Pondering truth...

(listening to: "Risingson (Underworld mix)" by Massive Attack (remixed by Underworld))

As I wrote on my twitter a few minutes ago: "In cafe in Iowa City, contemplating the nature of truth and fact. How philosophical of me, eh?"


But, seriously, that is what I'm doing. It's come up a few times in the last few days in conversations, and it's quite stuck in my head. There's a range of different truths we live by: scientific truth, legal truth, artistic truth, personal truth, religious truth, and so on... and many of these different truths can vary, widely, in their methodology and basic definitions. This, of course, leads to problems. Take, for example, the evolution-creationism thing (incidentally, I find it interesting that Wikipedia classifies it as a "political dispute"). There's a lot of solid, good science behind evolution. And yet, because that's inconvenient for some people, it's up for argument. I'd submit that a big reason for this is because of incompatible applications of definitions of truth.

Take, for example, the definition of "theory". In science, theory means, generally, that an idea has been tested acceptably and found to be sufficiently valid. In law, on the other hand, a theory is something closer to a hypothesis, something to be argued that is not yet proven. When the "intelligent design" (ugh, I've taken a dislike to that term) crowd says things like, "Evolution is a theory, not a law", they're taking the legal definition of theory, that it is something still up for discussion. Because, in law, it's the decision that matters. The problem is, they're treating it like a hypothesis. Clive Thompson argues, rather well, I think, that we ought to call it the "Law of Evolution". But there's a basic conservatism in science which has prevented us from doing it so far. We've seen so often that, as our understanding of the universe improves, there's always room for something to be wrong. But when you twist that principle of conservatism for political ends, you can really make a mess of things. Because sometimes there's things which are continuously and consistently observed enough that there really isn't much need for discussion on the matter unless significant new information is introduced. You could say it's like an appeal in law: you have to argue that either there was a methodological (technical) flaw in the previous decision, or something significant has come to light which alters the facts upon which the previous decision was made. Otherwise, the previous decision (theory) stands.

But I didn't set out to write about evolution, and I'm straying from my original point: the current epistemological climate of relativism, in which truth is considered an unreachable moving target, is problematic. Sometimes you need an absolute by which to evaluate things. But we don't seem to have much of that now. There's so many people lacking a bedrock of truth to set their moral compass to, or even to use as a guide for evaluating and making better decisions. It's really become almost a central feature of our culture. And it's bad. It wastes everyone's time and money and attention on lousy unimportant things. It makes it easier for stuff like Enron and most of the Bush presidency and ignoring global warming and basically any big scandal of recent time you could name. It separates people from their values and pushes a case of selfish gain at the cost of basically everyone else.

I'm sick of it. I'm not sure what to do about it right now, except maybe write more and argue my point about it and see if that goes anywhere. If I can stick with it and really get consistent about writing, maybe I'll start another blog dedicated to it. But we'll see. I'm not very good at staying outraged for long.