First Truth Essay

  

Why Do We Tell the Truth?

Part One

            “The secret of success is sincerity.  Once you can fake that, you’ve got it made.”

            George Burns often used this line in his comedy routines, though it’s likely that he picked it up from someone else.  Comedians often borrow their material.  It’s a funny line, but for a philosopher it opens a Pandora’s Box of questions.  What is truth?  How do we distinguish truth from error and deception?  Why do we tell the truth?

            Today (August 3, 2016), on his Truth Social account, President Trump commented on recent poll numbers. 

“My REAL Polling Numbers, not those made up by the Fake News Media, are the best they have ever been, and why wouldn’t they be with the biggest tax cuts and employment numbers EVER, the biggest outside Investment in America in World history, a totally secure Border, a giant Victory in Venezuela, the Denuclearization of Iran, unparalleled respect and success throughout the World, and much more?”

I will not comment now about the various accomplishments the president lists, leaving it to my reader to judge whether the U.S. enjoys unparalleled respect throughout the world, that our border is totally secure, and so forth.  My point is this.  Mr. Trump says that the “Fake New Media” are lying about his popularity; they simply make up poll results, and his polling numbers are better than ever.  The president’s comments helpfully point to the same philosophical issues raised by George Burns.  How do we know what is true?  Why do we tell the truth?

When I took Intro to Philosophy (back in 1973!), Arthur Roberts categorized three “ways of knowing”: sensory experience, reason, and intuition.  Sense experience includes the things we see, hear, taste, smell and feel, and all the evidence empirical science tells us (often using sophisticated machines to extend our senses: telescopes, stethoscopes, EKG machines, etc.). Rationality consists in the mental work we do to criticize, compare, approve or dispute our beliefs.  Intuition names other kinds of belief formation: guessing, prophetic ecstasy, religious tradition (including sacred texts), and so forth. 

Philosophers have been arguing over these ways of knowing for 2500 years.  How do they fit together?  For instance, in the early 20^th century an influential group of philosophers, the logical positivists, campaigned for the doctrine that only empirical evidence supplied knowledge. Positivism died when its critics showed that every scientific observation takes place within some theoretical model or another.  There is no such thing as “pure experience,” no escape from a priori rational principles.  Example: the logical rule of non-contradiction.  All sane human beings deny (p + -p).

Why?  How do we know the basic rules of logic?  Jews, Christians, and Muslims affirm that we are made in the image of God, one aspect of which is to be rational.  In recent centuries, though, many philosophers have become “naturalists.”  Not like Aristotle, who thought philosophers ought to strive to understand the natural world.  Modern “naturalism” is the doctrine that since there is no God the universe occurred purely by chance.  On this view, human beings are not made in the image of God; all our mental activities result from nervous systems (including our brains) that evolved by natural selection.  If our beliefs, including our belief in logic, help up pass on our genes, they are “successful” beliefs.

Notice that on this story successful believing is not the same as true believing.  It might well be that a group of ancient hunter-gatherers that believed in the gods of the hunt would survive better than a bunch of atheists.  According to modern naturalism, none of the gods humans have worshiped are real, yet belief in those gods may have been “successful” by promoting group cohesion, successful hunts, and so on.  In naturalistic terms, truth doesn’t count for much.

Alvin Plantinga has made this argument in detail in Where the Conflict Really Lies. He points out the inevitable conclusion: given naturalism, the theory of evolution implies skepticism about all our metaphysical and scientific theories, including evolution and naturalism.  (If you think naturalism is true, you have a very good reason to think it is false.  Philosophers love pointing out that sort of thing.)  Given naturalism, our noetic capabilities may be aimed solely at successful gene replication.  In contrast, supernaturalism combined with evolution opens the possibility that God directed our evolution so we could be knowers.

Why do we tell the truth?  First, because we can.  In my next essay, I’ll reflect on truth telling a bit further.