Truth
TRUTH
The accordance or conformity between what is asserted and what is, or the conformity of intellection with being. From the viewpoint of the intellect as consciously conformed to being, truth is called logical or epistemological; from the viewpoint of being as conformed to intellection, it is called ontological. This article deals first with the history of the notion of truth, then with truth as studied in epistemology, and finally with truth as studied in ontology.
HISTORY OF THE NOTION OF TRUTH
The historical development of the concept of truth may be divided into phases corresponding to the development of Greek, patristic and medieval, modern, and contemporary philosophy.
Greek origins. The problem of truth was implicitly treated at the dawn of Western philosophy (6th century b.c.), when men first sought principles that would explain the changing universe. It was explicitly treated by parmenides; rejecting the doctrine of heraclitus, he distinguished the world of sense as the domain of appearance, change, multiplicity, and falsity from the world of thought as the world of the stable, the one, and the true. The true, for Parmenides, is the object of thought or the intelligible, and the true or being is one. Multiplicity is appearance; it is the effect of the disintegrating influence of man's senses on being.
The sophists, holding that man cannot attain certainty and that the only truth he has is the contingent judgment of the senses, which differs from one individual to another, first posed the problem of necessary truth and of the subject-object relationship in the knowing process.
plato taught that on the occasion of sensation there is awakened in man a corresponding idea, which was dormant in the soul from its contemplation of the subsisting Ideas before its incarnation in the body. The Ideas are the universal, necessary, and immutable essences, the archetypes of the sensible reality that imitates and participates in them. The Ideas, existing in the intelligible world hierarchically under the supreme Idea of the Good, are more real than sensible reality. Necessary truth, therefore, is the conformity of man's thought to the Ideas. Contingent and changeable truth, or opinion, is the conformity of his knowledge to the sensible world.
For aristotle, truth is primarily in the judgment. The judgment is true when it attributes a predicate to, or denies it of, a subject, according to what reality itself demands. Truth then is the adequation of the intellect to reality. Judgment guarantees the necessary truth of the first principles, particularly that of contradiction, which are founded in being. The universal concept that functions in judgment is not had from an intuition of the subsisting Ideas, but is obtained by abstracting or dematerializing the formal notes of sensible reality (see abstraction). Aristotle even conceived God as Thought Thinking Itself (Meta. 1074b 15–1075a 11), and in this sense as subsisting Idea or Truth.
Patristic and Medieval thought. Christianity, as the revealed truth of God proposing the Second Person of the Holy Trinity as the Truth by whom all things that exist are made, opened up new vistas for philosophical speculation on the nature of truth. The greatest of the Church Fathers, St. augustine, inspired by Plato (as interpreted and synthesized with Aristotle by plotinus), made the idea of truth central in his philosophy (C. Boyer, L'Idée de vérité dans la philosophie de saint Augustin, 2nd ed. Paris 1947). Truth, as a property of knowledge, is the affirmation of that which is. Man knows immutable and eternal truths, e.g., the laws of number and essences, with certainty. By these truths he judges the sensible. These truths are not justified by sensible reality, but are a participation in man's intellect of the first and subsistent truth, which is God. Hence from necessary truth, such as two and two make four, one can prove the existence of God (Lib. arb. 2.8.20–24). Truth as applied to reality is the identity of the idea and reality. Reality is true when it fully verifies what is said of it, when it fully verifies the idea, and hence when it is the idea. Only God fully verifies the idea. He is truth. Finite beings are true insofar as they are imperfect imitations of the first Truth, of the Subsistent Idea, which is God.
St. thomas aquinas, who achieved the most perfect synthesis of Christian philosophy, unlike Aristotle treated truth explicitly as a transcendental property of being. Being as true is being as related to man's intellect (De ver. 1.1). Since being does not depend on man's intellect, the relation that truth adds to being is a relation of reason manifesting the intelligibility of being. This intelligibility is the dependence of being on its intelligent cause, God. Hence every being as intelligible presupposes its idea in the mind of God. God is identically subsisting Intellection and Being, or subsistent Truth. Knowing His essence as imitable, He forms the idea of every creature He can produce. Creating, God conforms to His intellect the reality produced, making it identically intelligible and existing (Summa theologiae 1a, 15). Man attains truth properly in the judgment. His direct judgment is the affirmation of the nature of sensible reality according to the norm of being.
Modern development. R. descartes, the father of modern philosophy, was concerned primarily with certitude as this is found in mathematics. Hence, for him, truth is that which man conceives in a clear and distinct idea. Clear and distinct concepts, which are also innate and intuitive, represent reality exactly as it is in itself. Reality and the conceptual are identical. The analytical laws of connection of concepts are laws of reality. This is the principle of rationalism. It led N. malebranche to ontologism, wherein man is proposed as having immediate intuition of the divine ideas. It led G. W. leibniz, complementing Cartesianism by dynamism, to his doctrine of a pre-established harmony among the active elements of the universe, which he conceived as incapable of acting on each other. Rationalism found its logical conclusion in the absolute monism of B. spinoza: there is only one substance, God, of whose infinite modes man knows only two, namely, extension and cognition.
Diametrically opposed to rationalism is empiricism, which, prepared for by the nominalism of william of ockham and by the scientific method of Francis bacon, appeared in England under T. hobbes, J. locke, and G. berkeley, but found its full expression in D. hume. With the exception of mathematics, which he saw as a logical analysis of identities, Hume reduced all valid knowledge to sense impressions and to images derived from sense impressions and associated by habit. Therefore, for him, the notions of causality, of substance, of soul, etc., are invalid. Hence truth for man is the conformity of his knowing to sense impressions. B. russell and logical positivists such as A. J. Ayer (1910–89) follow Hume in making sense verifiability the norm of truth for all factual statements.
For I. kant, who reacted against the extremes of rationalism and empiricism, truth is the conformity of thought to its object. The object of thought is not reality as it is in itself, however, but is the product of the a priori forms of the unity of consciousness, which synthesize the elements of sensation received from reality. Hence necessary and universal truth is founded not in being itself but in the forms of man's cognitive faculties. Since the knowing subject produces the formal elements of knowledge, this system is called transcendental idealism.
The successors of Kant, J. G. fichte, F. W. J. schelling, and G. W. F. hegel, sought to remove the opposition between the two sources of valid knowledge in Kant, namely, the a priori forms of the subject and the material elements from reality itself. Hence they explained knowledge by the knowing Ego alone, thus reducing being to knowing. The most complete statement of this form of idealism is Hegel's. For Hegel truth is dialectically (i.e., by a synthesis of oppositions) evolving reason, realizing itself first as external nature, then as the human spirit, and finally as the absolute idea of absolute truth. This necessary evolution of reason constitutes history. Hence in this non-relative sense truth is historical.
Contemporary directions. Existentialists such as S.A. kierkegaard, K. jaspers, G. marcel, and J. P. sartre, reacting to the impersonal nature of idealism, reject objective and universal truth as superficial and of no personal value (see existentialism). Truth in the real sense of the word is practical and subjective. Real truth reveals itself to man only in and as the exercise of his liberty of accepting himself in the authentic human situation. Hence real truth is personal truth: the truth by which one lives and to which one commits oneself.
M. Heidegger holds the truth of judgment, as the conformity of judgment to reality, to be truth only in a derived sense. Truth in the primary sense, which makes the truth of judgment possible, is the revelation through man's being of the "to be" of being as such. This revelation takes place historically under different forms, all of which are true. In this sense truth is historical (see M. Heidegger, Vom Wesen der Wahrheit, Frankfurt-am-Main 1943).
For pragmatists, such as C. S. peirce, W. james, and J. Dewey, a proposition is true when, once admitted, it leads to satisfactory results.
Marxism, the doctrine of K. marx and F. engels as developed by N. lenin and J. Stalin, applies the dialectic of Hegel to matter. The only reality is matter, which evolves dialectically with historical necessity in function of economic factors toward a classless society. All man's thoughts, desires, and activity are a result of economic needs. Truth therefore is pragmatic; it is the conformity of knowing to that which here and now most promotes evolution toward the Communist society.
Bibliography: m. j. adler, ed., The Great Ideas: A Syntopicon of Great Books of the Western World (Chicago 1952) 2:915–938. r. eisler, Wörterbuch der philosophischen Begriffe (Berlin 1927–30) 3:450–471. g. gawlick, Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart (3d ed. Tübingen 1957–63) 6:1518–25. a. carlini, Enciclopedia filosofica 4:1549–60. a. fossatti, ibid. 4:1560–61. a. michel, Dictionnaire de théologie catholique v. 15 (Paris 1950) 2:2675–87.
[f. p. o'farrell]
TRUTH IN EPISTEMOLOGY
epistemology is concerned with the efforts of the human mind to attain true and certain knowledge; it seeks to establish and evaluate canons whereby such knowledge may be differentiated from the false and the dubious. Truth in human knowing is the concern also of logic, however, and thus, before analyzing truth from an epistemological point of view, it will be advantageous to explain how truth is treated in logic.
Truth in logic. As the science and the art that directs the mind in its reasoning process, logic is concerned in some way with truth. In its instrumental role, however, logic considers the correctness of the thought processes by which man knows things and judges and reasons about them. Thus logic aims directly at formal truth alone and can assure only the correct form of the mind's constructions; the matter or content with which such constructions are concerned remain outside its scope. It is possible, for example, to argue correctly from premises to a conclusion, attaining in the process formal correctness, and yet to miss material truth because the premises are false in their content. The truth that logic seeks, therefore, is a truth of method rather than one of content. This is well illustrated in the treatment of truth functions in symbolic logic (see logic, symbolic). In a complicated argument, logical relations may be seen more clearly and manipulated more easily and correctly if symbols, rather than involved verbal expressions, are used. Particularly is this so in verifying the investigations of the physical sciences, where mathematics is an important tool.
Truth of knowledge. The word truth (Lat. veritas, Gr. ἀλήθεια) means in general some kind of agreement between thought and its object, between knowledge and that which is known. It is sometimes applied to things, and a thing is said to be true in the sense of ontological truth. In reference to speech, truth is called veracity, or moral truth, and is present when a person expresses what is in his mind. see truthfulness (veracity). But the primary meaning of the word refers to the truth of the intellect, the truth of thought as opposed to the derived notions of truth of being and truth of speech. St. Thomas Aquinas reminds his readers that Aristotle maintained that "the true is properly not in things but in the mind" (C. gent. 1.59; cf. Meta. 1027b 25) and accepts as a satisfactory definition of truth "the adequation of intellect and thing," a definition that some trace to isaac israeli and others to avicenna. Whatever its source, it has come to be generally used and is the most frequently cited definition.
Apprehension and Sense Knowledge. Since truth in its most general sense is a conformity of knowledge with its object, it is possible to apply the term truth to any knowledge, including simple apprehension and even sense knowledge, insofar as these are in genuine conformity with their respective objects. The intuitive contact of the senses with their proper objects guarantees the validity of sensory knowledge and thus its truth. So, too, intellectual knowledge in its apprehensive dimension, i.e., simply knowing what a thing is, is impervious to falsity and must attain what it knows as it is; therefore it must attain truth. In other words, the kind of truth associated with apprehensive knowledge at both the sensory and intellectual levels is assured by the necessary relationship that exists between the powers of knowledge and their respective objects. Truth in this sense is necessary and unavoidable; it is built into the cognitive operations themselves; which may not be false. This type of truth, however, even though naturally guaranteed, is as imperfect as the apprehensive knowledge of which it is a necessary and infallible property.
Judgment. Truth in its full significance is found only in the second act of the mind, the judgment. St. Thomas implies this when he states: "Truth, therefore, may be in the sense or in the intellect knowing what a thing is, as in a true thing, but not as a thing known is in the knower, as the word truth implies; for the perfection of the intellect is the true as known" (Summa theologiae 1a, 16.2). To understand why St. Thomas holds that truth formally taken is found only in the judgment, one must recognize that in apprehension the human mind grasps only bits and snatches of the real. Through his ideas and concepts man appropriates to himself isolated elements of reality, or single aspects of the things he knows, without putting these aspects and isolated elements together as they are found in nature. Only through a series of judgments does he begin the process of unifying this knowledge to bring it into conformity with the constitution of things in the world. The real problem of truth arises in the process of putting unity into these isolated impressions. When the intellect makes the unification in a way that corresponds to the actual unity found in the object known, the mind enunciates a statement that is true. When the enunciation is at variance with the mode of being found in reality, the result is falsity. St. Thomas refers to this when he says: "Of all the types of intellectual discourse, the true and false exist only in enunciation, because only enunciation signifies absolutely the intellectual conception in which the true and the false exist (In 1 perih. 7.4).
Composition and Division. The meaning of truth becomes clearer if it is kept in mind that the very possibility of truth is implicit in the difference between the two intellectual functions of apprehension and judgment. In apprehension the mind simply grasps an object and represents it to itself conceptually. In this function of conception, the mind has no alternative to presenting the object that stimulates it to produce its own vital act of knowing. But in judgment, the act of composing or dividing apprehended concepts, the mind's function is different. Here, consequent upon apprehension, is a dynamic act in which the intellect does not simply report the things it knows but goes on to say something about them. The product of this operation, called enunciation, alone possesses the quality of being true or false. Here the mind no longer depends solely on the object represented but produces something new and original, i.e., a composition or division contributed by itself. It is this original element, a new unity, that opens up the possibility of truth or falsity. Truth is the property possessed by an enunciation that expresses a composition or division that is conformed to the real. falsity arises when the mind reassembles the aspects of the real in a way out of conformity with the actual mode that exists in reality.
Habits for attaining truth. "The true is the good of the intellect and the false its evil" (C. gent. 1.61). Thus the human mind is made to know truth, and "its ultimate perfection, according to the philosophers, is to have inscribed within it the entire order of the universe and its causes" (De ver. 2.2). Moreover, "although no man can attain to perfect apprehension of truth, yet no one is so completely deprived of it as not to know any at all. The knowledge of truth is easy in the sense that immediately known principles, by means of which we come to truth, are evident for all men" (In 2 meta. 1.275). Thus the pursuit of truth, the natural occupation of man, is not left to man's choice or inclination; there are certain basic truths that all men who begin to think must know. These are called first principles and may be exemplified in the first principle of all, viz, "being cannot be nonbeing," and in the first principle of arithmetic, "a whole is equal to the sum of its parts." Self-evident principles of this type are the source of all science and wisdom. The human intellect does not learn them, nor does it assume them; it arrives at them naturally and necessarily once it grasps the terms that make them up. The mind thus initially attains truth and certitude by knowing first principles; it then proceeds from these to conclusions. This does not mean that all knowledge can be deduced from these principles, but only that these principles must be admitted at least implicitly and then applied to experience before anything else can be deduced.
Understanding. The human intellect possesses a habit called understanding (intellectus) that is not properly innate but is gained by one act, the act by which it grasps the principle of contradiction. This act assures its first grasp of truth and necessitates its assent to immediate evidence. From further material supplied by the senses the intellect goes on to perceive other first principles that form the basis for each special field of knowledge. The precise way in which these primary judgments are formed is analyzed by St. Thomas at the very beginning of his treatise on truth (De ver. 1.1). These judgments are the primary mental assents at which the mind arrives in its inspection of reality, in terms of both the general modes of being common to all things, and the special modes of being proper to the different kinds of things encountered in experience. The judgments that relate to the general modes of being concern the transcendentals and are the source of all the principles and conclusions of metaphysics. The judgments that relate to the special modes concern the categories of being and are the sources of the principles and conclusions of the special sciences. The ultimate test of any fact is always experience itself, but the ultimate test of the truth of any judgment is the analytic resolution of that judgment back to first principles (see analysis and synthesis). St. Thomas states simply: "There is never falsity in the intellect if the resolution to first principles be rightly carried out" (De ver. 1.12).
There is, then, a minimum of truth that each man must possess, at least implicitly, and from which he may (though he need not) proceed to all other truths within the scope of his experience. In the speculative order, the habit by which this minimum is known is called understanding; in the practical order, the corresponding habit is referred to as synderesis. St. Thomas makes the distinction: "Just as there is a natural habit of the human soul through which it knows principles of the speculative sciences, which we call understanding, so too there is in the soul a natural habit of first principles of action which are the universal principles of the natural law. This habit pertains to synderesis" (De ver. 16.1).
Science and Wisdom. To assist man in the attainment of truth there are two other intellectual habits: one, called science (scientia), provides skill in moving intellectually from principles to conclusions; the other, called wisdom, disposes the intellect rightly to regard conclusions drawn from first principles and causes that are ultimate.
These two habits, themselves based on the habit of understanding, are indispensable for the proper operation of the intellect. Since they dispose the mind to attain truth, they are perfect qualities and therefore virtues (see virtue). Science and wisdom do not differ as being opposed or as regarding entirely different objects; rather, wisdom includes science and adds something to it. Science proceeds from any cause whatever, whereas wisdom proceeds only from ultimate causes. The habit of science, moreover, is concerned only with conclusions, whereas the habit of wisdom is concerned with principles also. It explains and defends both its own principles and those of the other sciences. One of the supreme works of wisdom is to contemplate the order connecting all truths and to show how these are derived from the first truth.
Awareness of truth. Men have always been concerned with the question how anyone can know that his judgment is true. In fact, the motive prompting the study of epistemology or of the critique of knowledge is that men are generally aware of their proneness to error; they are conscious of the ease with which the false can be mistaken for the true.
Egocentric Predicament. The problem is further complicated by the fact that truth and error are relationships that exist between thought and reality. To examine these relationships critically one must have a simultaneous grasp of the enunciation and that to which the enunciation refers. This seemingly simple requirement lays a trap for the unwary, into which not a few epistemologists fall because of their impoverished conception of knowledge. In their view, the process of knowing resembles what occurs when a camera takes a picture; the test of truth, for them, consists of comparing the picture with the reality to see how closely the two correspond. The attempt to apply this photographic analysis to knowledge runs into difficulties, however, since knowledge is involved in the very act of comparison, there is no way of attaining to reality apart from the knowing act itself. This situation, frequently called the egocentric predicament, has often been alleged as a reason why some form of idealism in epistemology is necessary. The difficulty here is actually the misconception of knowledge itself—the reduction of what is really a vital and immaterial action to mere mechanical copying. Such a misconception makes any satisfactory answer impossible because it raises only false problems. The real problem can be solved only in the context of a sound psychology of knowledge.
On this general problem St. Thomas observes: "There is truth and falsity only in the second operation of the mind, in which the intellect not only has the likeness of the thing understood but also reflects upon it, knowing it and judging it" (In 6 meta. 4.1236). Here are noted the basic elements that make up a judgment. First there is the likeness of the object, which in this case is complex, being made up of subject and predicate; second there is the reflection, the intellectual consideration of the mental content; and third there is the knowing of the conformity, i.e., the consciousness that what the mind has grasped in its act of composing or dividing corresponds to what exists in reality. Formal certitude can be present only when the intellect knows itself to be conformed to the real. This can come only from a process of reflection on the content grasped by the mind in its act of apprehension. Such reflection, which is really a resolution back to reality, is psychologically complex because of man's nature and his connatural mode of knowing. Ultimately, to recognize conformity or its absence involves returning reflectively to the phantasms from which the ideas were derived, and finally to the senses themselves, which are in direct contact with extramental reality. As St. Thomas notes: "All our knowledge in its origin consists in becoming aware of the first indemonstrable principles. Our knowledge of these arises from sense experience" (De ver. 10.6).
Known Conformity. The ultimate test of truth is thus the reflective resolution by which the mind goes back to the thing as it really is. And the element to be emphasized here is that there is a genuine known conformity between mind and object insofar as the conformity can be traced back to its origin in the object as originally known. All the data come from sense ultimately; not only are concepts derived from sense but the connection or nexus between them also is sense-derived. This connection is already present in the apprehension and the related phantasm. The function of the intellect in the process of judging is to assent or to deny the connection as being in accord with the objective structure of the object in reality, i.e., to pronounce: so it is, or so it is not. In this act of judging nothing quidditative is added to what was represented by the apprehension. What is contributed is an assertion about the mode of the thing's existence.
The truth value of the judgment is thus based on a known conformity, which means that the judgment not only represents the object as complex but enunciates the objectivity of the connection represented in the very complexity. This enunciation, itself the heart of the judgment, can exhibit a known conformity precisely because the mind is simultaneously aware both of the complex object and of itself in its ability to understand and encompass the thing as it exists in reality. Only on this basis can the mind pronounce the judgment. The mental act of composing or dividing does not simply affirm that the predicate belongs to the subject. This relationship has already been perceived in the simple apprehension. What the judgment asserts is the awareness of the mind that the complexity enunciated is conformed to the mode in which the object actually exists and that the intellect is aware of its ability to grasp things as they really are. Here is the crucial point the idealists miss. Here also is the existential element that is a necessary component of every judgment.
Objectivity and Existence. The dynamic assertion in the judgment differs from the representation of the object in simple apprehension in that, in the former, the reflective power of the mind simultaneously grasps the two poles of the process, i.e., itself knowing and the objective structure of the thing known. This reflective procedure is neither unusual nor something to which the mind has to force itself. It is rather a natural tendency of the intelligence, a natural curiosity that is stimulated whenever the intellect faces an object that is not completely or satisfactorily known. When the natural tendency of the mind is fulfilled in seeing and asserting a positive relationship between the two elements in the apprehended complexity, a positive judgment results. When the relationship is seen to be contradictory, a negative judgment is made, with the mind denying the objectivity of any positive nexus between the predicate and the subject because it sees that the connection is not there in reality. Finally, it is possible that the mind's tendency remain unactualized when intelligibility is absent. In this case no judgment occurs, even though a composite concept has presented the two elements together. But the mind sees that their relationship in reality is not intelligible, and therefore makes no judgment. What must be stressed is that, while the objectivity of the content is guaranteed by its derivation from sense experience, the motive for the intellectual affirmation is not the sense apprehension. The motive is rather the intelligibility of the connection seen in the object, and the simultaneous intuition of the intellect as a power able to understand and encompass the thing in its existence and objective structure. It is in this sense that the judgment is concerned with existence.
Every judgment, therefore, of its nature has an existential component, and because of this it has a guaranteed objectivity. This does not mean that every judgment is automatically true. It happens frequently that the intellect misses part of the evidence, or mistakes partial evidence for total, or misconceives the significance of the evidence. Whenever such situations occur, the result is error and the possibility of false judgment. Even though the mind of man was made for truth, except in the case of first principles it can fail in its efforts to attain truth. Yet the pursuit of truth can be successful in many areas. Proceeding from first principles, the mind of man can reach true conclusions, but not always immediately or easily. It is for this reason that it must be fortified by the habits of understanding, science, and wisdom.
Other theories of truth. Theories contradicting the view of truth presented here usually have their roots in metaphysical and psychological doctrines that deny the basic Thomistic theses concerning being, existence, the spirituality of man's soul, the immateriality of his intellect, etc. Only if this be kept in mind do any of these theories make sense in light of the foregoing.
Intellectualist Theories. Among the intellectualist theories may be noted those associated with R. descartes and with H. spencer. Descartes maintained that after doubting everything he was finally unable to doubt his own existence, for he saw very clearly that in order to think he must exist. From this he derived the general rule that the things man conceives clearly and distinctly must be true. As far as this test goes it is correct, for the clearly perceived nature contained in the judgment is really the adequate ground for asserting its truth. It was Spencer's thought, on the other hand, that through an evolutionary process the intellectual dispositions of the human race have been so conditioned by gradually accumulated and inherited experiences that the mind is unable to conceive the opposite of that to which it has become accustomed. The evolutionary hypothesis aside, there is a partial truth in the theory of the inconceivability of the opposite, but it is stated in a negative and misleading way. One does not see judgments as true became he cannot conceive the opposite; rather he is unable to conceive the opposite because he sees his judgments to be necessarily true.
Another test of truth, offered by G. W. F. hegel and his followers, is the theory of coherence or consistency. Rooted in the metaphysics of idealistic monism, this view assumes that thought and thing, the real and the ideal, are all fundamentally identical in the absolute. There is no genuine dualism and thus no extramental reality with which a judgment can be compared. Hence the truth of a proposition must be its coherence with the whole system of knowledge, that is, the harmony of all judgments with one another. The proponents of this theory are quite ready to admit that the mere consistency of one judgment with another does not necessarily bespeak truth and that it is possible to have even a conformity among a limited set of judgments without having truth. But they insist that truth consists in the wider conformity of the whole system of accepted judgments. Once this is recognized, they are willing even to accept the definition of truth as the conformity of the mind judging with the reality judged, since, for them, reality is nothing more than the whole system of judgments. Truth, then, consists in this coherence throughout the entire system, and the criterion of truth is the consistency of any judgment with the entire system.
This view without doubt contains a partial truth, but it also implies much that is false and inadequate. Consistency and coherence are certainly a negative criterion of truth in the sense that truth cannot contradict truth; of two contradictories, moreover, one at least must be false. But the fact remains that both may be false and that any series of judgments may be totally compatible and yet totally untrue. Besides this, it becomes clear on examination that consistency and coherence, even as a negative test, have no value apart from evidential being itself. For if a judgment be rejected as false because of its lack of compatibility with other judgments, this can occur only because the incompatibility is clearly seen, and thus one comes back to evidential being. Seeming incompatibility between a new judgment and a judgment already maintained can only be the cause of further reflection or of more complete investigation to discover which one is to be accepted. The only basis for a decision in any case will ultimately be the evidence available for either.
The theory of consistency maintains that a judgment is true if it conforms to other judgments. This criterion is rejected by those who insist that truth is more properly contained in a judgment that is conformed to reality. Reality itself is not to be identified with the sum total of judgments already known, for it may be that a particular reality is known solely through this individual judgment. It is true, of course, that any judgment based on mediate evidence will be in conformity with knowledge already possessed; yet this cannot be so for all judgments, and certainly not for those that are self-evident. Otherwise knowledge could never begin; it would always require a point of reference in other judgments. This theory, therefore, is as unsatisfactory as the idealistic monism in which it has its roots.
Anti-Intellectualist Theories. Contemporary pragmatism and instrumentalism, which offer the best illustrations of anti-intellectualist theories of truth, are associated with the names of C. S. Peirce, W. James, and J. Dewey. Dewey's idea of truth is in harmony with his general notion that reality is in flux and is to be identified with becoming rather than with being. Truth in this view is something relative; it has reference to a changing reality. Things are never true in themselves but only in their application to existential situations. Since the only test here is experimental verification, Dewey says that truth means verification, either actual or possible. His theory is one of correspondence—not a static but an operational correspondence.
Actually, in discussing truth and verification, Dewey uses the terms equivocally. In the Thomistic theory, truth is inseparable from being; if there is no being, there is no truth. In a world of pure becoming there can be no question of truth, for becoming without being is unintelligible. Thus, for the Thomist, Dewey's truth is unintelligible. Even the shift to verification does not help; for if truth consists in making sure experimentally, then there must be some standard of surety and ultimately some absolute. Without such a standard there is no possibility of verification: all that is possible is a series of guesses. In general, pragmatic epistemology shares in the inadequacy of pragmatic philosophy. Such a philosophy canonizes the empirical method, effects a reduction to sensism, and amounts to a denial of intellect. While supremely concerned with the practical, it neglects the speculative on which the practical is based, and offers no substantial base from which the changing and the ephemeral must ultimately be judged.
See Also: certitude; epistemology; knowledge.
Bibliography: thomas aquinas, Truth, tr. r. w. mulligan et al., 3 v. (Chicago 1952–54). l. m. rÉgis, Epistemology, tr. i. c. byrne (New York 1959). j. maritain, Distinguish to Unite; or, The Degrees of Knowledge, tr. g. b. phelan (New York 1959). f.d. wilhelmsen, Man's Knowledge of Reality (Englewood Cliffs, N.J. 1956). t. gilby, Phoenix and Turtle: The Unity of Knowing and Being (New York 1950). l. rougier, Traité de Connaissance (Paris 1955) 435–442. p. prini, Enciclopedia filosofica 2:813–840.
[g. c. reilly]
TRUTH IN ONTOLOGY
The following analysis of ontological truth treats of intelligibility as a property of being, the intelligibility of finite beings as caused by God's creative intellect, the analogy of ontological truth, and Subsistent Truth as the origin of all truth, both epistemological and ontological.
Intelligibility as a property of being. The truth of man's intellection depends on being as such; it is caused by being. But being does not really depend on intellection. Being founds intellection; intellection does not found being. Hence intellection is really related to being in a relationship of conformity or of measure. Man cannot think his intellection as really related to being without by that very fact thinking being as related—by a relation of reason—to his intellect as intellect. Being as standing in relation of conformity to the intellect is being as true, as founding truth. A relation of conformity to the intellect is what is expressed by the word intelligible. Hence being as true, or the ontologically true, is being as intelligible. By the very fact that man thinks, he thinks being, and insofar as he thinks being, he affirms implicitly that being is necessarily intelligible. He affirms that being as such and the intelligible as such are really identical.
Since being as such and the intelligible as such are identical, the act of being (esse ) and intelligibility or ontological truth are identical. Hence everything that possesses the act of being, insofar as it does, possesses intelligibility. Or everything that is, insofar as it is, is intelligible. Or every being as being is ontologically true. What is excluded from intelligibility is excluded from being (see intelligibility, principle of).
Intelligibility caused by God's intellect. Being as such includes everything that is, a plurality of particular beings, each of which has its own act of being and exists with others in the one order of being. Hence each particular being has the same ultimate ontological explanation, i.e., the one Uncaused Cause of the act of being. This cause is the subsisting and therefore infinite act of being, God.
Every being therefore is because God has freely willed it to be. If it were not freely willed, God would depend on it and hence could not be infinite, nor God. Freely to will something to be presupposes the knowledge or idea of that which is so willed. Hence each particular being presupposes its idea in the mind of God. God, willing this or that reality to be, conforms this or that reality to the idea in His mind or realizes the idea in reality.
The example most helpful in understanding this creative action of God is that of the artist. When Michelangelo executed in the Sistine Chapel his painting of Adam, he wished to realize his conception, his idea of the newly created Adam. The painting of Adam exists because Michelangelo freely decided to paint it. The painting depended on the idea in Michelangelo's mind to be what it is; it has its intelligibility, therefore, from the mind of Michelangelo. It is essentially true by dependence on his mind and is the realization of his idea outside himself. When someone contemplates that painting of Adam, he conforms his mind to it and hence, through the medium of the painting, conforms his mind to Michelangelo's.
To apply this example to God's creative action, one must remove the imperfection that the example implies. The surface of the ceiling on which Michelangelo painted existed independently of him and so continued to exist when Michelangelo died. Hence the configuration or conformity to Michelangelo's mind, which the surface of the ceiling received from his brush, once received, no longer depended on him. But no matter exists prior to the creative activity of the divine Artist. His action reaches not only to the surface of reality, but to the whole of reality, in its innermost fibers and in all the details of its being. Exactly as it is, and in all that it is, and in its ordination to its proper activity, the created being is the realization of God's idea. If it ceased to depend on God's idea, it would, by that very fact, cease to be. If God ceased to think it, it would immediately cease to be.
Hence every being, insofar as it is, is conformed to God's intellect. Its total intelligibility is received from God's intellect. Its intelligibility is identified with its act of being: it is intelligible. Hence every created being depends essentially on God's creative intellect; and the ontological truth of such a being is measured by God's intellect.
The possible is a possibility of being: only as a possibility of being is it intelligible. Why is the possible possible, i.e., why can God produce this form of being? Because God's act of being is imitable in this way or according to this mode of participation. Hence the intrinsic possibility of possibles, or the necessary truth of possibles, is founded in the necessity that God is. This necessity is the exclusion of nothingness or contradiction from being.
Again, contingent truth implies necessary truth. That James is, is true; but James need not have existed, had God not so willed. James's being denotes an ontological truth that need not have been and hence is contingent. Once he is, however, he is necessarily conformed to God's intellect and necessarily conformable to every other intellect. The contingent truth of James implies the necessary conformity of intellect and being. Further, when James is taking a stroll through the park, it is true to say that he is walking. When, however, he sits down to rest his limbs, it is no longer true to say that he is walking, but that he is sitting. The truth about James has changed in successive moments, not into falsehood, but into another truth (De ver. 1.6). Thus his truth is changeable insofar as his being is changeable. But his changeableness and the contingency of his truth imply once more the necessary conformity of being and intellect, without which James could neither be, nor be intelligible, nor even change. Hence no truth is so contingent that it does not presuppose and manifest necessary truth (ST 1a, 86.3).
Analogy of ontological truth. Every being, insofar as it is, is true by a relation of conformity or assimilation to the intellect. There are only three possible ways in which this assimilation of intellect and (finite) being can be brought about. Either one causes the other or another causes both, since a cause causing assimilates to itself. Hence either the intellect renders being similar to itself (God's creative knowledge); or being renders the intellect similar to itself (man's natural knowledge); or the intellect that renders being similar to itself, namely, God's, renders another intellect similar to being (angel's natural knowledge).
Practically considered, therefore, one can reduce to two the relationships of conformity to intellect that being as true denotes: the relationship to man's intellect and the relationship to God's. Being as true is being as actually conformed to God's intellect, on which it depends, and as conformable to man's intellect, on which it does not depend. The truth of being is constituted by God's intellect; it is manifested and not constituted by man's intellect. Being, therefore, is primarily true by relation to God's intellect, secondarily true in relation to man's intellect. Hence ontological truth, implying this secondary and primary sense, has a meaning that in the two cases is neither fully the same nor fully different; it has an analogical meaning (see analogy).
Considering ontological truth as that which has relation to the intellect, or as the intelligible, it is analogical in another sense, namely, in the same way as being is analogical. In his proofs for the existence of God (ST 1a, 2.3), St. Thomas argues from things that are more and less true to a most true; and these degrees of truth are identically those of being. His argument, therefore, means that intelligibility is a perfection that is verified in some beings more perfectly, in others less perfectly. This fact implies a being that is pure or subsisting intelligibility (see god, proofs for the existence of).
Subsistent truth. Because self-consciousness means consciousness of oneself as one is or has being, self-consciousness depends on consciousness of being as such. If, as in man's case, the self is not identically the plenitude of being, there is an opposition, or nonidentity, between the knower and being, which expresses itself in the opposition of subject and object. As a result of this opposition, man's knowing being is not simply being; or, in other words, in his knowing as knowing being, ontological truth and epistemological truth are opposed.
Hence his way of knowing, by its imperfection, reveals itself as limited in being and hence as caused by another Being. Or, man's way of knowing presupposes and depends on a Being whose way of knowing is not limited, viz, God.
God is identically self-consciousness and consciousness of being, since He is pure act of being, which is identically unlimited act of intellection. No other being except God is intelligibility (intelligibility is the act of being), and no other being except God is intellection (intellection is the act of knowing). Intelligibility is ontological truth; intellection is epistemological truth. Other beings besides God are ontologically true or have ontological truth, and in their cognition have epistemological truth. God alone is identically and unlimitedly ontological truth and epistemological truth. God, therefore, is subsisting truth: He is the self-thinking act of being.
From God as subsisting truth, as self-thinking act of being, all truth without exception is derived. Every finite being, insofar as it is, is caused by God; and insofar as it is, it is ontologically true. Hence all ontological truth is from God, who knowing Himself knows all that He can will to be, all that can be. Again, every finite being that is capable of intellection is as such created immediately by God, who fashions its intellect to know truth and thus ordains it and inclines it to the knowledge of truth as to its proper good. Hence its good, which is epistemological truth, is from God and is achieved under His inclination and cooperation (De ver. 1.8). Hence all epistemological truth is from God. God is the inner teacher without whose guidance and light no truth, even the most seemingly insignificant, would be discovered (De ver. 11.1).
See Also: double truth, theory of.
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[f. p. o'farrell]