Truth and facts

Thinking out loud

How can we best define ‘truth’, how should we judge whether something is ‘factual’? And what happens if I live my life in ignorance of the way things really are? It’s possible to be unwittingly ignorant, but it’s also possible to pretend to be ignorant. Clearly there’s a big difference between not knowing something and pretending not to know it. Does that difference matter? And if so, how?

What a lot of questions!

We should begin with some definitions, I think.

Facts

Maybe this won’t be too hard to pin down. Here’s a simple example.

‘Water is a liquid’ – Correct?

Well, with a few caveats it is generally true. If the atmospheric pressure is 101.3 kPa and the temperature is between 0 C and 100 C it will be more or less correct. If the conditions are different, the statement could be false.

Does it matter? Well, it might do. If the water is deep and you can’t swim, don’t claim it’s a solid; and whether you make that claim or not, take my advice and don’t walk on it! Almost everything in the photo is water; the clouds are made of tiny droplets of liquid water, the iceberg is frozen water, the churning sea is liquid water heavily contaminated with salts. Which of the three would you prefer to walk on?

That example already establishes that facts may be conditional and that ignoring them might have consequences. What makes it all the more tricky is that we may be unaware of the conditions, the consequences, or both.

Physical facts can often be pinned down rather well by careful measurement using accurate instruments; but there are others kinds of fact and some of those may be much harder to assess. A legal case might depend on whether a particular person was in a particular place at a certain time. And assessing such situations may depend on evidence (perhaps a time-stamped video recording), or it may depend partly or even wholly on whether we trust or believe a witness statement.

Truth

Now things get rather difficult. If there are facts available it may indeed, be possible to decide if a statement is true or false. But something may be true or false even though there are no facts available to help us decide.

What about the statement, ‘There is a higher power behind the universe’. As it happens, I believe that statement to be true. But I wouldn’t have to ask many people in the street to find someone who believes the same statement to be false. And let’s be honest about this – there is no evidence one way or the other. As a believer, I might say that I had a revelation, or a vision, or a feeling and they may be real for me, but I have no evidence to show to the person with no faith. And they might give me reasons for their belief that such a power does not exist, but those reasons do not, indeed can not amount to evidence.

And there are many other examples of unprovable true/false statements.

• The 15 quadrillionth digit of π= 6, true or false? One day we might calculate this, but currently we don’t know the value of this digit.
• There will still be life on Earth a billion years from now, true or false? We do not know.
• There’s a junction ahead, will you turn right or left? Nobody can know until you make the manoeuvre.

People

Once we consider the motives people may have (or not have) the difficulties grow again. When Donald Trump says he will do something, we can’t even tell whether he’s saying it because he intends to do it, or to achieve an effect of some kind, or to mislead.

And make no mistake, everyone is like Donald Trump in principal, he is just an outstanding and topical example. Every action and every word of every person must be considered as a possible intention, a possible attempt to achieve an effect, or even perhaps to mislead. We all do it, though we may not even recognise that we are doing it!

Consequences

How are we to live our lives if falsehoods are presented as truth and fact? That’s a good question we all need to consider.

We do have one advantage, however. And it’s a big one.

Actions based on false information will fail. Think about that for a moment. Once again it will help to use an example. Let’s suppose you are visiting a foreign country and you are told that in this place, cars are driven on the right-hand side of the road. If the information is correct things will go more smoothly than if it is incorrect. Never mind why a piece of information is incorrect; it might be an innocent mistake, a misunderstanding, or it might be deliberate. The knowledge that it is incorrect is all we need to know to keep us safe.

This is important: misinformation will lead to mishaps.

If Vladimir Putin makes false claims to enhance his chances of success, it will work until it doesn’t! We live in a universe where false information results in unexpected results. We may get away with it for a while, but we will not get away with it forever.

John Lydgate had a great thought; he wrote, ‘You can please some of the people all of the time, you can please all of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time.’ He was later slightly misquoted by Abraham Lincoln and also by Winston Churchill .

‘You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.’

That is absolutely right!

In conclusion

So how, then, should we live?

Always try to speak the truth – Check what people tell you – And remember, if you mislead you will, sooner or later, come unstuck. People will generally forgive a mistake. But if you make mistakes often they will stop trusting you. And if most of the things you say are untrue, people may conclude you are deliberately misleading them.

The next level of depravity after deliberately misleading people, is to harm them if they oppose you. That way you may get your way because people fear you. They have seen what happened to others who fell out of windows or were offered cups of tea and they will want to avoid a similar fate.

We live in a wicked world. It’s good to be truthful and honest, but it’s necessary to be to be careful and wise about other’s motives too. Jesus told his followers to be as shrewd as snakes, yet as innocent as doves. It’s great advice in a sometimes confusing world!