Sources of Truth

We often ask for 'the truth'. We demand that someone should 'tell us the truth'. It is considered very bad form for a politician to be found out in a lie. In theory it is bad form for a politician to actually lie to his electorate (assuming some form of 'democratic' government) but in practice the fall from grace accompanies being caught, not committing the act. Equally, the crowds rarely accuse a politician of falsehood when that politician is telling people how wonderful they are. Can you picture the scene: the candidate stands up and roars to the crowd what wonderful people they are, and there is an echo of boos and cat-call as members of the audience make public the sins that have been belabouring their individual consciences. We are selective about when we want 'the truth' and selective about what we accept as 'the truth'. Sometimes the 'truth' is simply what we want to hear.

We allow ourselves a multitude of loopholes through which subtle distinctions of truth can be distinguished (or invented) by reference to its sub-species: scientific truth, artistic truth, legalistic truth, religious truth and personal truth. So, is there an underlying entity, 'truth', which all these notions are related to, and to which any concept must pay homage in order for it to be granted the honour of joining the family of 'truth'? An equally intriguing question is the degree to which a writer must be 'true', and what sense of truth is invoked in that quest.
Whilst naive notions of truth are good touchstones to which one must return to test out deliberations on the notion of truth they can't really cope with the subtleties with which we infuse the concept. The idea of 'truth' as being 'in agreement with reality' or 'according to the facts of the case' requires a lot of unpacking to be generally useful. Suppose you read a work of fiction, and it explicitly states that the events and characters contained therein are not based on real events, and that any similarity is co-incidental. Does that give the author complete freedom to write anything? In a sense the answer is 'yes': an author can always write whatever he wants - and then simply accept the consequences (which given the time and place can range from praise and acceptance, through ridicule, to imprisonment, torture and death). If the author writes to make a living or convey a message then there has to be a certain sense of truth to the work even though all that it contains came entirely from the imaginative mind of the author. Even if what the author is trying to do involves pushing the boundaries of the medium in some way, it must be in such a way that the work communicates with an audience. In that sense there must be a basis of shared truth. If it is so opaque that no reader (outside of the author) can access the meaning, emotions or dynamic then some basic 'truth' has been lost.
Suppose, in contrast, another writer creates a work of fiction avoiding all recognisable characters and events, but it is an allegory or modern myth. In that case, if it is well-crafted, then many readers would see a profound element of truth in the writing which relied neither on reference to 'reality' nor on any particular report of a viewpoint. One could say that what was being described was 'reality' in some deeper sense, but it would be the sort of truth which would confuse and confound the literal minded. It would not be the sort of 'truth' to please an empirical scientist or a practitioner of jurisprudence.

Although it would not be truth of an empirical scientist, perhaps it would be similar to the truth of theoretician. In mathematics there is a powerful notion: the isomorphism. Literally the word means 'equal form'. If two mathematical structures can be put into a certain relationship to each other (I am deliberately avoiding going into the details) then one can say that even though the two structures have differently named components and operations, they behave as the same entity. In slightly more poetic language it is as though the one was a metaphor for the other - a metaphor so close and so evocative, that it completely captures the behaviour of the other.

What makes the notion of 'truth' as a record of 'reality' so very difficult is that all we ever have is any number of parallel and competing records purporting to be of 'reality', but no communicable access to the reality itself. (Religious truth does allow for direct access to reality, but by the very fact of accepting that such access is only available in certain states of religious ecstasy one rule out the possibility of the experience being communicated through language). This puts the terrible onus on the reader, on each of us, to take responsibility for judging what is true and what misleading.

If we were asked to judge a book on car-maintenance then the final test of the usefulness of the book would be whether it allowed a mechanic with the appropriate basic skills to complete a particular job of work on a car. We would be happy to use the 'proof of the pudding is in the eating' rule: a car maintenance manual that does not enable you to maintain a car simply isn't a maintenance manual. In a fairly basic sense, it is not true. Would there be anybody inclined to blame the car? Even if the car did not conform to the pictures, diagrams and text of the manual, the frustrated would-be mechanic would blame the manual. The mechanic's concern is to get the car working and the manual is just a (potential) help in doing that - if its not helping then you don't look for a car to fit the manual. In this circumstance we have a simple intuitive grasp of what is 'real'. The reputation and authority of the author of the manual might have induced you to buy it in the first place, but that authority would not induce you to accept as true what the evidence of your own senses was telling you was wrong.

In many other situations, paradoxically, we take the 'manual's' version of reality over the evidence of our own senses. We can be overawed by the power of rhetoric, authority or reputation and then convince ourselves that the evidence of our own senses is wrong. This is not the same as accepting that we are misinterpreting a situation. Because of the impenetrability of 'reality' we never (with the exception mentioned above) have direct access to reality. All we perceive is twisted and manipulated by the content of our mind (and mostly unconsciously at that). By the process of reprogramming our unconscious mind, or over-riding by conscious control, we see old things in new ways. However when we simply accept the content of the manual, even though we cannot see how to apply it to our experience, then we are denying what we intuit to be truth in favour of what a source of authority of some kind is telling us. There is all the difference in the world between accepting that we see is probably illusion, and denying that we see it at all.

What we are faced with are alternative versions of reality. We are faced with these in everything from day-to-day experiences, to political accounts of events, to religious truths, through to theoretical accounts of the nature of the universe. It's not even as though we maintained perfect internal consistency within the private sanctuary of our own mind. It is perfectly possible to believe two mutually incompatible things at the same time and to feel no discomfort thereby, until circumstances force us to square the circle of their incongruence. This thrusting of truths to the surface can cause great pain, if the incompatible truths held are of the nature of: 'my father loves me', 'my father abused me'. Even on such an emotionally raw canvas the nature of the human mind is capable of holding truths which cannot co-exist in consciousness.

Yet knowing all this, we - most of us, for most of the time - also hold the view that there is 'the truth' which can be stated. If the nature of that view was that the 'truth' we sought was like a scientific hypothesis or model, then there would be no problem, and it could be discarded like a worn out socks when the holes became intolerable. Sadly we don't. We hold on to 'truth' and our view of 'truth' with considerable emotional investment. The truth is not something held on to outside of ourselves, but is a part of our being. This use of the word 'hold' is probably stretching its meaning beyond snapping point. 'We' cannot be said to 'hold' truths in any way similar to holding a hammer, a spoon, or a ball. That which we cling to as 'self' is woven on the truths that inhabit us.

When we look for the truth we look for ourselves. In seeking the truth in writing we seek ourselves whether it be as reader, writer or critic. The source of truth is in our power to seek it.