19 February 2021

Post-truth (part 3) - reviewing the project brief

Truth is a massive topic and, as I said in part 1 of this series on post-truth, my writing comes after thousands (if not millions) of articles, comments, philosophical schools, books, memes, scientific debates, epistemological feuds, personal disagreements, psychological studies, ideological assertions and legal contests about truth

diagram of house with components representing truth, content is explained in part 2 of this series
Click to enlarge
In part 1, I described how the dominant metaphor for truth – a journey to find truth – is a poor fit. Not just that, it creates problems for humanity’s relationship with truth. It stops us understanding what is happening with post-truth.

In part 2, I introduced a new metaphor - the construction of a house. I briefly outlined each of the components of the house: the ground (objective reality), the footings and foundations (our attempts to probe and understand reality), the floor (facts about reality as perceived and determined by humans), the walls (social consensus on truth) and the roof (psychological security of confidence in truth). 

I intended to follow this with a post explaining the metaphoric building processes (social agreement on truth) and the building code (social influences on these components and processes). Finally, I planned to get to a discussion about post-truth

I was aware I was skating rapidly over the details in the new metaphor and how I have selected from the extensive previous writing on truth. So quickly, I left too much out. Not surprisingly, it raised a few questions for readers.

This third post in the Post-truth series is a response to some of the questions. It seemed like a good time to go back to the metaphoric drawing board to revisit the project brief for the construction of truth. 

Your questions


icon with two human heads with question marks
Some questions from readers related to the purpose and components of the house metaphor, and those are responded to in this post.

Some questions related to the nature of reality and how humans probe reality. I hope to explore these in more detail in a future article once the metaphor is more fully developed (or I'll never get to post-truth!). I have integrated some of the suggestions though; for example, I will be more explicit there is more to reality that a physical aspect, and ways other than science that humans use to probe the nature of reality. These great suggestions can be integrated without changing the house metaphor.

Some questions touched on aspects of the metaphor that I haven’t yet written about, so I hope my preliminary answers are not so brief they remain too full of holes! 

I have extracted key questions below before attempting to answer. You can see the full comments and questions in full at the previous post.

The journey metaphor represents HOW humans ‘find’ truth, and assumes truth is ‘out there’ to be found. Where is ‘truth’ in the house metaphor?


Great question: I had neglected to state where ‘truth’ is in the metaphor!

At the personal level, the whole house is truth; the metaphor represents what kind of thing truth is to humans. We live our lives and reside within the metaphoric house, in the safety of truth. It doesn't matter to us if the walls are full of holes or if the floor is out of kilter with the ground. The house provides physical shelter - a basic human need - just as truth provides psychological shelter - also a basic human need.

two small children peering out of broken windows of a bullet ridden house that looks like scant shelter
We integrate our perceptions and interpretations (the floor of 'facts') of the physical world (the ground) into the available stories that explain how the world is (the walls), through social interaction with our family and culture. Both the physical and the social are necessary to construct truth and to provide psychological safety (to hold the roof up).

Contradicting both the journey metaphor, and simplistic ideas about facts being equal to truth, the human concept of truth is not 
something external or objective to human beings, nor is it a simple or logical compilation of 'facts'. We tend to say that 'facts' (what humans can determine about the nature of the world) are 'true' only when they fit in our overall story of meaning. 

Immediately, you may see a conceptual distinction between how humans use the words true and truth. My contention is these two words do not have much of a link – this 'fact' can be true (as in aligned with reality), but that doesn’t make it part of someone’s truth. This might sound ludicrous at this point, but the house metaphor will eventually explain this contention.

Truth is the status we give the coherent stories we construct for understanding the physical and social world, and our place in it. The metaphor attempts to illustrate how humanity’s relationship with truth is more like a house we build around us and retreat within, than a journey to a destination.

Is this a metaphor for truth or a metaphor for belief?


At the conclusion of this post-truth series, I intend to argue that the house metaphor reveals that how humans construct truth, how they act on truth, how they defend truth, how desperate humans are to ensure they HAVE the right truth, and how vulnerable truth can be, all mean that what humans call truth is more like how we define the word belief (and dismiss as ‘merely belief’).

This question about belief anticipates this conclusion, but I will attempt a brief explanation here.

a row of dictionaries on a bookshelf
We started with the assumption that the human concept of truth is based on the dictionary definition provided in post 1: 'in accord with reality'. We reasonably (and casually) assume that truth equals true (and equals factual and equals 'in accord with reality'). 
But they don't in the way we use these words. This assumption sidetracks discussion and understanding of post-truth. 

The distinction between the dictionary definition and what humans mean in practice is revealed when we explore the source of competing ideas of truth in the world. I intend exploring the idea that our distinction between truth and belief is an artefact of the journey metaphor and the assumption of the existence of an objective truth 'out there', which pervades our thinking (and our definitions of relevant words) even if we disagree with that metaphor. We end up with concepts like false beliefs and true beliefs, and another definitional quagmire. 

BUT...

I want to pre-empt certain erroneous conclusions from my assertion - the social construction of truth is not arbitrary or unconnected to physical reality; it also does not follow that there is no objective physical reality; and it does not mean a person can just make up their own ‘truth’, all of which we tend to imply by the word belief

Understanding that, in practice, we unconsciously use the concept of truth more like our stated concept of belief, and distinct from our concepts of true and factual, is helpful in grappling with words for the various versions of 'untruth', as I will write about soon. 

Is the house a metaphor for how we DO determine the truth or how we SHOULD determine the truth? 

You suggest the ideal is being based on the foundation of science. I don’t think it works as a model for how people DO form beliefs because most humans for most of human history have had no access to science as we would know it today. If science is positioned as the foundation of the building, then the metaphor does not represent how most people form most true beliefs about their physical world – personal experience and the guidance of others is the most common way.


Well, neither DO nor SHOULD so far! I have not yet outlined how we DO determine truth. I do not intend writing about how we SHOULD determine truth

My ideas for how we DO determine truth was touched on with my allusion to ‘prefabricated’ materials in the metaphoric walls – the guidance of others through pre-packaged explanatory stories (traditions) from our families and our culture. I agree that we most commonly 'get' truth from other people, rather than working things out through observation, experience and logic.

I suspect the step-by-step introduction of the components of the metaphor may have inadvertently given an impression of a sequence used by humans in constructing truth. That was not my intention; I don’t think humans ever build truth from the 'ground' up, even in the current scientific era!

Perhaps also I gave the impression that truth is ideally constructed on science-derived facts about the material world by starting my introduction of the metaphor with the components of the ground (objective reality) and the floor (human constructed ‘facts’), as well as the comment on the footings or foundations (the role of the physical sciences as the dominant method to determine ‘facts’ about physical reality). Rather than proposing an ideal, my aim was to highlight the distinction between physical reality (the ground) and what humans ‘can know’ about reality (the floor).

In explaining why these are two very different things, I may have inadvertently implied that science was the only (or even required) foundation of the metaphoric house, when I was using it as the currently dominant method. Even then, science does not make truth - it is a way to probe reality.

diagram showing the four humours of blood, yellow bile, black bile and phlegm
Prior to contemporary science (with all its faults and limits), humans interpreted and explained their experience of the physical world mainly through religion (e.g. god/s created the earth, disease is god’s punishment, etc.) and used these ‘facts’ (their floor) to construct coherent explanatory stories: truth (e.g. creation stories). Those using a secular standpoint also interpreted the physical world to construct ‘facts’, e.g. the Hippocratic ‘fact’ that human health is made up of four humours (blood, yellow bile, black bile and phlegm) provided a ‘floor’ for understanding the world, and was part of constructing truth for centuries.


In part 1, I mentioned that while science had largely replaced religion as the main method for determining 'facts' and equating that with truth,  humans had maintained the religious ‘pilgrim’ or journey metaphor for finding truth ‘out there’. The  journey metaphor is pervasive, and we* tend to view 'objective knowledge' about reality as the ultimate truth or destination. Putting 'facts' in inverted commas was part of distinguishing (an assumed) objective reality from what humans can determine about it. (*All my comments relate only to what I know about contemporary Western society.)

So, agreed, contemporary science is not necessary to construct truth. However, contemporary society has agreed that (for now) it is the dominant tool to ‘probe’ the physical world to determine the ‘facts’ that make up the floor of our metaphoric house of truth.

The social agreement on exactly which tool to use to probe reality is explored in Part 6 on the metaphoric building code, and that’s where SHOULD plays a big role!

If science belongs anywhere in the model, it would be in the walls as a set of constantly shifting principles and rules reached through social agreement (and disagreement).


Ahead of me again! The concept of ‘principles and rules’ is most important. I mentioned that the construction of truth, like the construction of a house, is not arbitrary or random. Over millennia, humans have developed various sets of principles for how to go about this, and competitions about truth sometimes come down to disagreement about who gets to decide the principles! 

clip from a book cover that reads code of regulations
Part 6 describes these principles and rules. I draw a distinction between the social agreement about truth and the social agreement about how best to determine truth. Metaphorically, this is the difference between the walls and the building process (representing truth) and the guidelines and rules for building – the building code (agreement on ways to determine truth).


Part of the building code is the social agreement (or disagreement) about the appropriate methods (footings or foundations) to probe the nature of reality (the ground), as well as who decides which ‘facts’ are important. So far in explaining the metaphor, I had placed science in the footings or foundations as the currently dominant way to probe the nature of physical reality (i.e. the ground upon which to build the floor for our house/truth). Readers raised the options of morality, logic and maths, aesthetics, philosophy, theology, which I agree could also fit in the footings – various ways humans probe and make sense of (i.e. interpret) their experience of reality. 

My key point is that science (or any other ‘footing’ for the house) does not determines truth. I don’t see science as the source of truth, but I think many do.

Science might be our best shot at holding true beliefs about our physical reality, but there’s no guarantee that such beliefs are better than untrue beliefs, many of which have made us happy and comfortable for generations.


I agree that ‘untrue beliefs’ (as in, ideas about reality that are now discounted by science) have kept many ‘happy and comfortable for generations’. That metaphoric roof over the house - safety in truth and the shelter it provides - is more important than anything else. 

To clarify, the veracity of pre-science ‘facts’ was not the focus of my writing. My main point is that, even with science which is considered by many to be a far superior way of interrogating physical reality, what humans ‘can know’ about reality remains constrained by our own biology, psychology and expectations. 

As for whether science-based ‘facts’ are ‘better’ than other ideas about reality, that is not in my scope. When I said the physical sciences are the best method we've found so far to probe the nature of physical reality, I was contrasting it with the methods of theology or philosophy’s inductive reasoning. ‘Better’, not morally, but practically, in that it has proven the most fruitful way to harness reality (i.e. to fly, treat illness, etc.) which humans have used to improve quality of life. 

That may or may not make us happy though!

Most components of the metaphor relate to what we think about the world (the roof, walls, floor, and foundations). In this model, ‘truth’ is the ground upon which these other elements rest, but this is the part of the model that is least explored.


In the house metaphor, I use the ground to represent ‘physical reality’, and the floor to represent what humans call ‘facts’. Neither are what humans call truth.

I had not explored the ground much because I don’t think it’s that important to really, really know about objective physical reality. 

a plush velvet green chair
For example, modern science tells us that the chairs we sit on are not solid; they are mostly made up of space. Science tells us that our experiential level ‘facts’ about the world do not reflect objective reality at all. 

Do we hesitate to sit down because of that? No. At most, we say, ‘Weird, hey?’ and shift slightly in what feels like a not-at-all-unsolid chair. It doesn't really matter to our lives. It doesn't matter to truth.

The manifestation of amazing things like atoms at the human experiential level is all that matters for our everyday functioning, and importantly, for our construction of truth

Should we be alarmed to find out that we can never really, truly know objective physical reality? 

Well, we never could; we just thought we could. It raises alarm only if we assume (which Newtonian physics and ‘science’ did for some years, and which many still people do) that the floor is the same as the ground, and if we assume that our experience of physical reality is our source of truth.
  
It is not, and the metaphor explains the distinction.

Seeing this as a dilemma for truth (and not just fascinating, and quite useful for very narrow applications at the atomic and sub-atomic level) seems to be an artefact of the ‘quest’ of the journey metaphor - to find objective truth ‘out there’! 

I don’t see dilemmas in the discoveries of quantum physics and theories of relativity in terms of humans and truth. I don’t think it’s concerning or awful that humans don’t have direct access to reality. I don’t think it is at all concerning that humans construct a floor of ‘facts’ to interpret reality, constrained by their biology, psychology and expectations. 

The key thing is to understand the distinction between the ground and the floor, when that becomes important, as it sometimes does in competitions about truth. (yet to be explained.)

In fact, this understanding should open our eyes to the possibility of different interpretations of the physical world by people from different languages, cultures and eras. 

Instead, however, the idea of a difference between objective reality and human ‘facts’ leads some to infer that there is no reality at all, that coherence with reality is unimportant, or you can arbitrarily choose your own 'truth' - all remnants of the journey metaphor.

I will cover this in future writing. 

The metaphor characterises human perception, the metaphoric floor, as an imperfect approximation of reality. But perception is more than this. 

It is not just the once-removed representation of the ground. The floor might run parallel to the ground beneath and have some correspondence to its shape, but the choice of coverings – carpet, tiles, or wood – is all us. 


I agree with this entirely; perhaps the brevity of my writing made this less than clear.

So, to clarify, the ground is the metaphoric representation of objective reality (whatever that is), and the floor is the metaphor for humanity’s perception but more importantly interpretation of our experience of reality - a human construction: carpets, tiles, wood - a blend of objective and subjective. In part 2, I focused on the distinction between the ground and floor, but there is a lot more to say about the nature of the floor. 

You assume that the only objective reality is a physical material reality.


The remaining very interesting questions related to the nature of reality, how to probe it, and the relationship between reality (the ground in the metaphor) and humanity’s interpretation of it (i.e. the floor).

I think it's fair to say (as this reader suggests in the full comment) that if the metaphor is based on an assumption of an objective physical reality, it could also accommodate an assumption of the existence of an objective non-physical reality. 

I hadn't explored these ideas in my focus on differentiating 'reality' itself from human 'facts', but upon reflection, I do assume there is more than an objective physical reality. As with physical reality, we probe it with various tools, tool constructed by humans, and limited by human capacities. Whether it is 'objective' though, is something I need to ponder further.   

What Plato reportedly said that Socrates said, which Plato didn't actually say. It was Goldman. So now have the truth!

So, I have tweaked my thinking about the house metaphor to be explicit that the metaphoric footings or foundations include the range of ways humans probe and interpret an objective reality we assume exists. In addition to science, the footings might include mathematics, philosophy, theology, morality, aesthetics and personal experience. 

Exploring the question of how important it is to know the nature of objective reality to determine truth, well that’s another post. Yes, another one! (And the brief answer, for those who usually skip to the end, is ‘not very’.)

However, I will put that writing on the back burner (still watching it carefully though!) while I outline the processes involved in construction of truth in the next post.

The project brief for the house metaphor for truth


Pondering these questions has allowed me to clarify some details, to highlight as-yet-unexplored aspects of the metaphor, and to revise some assumptions I had made. The metaphor is now tweaked accordingly! 

However, the project brief remains the same.

The project brief - the aim - for the house metaphor is to explore truth and post-truth, as well as political lying, cults and propaganda from a new perspective. I intend to highlight the role of language and words - the metaphoric building materials in the construction of truth - which will make it clear why I consider truth and post-truth are Wordly Exploration topics. 

The house metaphor highlights the various components and processes of establishing truth, it does not declare what the truth is, or that one truth is better than another. 

The house metaphor doesn’t solve the problem of conflicting ‘truths’. The house metaphor will, however, highlight the specific sources of conflict.

In contrast to the journey metaphor, which says that conflict arises because one person is wrong or lost, and has missed the CORRECT truth at the destination, the house metaphor will explain why different ideas about truth are inevitable and built into the components and the processes of constructing truth. Understanding this could allow us to resolve some of these conflicts, some of the time.

There is a lot to say about idea - it’s not trite, dismissive of truth, or a retreat into relativism. It is an understanding that could change our approach to those differences in truth that can be dangerous. 

The project brief for a metaphor for truth is massive, just as truth is indeed a massive topic.

P.S. And enormous thanks again for all the great questions!!

Images, used under Creative Commons Licences 



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