All truths are relative. Not in the relativist sense but in the sense that truth is best thought of as a relation between two statements. One statement can be truer than another. Asking whether either of them is true on its own is nonsense.
I find this simple idea very zen. When confronted with the task of figuring out whether something is true or not, I can call nonsense and go back to work. “Truer than what?” would be a good question. If the statement is true enough and gives us good results, then that’s all we have to say about its truth. Science can be seen in a similar way: it gets truer every decade but we don’t like science because it’s true—we like it because it gives us good results.
The idea that truth in itself is meaningless is also useful when doing induction. Any induction will carry doubt, and the relativity of truth makes a lot of sense if we can never be sure. An explanation will be truer than another if we have more reasons to believe it. Saying that our top candidate explanation is correct and true makes no sense. It’s only as true as the distance between it and the next candidate explanation.
This simple idea has nice side-effects in the social domain. When we argue, we often talk as if we were right and the other wrong. But this is incorrect: our statements can only be truer than those of our opponent. We should focus on the differences between competing statements and see how these differences shed light on the relative truth between them.
In fact, the whole idea of something being wrong can go out the window. Once a statement is made, we can only offer a truer statement in response. Saying that a statement is wrong is nonsense. The statement can be wronger than another one, nothing more. This stance on the relativity of truth carries a very positive outlook!
So how would we behave if we truly believed in this relativity of truth? I believe we would:
- Never claim that something is true
- Never claim that something is wrong
- Focus on relative differences between two statements—not on being right
- Combat flaws in others’ statements by offering truer statements
And this is where practical philosophy meets self-help: believing in this relativity of truth makes us more humble and positive people. Nothing wrong with that.
