Truth
Truth is thought or speech that accurately represents what is so.
Truth does not depend upon whether a person likes what is true, wishes it were true, or sincerely believes something else.
If someone says, “It is raining outside,” the statement is true if it accurately represents what is happening and false if it does not. The speaker’s sincerity does not determine the truth. Reality does.
Aristotle distinguished truth from falsehood by saying, in substance, that it is true to say of what is that it is and of what is not that it is not. The basic idea is simple: thought and speech can represent reality accurately or fail to do so.
Different Kinds of Truth
Not everything that is true is known in the same way.
Some truths are discovered principally through empirical observation. Scientists investigate the natural world through observation, measurement, and experiment.
Other truths are known principally through reason. A person could spend his life examining physical objects and natural reality, and never discover that, in Euclidean geometry, the interior angles of every triangle equal 180 degrees, or that differentiation and integration are related as inverse operations under the fundamental theorem of calculus.
Mathematical truths concern intelligible relationships the mind can understand and demonstrate. Logical truths provide another example: contradictory propositions cannot both be true in the same respect at the same time.
Observation, experience, evidence, logical argument, mathematical demonstration, and reason are different ways of discovering what is so. Truth is not created by the method through which we discover it. Our investigations attempt to bring our thoughts and speech (logos) into conformity with what is so.
Truth and Opinion
Human beings frequently disagree. Disagreement does not prove there is no truth to discover. When people make contradictory claims, at least one must be mistaken.
Suppose one person says a bridge is ten miles long while another says it is twenty. We would not conclude that each possesses “his truth.” We would measure the bridge.
The same principle applies to harder questions. Difficulty does not mean there is no truth to discover, and sincerity does not transform error into truth. The possibility of error presupposes a distinction between what someone believes and what is actually so.
Are There Moral Truths?
The more difficult question is whether objective truth extends beyond mathematics, logic, and empirical facts to include truths about good and bad, right and wrong, justice and injustice.
Waypoints proceeds from the classical premise that it does.
Consider slavery. A slaveholder might sincerely believe that another human being is rightfully his property. The person enslaved might believe just as sincerely that no human being rightfully owns him.
If there is no objective moral truth beyond those beliefs, it becomes difficult to explain why the slaveholder is actually wrong rather than merely holding a different opinion.
To say slavery is unjust means more than saying we dislike it. It means slavery violates something objectively true about human beings and how one person ought to treat another.
Human beings differ in height, weight, strength, intelligence, beauty, wealth, ability, ambition, and countless other respects. But those differences do not make one person more or less human than another. No human being is naturally a beast to be owned by another, and no human being is naturally a god possessing unlimited authority over others.
Within the classical understanding of natural right, those truths about human beings ground conclusions about equality, natural rights, consent, and legitimate government.
Truth and the American Founding
The Declaration of Independence presents moral-political principles explicitly as truths. It appeals to the “Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” and declares certain truths “self-evident”: natural human equality, unalienable rights, the purpose of government, and the principle that just governmental powers derive from consent.
The Declaration therefore does not present equality or natural rights merely as preferences or “values” chosen by Americans in 1776. Its language presents them as truths that exist independently of government.
Government does not make human beings equal by declaring them equal or create natural rights by passing laws. Government itself can be judged by whether it recognizes and protects truths about human beings that precede it.
Nature and Reason
The Founding’s appeal to natural rights assumes that human beings can know important moral-political truths about themselves.
Nature is not merely something outside us—mountains, forests, stars, animals, and physical forces. Human beings are part of nature too. Human nature is a proper subject of investigation too.
- What kind of beings are we?
- What capacities distinguish human beings from other kinds of beings?
- Is there a telos or end toward which human nature points?
- What do human beings require in order to live well?
- Are there standards of justice rooted in what human beings are?
These questions connect observation of human life with philosophical reasoning about human nature. The claim is not that every moral or political question is easy to answer, but that disagreement occurs against a reality human beings can investigate through reason, experience, argument, and reflection—not within an endless diversity of opinions and feelings from which no truth can be discerned.
Truth Above Power
Objective truth establishes a standard independent of political power. A law does not become morally right merely because government enacted it or a majority voted for it. Nor does a ruler make a falsehood true by commanding citizens to affirm it.
Truth exists independently of political authority, and government can be judged by moral standards it does not create or control.
Why Truth Matters
Human beings can be mistaken. Desires can distort judgment. Passions can overpower reason. Governments, majorities, experts, and individuals can all make errors.
The remedy is not to abandon the search for truth but to pursue it more carefully. That pursuit requires humility because none of us is infallible; courage because truth may contradict what we wish to believe; and reason because competing claims must be examined rather than merely asserted.
A free society cannot rest ultimately upon the proposition that there is no truth about freedom, or that every person has his or her own truth. Perspectivism is nihilism in disguise.
Government does not create truth by declaring it. Majorities do not create truth by voting for it. Truth provides a standard by which governments, majorities, and individuals should be judged.
