Post-truth (part 2) - we need a metaphor for truth that fits

In part 1 of Post-truth, I explored the dominant metaphor for truth: humanity on a long journey to a destination.

We use metaphors all the time to talk and think about the world.¹ A familiar metaphor is conventional ideas as 'inside the box' and new ideas as 'thinking outside the box'. There is no actual box, but the metaphoric box conveys complex concepts about creativity and originality. 

A good metaphor helps us think about the world. A bad metaphor can be misleading. 

A 'journey' is not a very good metaphor for truth. It doesn't fit well. In fact, I think it is misleading and, among other things, it blinds humanity to the early signs of emerging dictators and power-mongers. 

In this post, I introduce a new metaphor and a new way of thinking about truth. My goal is to incorporate the numerous contests of ideas about truth, e.g. objective versus relative, humanity's need to know truth, the boundaries to 'knowing', and the place of 'untruth' in all its guises.

This post introduces and explains the 'fit' of my new metaphor. In subsequent posts, I will explain how I see it can accommodate these conflicting ideas about truth.² 

I'm exploring old ideas but trying to think outside the box. 

Armed only with a new metaphor.

Truth is the construction of a house 

I see truth as a project - or perhaps four projects - to construct a house within which we feel safe:

♦️ The foundations - represent the efforts of science to probe the reality of the material world and other methods to investigate the social world

♦️ The floor - represents our perception, interpretation and making sense of the world

♦️ The walls, the windows and doors - represent the social process of constructing meaning from what we perceive, what we 'know', what we've been told, the stories in our culture that explain the world, where we fit in, our social role and experience, and what information is available to us. As house construction is a social process involving many 'builders', the walls also represent the efforts of others to influence our personal construction of truth, where that may serve their goals of profit, status, etc. The windows and doors represent our capacity to filter and select new incoming information to integrate as we maintain our house.

♦️ The roof - represents the sheltering role that truth plays for humans in providing the sense of safety about a familiar, predictable, 'known' world. 

 

Let's start building.

The foundations - digging into what is real

I'm building this new metaphor from the ground up (BUT humans don't make truth from the ground up; to be discussed in later posts).

In the new metaphor, the physical world is the ground. It's there and we build upon it. The physical world sets some important limits for what we can build - limits like gravity, load bearing, upwind forces, etc. 

So my metaphor for truth is based on an assumption that a material world exists. I can't prove it does, but I am content to assume it does exist. (Some like to play with the idea that we might exist in a massive hologram set up by aliens, a mirage world set up by gods to test us, or in a 'blue pill' hallucination. We might, but I don't find those ideas interesting. They aren't 'testable' - if they are true, we can never find out. Interesting ideas to make a movie about, but nothing to use to make sense of our world as we experience it or to understand the contest of ideas about truth.)

The foundations or footings of the building represent humanity's probing into the material world, looking for stability in the ground upon which we build our truth. This is the role of the physical sciences - physics, chemistry and biology in particular - attempting to dig into the facts about reality. It's hard and challenging work, and if you don't do it carefully and according to strict scientific guidelines, then your whole building will be shaky, develop cracks and might even fall down.  

(Edit based on feedback). Other footings that we use to probe the objective reality (that we assume exists) include mathematics, philosophy, theology, the guidance of others, and personal experience. More on these in future posts.

But these foundations (resting on an assumption) are not something we see when we are in our house. It's easy to forget those out-of-sight foundations and the critical role they play in stability of construction of both buildings, and in this metaphor, of truth. 

The floor - the platform for understanding the world

The floor represents humanity's best effort to interpret and understand the physical world, to build a firm basis for living in the world and being safe. The floor benefits from solid footings, it is limited by the nature of the ground, but it is not the ground itself (an assumed 'objective factual reality').

The floor in the house metaphor represents the outcome of humans' perception, interrogation and interpretation of reality.

And that's another reason that some fret that truth doesn't exist - humans can only know about reality to the extent that our organs of perception (vision, touch, etc.) and capacity for thinking (reasoning, creativity, etc.) allow. 

We can presume that 'objective facts' exist independent of humans, but we can ONLY understand them through our human tools of perception and interpretation. That why the metaphor distinguishes between the ground and the floor. It is important, at times, to recall the assumptions and the limits to knowing objective reality. 

However, in terms of building truth, the distinction is really no big deal. 

As philosopher Hume said, 'Since all of our perceptions of the physical world are coming from the same physical world, and the nature of perceiving works more or less the same in each person, we can achieve a consistency in our understanding.'

It means that enough of us do a good enough job of interpreting physical reality well enough to feed ourselves, avoid predators, get health care, and build machines to labour for us.  

At the practical level, we work around the barriers to 'objective' knowledge. 

Sure, we have limits to knowing about physical reality, but if we get it seriously wrong, then we die (or we don't 'reproduce' that false idea). Physical reality, even if we can't determine an objective truth about it, sets the limits to human life and adventure (eventually!)  

Understanding reality - the effort to be less wrong

This is where science plays a key role. Science is the human endeavour to be less wrong; to detect errors in perception, interpretation and thinking about reality. 

We've made great strides in being 'less wrong', but we'll never ever get to 'perfect' because we are human. Humans exhibit an enormous number of biases in what they pay attention to and how they interpret what they see, etc³. 

Despite the indirect link between the floor (our understanding of reality) and the ground upon which it sits (our presumption of physical reality itself), we can agree to certain facts that don't need to be debated continuously. We can call them truth: apples fall in normal gravity; the sun rises in the east; viruses make humans sick and die; babies need to feel safe to thrive. This is the basis of the well-known quote from Moynihan. 

What we call 'facts' are as close as we can get to objective truth, given we are human. And for many practical things - treating illness, feeding human populations, designing aircraft, understanding the weather, establishing an international digital communication system, etc., it is a productive and sufficient basis for truth. 

It works.

At times, some key people point out that a particular footing in the foundation of our ideas about reality is actually dodgy, like the 'fact' that humans were the center of the universe. Over time, cracks had appeared in the floor and the walls had buckled.

At other times, society's ideas of truth about the world has been challenged by a new scientific finding. There may well be cause to examine the whole floor.

However, resistance to making changes to the floor can be savage (like excommunication or death for those challenging that particular 'foundational' assumptions). Digging up an old foundation can throw the whole building project into disarray. So, we humans tend to patch it up or put a floor covering over the cracks for a long time. 

We'd rather a not look at the foundations if it would jeopardise our sense of the truth.  

Source: SMBC, always profound

We don't know how we know truth

So, for practical purposes, we tend to overlook the limits to the human capacity to know objectively about physical reality.

However, conceptually or philosophically, we have a loose grip on truth as alignment with reality, on how we know what we know. And that can cause many to fret.  

At a personal level, when someone demands that we justify how we KNOW for sure that apples fall and the sun will come up in the east tomorrow, we flounder. We have no access to the centuries of thinking and careful scientific investigation that sit below our current understanding of the world. 

We don't have a clear idea of how what we call 'facts' actually fits with truth. 

We forget that our sense of truth comes not from observation and careful interrogation of the physical world, but from the stories and explanations we've been given as we grew up.  

And this brings us to the walls of our metaphorical building, the social construction of truth.

The walls - the social construction of truth

What we know about the physical world is not sufficient to build truth, because humans are both physical and social beings. 

Constructing truth is essentially a social process.

In the house building metaphor, our social interactions to construct truth are represented by the walls.

The walls are the most apparent feature in our homes - something we look at every day. They enclose us and provide safety from wild animals. We rarely even think about the stability of the floor or who built the foundations. 

The walls represent the construction of a shared, meaningful and coherent 'story' about how the world is, what we know we know, and why things are the way they are. 

I use 'story' to highlight the distinction between truth as the compilation of facts and truth as the interpretation and shaping of those facts to create a coherent and meaningful whole. 

Essentially, each community of people constructs a story to explain the world, a 'story' that they call truth. The coherence of the story is more important to our sense of truth than the facts that go into the story, or any stray facts that we might just have to ignore to ensure we can hold onto it.

If scientific facts or another 'story of meaning' conflicts with a person's values, politics, morals, religion or even economic self-interest, they may well be rejected - the social value of one's story of meaning as truth is more important than the value of the compiled facts as truth⁴. 

We might assume that people would make important decisions about life based on thorough evaluation of the available facts. However, many people make such decisions based on what feels right, is ideologically aligned, meets their immediate personal preferences, satisfies the demands of their profit making, or all of these. Basically, with what fits with their story, their truth, that explains how the world is.

Thus, people tend to resist 'facts' and evidence about the world if they contradict with their overall story of meaning. 

Truth is constructed socially, just like a story is social. That does not mean that 'nothing is real'; the physical earth exists (and hits back if we ignore it). It also does not mean there are no point to looking for objective facts (to the extent that human eyes and minds can determine). Facts seem to be the preferable foundation upon which to construct truth if you want it to last longer. 

It's just that facts do not equal truth in a way that satisfies human social needs.  

Building truth together

Just as most of us couldn't build a lasting, functional and safe house on our own, we don't construct truth alone. We are given cultural stories and also construct our own personal stories that make sense of the world. Based on others' input and feedback and responses to us, we develop an idea of ourselves that explains how and why we are like we are - our personal narrative. 

The nature of the metaphoric walls of the house, i.e. our truth, depends on the ideas and skills of those who assist us in the construction. 

The walls reflect what others have built before with methods that have been successful in the past (e.g. tradition and what we already know), and who has the most influence (e.g. who has power and makes the rules, etc.) and what materials are available (e.g. existing interpretations of history and understanding of the world). Construction is not random or arbitrary: there are physical limits to making a building that will stay up, and there are numerous social conventions about how we build both houses and truth. (More on this in part 6 of this series, when I discuss the metaphoric building code that controls what we think of as truth.)

We each participate in the construction, but we don't each start from scratch. Prefabricated walls - coherent stories of truth - can be plonked into place ready-made. 

The explanations and stories we learn from our families, as we engage in our culture, as we think about the world - they all stem from other people's historical, cultural and idiosyncratic interpretation of reality (i.e. the floor and the ground below it). If we grow up with the story that god placed the earth at the center of the solar system, or that some people are 'naturally' superior to others, it becomes truth for us. 

Source 

You don't require objective facts for a shared sense of truth, and you don't need an accurate interpretation of the material world. Together, people have built workable metaphoric houses of truth for millennia, although over (a long) time, the 'story of the world' that held their truth together crumbled when the foundations were destroyed. 

Just like we tend to overlook the way the floor (our interpretation of reality) has foundations bored into the ground (objective reality), we overlook the many ways that others are involved in constructing our meaningful story about the world.

However, interpersonal relationships will usually determine whether we accept and integrate a fact or a new idea into our existing understanding about the world.  

We are willing to adapt, change or extend our truth only as far as we feel safe, both physically and socially. 

In this way, shared truth meets the human needs for connection and belonging, as well as for safety. (Much more to explore on this; see part 5.)

The roof - shelter provided by truth

Each of us considers that our house, our truth, is built on stable footings and a firm and level floor. The walls constructed by us with out community safely enclose us. (In part 4, I explore the process of constructing the walls, and touch on the efforts of others to influence your idea of truth for their own personal gain, profit, fame or power.)

If we're lucky, we have also been taught a bit about the building process itself: how to think about the world, so that we can continue to maintain our walls, etc. 

So, the walls hold up the roof - the roof represents the shelter provided by knowing truth, by understanding the world and our place in it. Our sense of knowing truth underpins our sense of safety. It is deeply important to us at a personal level.

I might look at your house and think your foundations are unstable, or the walls are poorly made and have obvious gaps and cracks, but given they hold up your roof, you are not going to willingly pull them down, and you won't even like me suggesting there is anything wrong. 

I might think someone's whole construction of truth is upside down. What someone holds as truth might be called a conspiracy theory by others, but to that person it is a meaningful explanatory story of the world that gives them a sense of control, belonging and safety.

If someone criticises our truth, then they are attacking our sense of shelter and safety in the world.  

If we don't have a roof, we don't really have shelter and we don't feel safe. If we don't have truth, we don't understand the world and we don't feel safe. 

For most of us, the whole building somehow hangs together and the roof stays on, despite any flaws. 

In any one metaphoric house of truth, the construction process might obscure a lack of foundation in 'facts' as well as destructive or self-serving 'stories' from other, as well as contests about who decided how it the house would be built. 

But it holds your truth. As long as the roof provides shelter, you really don't care about the building process. 

And you don't care about checking the facts.

Constructing a house - a metaphor that better 'fits' truth

The house building metaphor fits truth much better than the journey metaphor. 

It represents that: 

♦️ Humans need a sense of truth in the same way we need shelter - to function and to feel safe.

♦️ With our families and wider communities, we collectively share and construct stories that explain the world and provide our truth; to share a sense of truth is an important part of belonging.

♦️ We observe and interpret reality as best we can with our human capacities, and for most practical purposes this is successful and sufficient. Our limit to 'knowing objective reality' doesn't impact on our survival.

♦️ Truth is not constructed in an arbitrary way or 'choose your own adventure’. We need to observe guidelines and rules for construction (this is big; to be explored in part 6.)

♦️ We build with what we have; others' truth may look quite different from ours and we may not feel comfortable in that space at all. 

'Facts' as determined by humans are linked to a physical reality that we assume exists, but what we can determine is limited by our organs of perception and made sense of through interpretation. Truth is most sustainably built on a stable foundation in reality, but that is not required. Throughout history, many have found a comfortable understanding of the world, their truth, based on what we now consider wrong ideas. What IS required, however, is a shared construction project involving many different people with differing contributions. 

Truth is constructed with the building material of facts but also culture, ideology, history, education, opportunity, etc., through human interaction for personally-essential and socially-useful purposes. Our construction is constrained by what is to hand, and also the influence and motivations of others involved in the project.

The metaphor personally and conceptually

At first, the metaphor of the house might suggest that I think truth is stable. Well, it's stable only in an individual's mind and our individual attachment to safety. 

Applying the metaphor personally, truth is the status we give our coherent stories for understanding the world, with its foundations, floor, walls and the sheltering roof – it’s the whole house we’ve (co-)constructed around us, to reside in. It’s not an objective thing and it’s not ‘out there’

Apply the metaphor to the abstract concept, truth is both the process and the product of humanity's need to understand the world, the product of the shared process of constructing and maintaining all components of the house - along with the numerous vulnerabilities inherent in a project that involves a lot of people. 

The house highlights the personal and social importance of a shared idea of truth as a place of shelter and safety.

The metaphoric fit extends also to the defensive response most of us have when someone threatens our sense of truth; the threat is to our safety, not to the facts we know. We will defend our truth in the same way we defend our homes.

The house construction metaphor recognises that truth is constructed by humans, and that's not only okay, it is inevitable and the outcome of a human need. 

Where to now?

I would love your feedback on this metaphor. I can take the truth!!

So much has been written about truth that perhaps one metaphor cannot do the job sufficiently; maybe I have overlooked critical aspects. I would love your comments, although there is so much I have yet to explain. 

In future posts, I will explore how many of those involved in constructing truth have conflicting motivations and ideas about how truth SHOULD be built. The construction metaphor accommodates the influencers, the post-modernists and the dictators. I will also present a metaphoric 'truth building code' as well as explore the central role of language in constructing stories.  

The idea of truth as a social construction project need not be disconcerting. It could help us think better about our society.

I think that if we cannot embrace this idea, if we equate truth only with 'objective facts', we risk overlooking the attempts by those who wish to control truth. 

Let me know if this metaphor helps you think about the world.

 

Footnotes

1. For a fantastic exploration of metaphors in thinking, read The Stuff of Thought: Language As a Window Into Human Nature, a book by psychologist Steven Pinker from 2007.
2. The more I explore this topic of truth and post-truth, the more I realise it is probably not a blog post; this topic is probably a book!
3. Read great summaries by Maria Popova of Kahneman's work here and here, which brought an understanding of the nature and pervasiveness of human biases to scientific endeavour. Also not just biases; there is so much to consider about scientists and their foibles… but not today.  Even when trained in scientific observation and analysis, humans are prey to the whole range of human weaknesses of pride, greed, etc. that might influence  what questions get asked, what observations get taken seriously, what conflicting information is ignored, and what gets published, etc. But science continues, always trying to be 'less wrong'.
4. An important distinction must be made between 'reluctance to accept' a fact and the human constraints on knowing objective facts, as well as the limits and flaws of science. 

Images, used under Creative Commons Licenses where provided

• Thinking inside the box by Matthew https://www.flickr.com/photos/purplemattfish/3854134991/in/pool-702859@N20 [CC BY-NC-ND]
• Philosophy cartoon But is it a 'true' cheeseburger by SMBC: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/truth [no information provided re reproduction].
• Hole through stone wall: Ian Haycox https://www.flickr.com/photos/ianhaycox/1535287950/ [CC BY-NC-ND]
• Upside down building: from social media, possible source https://www.easemytrip.com/blog/visit-some-unusual-structures-of-the-world 
• House framing: found through CC image search; no licence information provided
• The Pill of Truth: DES Daughter https://www.flickr.com/photos/diethylstilbestrol/11252650406/ [CC BY-NC-SA]
• All other images and quotes created by the author.