The Fallacy of Truth

I heard it said recently that the purpose of philosophy is to “seek the truth.” I will get into what I feel the purpose of philosophy is later in this blog, but for this post I want to delve into the topic of truth.

What is truth?

•       When I was young I was surprised to find out that a tomato was a fruit. To me, all the fruit I’d ever had was sweet and tomatoes weren’t sweet.

•       When I was growing up I was taught in school that that there were nine planets in our solar system. A few years back scientists determined that Pluto was no longer a planet.

•       Back in the day, everyone knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the world was flat. Now we are just as certain that the world is spherical.

One could look at these three examples as I did and come to the conclusion that there is no such thing as the truth, but only our understanding of things. Language is of course made up of words and each of those words has a definition. If a group of people get together and vote to change the definition of a word, as in the case of Pluto, then the reality of our understanding changes as well.

How can someone find a truth that they can rely on

if all the things we know are subject to change?

I took one of the above examples and focused on it for a while: the whole flat-earth, spherical-earth thing. We were sure that the earth was flat and if you had asked anyone about the truth of the earth they would’ve told you beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was flat.  Then we discovered that it was spherical and now if you ask anyone they will tell you the “truth” about planet earth is that it is spherical. Our understanding, and consequently what is true for us changed, but the shape of the earth didn’t.

As a thought experiment I thought, “What if someday we discover that the earth is really hexagonal in shape.” I know, crazy right, but just go with me. I'm sure a spherical earth sounded crazy to the flat-earth people too. This new discovery would become our new understanding. Our new "truth." But the shape of this planet still wouldn’t have changed at all. In this scenario, earth would have always been hexagonal. Its shape would have remained constant, only our understanding of the shape of the planet would have changed.

Then it hit me, there is an ultimate “truth,” and it is constant, but we may never learn it because of our own limitations as human beings. The closest we will ever get to it is our current understanding, and in the quest for a “truth” our current understanding is the only thing that really matters.

So as philosophers I think the search for truth is a waste of time. I believe it is sciences job to discover the truth about things. Come back next time and I’ll tell you what I think a philosopher’s job is.

What do you think?

If you have any thoughts about "truth," or if you agree with or disagree with anything I've said here I'd love to hear about it. Also please feel free to ask me questions on anything that seems unclear. Your questions will force me to think things through a little more thoroughly, and will help me understand my own thoughts a little better

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