An Essay On Truth

(A note to the reader: This entry is completely unrelated to the rest of the blog. Or rather, unrelated in presentation, but related in the sense that it's something that came from my brain while on my trip. And, because my trip is likely never to truly end, anything I write can, and probably will, end up on this site.)

Defining Truth

Truth, as it is defined, is a characteristic that can be used to describe statements about reality that correspond with reality.

Reality can be interpreted as two things:

1. Physical reality, what we can see and touch

2. The reality of things. The way things are. Everything that exists, both tangible and intangible

Anything that agrees with either definition of reality, or fits inside of it, is true. The statement “the moon is made out of cheese” does not correspond to reality, based on what we know about the chemical makeup of the moon, and therefore it is not true.

The statement “The sky is blue” corresponds with reality in the sense that when I look up at the sky it matches a previously agreed upon definition of what blue means, so it is true.

Some statements are easy to come to a conclusion on.

• “A blanket will make me warm” is something I know to be true.

• “A rock will fall from my hand if I let it go” is something I know to be true.

• “Sleeping will make me less tired” is something I know to be true.

These are things I was told were true, and found to be true through personal experience.

But some statements are more difficult to come to a conclusion on.

• “Dragons aren’t real” is something I think is true, but only because I’ve never seen a dragon.

• “The universe is 13.8 billion years old” is something I think is true, but only because of measurements that someone else has made.

• “A sea turtle can live to be over 100 years old” is something I think is true, but only because someone told me that.

These are things I was told were true, but am not able to find to be true through personal experience.

How To Know What Is True

So how do you know for sure that something is true?

The only way to know something is true, or have what I call “true knowledge”, is to have knowledge that you know two ways.

Knowledge that you have:

1. Been told corresponds to reality, or is true

2. Confirmed through personal experience to correspond to reality, or to be true

Now for #2, there are some things that you cannot experience firsthand, or experience with one of your five senses. The statement “drinking water will make you feel better” is a statement that people will tell you corresponds to reality, and you can experience it firsthand by drinking water and feeling better. But “all the angles of a triangle will always add up to 180 degrees” is not something you cannot confirm with only your five senses.

However, by “confirmed through personal experience” I am also referring to calculations you can do inside your brain. Calculations, experimentations, and logical deductions can all count as personal experience. I can calculate the angles of a triangle, and add them up to get 180 degrees. Then I can experiment with other triangles and reach the same conclusion. Then I can make a logical deduction that if every triangle I tested confirmed the statement, the statement must be true.

If you are right, then your statement will correspond with reality. Your statement and reality will agree. If you are wrong, by contrast, your statement will not correspond with reality. Your statement and reality will disagree. Statements that are wrong eventually run into reality, and fall flat.

Notice that to know something as true knowledge requires more than just your own mind. Of course I am assuming that the mind is capable of knowing something to be true, but this is why the redundancy of true knowledge is important. If a commonly understood statement is true, and you can confirm it to be true personally, or vice versa, then it can be understood as true knowledge.

The Importance Of Truth

But why is truth important?

For some, it is not. There are people who would rather not know anything for certain.

However, the majority of people like to know things for certain. I would guess that everyone, whether they say so or not, likes to know things for certain.

After all, what you believe to be true has huge implications for how you navigate life. Because whatever corresponds to reality is true, then what you believe is true determines what reality is. To define your own truth is to define your own reality.

The trick is that only one thing can be true. Reality can only exist in one way at one time. And if truth is anything that corresponds to reality, then truth can only be interpreted one way.

There is only one way that gas exchange happens inside the human body. To say that there are two ways would not be true because it doesn’t correspond to reality. To say there is only one way, that is different from the truth, would not be true because it doesn’t correspond to reality.

Truth And Human Existence

This all becomes very important when considering human life. Assuming that all humans want to be happy.

(An interesting thing to consider is that the statement “all humans want to be happy” is not something I can say is true, because I have not met all humans. But the statement “many humans want to be happy” is something that I can say is true, or true knowledge that I have, because it fits within #1 and #2 listed above. So, if it does not seem possible for a statement to be true, it might just need to be restated.)

If a human believes something about the proper way to do something, that would be called their philosophy.

If a human believes something about the way reality is, that would be called their worldview.

Therefore, if a human believes something about the proper way to life, as in, the way to life that will work the best, or result in the most happiness, then they have a philosophy.

And if a human believes that something about reality is true, then it means they believe something about the way reality is, and they have a worldview.

All people, whether they think so or not, have a philosophy, and have a worldview. If you live your life based on any information you believe is true about how to live, or reality itself, you have a philosophy, and a worldview, respectively.

Now, there are some popular philosophies, and some popular worldviews, usually attached to a well-known name and backed by many supporters.

Many people think that the only way to have one or the other is to ascribe to a popular one, and that is not true.

For a philosophy to actually work, as in actually be the proper way to live and therefore result in the most happiness, it should correspond to reality, or be true.

For a worldview to make sense, or be an accurate idea of the way reality is, it should correspond to the way reality really is, or be true.

If your philosophy is not true, it will not work. Plain and simple. It will not result in the most happiness possible, which is the aim of philosophy.

If your worldview is not true, it will result in great confusion. It will not correspond to reality, which includes a great many things, and has a higher chance of contradicting statements that are true.

The goal of philosophy would be to have a philosophy that is true, or have a belief about the proper way to do something (including living) that corresponds to the reality of what is the proper way to do something. And you will know when you’ve reached this goal when you see that it works.

The goal of worldviews would be to have a worldview that is true, or believe that reality is the way that it actually is. And you will know when you’ve reached this goal when you see that it makes sense.

Reality is the way it is. There are things that are true. While complex in some areas, reality is, for the most part, very simple. Most things make sense. You will be hard pressed to find an aspect of reality that doesn’t make sense. Because what you find will be part of reality, and things don’t become part of reality by existing first in another reality. If they did, then those things would not make sense (See Spiderman Into the Spiderverse).

So, if something doesn’t make sense, it’s probably not because it’s not true, or that it does not correspond to reality. Instead, it probably means that there is something wrong with the statement, or an interpretation of the information presented. In other words, reality is supposed to make sense. Our way of thinking about it is what can make it seem complicated.

If you’re having trouble understanding an aspect of reality, you could ask yourself, “what makes the most sense?” And this would probably get you pretty close to the way reality really is.

Similarly, you could ask yourself “how would I want reality to be?” And you would probably also get pretty close to the way reality is. This is because you are part of reality and the things that exist in reality typically like the way that reality is.

The Trouble With Truth

One troubling thing is that it is possible to be misinformed about reality. It is even possible to believe you have true knowledge, and be wrong, due to misinformation. True knowledge always contains at least a partial truth (see The Funnel below), but it is possible to be misinformed.

Consider this example. You read online that drinking wine is good for you. You, through personal experience, arrive at the same conclusion, that wine is good for you. Now this becomes true knowledge, based on how I defined it above. The problem is that you’ve been misinformed about what it means for something to be good for you.

It’s true that wine contains some health benefits, but it’s also true that too much wine can be harmful for your body. So the statement is not entirely true, but contains aspects that are true.

This can make people believe that they are disagreeing with the truth, because they are misinformed about what the whole truth is. Unfortunately, there is a lot of misinformation out there about reality.

Misinformation about reality leads to misunderstandings of reality, which leads to misunderstandings of truth.

There is no greater error than to believe something to be true that is not actually true. This will only lead to great frustration and confusion.

The Funnel

The way I think about it, there exists a funnel, when considering the pursuit of truth.

At the bottom of the funnel is ultimate true knowledge. The knowledge of everything about reality, and therefore what corresponds to it, and therefore what is true. Ultimate true knowledge is to know the truth about everything pertaining to reality.

Ultimate true knowledge is completely unknowable to human beings, because to do so would be to be all-knowing. In other words, to have infinite knowledge. Because humans are finite creatures, they are unable to have infinite knowledge. By this I mean finite memory, finite time in which to gain knowledge, and finite processing power to process knowledge. To gain ultimate true knowledge should not be the aim of the human, largely due to the fact that it is impossible.

The things that go into the funnel are statements. Statements about reality. Statements about reality can be true or false. The statements that are true fall down the funnel and combine with other statements. The statements that are false get rejected from the funnel. At the very bottom is the one true statement that describes all of reality.

(A note for the reader: The bottom of the funnel, a statement about all of reality, is similar to the aim of science, referred to as the theory of everything. A theory that explains everything about reality. In a similar way, all other scientific theories go into a funnel, with the goal of refining them until only one theory remains.)

Because ultimate true knowledge is unknowable, the bottom of this funnel is unreachable. Any statement you have, no matter how true, will not be the entire truth. It will not be the bottom of the funnel. The way to use the funnel is not to try to get to the bottom.

There are two uses for the funnel.

1. Identifying the true statements hidden within several partially true statements.

2. Navigating life with the goal of always moving downward through the funnel.

Use #1

#1 can look like this: one person presents statement A) “drinking any liquid is good for you”, and another person presents statement B) “drinking one cup of water a day is good for you”. Both are statements about reality. Both statements contain partial truths.

Statement A) contains two statements.

1. Drinking liquid is good for you

2. Drinking any liquid is just as good for you as drinking any other liquid

A1) is true, A2) is not true. Some liquids are harmful to your body.

Statement B) contains two statements as well.

1. Drinking water is good for you

2. Drinking only one cup of water each day is good for you

B1) is true, B2) is not true. Your body needs more than one cup of water each day to function properly.

If water is a liquid, the common truth among these two statements is that drinking liquid is good for you. The true statements fall down the funnel.

Once that is identified, the two people will see that while they presented different statements, there is a common element to both of them that corresponds to reality. Ideally, the two will agree that a third statement C) is more true, and will allow them to be on the same page about the statement. With C) being “drinking water is good for you”.

This use is important when looking at philosophy or worldview, as there are many statements being presented that contain common elements that are true, as well as other elements that are not true. If the true statements are identified, hidden within partially true or false statements, then two people with different statements can identify what is true, and come to an agreement. Identifying what is true results in less conflict with oneself, and coming to agreements results in less conflict with one another.

Use #2

#2 is equally as important as #1. What you see, if you look and listen to the world around you, is that many people believe they are standing at the bottom of the funnel. As in, they are standing on ultimate true knowledge.

When you believe you are at the bottom of the funnel, you stop looking down the funnel, and therefore stop trying to increase your knowledge of truth. After all, if you truly were at the bottom of the funnel, there would be no more truth to gain, because you would know all of it.

But as I stated before, it is impossible to get to the bottom of the funnel. So to believe that you have reached it is an error.

The goal is not to get to the bottom. The goal is to keep going down.

Instead of ever attempting to reach the bottom, you should focus on making sure that you are always traveling downward. Meaning, you are always traveling in the direction of more truth.

The farther down the funnel you go, the better view you have of the funnel above you. The better you can identify the true statements hidden within several partially true statements, and therefore assist others in performing Use #1.

When you identify a new true statement, or gain more true knowledge (see How To Know What Is True above), this does not mean that you have reached the bottom, but rather that you are on the right path to the bottom.

Conclusion

Ironically, to conclude an essay on truth would almost sound like I see myself as being at the bottom of the funnel. In actuality (notice I don’t say “in reality” due to the nature of this essay), I am simply farther down the funnel than I was before.

The pursuit of truth is a worthy endeavor, perhaps even the most worthy of all endeavors. For you to pursue truth will only bring your life more clarity. For others around you to pursue truth will only bring your life more community. Both of these things are, in my experience, sought out by all people.

However, there is no rule that says you must pursue truth, and certainly no rule that says you must like it. The truth can often result in more pain, as not everything that is true is good.

But the truth about reality, the truth about the way things are, in my experience, is far greater than the way things seem.

My goal with writing this is not to challenge you to find the bottom of the funnel, as I have already said that it is impossible. My goal with writing this is for you to move down the funnel with the intention of, after getting farther down the funnel, looking up, and assisting others in sorting the true statements from the false statements.