The Ugly Consequence of Scepticism about Truth
Facts don’t speak for themselves but depend on shared standards of evidence and accuracy
A lot of people, myself included, deep down feel there is such a thing as truth. And that it matters when it’s spoken, even if no one listens.
When you see an expert, someone with access to the facts, what they say sounds like a lot of dark Balinese magic, perhaps. But we’re aware that’s in the theologies of journalism and science to provide a view of a subject that closely matches what’s referred to as the “reality” of it.
But aren’t they also humans? Biased as hell, pushing their own opinions rather than channeling ‘the truth’? And didn’t I read something about most published research being false anyway?
These are hotly debated questions, and I don’t have a complete answer. But they also reveal something interesting about what truth is and can be, the role of trust and agreement in forming knowledge, and what has changed in the post-truth era.
Correspondence to…
In philosophy, ‘theories of truth’ try to answer two main questions:
In what does the truth of a statement consist? What is the difference between true propositions and those that are not true?
