Truth Essay

How should truth be defined based on the knowledge one would have? There are endless theories that try to answer this question. Unfortunately, every theory has its contest. Would we even know if a theory was the truth? That is not even possible. We could never prove whether a theory was actually truth. It creates a loop. We would have to know what is and isn’t truth to prove what is actually true. Is truth relative, or is it absolute? How would we know?

Winkin made a statement about the Dutroux Commission, which was a court case in which a Belgian man named Marc Dutroux was found guilty of murder after he kidnapped, imprisoned and repeatedly raped six girls and murdered four of them, which states “.

. . the Commission is based on a sort of presupposition that there exists, not a truth, but the truth. . . ” However, as he talked on he stated that he believed that both Officer Lesage, who said he send Judge Doutrewe a file on Dutroux, and that Doutrewe, who denied ever receiving the file, were both telling the truth.

It assumes that the real world exists and has always existed whether or not we were around to believe it or not. However, this theory is contested. It can be “wrongly assumed” that we can determine whether our beliefs correspond to an external realty or just our response to the external world through our senses. Perhaps the problem with this is that we cannot define the fact that the statement is suppose to correspond without using the true statement as proof.

However, in tune with the correspondence theory, coherence theory states that a belief is true if it is coherent with other beliefs that we regard as true. However, I personally believe that truth is not defined this way at all. You can get a 3 billion people to believe that the sun is a giant llama wizard and the stars are his minions and it would not make it anymore true and would probably be proven false eventually. This relates to when people thought the earth was flat or that the sun orbited it.

It is clear, with the faults in the correspondence and the coherence theory, more possibilities have been suggested. Possibilities such being that a belief is true if it works or is useful, like the pragmatic theory. This “Pragmatic Theory” holds that there is no actual absolute truth. A statement is true if it is useful to believe. It is only true if it is beneficial to us or necessary to survival, if it passes the test of science. However, the flaw I see in this theory is that the wonder that, what if what is beneficial to the human race is not able to pass the test of science?

Why would it need to? If it is useful and we believe it why should it have to pass the test of science? Not to mention that if everyone just suddenly believes it, it doesn’t necessarily make it true all of the sudden. I side with Winkin. He defines that there are many truth depending on whom you are and who is talking. I tend to agree with that. This would mean there just may be an actual and absolute truth but we would never know for sure. This way truth is both relative and absolute. I may believe the relative truth and another may believe that which is absolute.

It is also possible that everyone believes a relative truth and the absolute is hidden. It would be impossible to prove what is true and what would not be if we all believed something different to be true. However, that is small scale. There are seven billion people on the planet. Everyone one the whole planet could believe that, bringing the sun back to the spotlight, the earth is currently orbiting the sun. However, we could all believe it and have the science, as we would believe, to back up the theory but it may not be true at all. Truth can be both relative and absolute.