Can We Know Truth? (Reasons for Christianity Part 2/4)

Hey, I'm Doug Beaumont. Welcome to the channel. Today, we are going to talk about the nature of truth. The word truth appears 146 times in the Bible, but is never defined, so it is really up to philosophy to tell us what truth means. And I don't think there's been a better definition of truth than that given by Aristotle, who said, to say of what is that it is not, or of what is not that it is, is false. While to say of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not, is true. Now, there's a couple things to notice here. First of all, realize that the way truth is being defined by Aristotle here is pretty much the way all people understand it, unless they've taken some philosophy classes or been confused by some people that haven't. This view of truth as the correspondence between a statement and reality is actually undeniable, because if someone tries to assert any other view of truth, then what they're actually saying is, no, the reality of the situation is that truth is defined differently, which then means you need the correspondence view of truth in order to deny it, which makes it undeniable. The correspondence view of truth is at the basis of thinking, the basis of logic. It's simply something that cannot be denied, and any attempt to do so will defeat itself. The corollary to truth is the idea that we can't have something be true and false at the same time. This is known as the law of non-contradiction. The Muslim philosopher Avicenna said, anyone who denies the law of non-contradiction should be beaten and burned until he admits that to be beaten is not the same as to not be beaten, and to be burned is not the same as not to be burned. Now, we don't necessarily need to take it quite that far, but the point is, in reality, nobody denies the principle of non-contradiction. Nobody really actually thinks truth is anything other than correspondence, and the reason is that these things are actually self-evident. They are basic fundamental rules of thought. They simply can't be denied without that denial exploding in on itself. However, to see truth as correspondence means a couple of things that many people today are not very comfortable with. For one thing, it means that we must know reality, because if the only way to tell if a statement is true or false is to compare it to reality, well, then we must know reality in order to be able to do that. And, let's face it, there are just a lot of people that don't like reality. It would be very convenient for these people if reality was something unknowable, or something that could change depending on perspective, and if that was the case, then truth would go along with it. We see this in the ways that some people try to deny the correspondence view of truth. For example, somebody might say, well, all truth is relative. Depending on who is speaking, the truth can change. So, for example, take the statement, a giraffe is tall. Is that true or false? Well, it's true when compared to something like a thimble. However, it is not true when compared to something like a skyscraper. So, truth must be relative, right? Not so fast. You see, just because there are relative statements doesn't mean that the truth of those statements is relative. Typically, what happens in any of these examples is that we're simply not given all of the context of a certain statement. When I say giraffes are tall, the pretty obvious implication is that I am comparing giraffes, which are animals, to other animals, in which case the statement would be true. However, if I really was comparing giraffes to skyscrapers, then the truth of the statement would change. But notice that it's not the statement's truth value that's changing. There are different statements. One is saying that the giraffe is tall compared to other animals, but that is not the same statement as the giraffe is tall compared to a skyscraper. Those are really three different propositions that are being masqueraded as a single proposition simply by leaving out the context. Tall is a relative term by nature, and so when it's used in a statement, the statement becomes a relative statement. But once we know what the relation is, we can compare it to reality and determine whether it is true or false. And we are right back to Other people will say that truth is subjective, that depending on the speaker, statements may be true or false, and so it's really the speaker that makes them true or false. So, for example, if I say ice cream is delicious, somebody else might say ice cream is not delicious. And if we're both right, then does that mean that we are making up our own truths? Once again, no. What's happening once again is just a case of linguistic imprecision. You see, deliciousness is a subjective term because it is dependent upon the subject for whether or not it is true, and that makes certain statements subjective statements. But again, their truth value is not subjective. If it is true that I find ice cream delicious and I say ice cream is delicious, even though grammatically it sounds like the subject is ice cream, really the subject is me, because I'm not telling you something objective about ice cream. I'm telling you something subjective about me, the subject, not the object. Therefore, when another subject comes along who doesn't like ice cream, if they were to say the same subjective statement that I did, then the truth value would be false. Not because we are creating reality or creating truths, but simply because of the fact that that's how subjective statements work. Subjective statements tell you about the speaker, not about the object. So, there are relative terms and statements. There are subjective terms and statements, but that doesn't make the truth of those statements relative or subjective. Once the truth value is determined, it is true or false for all people on Earth at all times and places. Perhaps the most important thing about truth being correspondence with a statement and reality is that we actually must know reality. Now again, this is where things get a little sticky, because there are a lot of people that don't really like reality, and they would rather be able to make up their own. A parable is told of several blind men coming upon an elephant in the jungle. One of them touches the elephant on the side and says, we have before us a wall. Another touches its big ear and says, this is a fan. Another touches the tusk and thinks it's a spear. The tail thinks it's a rope. Another touches the legs and thinks that it's a tree. Now, the point of this parable is that all of us are just getting our own experience of reality, and none of us have the entire truth. But the problem with this parable is that it actually teaches the exact opposite, because the parable wouldn't make any sense if we didn't know the reality of the situation. Namely, that these people were touching an elephant. You end up being the one who knows reality, and nobody else does. But aren't there some examples where we don't know reality? Sometimes it's difficult to tell a dream from reality. How do we know we're not dreaming right now? Or what about hallucinations or optical illusions? We've probably all seen the trick where you put a pencil in a glass of water and it appears to be broken. You take it back out and it's fixed. Aren't these examples of us not knowing reality? Well, once again, we run into a problem of self-reference. You see, every time someone gives an example of when we didn't know reality, that example wouldn't even have been recognized if we didn't know reality. The reason we know that sometimes dreams are difficult to tell from reality is because we can tell the difference between dreams and reality. The reason we know that the pencil in the water is an optical illusion is because we know the reality of the situation—that pencils don't actually break in water, they only appear to. The very idea that we don't know reality comes with a self-referentially incoherent problem. Every statement is a truth statement. Every statement is said to correspond to reality. So if I say we don't know reality, I'm saying the reality of the situation is that we don't know reality. If someone says there is no truth, they're saying that the truth of reality is that there is no truth. If people say all truth is relative, or all truth is subjective, is that a relative or subjective truth? Because if it is, I don't need to believe it, and if it isn't, then it's false. The law of non-contradiction really cannot be defeated. Every attempt is going to defeat itself. Now, this doesn't mean that we aren't sometimes wrong about reality, and it is possible to know that we don't know something. For example, you folks out there watching this video may not know what my favorite color is, and you know that you don't know that. But it's not simply that you can't tell real from unreal. It's that there are certain things we just don't know. But that is not the same as saying that we can't know truth or falsehood. Just because there are some things we don't know doesn't mean that it applies to everything. In fact, it can't. The importance of this discussion is that if it is the case that truth is the correspondence of a statement with reality, and that because that definition cannot ultimately be changed, then it must be the case that we have access to reality and we know it. If every argument against the nature of truth or our knowledge of reality requires that definition of truth and our knowledge of reality to work, then those things must be undeniable. And this forms an important step in our consideration of faith. Because if there is any kind of religion that says that we are living in an illusion, or that we don't know reality, or that truth is relative or subjective, we can automatically take it off the table and say, no, that is self-defeating. I don't really need to know what else you teach because you've started off on a contradiction that can't be true. Further, it means that because we have access to reality and we can know the truth, we can take evidence from reality to get us to the next step, which is whether or not God exists. And that's what we'll be looking at in our next video. All right, I hope this video has been instructive. If it has, why don't you give it a like. 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