Truth and facts in a human-centered construction of reality
Do truth and facts align with reality, and does it really matter if they don't?
What is the definition of a fact?
Merriam-Webster and Oxford Languages will tell you that a fact is a thing that is known or proven to be true.
I then query, what is truth?
Philosophers have circled around this question for centuries, questioning the origins of truth and wondering what gives something the stamp of truth. Thinkers of the late 19th century centered their belief of truth around Webster’s definitional form: what we believe or say is true if it corresponds to the way things actually are. This so-called correspondence theory can be traced back to Plato and Aristotle, who drew direct lines between truth and correspondence to fact. Yet in the early 20th century, Harold Joachim postulated that truth was only such if it was part of a coherent system of beliefs [coherence theory]. Truth was thus an aggregation of beliefs attributable to a group at a moment in time.
I have thought a lot about these theories of late, given our world’s continuous nosedive in the age of disinformation, infobesity, and scientific devolution. As I see it, the world exists objectively, independently of the ways we think about it or describe it. Scientists claim that this objective existence can be witnessed through the clarity of fact. Humans feel that science and facts are secure in space and time, getting closer to truth with a Capital T (Theory of Everything). The facts that scientists present must then be truths, or some versions pulling us closer to the ultimate Truth.
I posit that truth does not exist. This falls in line with the interpretations of cognitive psychologist Donald D. Hoffman, who asserts that the facts and truths we witness around us only exist as a result of our perception. Nothing truly exists without humankind’s construction of said thing. A dog is a dog only to a human. Objectively, this dog may exist, but interpretations and facts associated with its existence only go so far as to confirm mankind’s self-constructed definitions of such.
The human brain has constantly constructed and reconstructed the world based on our [very limited] senses. We can only perceive the tiniest fraction of all electromagnetic frequencies, see the smallest portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, taste, touch, and smell the most minute slices of the realm of sensory activation.
If this is the case, does fact truly exist, or is it just a model of truth to mold to the limitations of human perception?
I would like to align with the realists and stand by the idea that there exists a reality that is ‘fact’ and operates independently of human construction. This then holds truth in the muddy waters of this human-independent reality and our cognitive representations of the world.
One might ask why I am going through the mental gymnastics of arriving at yet another Plato-esq perception of truth. Aside from the masochistic desire to continue jumping through these hellish hoops, I believe that the notion of truth has incredible bearing on our modern age.
I read an article titled “The Truth in Crisis: Navigating the Post-Truth Age,” in which Waleed Sami laid the groundwork for the ideology that our world is facing a crisis of truth. Digitalism has supercharged access to information and, often, this information has prioritized sensationalism over truth (Sami). I am no stranger to this concept, nor the consequences - a fragmented society in which the truth becomes subjective and societal institutions ever-increasingly fracture. I agree with Sami in his conclusions of the dangers of malleable truths, yet, I find it hard to discover an instance in which truth was not malleable.
When has truth ever been, well, ‘true’?
Truth has always been malleable. The Babylonians viewed the Earth as a flat disk. This was a truth for centuries before Hellenistic astronomy established the truer truth that Earth was roughly spherical. Newtonian physics was widely, and still is for the most part, accepted to describe the motion of objects and gravitational fields. Yet, Einstein’s theory of relativity broke down the assumptions of Newtonian’s classical mechanics when it came to speed approaching the limits of light or powerful gravitational fields.
It seems that even these most scientific of truths, backed with mountains of empirical data, are secondary to existence. In fact, quantum mechanics basically states that what our senses perceive is not actually reality, and thus cannot be ascribed as such.
Reality is most likely unobservable in our state and time, so all of the facts we believe are just perceptions of truth and empirical evidence is simply our understanding of facts filtered through our subjective lens.
In the absence of truth being truth, how can society continue to arrive at consensus [a version of ‘truth’]?
My idealistic theory would be that if you combined every perspective in the observable universe and conglomerated them into a singular viewpoint, we would arrive at society’s truth. This being impossible, I would argue that that the truth is the lump sum average of humankind’s experiences. Taking in all of the sensory information we receive, humans can arrive at a version of truth generally accepted by society.
Some might worry that this may erode scientific progress and certainty in our world. Though our truths may not align with reality, we can still arrive at certainty and continue to progress towards achieving more accurate truths. Emblematic of deep learning models, our society can and must continue to gather observational data to adjust the bounds of our truth.
Truth is a chimera. It is impossible to achieve and will remain so. Yet, humans so deeply require a conception of truth that we must continue to hypothesize, create, and investigate to readjust our truths. In the end, it is not the truth that is dangerous, but the perception that the arbiters of this societal truth are ill-intentioned.
I will save this discussion for another time and leave you with this:
Facts and truths in our society are one and the same. Both are simple aggregations of the average perceptions of a society at any given point in time and space. Both are malleable and serve the irrefutable function of order. And, both are just as necessary as breathing air and drinking water to the continuation of modern society.
I love this!