In Defense of Truth

Throughout the history of philosophy, truth has been strongly contested. Thinkers from various schools have been skeptical of objectivity, postulating the inaccessibility of reality and the impossibility of knowledge. The validity of foundationalism and the self-evidence of axiomatic propositions have been wrongly rejected, leading to the gradual degeneration of philosophy into dogmatic breeds of skepticism, rationalism, and subjectivism. In order to correct this mistake and free epistemology from the clutches of doubt, we must embark upon a construction of the correspondence model of truth, a validation of the necessity and self-evidence of axiomatic concepts, and an exposition of the fundamental flaws that undermine the opponents of truth.

 

Truth as Correspondence to Reality

Everyone has an intuitive conception of truth. Colloquially speaking, a proposition is true if it corresponds to a fact of reality, and it is false if its negation is true. This definition is obvious enough, but it must be carefully validated in response to the myriad attacks that have been brought against it by proponents of the so-called coherence model of truth.

In order to understand truth, one must first understand the nature of propositions and their structure. A proposition is a statement which asserts a relationship between entities. It can refer to just concretes ("my phone is on the table"), just concepts ("a chair is a piece of furniture"), or some of each ("this is a chair"). Since concepts refer either to sets of things (e.g. furniture) or abstract relationships between them (e.g. marriage, adjacency, distance), a valid proposition ultimately reduces to a statement about concrete entities. If a concept has no entities to which it refers, it is a "floating abstraction," an idea detached from the facts of reality. A proposition consisting of floating abstractions is similar to the statement "all floogs are bloogs that zoog." Since there is no meaning to the terms used in this sentence, it is impossible to evaluate the statement at all, as there are no floogs or bloogs to observe zooging or not. This statement cannot be given a truth value, as it makes no reference to real things and is thus devoid of meaning.

A definition of truth arises naturally from this examination. A proposition is true if the relationship it asserts--which can be reduced to the properties of entities via their effects on other things--does hold for the entities it describes. Otherwise, a proposition is false if this relationship can be explicitly observed not to hold. For example, the statement "I am typing on a keyboard" is true, as it refers to the current actions of my hands (at the time of writing), while "I am on Mars" is not true, as I am here on Earth. As already discussed, the statement "all floogs are bloogs that zoog" cannot be given a truth value, as it refers to no constituents of reality and no observation can serve as evidence to prove it or its negative--in other words, it is an empty statement.

It is now clear that truth means correspondence to reality. If a proposition asserts a relationship between real entities, it is true if that relationship holds for those entities and false if it does not. This is the correspondence theory of truth.

Since truth means correspondence to reality, belief must be justified by reference to entities and their effects on one another. However, to relate ideas to reality and reduce them to first principles, it is first necessary to identify their foundation. Without a set of self-evidencies underlying all knowledge on which to build, a constructive philosophy is impossible. The self-evident principles which make such knowledge possible are found in axiomatic concepts.

Axiomatic Concepts: The Necessary and Self-evident Foundation

Knowledge is hierarchical, and a hierarchy must start somewhere. The greatest adversary to certainty is an infinite regress of justifications resting on nothing, offering no means of validating propositions or the faculty of reason itself. If truth is to be defended, a self-evident foundation of thought must be identified as a set of infallible principles requiring no further justification. These principles are the axioms.

In traditional terms, an axiom is a proposition taken to be true that serves as a starting point for reasoning. While this characterization of axioms is accurate, it is incomplete. It is correct to say that axioms are necessary for conceptual reasoning, but an axiom is much more than this. An axiom, coming from the Greek ἀξίωμα (axioma) meaning "that which commands itself as evident," is a proposition which identifies a fact, called an axiomatic concept, that serves as the basis of reasoning and is justified by its being contained in all knowledge and experience. If one believes or experiences anything whatsoever--including whatever one might consider as evidence of the axiom's negative--then the axioms are self-evidently true, and the only way to avoid them is to renounce reality altogether and do nothing. As a consequence of its being implicit in everything, any negation of an axiom requires and implies its truth, making axioms infallible.

The fundamental axiom of philosophy is "Existence exists," which identifies the fact: "that which is, is." This concept cannot be expressed in terms of simpler ideas, as such ideas would have to be stated in terms of entities, which would necessarily exist. Indeed, any supposed "proof" of existence would be a chain of facts connecting the concept to real entities, and would thus have to assume itself. The fact that Existence cannot be proved or explicitly defined does not make it a floating abstraction, but instead validates the fact that it is self-evident. Existence is the necessary precondition of everything and anything, not an arbitrary assertion making no reference to the facts of reality: on the contrary, it is reality. As everything implicitly assumes it, the thought of anything that could contradict reality would require that this entity exist in some form, confirming the infallibility of Existence.

The second axiom is "Consciousness is conscious," identifying the conscious awareness of the mind which grasps Existence. Consciousness too--as the internal experience of awareness--cannot be reduced to simpler phenomena. To consider the possibility of one's unconsciousness is to consider a possibility, i.e. to use one's mind: thus, Consciousness is infallible. As with Existence, grasping a proof of Consciousness would require one's conscious awareness before it could be understood and accepted, deeming it logically prior to proof.

The final axiom of philosophy is the Law of Identity, stated as "A is A." It arises from the application of one's consciousness to that which exists, identifying the fact: "that which is, is what it is." Grasping the fact that Existence exists requires there be something to perceive in the first place, and that it have particular effects on one's mind in order to be differentiated from its surroundings. No concept of Existence or Consciousness would arise from staring into endless blackness for eternity with no content of perception whatsoever.

It must be noted that, while critics of these axioms claim they are justified in a circular manner, this is not the case. Such criticisms claim that the axioms are validated by "performative contradiction," meaning the law of non-contradiction is an axiom. While it is true that the rejection of the axioms must by definition assume them, serving as a defense mechanism in an argument, this is not how they are validated and is only a corollary of their self-evident nature.

The three axioms explored above are enough to construct a full view of reality. That which exists has a particular nature, meaning it acts in a particular way on other entities, including the senses. Then the effects such entities have on one's mind--including the properties they possess which allow the brain to abstract patterns from them such as depth, shading, and hardness--are caused by the nature of the entities themselves and therefore represent them accurately. The validity of one's cognitive faculties follows naturally from this fact: if A is a particular thing, A acts in a particular way, and thus has specific effects on the senses which allow for comparison with other entities and, most importantly, their integration into concepts based on their similarities and differences. Perception and reason are thus validated by one fundamental fact: "I see (Consciousness) it (Identity) is (Existence)."

Debunking False Theories

The necessity and validity of the axiomatic foundation of philosophy has been thoroughly demonstrated, allowing for the development of a complete system of epistemology. Nonetheless, critics have spent centuries developing complex arguments against reality, attracting new thinkers who cannot identify the deluded nature of their positions. Thus, it is necessary to combat opposing positions and reveal the flaws in their criticisms of a reality-oriented philosophy.

The first idea to be debunked is the so-called coherence theory of truth. This model states that a proposition is true if it "coheres" to previously accepted propositions in a set--generally through non-contradiction, though sometimes involving more complex entailment--regardless of any correspondence to reality. This model obviously steals the concept of truth, which occurs when the entities of a proposition really bear the relationship it specifies, and completely redefines the term in a way that divorces it from its meaning. Furthermore, a coherence model can never be justified, even if it possesses a foundation, as its ideas are entirely of the form "all bloogs are floogs that zoog." Without the ability to make any reference to reality (else the model would be forced to accept the self-evident facts of sense perception and become a correspondence model), the propositions contained in a set of cohering sentences cannot have any meaning. Finally, while coherence is a necessary condition of truth, it is not sufficient condition, as anyone who has uttered "I can walk though walls" and then attempted to act in a way coherent with this conclusion will recognize. The coherence theory of truth is incoherent.

Often invoking a coherence model of truth, rationalism makes many of its mistakes. Doubting the senses and rejecting self-evidence, rationalists adhere to an arbitrary set of pseudo-axioms based not on reality but their subjective opinion of it. Rationalism usually begins with the axioms of classical logic--which are in fact derivative of the Law of Identity--and proceeds to prove logically prior ideas like Existence and Consciousness through "performative contradiction." This process reverses the corollary fact that axioms are assumed even by their negation and uses it as the criterion for being an axiom, ensuring that no connection to reality is had throughout the process of reasoning. When confronted with the fact that axioms are true in themselves without the need for such confusion, some rationalists will claim that "nothing is self evident, as everything can be questioned." It is easy to see that such a proposition accepts as an axiom that everything can be questioned, ignores that the terms "everything" and "questioned" imply the axioms of a rational philosophy, and then refuses to apply its universally skeptical attitude towards its own position. Rationalism is irrational.

While many more theories could be debunked, they are less relevant and easier to manage after considering these two main examples. Nihilism defeats itself by using that which exists to oppose Existence; skepticism claims reason to believe there is no reason to believe; idealism assumes the existence of ideas in themselves, denying the basis for concepts in reality and postulating the existence of ideas "in themselves" without reason; pragmatism divorces truth from reality and tries to please everyone, without offering a rational standard by which to evaluate what should constitute pleasing. The list could continue, but this should be enough to understand why a reality-oriented philosophy is the only one capable of achieving its purpose.

It must be stated after considering there errant theories that most are not malicious in nature and represent authentic attempts at philosophy. They represent inaccurate views of reality and their contents must be revealed for what they are, but their proponents should be judged by their own intellectual character and not by whatever ideas they happen to espouse at a given time. No language of compromise can be used when evaluating erroneous philosophical positions, but in dialogue with an active mind determined to uncover truth, only a fair and charitable position may be taken.

 

Conclusion

After constructing a rigorous foundation for epistemology and refuting some mistaken ideologies, the road to truth is clear. The correspondence theory of truth is the only one that can capture the meaning of the term and evaluate the truth of propositions objectively. Knowledge has a firm, self-evident foundation of irrefutable axioms from which concepts are built. Sense perception and reason are valid without proof as applications of Identity. Competing theories from all schools and eras ignore fundamental facts about reality inherent in its foundation.

For thousands of years, truth has been wrongfully attacked--and now it has been defended. There is much more to say on the foundations of epistemology and its higher concepts, and I hope to write about it in the near future. In the meantime, more information on objective epistemology can be found in the works of Ayn Rand, Leonard Peikoff, Harry Binswanger, and others. May those interested in truth seek and find it through the application of their minds to reality.