The word, namely "truth", nowadays has faded out due to many reasons, but could we put the truth away? I don't think so. I am going to give an account that is arguably more acceptable than others.
Truth is the string that keeps interpersonal relationships at a meaningful level; I mean when I say Persepolis is located in Iran that means if you went to Iran you would find Persepolis there. That is obvious. But in recent decades there have been many schools that insisted on the claim that there are many truths, that everyone holds one
Let's suppose there isn't such a thing as the truth, but truths. Then, one could say Persepolis is in Iraq, not Iran. One who believes in many truths, gets a visa to Iraq, goes there, and travels the whole country, That person couldn't see Persepolis for sure; for "the truth is" Persepolis is located in Iran. I could arguably suppose one may proceed a little further and claim, as we have many truths Persepolis is the same as the Arch of Ctesiphon; therefore, that person sees Persepolis near now Baghdad. No need to explain more that this way how much is unthinkable. In such a situation all human communications collapsed; for, from this point no participants know others' intentions.
Before going further, note it worthy that many truths theories mean no truth; because truth means something real, verifiable, and unique in its essence, as humans have dealt with it from the very beginning. Truth is meaningful when it would be unique.
You may ask why ever on earth people deny the truth and come up with many truths? As many truths theories, deny the truth, there is a history behind it, from Nietzsche to postmoderns. They all denied the truth on grounds like Christianity used the truth for verifying its claims (Nietzsche), no one has the truth in their hands, even if there is the truth, human beings couldn't grasp it, etc. These grounds are understandable; many of them could be the case, such as no one of homo sapiens could reach pure truthfulness until they are homo sapiens. But does it mean that there is no truth? No, I don't think so.
That problem emerged from certain roots, in which a few important aspects had not been taken into account. Theorizing these philosophical topics by Greeks, Aristotle made a statement about truthfulness and falsity in his book Metaphysics: “To say of what is that it is not, or of what is not that it is, is false, while to say of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not, is true” (Metaphysics, 1011b25). This account, mostly regarded as the correspondence theory of truth, has some deficiency in it as it is. This way of defining truth relates trueness to utterances and statements. It is a deficiency, for, among all statements on one specific object, only one is "true", others all are "false. Here comes the problem: if one admitted that it is not possible for a human being to reach the truth how, the truth as claims correspondent to facts, is helpful? It is not evidently; when no one grasps pure trueness, their utterances do not correspond to the facts. However, it is not the end of the story.
Since this is for common people, accordingly, I want to proceed with common words, not philosophical jargon. I intend to explain the truth and how could we think of it. My account is based on a tradition that started by Martin Heidegger, particularly in his "On Plato's Doctrine of Truth", then continued by Hans-Georg Gadamer, Paul Ricoeur, et al.
Heidegger in his work argued that truth in Greek is "Aletheia", which means disclosure, or revealing. That meant pre-Socratics as things come out to be seen, to be disclosed, and to be revealed from their hiddenness. Heidegger particularly explained Plato, followed by Aristotle, changed it to "correctness of vision", that is to be able to see things correct, following this one could express true utterances. Heidegger was inclined to reverse it to the previous account. An easy-to-understand version is like this:
1. There is a real world out there, that we could make sense of it to some extent;
2. Truth is an adjective for things, not statements, utterances, or beliefs;
3. What makes an utterance true or false, is our connection to things and state of affairs outside of our minds; if it corresponds to a revealing state of affairs, made out of unconcealment of a thing, or based on the disclosure of the object it is true unless it is false.
3. Truth is a relative state, for unconcealment is relative; for A the fact of P was revealed very well and A tried their best to grasp it, so A's utterance is true, compared to B who made the utterance hastily, did not strive at their best.
So to speak, the truth is an objective, concrete thing that lies in things its own selves; we could express it by letting things be revealed, unconcealed to us.
To be more clear, we can exemplify it like this:
I could assess a fact, say a whale, then I come out with this that whale is a fish. Deduce from it that they are fishes, not mammals. It is false because they are mammals. My mistake is that I have not let them be revealed to me, hastily going on an utterance. Vice versa, If I take my time, let them be unconcealed I can know they are mammals. Then, I can say that they are mammals, a true statement. But a physiologist goes farther and could benefit from more unconcealment, that is why the physiologist is closer to the truth of whales compare to me.
This account of truth has many benefits that simultaneously avoid previous defaults and at the same time absorb those defaults to bring a good theory about the truth.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License