Be True
My description will doubtlessly focus on the environment in which I live, the lower-middle class of an English speaking capitalist western-style democracy, gainfully employed in the sciences, thankfully able to study the arts at University. I'll examine the issue of truth through as many theories as I have available to me, in order to form the most complete representation thereof. This is an effort to document my current understanding of “truth”, to provide a baseline against which to compare my later writings.
Why describe truth?
In frequent discussions with friends and colleagues, I'm brought to the proposition that I only assume to know one thing: I am. From this, I can only define three properties: true, false, and undefined. Everything else is derived. By the former I state that I exist, which requires a definition of existence to be discussed later in this article. By the latter, I state that some measure of truth exists, and by derivation also falsehood. I don't believe these to be mutually exclusive or inclusive, by which I mean a property can be true (one), false (zero), both true and false (which means you've asked the wrong question or need a different perspective), or undefined (i.e. a null set). From this I derive that in all things I can have an effective understanding, or an ineffective one.
Most frequently, these definitions arise during qualitative discussions. In my social groups, discussions typically involve topics which divide opinions along a binary axis, whose qualifiers typically involve the concepts of “right” and “wrong.” Derived from my belief only in self and truth, however, it can be stated that I don't automatically ascribe truth or falsehood to the objective, prescriptive notion of “right” versus “wrong” - only in descriptive “effective” and “ineffective.” I'll discuss this notion of effectiveness also later in this article.
Development of a concept of truth carries important derivatives, not the least of which are ethics (subjective, prescriptive notions of “right” versus “wrong”), epistemology (the study of that which can be known to be true), and hope (the expectation of things to come to be true). Incidentally, Immanuel Kant maintains these three questions as being central human concerns. Without a working definition of truth, it stands to reason that one can't know oneself, or begin to understand her or his position in an integrated society of selves.
Language, Cognition, Society, and Culture
Language isn't right or wrong - it's only communicates effectively or ineffectively. I use the term “effective” here in the context of causality, as differentiated form mere correlation. Based on the understanding that language is fundamentally independent from the medium by which it's communicated (text, speech, sign language, body language, etc,) the speech act itself is the communication of meaning. This meaning, however, is fundamentally social.
In any communicative community, no one-to-one correspondences exist at any empirical level between the thoughts and underlying linguistic meanings (semantics) of any two thinkers or speakers. Even between two individuals who may have grown up in the same home, had the same group of friends, attended the same churches and schools, speaking the same language, no two thoughts or words can be understood to have identical meanings, because “meaning” is fundamentally social, based on one's cognitive domain. Mathematically, equivalence is traditionally defined by Liebniz' definition: Two objects can be considered to be equivalent if every property of each applies also to the other.
Cognitive domains are inherently biased by qualia of perception, social interaction, and biology. No two perceptions of an object or action can be identical, so no two thoughts or words regarding those perceptions can be considered objectively equivalent. Arriving at effective equivalences in terminology can often-times be trivial, but for these reasons “objective meaning” can only be approached and approximated, never reached and defined.
By this understanding, language that doesn't communicate is inherently ineffective, and a language which can't communicate (generally by lack of an effective speech community), the language is considered dead. Text only communicates effectively if read by a member of a functional language community.
The question of hermeneutics addresses the interpretation of such texts from an ostensibly objective perspective. When applied to classical texts (those written in a dead language), there is an inherent question of definition of meaning. If documentation of the society and speech community using said language survive along with the text, a translation can be effective. Consequently, the relationship is inverse between knowledge of a dead language's society to ambiguities inescapably introduced into a translation. In this context, and by derivative that of corpus analysis, the same proposition given earlier holds: effective understanding of the meaning of an expression increases directly with knowledge of the assumptions and prejudices of the society effectively communicating in a language.
In this evaluation, three types of knowledge emerge as effective application of truth to actions: perceptions, communications, and deductions. Perceptions include any truth learned or acquired by means of personal sensation or interaction with one's environment. Communications include any truth learned by social means, and deductions any truth discovered by causal analysis. Assumptions can then be understood to include any truth developed or accepted outside of a body of knowledge, typically claimed to be self-evident. In this theory, all knowledge comes from the assumption of self-being, as not to devalue the inherited property thereof.
Language, cognition, and culture are therefore fundamentally social, and integrate to form a basis for observation, evaluation, and action based on concepts of truth and knowledge.
Observe, Evaluate, Act
Perception requires observation, which is rooted in the question of ontology: the metaphysics of the nature of being. Objective ontologists aim to decontextualize, abstract, and remove all prejudices and assumptions from perceptions and interactions. In the context of definition of truth, this is useful, but not possible. According to Heisenberg, no object can be observed without the observer affecting that object. Relative ontologists maintain, however, that interpretation is always relative, based on prejudices and assumptions. Their goal is awareness, not empiricism. In the development of a reasoned definition of truth, this is possible, but not very useful. I don't hold these two perspectives to be mutually exclusive, however. By discussing the question from two perspectives, they identify border cases of the same (traditionally linear) model. In order for a truth to be effective, it must identify and attempt to effectively mitigate prejudices and assumptions, rather than eliminate them.
According to Heidegger, interpretation is existence, and existence interpretation. In this perspective, prejudice is a necessary precondition for interpretation, and therefore effective existence. No outside viewpoint exists. This is by nature a recursive definition, because we can't objectively construct a perspective of “our environment” or “our cognitive domain” assuming only the proposition of oneself (the Kant scandal). By avoiding this cycle, however, the very concept of understanding (the effective perception of an intended meaning) is misunderstood. In order to shed light on this paradox (a question with simultaneous, mutually exclusive answers), a social perspective is needed.
A necessary and sufficient condition to action is thought, by means of language. Objects don't necessarily exist, only our perception of those objects and their properties. These properties can't be effectively acted upon (known), however, without some form of psycholinguistic qualia. The Sapir-Worf hypothesis claims a deterministic relationship between thoughts and language, which partially hold true in this case. Language is by nature, however, both creative and spontaneous - that is if a speaker lacks a word for something, or wants to communicate an utterance, that word doesn't have to pre-exist, and they don't have to have heard the utterance before. Even if representing an observed property or action solely to oneself, the externally social aspect of language is extended to internal representations of observations.
In short, to know oneself is an inherently social, cognitive, and linguistic activity that bridges Heidegger's paradox between interpretation and existence. By this I can now assume my environment can represent truth if I can effectively communicate the meanings (cognitive significance) I associate with the properties of objects and actions within my cognitive domain.
Social applications
Two of Kant's truth-derived questions remain, however: ethics, and hope. I expressed earlier in this article a non-belief in the objective notions of “right” and “wrong”. By all means, however, ethics are expressed in the subjectivity of effective and ineffective personal and observed actions in contexts. Morality can be understood, then, as social ethics.
Traditionally, ethics have been defined in the context of the “golden rule” and the Aristotelian “categorical imperative.” The former is typically expressed as “do unto others as you'd have them do unto you,” the latter as “what would happen to society if everyone did as you do?” The intrinsic weakness in these propositions, however, come from lack of social diversity. Every individual has a unique perspective, which will yield unique actions. These actions tend to be constructive, however, as society and cognition are only effective through a combination of competition and cooperation (between selves or ideas). Both of these notions require effective interaction, which in turn require construction (through knowledge - perception, communication, deduction, or assumption) of commonalities between various individuals.
In order for society to function, it must be constructive; language and cognition must therefore also be constructive. This lends itself to the Jungian notion of the collective subconscious, a system of moral dispositions present in his observation of human behavior: don't rob, don't kill, don't forsake your tribe / state / nation / country. I account for this as an evolutionary trait. Members of a society who can't control their urges to steal, kill, or desert their people simply don't pass on their genes as well as those who interact effectively and constructively with a society. The romanticized interpretation of this notion lends itself to an observed “universal morality,” though I maintain (and I think modern criminal justice systems would agree) that individuals don't always posses such observable traits.
By describing the actions of myself and others, and gauging whether they've effectively communicated meaning or helped construct my social community, I can begin to prescribe actions for myself to these ends. Furthermore, I can communicate those prescriptions (ethics) to members of my social communities to form a collective morality of that community.
For what can I hope, then? I understand hope to be the expectation of things to become “true.” In this framework, my only hope is in humanity, and in their effective communication and construction of society. This construction, by the code of ethics I've developed through observation and evaluation, and the subsequent morality I understand from my social communities includes both cooperation and competition when either is necessary to further the existence of those societies.
Be true
Truth, then, is an expression in thought or language which effectively communicates my understanding of the properties or actions of an internal representation of or external perception of an object with myself or others in my cognitive domain, and by derivative also my social communities.
This architecture of arriving at truth is versatile enough to also apply to personal applications (internal communication, thoughts,) and societally emergent behaviors (international relations). To be sure, these aren't answers, though. This is simply part of my framework for effectively condensing knowledge and arriving at truth from the vapor of perception, deduction, communication, and one assumption: I am.