Understanding Truth: Theories and Perspectives

Truth: Theories and Perspectives

2.4 Against the Problem of Knowledge and Truth

Parmenides distinguished two ways: truth and opinion. Connecting with this idea, Plato argued that there was a kind of true knowledge, while error belongs to the sphere of opinion. Marx and Hegel argued that error and falsehood are constituent elements of the process of knowledge. They signaled that there were false and ideological conceptions that have attempted to be presented as true.

Positions on the Subject-Object Relationship

• Idealism: The criterion of truth is about the subject that creates or constructs the object. Reality cannot be known directly. The cognitive structure of the human being is imposed and determines how to see things.
• Realism: The criterion of truth is the object; the outside world is dominant over the idea and is the only source of knowledge. It defends the possibility of objective knowledge.
• Pragmatic and Consensus Theories: These theories place the criterion of truth in the agreement among individuals of a community.

Truth as Correspondence

This theory considers two previous cases: there is a reality independent of thought, and we can get to know it. It corresponds to empirical and realistic positions of knowledge. Aristotle and Aquinas stated that truth is the match between the concept and the thing. Russell maintained the existence of an isomorphism between reality and language. This theory explains its own semantic theory of truth and reveals the mediating role of language in the process of knowledge.

Truth as Coherence

This position is held by rationalists and idealists. A proposition is true when it does not enter into contradiction with other propositions that make up the theory. In the 20th century, this theory was revived thanks to mathematical logic, and the most important system is believed to be the absence of any contradiction.

Truth as Unveiling

Truth is reality in general, and the mission of the subject is to discover it. It emerged with Parmenides. Heidegger developed it more explicitly: the aim of knowledge is to allow hidden things to be shown through their speech.

Truth as Consensus

Truth lies in the plane of relations between subjects. Durkheim believed that the opposition between true and false reduces to a social problem of agreement and disagreement. Habermas believes that a good definition of truth must not forget intersubjective aspects. Truth is the intersubjective product of a community of individuals acting across communal discourse.

Truth as Pragmatic

This theory states that what is true is shown to be effective in practice. According to Charles S. Peirce, a statement is true when the scientific method is used to affirm its truth. Some authors, such as John Dewey, have claimed that success or usefulness are the only reliable criteria of truth.

Truth as Perspective: Hermeneutics

Preceded by Nietzsche, this theory takes into consideration the conditions from which the individual seeks truth. According to Ortega y Gasset, truth could only be obtained with the sum of all individual perspectives of seeing the world. Throughout the entire understanding and experience of the person, truth is conditioned by a series of factors that influence the possibility of understanding the world. Truth has an existential character. It appears in dialogue and is the result of an agreement, the fusion of horizons of the subjects.