[This article consists of my response to an exam prompt]
Prompt: Describe the nature of knowledge and truth and how Postmodernism undermines these traditional notions. What response would you give to the Postmodernist?
Truth
First let’s consider the nature of truth. Truth is the classification for when a belief, statement, or proposition (I will use them interchangeably) corresponds to reality. In other words, truth is when one’s belief matches the way the world actually is. Truth is essentially a relation between the two (belief and reality).This is known as the correspondence theory of truth. Here in lies a deeper question: what makes a statement correspond to reality? What is it about the statement or reality itself that makes the two have a true relation?
For some philosophers, what makes something correspond to objective reality (i.e., what makes something true) is in the relationship between a “truth-maker” and a “truth-bearer.” This is referred to as truthmaker theory. Relevant to our discussion, the content of objective reality is the truth-maker, and the statement is the truth-bearer. If I say, “my car is silver,” the truth-bearer is the statement and the truth-maker is my car being silver. Ergo the statement is true because it corresponds to reality—my car actually is silver.
Truthmaker maximalism goes a step further by saying that every statement has a truth-maker. For every statement there must be a truth-maker which instantiates that true statement. Deep questions face both theories.
Consider things that do not exist. For instance, if I say, “pterodactyls are extinct,” what is the truth-maker? What makes that a true statement? Well, it cannot be pterodactyls, because they do not exist! There is nothing to instantiate the truth-bearer—the statement that pterodactyls are extinct.
One could claim that the truth-bearer is the truth-maker. That is, the statement that pterodactyls are extinct is the truth-maker for pterodactyls being extinct. But this seems unlikely. Since propositions do not actually exist, they cannot be truth-makers. So here we have an example of a truth-bearer without a truth-maker.
One could say that the statement, “pterodactyls are extinct,” is true simply because that is how reality actually is. But this is to confuse the correspondence theory of truth with truthmaker theory. Regarding the latter, there must be something that makes the statement true. So why can’t the truth-maker just be reality itself? What would follow from this is that reality—which includes the extinction of pterodactyls—makes the extinction of pterodactyls true, which subsequently corresponds to the statement that pterodactyls are extinct, rendering the statement true. But what could it mean to say that reality includes or instantiates the extinction of pterodactyls? The extinction of pterodactyls is not a thing; it is merely the absence of the thing mentioned. So how could the absence of a thing instantiate the truth-bearer? This seems unintelligible to me.
Moreover, to say that objective reality instantiates the truth of the statement seems to beg the question. That would be like saying it is true that my car is silver because in objective reality my car is silver. Objective reality does not appear to be what makes your car silver. Therefore, truthmaker theory cannot get by with saying objective reality is the truth-maker for propositions. There does not appear to be anything that makes the statement, “pterodactyls are extinct,” true. Nevertheless that does not discredit the statements’ correspondence to objective reality. It could just be the case that some statements are true without a truth-maker, in which case truthmaker maximalism would be false.
There seem to be certain kinds of propositions—namely those that include logical impossibilities and mathematical certainties—that are either made true by the laws of logic or that contain no truth-maker at all (like we saw in the previous example). Think of the proposition, “there is no such thing as a married bachelor.” According to the laws of logic, married bachelors cannot exist. Hence, either the truth-maker is the law of noncontradiction or the proposition does not have a truth-maker. Notice this is saying something different than the pterodactyl example. Since logical contradictions are logically impossible, the truth-maker of the proposition, if there is one at all, must be logic itself. This leads to the Platonic question, are the laws of logic actual things—that can make a proposition true—or are they just figments of the mind? I do not have the wherewithal to discuss this question here.
Furthermore, the theory of truth-makers becomes odd when you apply it to itself. What would be the truth-bearer and truth-maker for truthmaker theory? The truth-bearer would be the propositional understanding of truthmaker theory, but what would be its truth-maker? We have already seen that it cannot be the proposition itself nor reality itself. Therefore, there is no foreseeable truth-maker for truthmaker theory. Likewise, there doesn’t appear to be any truth-maker for truthmaker maximalism, which would refute itself.
In summary then, truth is when a belief corresponds to reality, but there is not always a truth-maker that makes a belief correspond to reality.
Knowledge
There are at least four epistemological types of knowledge. Before I break those down, let me clarify: knowledge is not the same as knowing something with certainly. You can have knowledge of something without being certain of it. I know and believe with all my heart that Jesus of Nazareth existed on earth roughly two-thousand years ago, but I could not say this with absolutely certainty.
The first kind of knowledge is a result of direct awareness (sometimes called knowledge by acquaintance or simple seeing). Knowledge can be gained simply through perception. If I see that my textbook has 659 pages, then I know my textbook has 659 pages. Or if Audible tells me I’m currently on chapter 3 of my textbook, then I have the knowledge of being currently on chapter 3. This kind of knowledge does not require a full understanding or concept of what you have knowledge about. For instance, I do not know everything that went into writing my textbook: how the paper was made, what the printing process is like, all the steps it took to ship here. Knowledge by direct awareness is not just sensory perception. For instance, you can be aware of the fact that you are reading this essay and you can be aware of your own thoughts and feelings. Awareness brings knowledge.
A second kind of knowledge is of certain necessary truths through rational intuition. Logical contradictions would be an example of this. If I exist, I cannot not exist at the same time. Therefore, if I know I exist, I also know that I don’t not exist. A and not-A cannot be true at the same time. Put another way, I know squared circles cannot exist because that would be a logical contradiction. Another example of a necessary truth is a mathematical certainty, such as 2+2=4 (and cannot = not* 4).
A third type of knowledge is propositional knowledge: holding a true belief with sufficient reasons. There is a distinction between a true belief and a sufficiently held true belief. If I said that I know my mom loves me because her favorite color is orange, that is a true belief (my mother does love me), but is held for insufficient reasons. Whereby this would not count as knowledge. Contrariwise, if I said that I know my mom loves me because she tells me so and expresses unconditional love in different ways, the true belief that my mom loves me would be considered knowledge.
The last kind or type of knowledge is experiential. In essence this is knowledge of the things you do. No one taught me how to shoot three-pointers in basketball well. I simply practiced at my own pace and learned what worked and what did not work. So I had knowledge through non-propositional experience.
Postmodernism
Postmodernism believes there is no such thing as an objective reality, rather that each person or culture makes up their own reality. What is true for one person or culture may not be the case for another person or culture. Truth is dependent upon and relative to individual persons or cultures. Postmodernists do not maintain the correspondence theory of truth because they reject the external world as a relational partner. To them, truth is not bound by what it is, but how persons perceive it. Our epistemological apprehension of knowledge is likewise rejected because it is predicated on seeking how the external world actually is. For theists, our awareness and perception of the external world is only a gateway to uncovering the truth of the external world. Conversely on postmodernism, it is each individual who, by their perception, create the truth of the external world. This ideology is not without insurmountable objections.
First, some things are true regardless what people believe about them. For example, if someone posted a fake obituary for Gary all over the city, many people would think Gary is deceased. It makes no difference whether they believe Gary is alive or not; Gary actually is alive. The belief that Gary is deceased is warranted (because of the obituary) but it is false. Many would argue moral truths function in a similar manner. Murdering little children is wrong no matter who you are or where you are from. Even if some people throughout history have believed killing little children is morally right, that would not change the fact that killing little children is objectively wrong.
Second, postmodernism is self-refuting. If everything is relative, then the belief in postmodernism is relative. Thus postmodernism is true for some and false others. Or one could pinpoint its self-refuting nature by asking a postmodernist, “is postmodernism true?” If they say, “yes,” then they have contradicted their own view. If they say, “no,” then postmodernism is false.
Third, no one can truly live out postmodernism. Imagine your friend is so ill that she will die unless she gets medication. The doctor told you all she needs is this medication A. But instead of medication A, because you are a postmodernist, you believe what she really needs is a lollypop. So you get her a lollypop instead of medication A. Will the lollypop make your friend better since that is what you believe will happen? Obviously not. No matter what this person believes, a lollypop will not save the friend. No one can live as though the truth of a label on a medicine bottle or a medical diagnosis are relative to each individual. Likewise, no one can live as though the six million Jews who were slaughtered by the Nazi’s was equally right to the Nazi’s and wrong to the rest of the world.
Fourth, the fundamental error of postmodernism is on their definition of truth. They believe the truth-maker of a proposition is in the subject or proposition holder, not the object. To them, the statement, “the apple is red,” is true for the person speaking the proposition, not in the apple itself. This is just to say that the human perception and mind dictate what is true and what is false. Like the previous point, this belief is unlivable and self-refuting.
[Each topic will be expanded in later posts]
Christian A. Meister
Comments