Subjectivism and Truth

Nwanyanwu Christopher

The question of truth has been an age long object of quandary, because it is a stakeholder in the palace of human knowledge. In the words of Uduma, it is a question about the quality of a statement or proposition when they are assessed as conforming to what is real. Truth signals the attainment of a statement in situations of probability. It is the conditions under which a particular proposition has to satisfy before it can be considered to be true/real.

The hold of truth in any proposition has been a problem right from the time of the biblical experiences between Jesus Christ and Pilate. Of course, we could remember that the question of what truth is was never unclothed by Christ and the why of it remains hidden. This spiced the problem on the question of truth. How can we know that a claim to knowledge is true? Where lies the truth of a proposition? Meanwhile before we continue to present our problematic presentation, it is worthy to still bring to the fore the sole reason why the nature and structure of truth has been controversial. The very reason why we are interrogating truth is that as human beings we want to be very sure that what we are having or taking is the real and the correct.

Moreover, the problem on the question of truth becomes significant when we bring to the fore again the debate between the objectivity of truth and the subjectivity of truth. In relation to the “above before now” we now have a situation whereby a group says that truth can be known objectively while the other groups says that truth is subjective. But from the way things are going, it seems that truth is all about subjectivity although it may transcend that level and then in the swimming pool of agreement with other subjective views we have an objective truth; but at the first instance, it is subjective. The objectivists group will never agree because they claim that truth is foundationally objective. In view of the above immediate claims, few major views about the nature and structure of truth have been proffered to determine whether truth is objective or subjective.

The first account of the nature and structure of truth is the Correspondence theory of Truth. According to this account, the truth of any claim or proposition lies in its correspondence with what it is speaking of. Put differently, it says that the truth of statement is determined by its agreement with the facts it is speaking of; such that if it corresponds with the facts out there, it is true and if it does not, it is false. The objectivists hold on to this claim as they aver that it is all about going out to verify the statement that has been made to check its correspondence with facts outside it. Relegating the nature of this claim as denying the reality the non-empirical reality, this claim has a major fault for which the objectivists like Wittgenstein may be unaware of. The problem with this theory is in love with the problem of sense experience. This is the case when we realise that the correspondence theory of truth presupposes the use of the senses as the object of verification. By extension, just as the senses are given individually and independently and filled and surrounded by emotions and feelings, the judgment of the senses according to the bodies is going to be different. We cannot actually say that because it is a matter of verification with the senses, individuals are going to taste, see, feel, hear and smell the same way. In fact it was for this very reason that our beloved brother Karl Popper asserted that we cannot have objective data experience because we all come from different worlds of emotions and feelings which he popularly called conjectures. For him, the judgements we make stem from this already biased mind.

I strongly agree with Popper (though not absolutely for now) over his postulations, because in the case of sight, we can view differently and there is no algorithm to check the real seeing of a particular object. In such a scenario, what we shall have is a divided opinion over the matter at hand. And it is good to note and in reference to our daily life experiences that the group who claim to roast the other group over the object of perception does that on the tribunal of their different individual but similar perception. In such a case like this, can we have an objective perception of reality with the senses? In most cases what we have as the objective truth of the object is the similar subjective results arrived at by those involved in that encounter, and in allusion to the post positivists, who is sure that the outsiders of that scenario will agree with what has been arrived at?  In some other cases, it is the result of the group with the greater weight that is taken as the general result. In all these cases, can we say that the correspondence theory of truth as an objective account of truth is adequate?

Consequent, upon the inadequacy of the correspondence theory of truth to unveil the objectivity of truth, another theory was delivered. The Coherence theory of Truth says that the truth of a statement lies in its agreement with the system of statements. The coherence theory says that it is the relation or coherence of a particular cluster of proposition that establishes the truth of any propositions. In the minds of the mothers of this theory, objective truth is given in the coherency of statements. Whether they were aware or not, their theory preaches on consistency instead of truth. This is because perhaps they never considered where a lie can be told yet it is consistent with its system of proposition. How then given such a case can consistency void of truth be adequate enough to account for objective truth. Unfortunately for this theory, it lacks in most cases truth at the subjective level; in those cases whereby a statement is regarded as true under this house, right from its genesis the proposer is well aware that the statement is a lie. How can what is false from its childhood, stand up to quarrel about objectivity of truth in the latter years? This theory as we have seen even lacks the stand to debate over subjectivity or objectivity of truth; for is foundation is corrupt, though in some cases where it is full of lies. However, this is not to say that there are no cases whereby from the foundation a statement is true and is coherent with its system of statements. Nevertheless, what we are saying is that this theory because of the chances of having a proposition that is not true but consistent with its system lacks the right to speak of either subjectivity or objectivity of truth.

With not only the urge to characterise the nature of truth in relation to statement/proposition, but also with the aim of ordaining the objectivity of truth, another theory was undressed. The Pragmatic Theory of Truth says that what is true is what works in practice or what is expedient in our way of thinking. For the group of people under here, a statement or idea is true when it works in practice or when it has beneficial consequences in practice. To characterise truth in this bedspread presupposes that it will objectively work or will work for all. If we take this as the case, how far can we justify the claim that first everybody wants a statement or idea to work in a particular way? Second, how far can we justify (if we assume the very before now) that everybody will agree that the idea or statement has worked just that way they expected? The last and the most perilous, how can we justify the claim that everybody will accept practicability as truth?  From the first question, even if we all accept that everybody wants a statement or idea to work in a particular way, what we have is not a mere agreement of the subject but the same views about that idea? There may be problem with the second problem here because in terms of the standard of the workability of the idea, can we have a situation whereby something works the same way for everybody? And finally, we also find out that the issue of practicability is a product of a very few in the entire world. Therefore this theory does not guarantee the arrival of an objectively given truth of an idea or statement.

At this juncture we have come to realise that the three major accounts of an objective arrival of truth are full of gaffes. Hence, we are still concerned with the problem of objectivity of truth. The traditional view of truth is that truth is the property of a proposition or statement, which is independent of human experience. If we accept this, how can we possibly arrive that this objective property of a statement called truth, since truth is characteristically objective. Again another quality of truth is that it is true regardless of time and space; for it is true yesterday, today and tomorrow. This being the case, the question now moves to how can we arrive at truth? If we claim that it is arrived at with the senses, then we cannot have universal senses but only individual senses. If we can arrive at it by reason, how can a contingent being arrived at what is necessary? How can spacio-temporal beings obtain a trans-spacio-temporal idea or knowledge? In fact, is there anything like reason which we ascribed as having the powers of arriving at this truth? There are many claims to truth human beings have made with the acclaimed reason in the past that are today false. In the words of the post-positivists, who is very sure that what is true today may not be false tomorrow? There is a problem with the objectivity of truth because the claims to truth that have been made in the past and at present which are also claimed to have being arrived at are debatable. Truth should be such that cannot be debatable. But it is worthy to note that people might know the truth and pretend not to hold it. This can be true; but at the same time the contrary could still be the case.

What is truth? Had Christ answered Pilate are we sure that Pilate would not have objected to it? Without prolonging this problem, it is good to say that it is only in religion that we can have truth. But beyond this, truth as being objective, indubitable and eternal can only be arrived at by Divine revelation. Outside religion, the truth is more subjective than objective. In fact, what we call objectivity is a mere agreement with the subjective views in a given scenario. Think about it!