Conversion Zindabad — 8
How can we know the truth?
In one of my earlier posts, I mentioned a friend who asked me, “Is there only one truth?” In the ensuing discussion we saw how truth by definition is exclusive. So now the question is how we can know if something is true.
To explain this better, I asked my friend, “Assume you heard the news that your hometown is flooding. Since your parents live there, what would be your immediate response?” He said he would ignore that because it usually rains heavily during that particular season in Kerala and there would be no need to be alarmed. Then I asked him if he got to hear the same news from few other sources what he would do. He said that he would try to call his parents to check if they were all right.
But now when you tried to call them you could not reach them due to network unavailability. Now, it may be a random network problem or may be due to the floods. Right? He agreed and said that he might even try to call others who lived close to his parents. Also, he would actively search social media or news portals to get the right information.
At this point, you recognized that this news could possibly be true. Suppose you were told there is a snowstorm in Kerala, you would have snubbed it immediately, or made fun of the guy who told you. Right? That is because the information does not correspond to reality, it never snowed in Kerala. This is the theory that says, truth should correspond to reality. Snow in Kerala does not make sense, but floods do.
But even if the information corresponds to reality, it does not guarantee that it is flooding now. That is why you want to check information from different sources. What if the pieces of information are conflicting? It bothers you.You will not keep quiet until you find some coherence in all the answers you gathered. This is the second theory that says truth is coherent. That means two contradictory statements cannot be true in the same sense. The correspondence and coherence theories help us test the truth. Like the above
MC Escher’s print where every piece has to fit together.
Since you found out that your hometown is flooding, would you stop your search? He said, “Obviously not. I would want to know my parents’ actual condition and see if they need help.” My friend understood the weight of finding the truth because of his personal experience with the recent floods.
This leads us to the next tests for truth. Logical consistency, empirical adequacy, and experiential relevance. Everyone has faith in some belief system or systems, religious or non-religious, but how often do we test if they are true? Remember in reality truth alone can save, falsehood ruins.
We will see about those three tests in my following posts.
‘Conversion Zindabad’ series is a partly fictional and partly actual conversations on the concept of ‘freedom of conscience’. If you like these posts and want to be notified on the new posts, follow us by clicking the button below.
