article by the blogger Andrew
____Bernardin in a blog entry entitled “Four Types”
____1. Personal Truth - This is rehashed “subjective truth” that has been made
________popular by “Dr. Phil” the daytime talk show psychologist.
____2. Social Truth - Similar if not identical to the TRC version of “social truth”
________llisted above
____3. Human Truth - An odd categorization or “type” of truth, but is defined by
________Bernardin as pertaining to the universal dispositions and abilities of the
________Homo Sapien species. He lists sexual preferences and dominance
________hierarchies (i.e. the belief in a Deity)as indicators of truth relative to the
________human race.
____4. Universal Truth - Mostly akin to “forensic truth” listed by the TRC above.
________It is basically the retreat of those that once adhered to the idea that
________“all truth is relative”. The relativists realized that their very statement of
________truth was itself “absolute” and therefore, was self-defeating as “relative”
________or “subjective” and therefore, unnecessary for anyone to accept.
The following two points basically summarize the entire TRC redefinition of truth:
________Point One: Only certain truths are objective and/or absolute but they,
________the authors, are the ones who will define which truths are subjective
________or objective and absolute or relative, and not the reader.
________The second point these “four truths” make is that MOST “truth” is
________relative and therefore, only applies to an individual, society, or a species.
To get to the bottom of “truth”, Dr. Kenneth Hochstetter has kindly contributed an article that explains the basic building blocks of truth that will enable the reader to understand how to approach the topic of truth, and more importantly, how to engage in the exciting pursuit of truth in itself.
What is truth?
by Dr. Kenneth Hochstetter, Contributing AuthorTo this general and somewhat obscure question, one often receives a variety of quite obscure answers. Such answers include, “Truth is Love,” “Truth is relative,” “Truth is in the eyes of the beholder,” “God is truth,” Science is truth,” “There is no truth.”
What should we make of these answers, or even the original question itself? One doesn’t know quite what to say. Perhaps the reason why we get such a diverse and obscure set of answers is that the original question is itself too general and obscure. Let’s make it more precise.
What is it for a claim to be true? That is, what makes a claim true? Before considering possible answers, let’s make sure we are clear about what is being asked. Towards this end, let’s back up a bit. We use sentences (spoken or written) to make claims. However, we also use sentences for other expressions.
We use sentences to:
____(i) Make a claim (e.g., the Earth revolves around the sun)
____(ii) Ask a question (e.g., What time is it?)
____(iii) Give a command (e.g., Close the door!)
____(iv) utter an exclamation (e.g., yippy!)
____(v) to greet or say goodbye to someone (e.g., hello).
The first step towards clarifying our question, then, is to make sure it is clear that we are discussing only sentences that make claims, not the others. One big difference between sentences that make claims and the others is that only a sentence making a claim can be true or false. The others cannot.
To see this more clearly, note how the following sentences do not make grammatical sense:
____1. It is true that what time is it?
____2. It is true that close the door!
____3. It is true that yippy!
____4. It is true that hello.
The reason is that questions, commands, exclamations and greetings have no truth-value. They are neither true nor false. Truth and falsehood simply do not apply. On the other hand, claims do have truth-value; i.e., they are either true or false. Consider, for example, that the following makes perfect sense.
____5. It is true that the Earth revolves around the sun.
Also, notice that beliefs are very much like claims. While beliefs are “in” one’s mind and claims are not, they have similarities which are important for our purposes. First, they are both about something. My claim that
____6. Utah is in the United States is about the location of Utah. Likewise my belief that
____7. Iran is a threat to its neighbors is about Iran’s relationship to its neighboring countries.
Not only are both claims and beliefs about something, each “expresses” that something is the case. Notice that (6) expresses that Utah has a certain location, and that (7) “expresses” (perhaps ‘holds’ would be a better way to put it here) that Iran stands in a certain negative relationship to its neighbors. Given these similarity between claims and beliefs, we can say that beliefs, just like claims, are either true or false.
Ok, now that we have clarified, let’s consider some possible answers to our question. Here again is our question: What makes a claim (belief) true?
As a first attempt to answer this question, someone may offer this:
____8. What makes a claim (belief) true is that most people believe it.
This answer might initially seem to have a lot going for it. After all, how could a majority of us be wrong. The evidence, however, tells us that this is not right. There are countless cases in which a majority of people believed something, but were mistaken. Here is just one example. Prior to Galileo nearly everyone believed that the Earth was the center of the solar system, and that the sun, moon, planets, and stars revolved around the Earth. So, 1,500 years ago nearly everyone (if not everyone) believed and claimed that
____9. The Earth is the center of the solar system.
However, we now have very good evidence that they were wrong. That is, we now know that (9) is false. So, the mere fact that a majority of people claim or believe something cannot be what makes it true. Ok, perhaps what makes something true is that there is evidence for it. So, perhaps the following is the right answer:
____10. What makes a claim (belief) a true is that we have evidence for it.
This is certainly better than (8). After all, having evidence of something is how we know, at least in part, that something is true. While this is a good attempt, unfortunately it won’t due either. The reason is that we often have evidence for a false claim. Here is an example. Suppose that Sam commits a crime – he murders his neighbor Fred. However, suppose that Sam is very crafty. He has carefully studied the work of crime scene investigation and has learned how to cover his tracks and make it look like someone else did it. So, he does just this. Sam leaves evidence that his other neighbor Jim murdered Fred. So, when the detectives and crime scene investigators show up, and gather all the evidence, they conclude that it was Jim who murdered Fred, because the evidence supports that. That is, they have evidence, let’s even suppose good evidence, for
____11. Jim murdered Fred.
In spite of the evidence, we know that (11) is false. While the above story was fictional, we know that there are actual cases where this occurs. We also know that it happens in the sciences. Consider (9) again:
________9. The Earth is the center of the solar system.
Not only did most (all) believe
this at one time, but astronomers had good evidence that it
was true. This is one reason why it was hard for Copernicus
and Galileo to get scientists to accept that it was false.
Ok, perhaps what makes a claim true is that it is
impossible to prove it false. So, we have
____12.
What makes a claim (belief) true is that it is impossible
to prove it false.
While it is true that if it is impossible to prove a claim
false then it is probably true, this seems too strong.
After all, there are some claims, which while they are in
fact true, they could have been false, and had they been
false then we would be able to prove them false. For
example, it is actually true that Barack Obama was elected
to be the 44th president of the United States. However, it
is possible that he wasn’t. American voters could have
given a majority vote to John McCain instead. Had they done
so, then Obama would not have been elected to be the 44th
president of the United States. So, while
____13.
Barack Obama was elected to be the 44th president of the
United States.
is actually true, it could have been false. And, had it
been false, then surely we would have been able to prove it
to be false. So, since (13) is possibly false, and is such
that had it been false we would be able to prove it to be
false, it follows that it is possible to prove (13) false,
even though it is actually true. Therefore, (12) above is
too strong. Someone may be led to conclude from all of this
that there isn’t anything that makes a claim (belief) true.
They may think that either there is no such thing as a true
claim, or that while there are true claims, there is
nothing that makes them true. The first suggestion, that
____14.
There is no such thing as a true claim,
won’t work. The reason is that (14) itself is a claim.
Thus, if what it says is true, then (14) cannot be true.
That is, (14) is true only if it is false. This is clearly
incoherent. So, we don’t want to go to the extreme of
saying that there are no true claims or beliefs. But, the
suggestion that there are true claims, but nothing that
makes them true seems too strong as well. Surely what makes
“Utah is in the United States” true is that Utah really is
in the United States. The last point leads us to what we
take to be the answer to our question. We propose that what
makes
____15.
Utah is in the United States.
true are the conditions of the world – namely the state of
affairs of Utah actually being located in the United
States. We can generalize from here. We propose the
following generalization.
____16.
What makes a claim (or belief) C is true is that C
corresponds with the actual world.
This theory did not originate with us. It goes back at
least to the ancient Greek philosophers. It is known as the
Correspondence Theory of Truth (or CTT for short).
There are a few important points that must be mentioned
about CTT. First, it truly is general. It covers claims or
beliefs about anything. For example, we make claims and
have beliefs about the concrete physical world. E.g., we
believe and claim that
____17.
Water is composed of H2O.
People also make claims and have beliefs about the concrete
non-physical world. E.g., many believe and claim that
____18.
God (of Christianity) exists.
And, we make claims and have beliefs about countless other
matters. Here are just a few more. We claim and believe
that ‘2 + 2 = 4’, that ‘murder is wrong’, that ‘Santa Claus
is jolly’, etc. CTT covers all of these. In each case, what
makes the claim or belief true is the condition of the
world. If the world contains the corresponding appropriate
states of affairs, then the claim is true. It is false
otherwise.
As a last point, it is worth elaborating on what we mean by
‘actual world’. First, by ‘actual world’ we do not mean
‘Earth’. Unless Earth and its inhabitants is all that
exists, the actual world includes far more than Earth.
Second, ‘world’ does not refer to our collective beliefs.
While our beliefs are members of the world, the world
includes far more than our beliefs, unless all that exists
is our beliefs. Instead by ‘actual world’ we mean the sum
total of all the states of affairs that exist. And, it may
well be the case that the actual world contains a variety
of different types of facts. That is, there could very well
be concrete and/or abstract states of affairs, as well as
physical and/or non-physical states of affairs.
Of course one may ask:
____19.
Who’s to decide which states of affairs exist (i.e., what
states of affairs does the world contain)?
If (19) is intended to be taken literally, then the answer
varies. For some states of affairs, no one decides that
they exist – they just do (e.g., that 2+2=4). For others,
perhaps God created them. Still for others, some human
created them. However, perhaps the question really means:
____20.
How do we know which states of affairs the world contains?
The answer to this is difficult to give. Fortunately we do
not have to answer it in order to say what it is for a
claim or belief to be true. But, we can say that, like
states of affairs, which states of affairs are members of
the actual world is, for the most part, independent of what
we think or believe or claim. Though, of course, one’s
belief itself is dependent upon one believing it. So, of
course, mental states of affairs are dependent upon each
individual that has them for their existence. But, states
of affairs that are not mental do not depend for their
existence upon what anyone thinks, believes, or claims.
In sum, the actual world contains all the objects
and states of affairs that exist. A claim is true only if
it corresponds to the actual world. This makes truth
objective and discoverable. It makes science, philosophy,
and religion worthy investigations.
