The nature of truth

[solicitr]

And the belief that the truth is relative is, in my opinion, one of the most dangerous concepts in the history of mankind.

Agreed, Unfortunately, we are now in the age of "post-modern history" and "post-normal science," both of which take as their starting point that there are no facts and no truths.

[Primula Baggins]

What kind of science doesn't deal in facts? If it doesn't, it isn't science. There is nothing "post-modern" or "post-normal" about science.

As for truth, a theory that explains observed facts and has not yet been disproven is as close to truth as science can get. Science can't even prove theories, let alone truths.

[solicitr]

A couple of examples

Indeed the struggle is about ideology, not about facts. Who knows what facts are? We try to convince as many people as we can that our interpretation of the facts is the correct one, and we do it because of ideological reasons, not because we are truthseekers....the ideological or moral sense of the teller supersedes the availability of source material which in any case is unimportant. Rather, a new moral consciousness outscores accuracy.

--Ilan Pappe, Israeli 'postmodernist' historian

Self-evidently dangerous climate change will not emerge from a normal scientific process of truth seeking, although science will gain some insights into the question if it recognises the socially contingent dimensions of a post-normal science. But to proffer such insights, scientists - and politicians - must trade (normal) truth for influence. If scientists want to remain listened to, to bear influence on policy, they must recognise the social limits of their truth seeking... Climate change is too important to be left to scientists - least of all the normal ones.

Mike Hulme, a professor in the school of environmental sciences at the University of East Anglia and the founding director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research

[Inanna]

Science can't even prove theories, let alone truths.

And we are so very specific about it. You can never say "prove", only "supports my hypotheses".

I believe truth is absolute, and to expand on TED's initial few posts, the reason truth is perceived differentially and called 'relative' is because of information availability and human's limited capacity to absorb and process information. This concept is called bounded rationality.

Everyone has limited cognitive capacity, limited time to make a decision, and limited information available on anything - say, a specific incident. Which is why we have different perspectives of anything that took place. Add to that every person's filters and biases and you have the mess you have with witnesses.

But that does not mean that there isn't one absolute truth - there is. But I, personally, believe it is impossible to get at it. How much deeper will you dig?

If you take TED's second incident in the first post (and TED, you really should have had the same incident with the same consequences to make your point), I can add further layers to the story. The father always sang the song, singing it made him concentrate so well on his driving and road. The truck driver was reallly tired and lost attention. But the father's car's tires had not been changed from summer to winter. But the truck driver had the best safety record of all time.

[axordil]

Truth is absolute truth only insofar as it is axiomatic.

[solicitr]

Truth is absolute truth only insofar as it is axiomatic.

Spoken like a true Cartesian.

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OK, here's an example: the famous Joe Rosenthal photo of the flag-raising on Mt Suribachi, Iwo Jima.

For years some claimed that the picture was "posed" or "staged." The discovery in the 70s of the concurrent movie footage put the "posed" idea to bed. Nonetheless, it is true that the moment depicted is the raising of the *second* flag, the one planted by the first platoon to the top being too small. The second, larger flag was ordered up by the battalion commander, and by the time it arrived the shooting had stopped and there were motion and still cameramen on the scene.

So- is Rosenthal's Pulitzer-winning, iconic photograph "true?"

[Inanna]

What do you mean by "true"?

[solicitr]

That's the point of the thread, Mahima. Does your definition of "true" include the Iwo Jima photograph?

[River]

This thread has had me thoroughly confused from the get-go. This is the first time I've ever seen truth differentiated from facts.

To go back to TED's opening post, both of those stories could be true. I have no idea which one is. His second one read more like a work of fiction, mainly because if in fact there was a car crash and no survivors, there'd be no one to report the dialogue. But unless TED can back up one vs. the other with a source of some kind, I am unable to determine if one is fact and the other fiction.

For solicitr's question - I don't even understand what's being asked or why. There was a flag raised on top of a mountain on Iwo Jima while a battle raged and then, later, a second flag raised and that's what became immortalized on film. But that flag being the second flag doesn't change the fact that it was a flag raised on top of a mountain on Iwo Jima - there's no fiction in the photograph. That image went on to become a symbol and as with all symbols there is myth involved, but the photograph itself is as true as the wall I banged into while trying not to slip on the stairs a couple days ago.

[Inanna]

That's the point of the thread, Mahima. Does your definition of "true" include the Iwo Jima photograph?

For me truth is facts, solicitr. And from that perspective, your question doesn't make sense to me. The photograph was taken, that's the truth. Now does it represent what people of many years thought it represents, that's a different question - I can't substitute "true" in my head for "expectations/perceptions of population x"

[River]

Oh good, someone else is just as lost as me. for Mahima.

[Primula Baggins]

"True" is sometimes used to describe a piece of art that communicates an insight or a feeling that's true, meaning people recognize it because they've experienced it in life before. It's a good thing, but it's not the same as factual truth, or a moral truth if you believe in that kind of thing.

The Iwo Jima photo is also "true" in this artistic sense. It should be: it's one of the finest photographs ever taken. IMO.

[River]

"True" is sometimes used to describe a piece of art that communicates an insight or a feeling that's true, meaning people recognize it because they've experienced it in life before. It's a good thing, but it's not the same as factual truth, or a moral truth if you believe in that kind of thing.

The Iwo Jima photo is also "true" in this artistic sense. It should be: it's one of the finest photographs ever taken. IMO.

Okay, so I guess the answer to soli's question then would be whether or not the photo needs a factually true story behind it to be artistically true.

For me, at least, that sort of truth found in a work of art is almost always (can't think of any exceptions, actually, but that doesn't mean I don't have any) independent of the facts behind the work if the art is a truly great work. Now, if, say, the Iwo Jima photograph were mediocre, then I might be singing a different tune...but it's not mediocre. Even if was the second flag raised, because the first was too small and unwitnessed by media, it's still an astounding photograph and it deserves its iconic status.

[Primula Baggins]

I remember when they found the film of the flag-raising that proved it was not posed (it doesn't look posed!). It just showed how amazing it was that that one moment was captured.

Now, of course, they'd take 100 pictures automatically within those few seconds and have the luxury of picking out the one that looked best.

[Inanna]

Oh good, someone else is just as lost as me. for Mahima.

and back.

[solicitr]

(More on Iwo Jima when I have time)

________________________________

Cascade Theory and the Madness of Crowds:

One of the best examples of cascade theory is that of the entirely false consensus that built up in the 1970s around the danger of "fatty foods". In fact, this consensus still exists, even though it has never had any scientific basis.

The theory can be traced back to a single researcher, Ancel Keys, who published a paper saying that Americans were suffering from "an epidemic" of heart disease because their diet was more fatty than their bodies were used to after thousands of years of evolution.

In 1953, Keys added additional evidence from a comparative study of the US, Japan and four other countries. Country by country, this showed that a high-fat diet coincided with high rates of heart disease.

Unfortunately for this theory, it turned out that prehistoric "traditional diets" were not especially low-fat after all - indeed, even the hunter-gatherers of yore, if they relied on eating their prey, would have had more fat in their diet than most people do today. As Science magazine pointed out, in the most relevant period of 100 years before the supposed "epidemic" of heart disease, Americans were actually consuming large amounts of fatty meat, so the epidemic followed a reduction in the amount of dietary fat Americans consumed - not an increase.

Keys' country-by-country comparison had also been skewed, with countries that did not fit the theory (such as France and Italy with their oily, fatty cuisines) being excluded. The American Heart Association (AHA), considered to be the voice of experts, issued a report in 1957 stating plainly that the fats-cause-heart-disease claims did not "stand up to critical examination". The case for there being any such epidemic was dubious, too - the obvious cause of higher rates of heart disease was that people were living longer, long enough to develop heart disease. But it was too late: the cascade had started.

Three years later, the AHA issued a new statement, reversing its view. It had no new evidence but it did have some new members writing the report, in the form of Keys himself and one of his friends. The new report made the cover of Time magazine and was picked up by non-specialists at the US Department of Agriculture, who then asked a supporter of the theory to draw up "health guidelines" for them. Soon, scarcely a doctor could be found prepared to speak out against such an overwhelming "consensus", even if a few specialised researchers still protested. And all this was good enough for the highest medical officer in the US, the Surgeon General, in 1988 to issue a doom-laden warning about fat in foods, and claiming that ice-cream was a health menace on a par with tobacco smoking.

It was a pretty silly theory, and certainly not one based on good evidence. In fact, in recent years, in large-scale studies in which comparable groups have been put on controlled diets (low fat and high fat) a correlation has at last been found. It turns out that the low-fat diet seems to be unhealthy. But no one is quite sure why.

"Three years later, the AHA issued a new statement, reversing its view. It had no new evidence but it did have some new members writing the report, in the form of Keys himself and one of his friends." Hmmmmm....

[Inanna]

As far as I know, the problem is not fat consumption, it's the lifestyle with the fat consumption. We don't burn it off in our current lifestyles.

And the point of your story is?

[solicitr]

Ah, found the whole Hulme quote:

Philosophers and practitioners of science have identified this particular mode of scientific activity as one that occurs…where values are embedded in the way science is done and spoken.

It has been labelled “post-normal” science. Climate change seems to fall in this category. Disputes in post-normal science focus…on the process of science – who gets funded, who evaluates quality, who has the ear of policy…The IPCC is a classic example of a post-normal scientific activity.

Within a capitalist world order, climate change is actually a convenient phenomenon to come along.

The largest academic conference that has yet been devoted to the subject of climate change finished yesterday [March 12, 2009] in Copenhagen…I attended the Conference, chaired a session…[The] statement drafted by the conference’s Scientific Writing Team…contained…a set of messages drafted largely before the conference started by the organizing committee…interpreting it for a political audience…And the conference chair herself, Professor Katherine Richardson, has described the messages as politically-motivated. All well and good.

The danger of a “normal” reading of science is that it assumes science can first find truth, then speak truth to power, and that truth-based policy will then follow…exchanges often reduce to ones about scientific truth rather than about values, perspectives and political preferences.

…‘self-evidently’ dangerous climate change will not emerge from a normal scientific process of truth-seeking…scientists – and politicians – must trade truth for influence. What matters about climate change is not whether we can predict the future with some desired level of certainty and accuracy.

Climate change is telling the story of an idea and how that idea is changing the way in which our societies think, feel, interpret and act. And therefore climate change is extending itself well beyond simply the description of change in physical properties in our world…

The function of climate change I suggest, is not as a lower-case environmental phenomenon to be solved…It really is not about stopping climate chaos. Instead, we need to see how we can use the idea of climate change – the matrix of ecological functions, power relationships, cultural discourses and materials flows that climate change reveals – to rethink how we take forward our political, social, economic and personal projects over the decades to come.

There is something about this idea that makes it very powerful for lots of different interest groups to latch on to, whether for political reasons, for commercial interests, social interests in the case of NGOs, and a whole lot of new social movements looking for counter culture trends.

Climate change has moved from being a predominantly physical phenomenon to being a social one…It is circulating anxiously in the worlds of domestic politics and international diplomacy, and with mobilising force in business, law, academia, development, welfare, religion, ethics, art and celebrity.

Climate change also teaches us to rethink what we really want for ourselves…mythical ways of thinking about climate change reflect back to us truths about the human condition…

The idea of climate change should be seen as an intellectual resource around which our collective and personal identifies and projects can form and take shape. We need to ask not what we can do for climate change, but to ask what climate change can do for us…Because the idea of climate change is so plastic, it can be deployed across many of our human projects and can serve many of our psychological, ethical, and spiritual needs.

…climate change has become an idea that now travels well beyond its origins in the natural sciences…climate change takes on new meanings and serves new purposes…climate change has become “the mother of all issues”, the key narrative within which all environmental politics – from global to local – is now framed…Rather than asking “how do we solve climate change?” we need to turn the question around and ask: “how does the idea of climate change alter the way we arrive at and achieve our personal aspirations…?”

We need to reveal the creative psychological, spiritual and ethical work that climate change can do and is doing for us…we open up a way of resituating culture and the human spirit…As a resource of the imagination, the idea of climate change can be deployed around our geographical, social and virtual worlds in creative ways…it can inspire new artistic creations in visual, written and dramatised media. The idea of climate change can provoke new ethical and theological thinking about our relationship with the future….We will continue to create and tell new stories about climate change and mobilise these stories in support of our projects. Whereas a modernist reading of climate may once have regarded it as merely a physical condition for human action, we must now come to terms with climate change operating simultaneously as an overlying, but more fluid, imaginative condition of human existence.

[N.E. Brigand]

Ah, found the whole Hulme quote:

Philosophers and practitioners of science have identified this particular mode of scientific activity as one that occurs…where values are embedded in the way science is done and spoken.
It has been labelled “post-normal” science. Climate change seems to fall in this category. Disputes in post-normal science focus…on the process of science – who gets funded, who evaluates quality, who has the ear of policy…The IPCC is a classic example of a post-normal scientific activity...

Hulme also apparently believes that there is no chance of serious measures being taken to combat AGW, despite the clear scientific evidence demonstrating it, and that we will have to learn to < adapt >:

"It is rather hubristic to think we can actually control climate. Climate change is the new human condition we have to live with. Let's accept this is the new reality.
"Don't construct the problem in a way which means we cannot have a solution which is the way I think we have got it constructed at the moment."

Is Hulme's "post-normal science" really science? Is it just a new label on a political or philosophical response to science, the likes of which date back for centuries at least?

[solicitr]

OK, back to Iwo Jima.

To back it up, I think we would all agree that had the picture actually been composed on a Hollywood backlot with actors in Marine uniforms, it would have had no truth-value at all. But from there we move on to various shades or degrees of "truth", which is, I deem not entirely binary. There is always a tension between what the picture implies itself to be, and what it "is." For example, if (as was once alleged), the picture was taken on Iwo, but the Marines had been carefully posed and arranged by Rosenthal for a set-piece, composed shot, then it would be less "true." And even as we have it, the picture silently invites the viewer to provide a context which is not precisely true either, that the photo depicts the lead USMC assault elements planting the flag under fire like Armistead's brigade at Gettysburg.


It is certainly possible to make verbal statements that are "true" but which invite or imply a context which has a significant untrue component. For example: This is from an earlier edit of the Wikipedia article on the SS, as a consequence of a news item from a few years ago:

The uniforms were made by Hugo Boss, with some workers being prisoners of war forced into labor work.

Now, there is nothing factually incorrect with that sentence (unless one wants to quibble over the definite article). But its implication is entirely misleading: yes, the Boss factory made uniforms for the SS. However, Boss was one of hundreds if not thousands of clothing factories which made uniforms under contract to the Reich Quartermaster Office, for the SS but also for the SA, Hitler Youth, Army, Navy, Air Force, National Socialist Motoring Club etc etc etc.

Yet the implication, created by the narrow focus or tunnel-vision effect, can give rise to this line which still appears on the Hugo Boss Page:

With the rise of Adolf Hitler in 1933, Boss's business also began to prosper as he became the official supplier of uniforms to the SA and SS

At this stage, the definite article moves completely over into untruth, because the editor simply assumed the implied context of the first statement.


Implied or concealed context is a real problem for the "truth" of images or statements, or (notoriously) statistics. We all know of the plane-crash effect: because airliner crashes generally get heavy media coverage, because a lot of people die all at once, a feeling or belief develops that commercial air travel is peculiarly dangerous, when in fact the opposite is true. This effect can also be seen in the "rash" or "epidemic" or "campaign" of church fires in the 90's. In fact the rate of fires at rural churches was no higher than normal; few were actually arson; and the black/white element was simply random distribution. Nonetheless an enormous amount of ink was expended on a supposed gang of white supremacists torching black churches: a cascade effect or, perhaps, a "bubble": the Madness of Crowds not unlike the Tulip Bulb Bubble.