I had a discussion recently with a friend about the difference between truth and fact, and it occurs to me that this has an important place in my religious beliefs. I think that something can be “true,” while not being a “fact.”
For example, many of the morals espoused in fables seem, to me, to be true… though they are often based on stories that are clearly metaphoric. Tortoise and the hare, etc. Can a fictional story contain truth and wisdom? I was taught safety behaviors in grade school by an animated pony named “Patch.” It was the first time I was exposed to the whole “don’t take candy from strangers in large, black town cars” meme. Is the lesson false because the story is fiction? I don’t think so.
On to religion.
Jesus taught in parables. This is stated explicitly. We also believe that Jesus always spoke the truth. So… Jesus told us stories (the prodigal son, the good Samaritan, etc.) that are both non-factual (in that they did not occur), and true (in that Jesus speaks the truth). This is complicated (or, as I believe, made compellingly poetic, powerful and beautiful) by the fact that Jesus himself is referred to as “the word.” A word is not that which it describes, of course. I can’t eat the word “pie” any more than I can ride in the words “black town car.” But if Christ is the word, and the word is with God and the word is God… that’s deeply (beautifully?) weird. And it says something about the power of metaphor, language, meaning, connections, relationships and conveyance.
Most Christians believe in the mystery of the trinity; Father, Son, Holy Ghost. So we know that saying “Jesus is God” may be a holy paradox, but it’s not an obfuscation. To say, though, that Christ is “the word,” and that he was at once with God and the same as God seems… oddly (lyrically?) vague. After years of thinking about this passage, however, I find it to be comforting and helpful. If Christ is the word, and the term can be said to have anything to do with what we think of as a word, then Christ is a way of conveying meaning. Which makes perfect sense. God sent his son to convey meaning to us. But if he is also God, then that which was spoken (Christ) is also that which spoke. Which means that the thing that brings meaning can be the same as the meaning. We’re breaking down semantic bricks here, of course, but I find it interesting.
This is what happens when you study poetry, technical writing, and scripture in school.
So if the thing that conveys the meaning can be the meaning itself, then the metaphor can be the truth that is intended. OK… that didn’t come out so cleanly. Let’s try again. If Christ is the word of God, and also God, then the Bible can be the thing that conveys truth, and the truth itself. The line between the metaphor and that which it conveys becomes blurred.
Not sure if I’m explaining this well. I may try again later.
So… the parts of the Bible that everybody gets bent about (one way or the other) in terms of whether or not it’s “true,” are (imho), more about whether or not they are “fact.” But if Christ can teach in true metaphor (not fact), and the bringer of truth (Jesus) can also be the truth itself (the word)… then why can’t the Bible be true, regardless of whether or not it is fact?
Maybe the things God wanted to teach the early writers/readers of the Bible weren’t teachable in terms of fact. Maybe they still aren’t. Maybe you need metaphor to understand (in a meaningful way) the beginnings of the world. Maybe the stories about Adam and Eve, Noah, Jonah, Job, etc. are true in that they convey real, powerful, important wisdom about the nature of the universe. Maybe the things that actually, factually happened are less important than the stories?
I believe God gives us what we need to understand him (enough). I also believe that the universe is a few billion years old or so. I can reconcile those beliefs — and not just with chicanery, but with some (I feel) elegance — by keeping the definitions of truth and fact a bit… separated. Some of the most important truths in my life, after all — love, beauty, music, peace — are hardly explainable factually.
The difference between a truth and a fact is that a fact is grounded in specifics: time, space and other measurements; a truth transcends these definitions. A fact becomes *true* when it meshes with other known facts, creating a larger picture.
For instance, “a bank in Milwaukee” is a fact (really a factoid). It’s a piece of data that has no real meaning out of context. “John works at a bank in Milwaukee” is a fact that could be considered true, if it meshes with other pieces of information, like “John works in Milwaukee” or “John works for a bank”.
The best way to understand this is to consider other ways in which the word “true” is used, as in typesetting: a line is “true” when it conforms to other lines, is not out of kimbo; in carpentry: a joint is true when the ends which meet mesh cleanly. Truth is defined, then, by relationship; facts exist in themselves.
Metaphors and parables are excellent examples because they do communicate large, complex sets of information that we can judge to be true to our own sense of experience, without necessarily resorting to factual data.
This is really only confusing if you are of a strict materialist-realist persuasion and have not bothered to really examine terms. The contradiction enters in if one is convinced that there is nothing beyond tangible, physical existence, in which case, it is difficult, if not impossible to “transcend” factual data, to become objective or acknowledge an objective sense, if data is indeed all we have. In which case, facts do not automatically become “true” but “truth” itself becomes an impossibility.
And that’s a fact
First of all, props for use of “out of kimbo.” Nicely played.
I think we’re agreeing with each other. The only additional stipulation I’d make is that it seems, to me, that the more important (or, perhaps, meaningful) a fact is, the more it will rely on some kind of interpretation that may bring with it assumptions not based in fact.
Your example. “John works in a bank.” You’re right. Fairly straightforward. And, because of my social context, I would assume this to mean that John, who is probably a man, has paid employment, probably during regular work hours, at a financial institution, most likely, though, as a fairly low-level functionary in an actual retail bank office, rather than “upstairs” in management. Because if he was a VP, we’d probably say that “John works for a bank” rather than “at a bank.”
And while that is factual, we can call it “true” in that we — and probably nobody else — are not in dispute over the facts.
It becomes a more important truth, though, if you are having a discussion with your friend, Mary, who is looking to get hooked up, but who hates (because of previous bad experience) “bankers.” “What does John do?” “He works in a bank.” “Oh, crap. Well, I hate bankers.”
Is that a fact? Is it true? It is arguably incredibly important to the possible future relationship of John and Mary. If the fact of John’s employment is enough to keep Mary from going further… well, OK. But what if John works in a bank as their interior designer? Or marketing guy? Or janitor? We need more facts.
Some facts are, of course, enough. “This barbecue sauce contains peanut products,” is enough of a fact, and important enough truth, to keep anyone with allergies from eating it. Well and good. “Can I meet your grandpa?” “No, he’s dead.” Well… yeah. Dead is a pretty important single fact.
Obviously, though, where things get flaky is when an undisputed fact can be contradictorily true or false, depending on your context.
“He was justified in killing the intruder, because the thief had broken into his house, and he was defending his property.”
Let’s assume the facts are undisputed. Burglar breaks in. Homeowner kills him, even though he’s not in fear for his life. The event takes place in a state where the law says that you can do that and not be charged with a crime.
One person might look at the facts and say, “It is true that the killing was justified, because the law allows it.” Another might say, “It is wrong to kill someone in your home if you could just scare them off or run away.” Still another might say, “It’s wrong to kill someone under any circumstances.” One set of facts, three sets of truth.
It sounds like you’re arguing personal justification. I say 2+2=5, because I like 5. I say this wood joint is smooth and meshes because I made it. I say we can’t possibly run out of oil in the next 100 years because that’s where I get my campaign funds.
Yet, if truth is an interior reality, one that is entirely personal, then truth lacks the potential to exist objectively. If truth exists entirely in ourselves, then truth is just another flavor of emotion, akin to satisfaction. We wouldn’t even need the word for truth — instead of “That sounds true” we could just say “I like the way you talk”
I’m probably just tired, and not thinking clearly but your John/Mary example is eluding me. How would Mary’s dislike of bankers alter the truth about John?
Your second example seems to conflate two statements: “Is it true that the killing was justified?” and “Is it wrong…?”. In this sense, it would help to point out that one can be legally justified and morally wrong — or morally right and not legally justified, given that public law and morality do not always agree.
Secondarily, you seem to be arguing that any given argument constitutes a truth. Does it? If facts can be true and reasonable arguments can be held to be true, so that we have a multiplicity of truths, can I say that it’s true that the moon is made of green cheese, simply because I’ve crafted a fairly intricate argument with which to make my case? Can I insist that my viewpoint is perfectly valid, because it represents one of a myriad of potential truths?
I would argue that truth is knowable, though not always attainable, in the same way that physical geography is knowable, but a true understanding of it is not always attainable. We could have 3 different people standing in the same territory, each attempting to create a map. If they all wildly differ, we wouldn’t necessarily say we have 3 true maps.
We could say that perspective sometimes alters our ability to comprehend truth. My perspective on a plateau may conceal the existence of a river in a valley. My perspective from a mountain may reveal the river, but distort the size and shape of a nearby forest.
In printing, a true line is justified by other true lines. In common parlance, a truth is justified by other truths. A line which exists in space with no other lines to justify it cannot be true. A statement made in a vacuum, without context, also cannot be true. This is why a concept of personal truth doesn’t work — there’s nothing to justify (or align, or verify) the concept of “truth”.
Of course, a statement supported by other statements may still turn out be false, the way a distorted map, despite being filled with lines, may turn out to be false. Yet, just as multiple maps do not create multiple geographical realities, multiple arguments do not create multiple truths.
I didn’t mean to argue that truth is interior and entirely personal; that wasn’t my point, though I may have made it badly. My point was that the same set of facts can justify different truths. And that truth is not always made up entirely of facts.
I do like your point about truths requiring other truths to support them; I think that is a very important distinction between truth and fact. One fact does not rely on another in order to be factual. If I say, “It’s 72-degrees outside,” you don’t need to know what day of the week it is in order for that statement to be true. On the other hand, as you point out, the truth of “it is defensible to kill someone who intrudes in your home” requires additional truths to back it up; are we discussing morality or legality? which state are we in? is this for all circumstances? how do we define “intrusion?”
Many of the most important truths in our lives are less related to fact than to other truths, I think. I would say that, for example, “what goes around comes around,” is pretty true. It links in with other truths such as “judge not, lest you be judged,” and “blessed are the meek,” etc. One would have to stack up a great number of facts in order to justify those… but, over our lifetimes, we see how (to use your lovely metaphor) they are straight lines that parallel each other; they are true to the bigger picture.
I have a friend who believes in the absolute, factual accuracy of the Bible. When asked how to reconcile that with the many things in the world that are contradictory (age of the planet being a big one), she replies that the universe was “created old.”
We look at facts about carbon dating, the fossil record, geological eras, etc. Nobody can dispute that it takes X-million years for this-and-such type of rock formation to occur naturally. It’s provable. But the truth she draws from that is that God created those rocks all at once, with all the evidence of age, in order to test our faith. Whereas I believe that God gave us a wonderful book filled with truths that are often metaphoric in order to help teach us better.
Same facts, very different truths. Mine seems (to me) to run more evenly in parallel with how I experience the universe. Hers seem parallel to her. Which reminds me that parallel lines, when viewed from any angle other than 90-degrees, seem to converge.