H51060 etc.: KNOWLEDGE AND TRUTH
We human
beings seem to be into knowledge in a big way.
We share this interest with some of the 'higher' animals. However, in our case, both our desire for
knowledge and our capacity for it seem to go way beyond the needs of
survival. But what is this 'knowing',
what is it to know? How do we do it
well? and what do we get when we do it well? That is, to ask Pilate's famous but in his
case possibly ironical question, what is 'truth'?
Some questions to get you thinking:
1. Can you 'know' someone without knowing too
much about him or her in the way of 'facts'?
Are they the same thing, knowing someone and knowing facts about them? Or could you know a whole
heap of facts about someone (e.g. in your role as taxation commissioner or
principal of a college or police) without actually knowing them?
2. What about knowing how to ride a bicycle, or
drive a car or speak French or Chinese?
Could you have a very large knowledge of mechanics and physics without
knowing how to ride a bicycle or drive a car??
3. Say you were a teacher. How would you determine whether or not your
students knew something? Does it matter
how they go about learning it, as long as they get there in the end??
4. Do you know anything at all about scientific
method? If so, what do you think this
method (or methods?) might consist in?
Does it differ from natural science to the
social sciences and humanities?
5. What is truth?
Feel welcome, now, to consider the
following 'lecturer's input' and read relevant sections from book of readings,
before continuing with your journal on this set of questions.
LECTURER'S INPUT ON KNOWLEDGE, TRUTH AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD
If you don't
mind, we will concentrate on the following issues:
(A)
What
is knowing?
(B)
What
is involved in the process of coming to know/arriving at the truth?
(C) What is
truth?
(D) What is
good scientific method, if there is such a thing? [See Overheads]
(A) What is knowing?
Some interesting distinctions:
The first
thing we might do in answering this question is to make explicit the
distinctions implied in the first two questions above:
Knowledge by Acquaintance versus Knowledge by
Description:
·
One
can know quite a lot about someone else, have a rather large dossier full of accurately
descriptive statements, facts about them, without ever having met them or being
personally acquainted with them. Similarly with places and situations and
emotions. One can have a whole
psychology of love without ever having been 'in love', or have learned quite a
lot in geography lessons about Sydney without ever having been there, breathed
in the atmosphere and the smells, or been on the incomparable harbour.
·
To
some extent it also goes the other way: one can be acquainted with someone,
even be very good friends with them, without knowing too many facts about
them. Indeed, there may well be lots of
people and lots of agencies who know quite a good deal more in the way of
facts, including birth and marriage details and taxation and income details,
and nowadays credit worthiness and even detailed spending patterns. Though one can hardly be acquainted with
someone without knowing at least some facts about them.
Can either of
these categories of knowledge be reduced to the other? Some people would like to be able to cash
'knowledge by acquaintance' into 'knowledge by description', that everything
one can know by acquaintance could, if you had long enough, be put into words
and turned into a list of descriptions.
But is this so? Can this be done
without remainder? What do you
think? If you could do it without
remainder, this would turn acquaintance into a way of getting knowledge rather
than a kind of knowledge. But can you do
that?
Knowing How versus
Knowing That:
·
One
can know quite a lot of mechanics, more than enough to explain in detail the
dynamics of bicycles or motor cars, without knowing how or being able to either
ride a bike or drive a car. Indeed, it
is conceivable that one could know an enormous amount, more than any Olympic
athlete, about the biology and physiology and psychology of running without
being able to run a step. And a half-way
intelligent ten year old Chinese person could have much greater competence in
Mandarin than an Anglo Professor of Chinese in an English speaking culture,
even though the latter might have a vastly superior knowledge about the grammar
of the language in question. Knowing That doesn't translate into Knowing How.
·
Once
again, to some extent it also goes the other way. A fairly high level of know-how is consistent
with a fairly low level of knowing that.
Knowing How doesn't translate necessarily into
too much Knowing That. Though Knowing
That in particular cases may enhance one's know-how - or, perhaps, someone
else's knowing that, e.g. the coach, one's French teacher, your dietary advisor
etc.
·
Finally,
of course, a high degree of Knowing That requires the
acquisition of certain knowledge research skills, i.e. a certain about of
Knowing How!
Philosophers
typically concentrate the bulk of their attention on Knowing
That and Knowledge by Description. So
having made such interesting and indeed important distinctions for the rest of
our time we will unfortunately pretty much ignore them!
Some attempts to 'define' knowledge:
A classic way
of defining 'knowledge' or 'knowing', in the sense of knowing or knowledge about, since at least Plato's Dialogues
is that knowledge = true belief plus
evidence or, if you prefer, knowing is true believing where you have
evidence and are not just guessing.
Knowing about something is having true beliefs about that something in
situations where you have evidence.
Let's then
have a look at each of these three supposed ingredients, see what they amount
to and why a person might like to include them as ingredients of 'knowing'. Then, as true philosophers, we will see if
this nice little recipe really might work, to try to think more deeply about
it, beyond the taken for granted.
In the rather
obscure language of professional philosophers, where 'A' is a person (or some
other kind of knower if not all knowers are persons)
and 'p' is the state of affairs picked out by a statement about something or
other, e.g. the cat ate the mouse, a
person 'A' knows that 'p' if and only if:
1) 'p' is true. You can't know what's not so. Before you can know that the cat ate the mouse, surely the cat must really have
eaten the mouse.
2) 'A' believes that p. You can't be said to 'know' something, if you
don't even believe it, and certainly not if you believe something
different. Though believing that
something is the case is not sufficient by itself for what you have to count as
knowledge.
3) 'A' has evidence for 'p'. He or she is not just guessing, they really
know, they have evidence in favour, some reasons for
believing and good reasons at that. I
can't really be said to know that the cat ate the mouse if I'm just making a
wild guess. What counts as good reasons
or evidence would be relative to the situation, of course. For example, the cat was playing with the
mouse a moment ago and now the cat looks like the proverbial cat that swallowed
the canary. Or even better, I or someone
else whose testimony is trustworthy may have actually seen the cat eat the
mouse.
Now this all
sounds quite good, almost common sense really, once we get the idea of what the
philosopher is trying to do. But like
good philosophers, let's have a closer look, let's look at the matter more
deeply, let us slow things down a little bit.
We will have a look at each component of the recipe in turn:
W.r.t.
1) 'p' is true. Putting aside until later what 'truth' might
be anyway there are still some problems with this. What in practice does this component amount
to?
Here we have
to distinguish immediately between two points of view, which we may call 1st
person point of view and 3rd person point of view, namely where the 'A' in
question is myself, versus where the 'A' in question is someone else.
·
From
the 1st person point of view, "'p' is true" seems to be redundant, in
so far as to believe something anyway is to take it as true. So knowing something = believing something in
a situation in which I have (or, I
believe I have??) good evidence or good reasons, full stop, that is, I allow myself
to know something in situations in which I think my belief is well grounded,
full stop. I know that the cat ate the
mouse = I believe that the cat ate the mouse and I am not
just guessing, my belief is well-grounded.
·
From
the 3rd person point of view, "'p' is true" reduces to I or we also
believe that p, we the judges of the claim to knowledge also take 'p' to be
true. This is certainly so: we don't
allow a claim to knowledge to stand if we ourselves don't believe it is the
case. Though our reason for believing it
to be the case might consist in the combined facts that (a) they believe it to
be the case, and (b) they are in a situation to have good evidence for their
belief, e.g. they are the scientists, the experts after all.
This is all
controversial, however. Theoreticians of
knowledge divide at this point between epistemic Internalists and Externalists. Externalists contend that what makes
believing good is determined from outside or external to our believing
practices themselves, namely by 'reality', what's really out there, versus what
I or you or the majority or the experts or even God believe is really out
there. Internalists propose that this
way leads nowhere fast, in so far as we have no access to what is really out
there external to more or less well-grounded claims to knowledge of what is
really out there by this, that and the other person. Externalists reply that Internalism
is much too subjective, in so far as it makes the validity of claims relative
to the knowers rather than being determined by what
is really out there.
In respect of
our present problem, Externalists will typically continue to define
'knowledge', and, in a stronger form, even 'meaning', in terms of 'truth'. The meaning of a statement = its 'truth
conditions', i.e. what would be the case out there in the world were the
statement to be true, the conditions in reality which would make it true. Whereas Internalists
will more likely try to define 'truth' in terms of 'knowledge'. For example, 'truth' is what God knows, or,
to make our definition more acceptable to agnostics and such-like, what God
would know, were there a God. Or, truth = what is satisfactory to the human
mind and stands the test of critical examination (Hume, implicitly). Or perhaps, if you can live with it: 'truth'
is just the attribution we give to our best guess for the moment...
What then are you, an
Internalist or an Externalists? And what might be the consequences for
theology of one position or the other??
Or perhaps you
are an 'I don't know'-ist!
W.r.t.
"'A' believes that p":
Here
the interesting philosophical issue is what belief amounts to. An example sometimes used, not so good for us
Australians perhaps, has to do with in what conditions we attribute a belief
that the ice on a pond or river is thick.
If a person says the ice is thick, but is not prepared to walk on it, we
are inclined to disbelieve them. They
don't really believe that the ice is thick: after all, they are not prepared
themselves to walk on it. (Remember the parable in the Gospel about the Two
Sons.) An example which might work for
city dwellers might be, the belief that the streets are safe and whether we are
actually prepared to walk in a certain part of town or not.
Whatever,
belief is manifest as much or even more authentically, it seems, in what a
person is prepared to do, how a person is prepared to act or behave, as in what
they say or even perhaps what they self-consciously think. A person's beliefs define reality for them,
and the 'person' in question in this case is the whole acting, behaving
organism, not just the self-conscious thinking or talking part.
Is
this even true from a first person perspective, that sometimes I don't know
what I really believe until put on
the spot where that belief becomes relevant?
So that sometimes I even make discoveries about my own beliefs? Or is this altogether too paradoxical? What do you think?
We
probably wouldn't want to push it too far, however. What a person says, and in first person case
what a person self-consciously thinks they believe, is evidence for believing that thing
and most of the time good evidence.
Belief manifests as a disposition to behave in certain ways in certain
circumstances, including talking and self-conscious thinking. Is this, then, what belief is? Or is 'belief' that in us or that about us
which grounds such dispositions, the intentionality or stance so to speak of
the total organism in its relationship with its total environment or something
like that, a certain way of being with the things and with other people.
This is all of
obvious relevance to theology, don't you think?
Pushed far enough it might even resolve the faith versus works problem??
W.r.t.
"'A' has evidence for 'p':
There are a
number of interesting questions for exploration here:
·
Firstly,
there is the problem of how much
evidence?
We've already
noted that what makes for evidence is dependent on what it is we are talking
about. Evidence for Pythagoras' Theorem
is being able to demonstrate it, or perhaps knowing that it is a theorem of
geometry on the basis of what mathematicians say - that is, a
knowledge based on testimony: even though I can't prove it, I know other
people can. This is rather different
than our evidence that the cat ate the mouse: here we rely on my or someone
else's experience, or in some cases with deductions from experience. This much is OK.
But how much
evidence do we need in order to say we know?
Enough to make us certain. But how certain? Certain beyond all possible doubt, or certain just beyond all reasonable doubt? The latter opens up interesting
possibilities. Statements certain beyond
reasonable doubt can in fact be overturned: the courts sometimes get it wrong,
though no fault of their own, the person actually was where his totally
unsubstantiated alibi said he was,etc. Does it make sense to say, then: "I know,
but I could be wrong"? [People who
say, it does make sense, are sometimes called "Falliblists"]
This becomes
particularly interesting in respect of science.
According to post-Popperian philosophers of
science, a scientific theory has to be falsifiable in order to count as
genuinely scientific. Does this mean
that scientific theories don't count as genuine knowledge?? And what of e.g. Newtonian science, which was
the most certain part of knowledge outside of pure mathematics for some
hundreds of years, but whose fundamental concepts have now been shown to have
severe limits? Perhaps in another
hundred years we will come to the conclusion that contemporary Relativity
Theory and Quantum Theory also have severe limits. One thing it seems that science can't predict
are future discoveries in science. Even our best scientific theories, it seems,
may turn out to have been little more than "our best guess, for the
moment". We seem to be left, then,
with a choice between Fallibilism on the one hand and
placing severe limits on the scope of true knowledge even in the 'hard'
sciences on the other. This is very
intriguing.
·
By
way of a second, just as interesting question: do we need to know that we have good evidence, in order to have good
evidence? More generally, Do we need to know
that we know in order to know?
This
immediately puts us in a bind. If we
say, no, then it is conceivable that we think we are only guessing but we
actually know - we have good reasons but we don't know we have good reasons. On the other hand, if we say yes, then we get
involved in an infinite regress. If we
need to know that we know in order to know, then, in order to know that we know
we need to know that we know that we know, and so on forever.
One of the
interesting consequences of not needing to know that we know in order to know
is that it makes it easier to extend genuine knowledge beyond the realm of the
human. This is providing we allow other
animals to at least have beliefs.
One theory
here is that all that is needed for knowledge is an appropriate causal
relationship between the situation to be known and the believing. Provided the situation or state of affairs to
be known causes the correct believing, whether directly or indirectly, a person
or animal can be said to know that situation or state of affairs. In this sense a dog can know that such and
such is the alpha dog in its pack/its 'master', and
that so and so are its pups.
People who go
for this very interesting idea are sometimes said to be advocation
"Causal Theories of Knowledge".
This is surely
enough to get you thoroughly confused.
How much of it is real, and how much just
philosophical quibbling?? However, it is
the kind of thing that professional philosophers get into in a big way, and it
doesn't hurt to be a little bit familiar with it.
(B) What is involved in the process of coming to
know/arriving at the truth?
One common way
of working out what constitutes good practice is to have a close look at the
practice as it actually occurs and see if we can determine the most general
features of its more successful deployment.
Some general,
hopefully useful statements on the
process of coming to knowledge:
See if you agree with the following:
1. The acquisition of knowledge involves a more
or less strong element of human active involvement. Alternatively: knowledge takes work, and
requires personal involvement and commitment. It consists in sometimes quite
creative human constructions suitably tested rather than in passive mirroring
or 'photographing' of reality.
According to
this idea, knowing is a species of production, not just a matter of sitting
back and being impressed. It is what we
bring to our experience and how we process it that enables our experience to
yield what information it does. Knowing
is something we have to work at, though in common everyday life most of the
work is habitual and largely unconscious.
Without this sometimes unconscious processing, this habitual way of
construing or interpreting what is happening to us, the effect of the
environment on our psycho-physical organism, our experience would be no better
than that of a new born babe.
This doesn't
mean that what we claim to know is really only our invention. It is just that the emergence, the coming
into the light, the coming into unconcealedment so to
speak of things and people, is a production, though not only my production: our
production, and the result of a dialogue or interaction also with the
"objects". All knowledge, all
truth is "mediated" by the work of the subject. Things and people need our work, albeit
mostly unconscious and habitual, in order to give themselves as they do. You have to listen and be on the ball and be
perceptive. They don't give themselves
to lazy people, nor to stones and bricks.
For this point,
see especially Kant: experience without
thinking is blind, thinking without experience is empty, both as needed for
genuine knowledge which occurs when percepts are subsumed under concepts. Also the work of the later German philosopher
Edmund Husserl, with his notion of 'constitution', at work even in
perception. Also contemporary work on
the psychology and neurology of perception: perception, esp. seeing, as an
active process. Also contemporary
hermeneutics and contemporary philosophy of science: all facts are theory
laden, all experience is theory laden.
But the idea of knowing as involving a sometimes strong element of
creative human activity is present already in Aristotle and the Scholastics,
Aristotle's 'nous poetikos'
(creative or making intellect, 'poetikos' the word
from which we get 'poetry'), the medieval latin 'intellectus agens'.
2. If done
well, this creative involvement enhances
rather than reduces the prospects for useful knowledge.
The mystery is
that, as a general rule, the degree of giving, the degree of unconcealedness of the real, of people, of things, of
the appearing of Being,
is directly
rather than inversely proportional to the contribution of the intending act/the
subject, i.e. to the degree to
interpretation, to the degree of mediation, to us human beings (or whatever) doing our thing.
As a general
rule: not
always. A particular quality of
contribution on our part is required, not a domination, a dogmatic
rationalistic determination by the knower but a letting be (Heidegger). Without questioning and the right kind of
questioning no answers, but being, people and things, only lets itself be seen
when it is given room to move, and this requires a continual dialogue, an
attitude of openness, a going out and eliciting of a feeding back. The most important thing in knowing is the
art of asking the right
questions. Cf. Lonergan:
objectivity is the fruit of authentic subjectivity.
Whatever,
"subjectivity", personal, dedicated involvement of the 'subject' or
person in the process of knowing, is not to be seen as an obstacle, something
to be got out of the way. It is, rather, something to be got right, one
of the factors whose authentic deployment enables objects and people to give themselves.
3. Doing it well typically involves a three
phase process:
This dialogue
which enables things and people to give themselves, on every level from
childhood 'constitution' of world and persons and self through everyday life to
quantum physics, in its most general aspect, would seem to involve a threefold process, repeated as necessary, of
·
presentation
or experience,
·
imaginative
theorizing, hypothesis formation, and
·
testing,
implementation of willingness to stand corrected with reference to new
experiences,
with what is achieved in any step in the
process carried forward to the next.
Thus: presentation, understanding judgement
experience, what is it, is that so?
things happening why is it so? is
that the
to us hypothesis
construction solution?
raw data problem
solving testing,
theory making truth
in
respect of
interpretation our
theory,
bright ideas the
validity of
our
interpretations
A pattern
maintained right through (cf. also the interpretation of texts.) Compare a detective, looking for a murderer.
For this see
especially the work of Bernard Lonergan. But once again, it is already in Aristotle
and Aquinas.
Notes:
·
The
key to good knowing seems to be to have all three stages, and in fair
balance. In practice, this may be the
work of different people, involving a division of labour: some people are better at one phase than
another.
·
Only
a relative distinction (versus Lonergan sometimes):
-- all experience, probably, is
'theory-laden', with the possible exception of some moments within certain
kinds of mystical contemplation: observational and theoretical are only
relatively distinct, theories become facts, sometimes even perceived facts. There is an element of interpretation in
every statement even the most basic.
-- the
drive for understanding is a drive for true or accurate understanding – from
the beginning. We are trying to solve
the problem after all.
-- and the mere fact that I posit or
judge a theory as true doesn't mean I've broken through to the final
truth about the universe.
·
These
are names for phases in continuing individual and communal processes. There do appear to be limits however in
respect of how much theory can be built already in the level of what we see, or
hear or smell or taste or touch, the level of perception. Some 'theoretical entities', entities posited
by theories, especially of the sciences, may well
remain always as theoretical entities, though these also at a certain point may
come to be regarded as facts. Every
experience after the womb (and maybe even in the womb) is 'theory laden'. Every fact is theory laden. But not all facts are experienced or
perceived in any direct sense. Neither of these statements calls the truth of
our knowledge into question --it is just that all truth is mediated. Why not?
Why should things give themselves to us without effort?
·
But
what is Truth?
(C) What is truth?
This is not as
obvious as you might think.
First of all,
we need to distinguish three kinds of claim in respect of all of which we
deploy the word, 'truth':
1) Truth as in the expression, "are
you telling the truth?", truth as in am I saying
what I really believe, am I being sincere?
This is sometimes called, truth as 'subjective' validity;
2) Truth as
in the expression, "is your statement true, is it really the case that the
cat ate the mouse, truth as conformity with the facts or with reality - truth
as 'objective' validity; and
3) Truth as
in the traditional expression, "are you being true to me?", truth as in 'intersubjective'
validity - as in the marriage vow.
Philosophers
are typically interested in the second sense, truth as objective validity. But the others are just as valid uses of the
word. Indeed, as the contemporary German
philosopher Habermas has noted, any attempt at
communication (any 'communicative action' as he terms it) is susceptable to contestation on all three grounds: is this
person telling the truth, is what this person says in fact true even if it does
appear to be what they really believe, and is this person being true to his/her
hearers in the sense of not engaging in propaganda or trying to dominate or
seduce or seriously mislead or only giving half the story and slanted at that.
The competing
theories of truth below, in any case, all have to do with the second sense,
truth as objective validity. What does
this mean?
Some competing theories of TRUTH
Correspondence: conformity between mind and things. Truth is some kind of correspondence or
agreement between what I say/mean/think/believe and what is so, what is really
out there. When we have this
'correspondence' then we say my statement is true. This is more or less the common sense idea,
already enunciated above: truth is conformity to the fact, in line with
reality, in line with what is really out there.
This is a very
strong theory, in so far as it does appear to match our intuitions fairly
closely. However, it is not without its
detractors.
One trouble
with this, the standard view on truth since Plato, is that, unfortunately, we
never do compare what I say/mean/think/believe with what is so, what is really
out there. The comparison is always with
what we apparently experience to be so or really out there or what the experts
or other people think or the rest of what we confidently say or regard as true
or really out there. The comparison,
like it or not, is always with something else on the side of 'subjects', either
our and their experiences or their opinions.
This factual state of affairs is reflected in a second family of
theories
Coherence:
the truth of a statement is a function of its coherence with other statements
we believe. We regard a statement as
true if it fits in or 'coheres' with everything
else. Truth = 'it fits, it makes sense'.
Full truth is
found only in theoretical systems --physical theories, metaphysical
systems. Individual statements of common
sense are only half true. Our need to
rely on experience is temporary and not indicative: if we knew everything we
would see how it has to be exactly the way it is. Thus Hegel.
This family of
theories has come back into its own, in the aftermath of the apparent collapse
of Foundationalism.
Truth = how it fits in with everything else, that in respect of which
we, or at least the relevant 'research community', have achieved an, often only
temporary, communal 'reflective equilibrium'.
Pragmatism: the truth of a statement whether in
science or common life (or religion) is a function of its usefulness or
fruitfulness, Truth
= it works well when we carry it into practice.
But works well for what?
Peirce and Dewey: for prediction and control --as in science: two
theories differ in so far as there is a difference in what you would be led to
expect in future experience;
William
James: James allows also a difference as to what we would take to
experience, a difference as to how we insert ourselves into the world --a
theory may count as true to the extent to which it enables us to co-ordinate
ourselves with the real in a fruitful fashion.
E.g. religious faith could well be true in this sense.
According to
this family of theories, we regard a statement as true if it works, if it
delivers the goods for prediction and control or for our dealing with things
and people in life generally. If it does
that, then this is all we should worry about.
Cf. Karl Marx,
Theses on Feuerbach,
Thesis II: "The question whether objective truth can be attributed to
human thinking is not a question of theory but is a practical
question. In practice [in the praxis] a
person must prove the truth, that is, the reality and power, the
this-sidedness of their thinking. The dispute over the reality or
non-reality of thinking which is isolated from practice is a purely scholastic
question."
Obvious reference
to theology: a theology is true in so far as it makes for fruitful insertion
into the journey of human beings to God/the struggle for the Kingdom. Otherwise it's purely scholastic in the bad
sense, a game for intellectuals, like chess but with the pretence to be
otherwise which chess doesn't have. Theology as praxis.
These are the
main traditional theories, but there are a few others which may be worth a
mention:
Fulfillment
(cf. the German philosopher Edmund Husserl
1859-1938): truth is the 'fulfillment' of an empty 'intention', when what I
say/think/mean is given to me. Loosely: agreement between what I say/think and
what is 'given', e.g. in perception or in 'intuition' of essences (as in logic
or maths - we know such truths by a kind of intuition,
e.g. 2+2 =4). Truth = intuitive givenness.
This is a
rather strong conception of truth, meant by Husserl
as the aim of his beyond doubt foundational phenomenology. It may not work so well in common life,
however.
Deflationary or Reductive Theories
of Truth (esp. Tarski): "A is B" is true if and only if A is
B. The statement, "1 + 1 = 2"
is true if and only if 1 + 1 = 2. The
notion of truth is thus redundant. The
statement "The cat ate the mouse" is true if and only if the cat ate
the mouse.
This is
popular among people who like to avoid obscurity and for everything to be
clear. It may however be a mechanism for avoiding the question rather than
answering it. On the other hand, it may
promote a rephrasing of the issue, from What is Truth? to How does language
map on to the world? Or does it? Or is
"mapping on to the world" a useful or true way of putting it?
Unconcealedness or Aletheia (another German
philosopher, Martin Heidegger): Truth
is unconcealedness, not being concealed, a-lethia, un-hiddenness, not
being hidden to us, standing in the light.
We regard a
statement as 'true' to the extent that it sheds light on the matter as we say,
to the extent that it brings things and people and what's going on with things
and people into unconcealedness for the people to
whom it is directed.
Note that
"unconcealedness" here is always unconcealedness for someone. Note also that Being, and
beings or things and people, need human beings or something performing similar
functions in order to become unconcealed, and the degree of unconcealedness
depends to some extent on us, the receptive mediation, the letting-be of human
beings or something like human beings.
Note also that
as with Coherence and some versions of Pragmatism, truth as Unconcealedness
allows for degrees of truth = degree
of unconcealedness.
Not all in the light, always some in the shadow, light on one part
frequently puts other parts into the shadow.
This has been
invoked by some people as particularly useful in theology. Cf. Esp. Keith Ward, truth as
Disclosure. See also Louis Dupre, in Religious
Mystery and Rational Reflection (Eerdmans, Grand
Rapids, Mich., 1998), pp. 27 – 40. Among
other things, it fits in very well with the notion of Revelation. In fact it is almost the same word, lifting
back the veil.
In respect of
such theories, a distinction is sometimes made between two questions:
1.the question of the meaning of 'truth', what we intend when we affirm a statement as
'true', and
2.a question concerning the criteria for truth, criteria for knowing
when we have the truth.
Crudely,
coherence, pragmatism and fulfillment might be said to do better on the second
question, with major options for the first question being correspondence or unconcealedness. But
this is all very complicated, wrapped up in various complicated ways with ways
of understanding knowledge, among other things.