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Word Gems
exploring self-realization, sacred personhood, and full humanity
Dr. Mortimer J. Adler's
Six Great Ideas
| The New Age movement has become one of the new religions of the world. Like all “infallible” dogmatisms, replete with sloppy thinking, it has its unquestioned doctrines, such as the fashionable and cachet prevarication, “I have my truth, and you have your truth.” But allow me to pop this air-head bubble. |
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Editor's note:
Excerpts from Six Great Ideas are offered below, indented format; plus, at times, my own commentary.
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Before we consider how this form of [mitigated] skepticism affects our understanding of truth, I would like to deal briefly with the
other two forms, which tend to involve mistakes that can and
should be avoided. One is the mistake that people make when
they misinterpret the familiar remark:
my truth and your truth
"That may be true for you, but not for me." The other is an equally widespread misinterpretation of the remark: "That may have been true sometime ago, but no longer."
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'that was some time back,' said Barney
Adler's last comment reminds me of an old joke:
The Andy Griffith Show: Opie Flunks Arithmetic (1965):
Aunt Bee: [The grocer told her that] Einstein was a dropout!
Barney: Well, that was some time back, Aunt Bee - it was a little easier to get by then. And besides, who knows how far he might have gone if he hadn't been a dropout.
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there's a big difference between 'is my statement concerning an object of thought something factual' versus 'is my judgment concerning an object of thought something factual' - these are two different things entirely
The first of these misinterpretations arises from the failure to
distinguish between the truth or falsity that inheres in a prop-
osition or statement and the judgment that a person makes with
regard to the truth or falsity of the statement in question. We
may differ in our judgment about what is true, but that does
not affect the truth of the matter itself.
Let us take, for example, a difference of opinion about the
number of peaks in the Colorado Rockies that exceed 14,000
feet. One person sets the number at fifty; the other says, "Not
so." The number of peaks in Colorado exceeding 14,000 feet is
some definite integer, and so the statement that sets it at fifty is
either true or false, regardless of what the persons who dispute
this matter of fact may think about it.
reality doesn't change just because we might vote to alter it
The truth or falsity of a statement derives from its relation to
the ascertainable facts, not from its relation to the judgments
that human beings make. I may affirm as true a statement that
is in fact false. You may deny as false a statement that is in fact
true.
reality does not care one micron concerning what we think about it; it doesn't care what we think is 'truth' - it remains the same
My affirmation and your denial in no way alter or affect
the truth or falsity of the statements that you and I have
wrongly judged. We do not make statements true or false by
affirming or denying them.
there is no 'your truth' and 'my truth' but only private opinions about it
They have truth or falsity regardless of what we think, what opinions we hold, what judgments we make.
A different jury hearing the evidence in a particular case
might reach a different verdict. Though the prisoner at the bar
may be thought guilty in the eyes of one jury and innocent in
the eyes of another, one of those verdicts is right and the other
wrong because the prisoner is either guilty or not guilty as
charged. If guilty, then a verdict that declares the prisoner's
guilt is true even when a jury renders the opposite verdict.
The mistake of identifying the truth or falsity of a statement
with our attribution of truth or falsity to it can be easily corrected. Those who persist in the mistake turn truth and falsity
into an entirely subjective affair. They are, in effect, espousing
the position that what's true for me is true, and that's all there
is to it.
when people say, 'that's true for me, and that's the end of the story,' what they really mean is, 'that's my opinion on what I like, on what I want to have, and there's no changing what I want'
Stated another way, they are maintaining that there is no
truth at all apart from what is true for me or true for you.
people who say 'my truth, and your truth' are really saying, 'I don't care about objective reality, all I care about is how I see it in my own head'
When what is true for me is not true for you, I may try to change your opinion and win you over to mine, but...
even if we both agree, as the cult members often do, reality couldn't care less about our agreement; it is what it is
... even if I do succeed in persuading you that mine is correct, we are together no nearer to the truth in any objective sense than we were when we differed.
The subjective aspect of truth lies in the claim that the indi-
vidual makes for the veracity of his judgment. The objective
aspect lies in the agreement or correspondence between what
an individual believes or opines and the reality about which he
is making a judgment when he holds a certain belief or opinion.
The objective aspect is the primary one.
To ignore it, or to fail to see that it is distinct from the subjec-
tive aspect, washes out the meaning of the word "true.” This is
precisely what happens when an individual who claims that a
certain statement is true for him adds, "And that's all there is
to it." He might just as well have said of the statement he calls
true that he likes it, and that's all there is to it.
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more than drinking the koolaid
The long reach of cultism encompasses much more than crackpot churches. The root idea of cult offers the sense of "cut." This core concept of "cut" leads us to images of refinement and refashioning and, by extension, development, control, pattern, order, and system.
Cultism as systemization finds a ready home in religion and philosophy which seek to regulate and redistill the patterning and ordering of ideas. However, in a larger sense, the spirit of cultism extends to every facet of society. We find it scheming and sedulously at work in politics, academia, family, corporations, entertainment, science, artistry – anywhere power might be gained by capturing credulous and fear-based minds.
See the “cultism” page for a full discussion.
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'subjectivism' and 'relativism' and other dirty words in philosophy
The form of skepticism that we have been examining is some-
times referred to as "subjectivism" and sometimes as "relativ-
ism." It is widely prevalent even among persons who would
not regard themselves as addicted to skepticism because they
do not think of themselves as adopting the extreme skeptical
view that nothing is either true or false. But they have, never-
theless, allowed themselves to fall back into excessive skepti-
cism by their refusal to acknowledge that subjective differences
of opinion concerning what is true or false can be resolved by
efforts to ascertain what is objectively true or false, remember-
ing that the truth of a statement resides in its relation to reality,
not in its relation to the individual's judgment about it.
Closely akin is the form of skepticism—or relativism—that makes the truth of a statement depend upon the circumstances of time and place. Everyone is acquainted with such remarks as “That may have been true in the Middle Ages, but it is no longer true," or “That may be true for primitive people, but it is not true for us." The mistake here is exactly the same mistake as before.
in the middle ages, they believed that the world was flat, but that notion is still false, and will always be false, no matter the name of the century we currently inhabit
A portion of the human race some centuries ago held it to be
true that the earth is flat. That false opinion has now been
generally repudiated. This should not be interpreted to mean
that the objective truth has changed—that what once was true
is no longer true. If it is now objectively true that this planet is
spherical, it never was true that it is flat. What has changed is
not the truth of the matter but the prevalence of an opinion that
has ceased to be popular...
What is mutable and variable with the circumstances of time and place are the opinions we hold concerning the true and the false, not what is objectively true and false.
Sometimes the change is only in our minds and not in reality,
nor in the relation between that unchanging reality and state-
ments we make about it. Sometimes reality itself changes, as
when a new species of living organism comes into existence or
an existent species becomes extinct. But a statement to the effect
that a species now extinct existed in an earlier geological era, as
evidenced by its fossil remains in a certain stratum of the
earth's crust, remains immutably true (if true in the first place).
The fact that the species no longer exists does not impeach the
accuracy of the statement about its existence at an earlier time.
The subjectivism and relativism we have been considering
are much more prevalent in regard to goodness and beauty than
they are with regard to truth. One reason for this may be that it
is easier to correct the errors involved in the case of truth. It is
easier to distingish between the objective and subjective as-
pects of truth. We will find that more difficult to do when we
come to the discussion of goodness and beauty.
With regard to goodness and beauty, all of us are familiar
with the dictates of subjectivism and relativism: “There is noth-
ing good or evil but thinking makes it so" and “Beauty is en-
tirely in the eye of the beholder." But with regard to goodness
and beauty as well as with regard to truth, it is necessary to
distinguish between the objective and subjective aspects
in order to prevent the relapse into extreme skepticism that re-
sults from an uncorrected and unrestrained subjectivism and
relativism.
Editor's note: There is an aspect of goodness and beauty which conforms to personal preference. There is an old Latin saying, roughly translated, "there's no use arguing about matters of personal taste." And, in the main, this is correct, however, as we shall see, there is a domain of objectivity even in these areas.
Let me recapitulate before going on. Individuals differ from
one another in their judgments concerning what is true. Each
by himself or herself differs from time to time in what he be-
lieves or holds to be true. We have all said, “That's true for me
even though it may not be true for you," and "I once thought
that to be true but I no longer do." Properly interpreted, such
remarks do not obliterate the objectivity of truth. On the con-
trary, they appeal to it, for if truth were entirely subjective we
would have no basis for trying to resolve by rational means our
differences of opinion about what is true; nor would we have
any basis for congratulating ourselves on having made an ad-
vance by replacing a false opinion with a true one.
It is with all this in mind that the third of the milder forms of
skepticism—the only one that is entirely sound—turns our at-
tention away from the objective aspect of truth, the existence of
which it does not question. Looking at the subjective aspect of
truth, it offers us a correct interpretation of our conflicting and
changing judgments concerning what is true or false. The fact
that we differ in our judgments and change them from time to
time should awaken us to the wisdom of a cautious restraint -
not to regard our judgments as certain and secure, as infallible
and incorrigible.
The fact that we often disagree with one another's judgments
about what is true and the fact that we often repudiate an earlier
judgment and replace it later by one that is quite contrary to it
should persuade us of the infirmity, frailty, and fallibility of
the human mind in its efforts to get at the truth. Being per-
suaded of this should not lead us to abandon those efforts as
entirely futile or fruitless, but it should restrain us from claim-
ing certitude, finality, and incorrigibility for judgments that are
subject to doubt, change, and correction.
The objective truth of a statement may be immutable, but not
our subjective judgment about whether it is true. There are no
degrees of objective truth. A statement is either true or false
objectively. But when, subjectively, we judge a statement to be
true or false, we may do so with more or less assurance, and
accordingly we may speak of it as being more or less true, or
we may say that the probability of its being true is greater or
less.
The form of skepticism that wisdom recommends we adopt
is one that does not challenge the objectivity of truth, but it
does enjoin us to recognize how few are the judgments con-
cerning what is true for which we can rightly claim certitude
and finality, and how many fall in the realm of doubt where
they are subject to change and correction by all the means that
human beings employ in their efforts to get at the truth.
In fact, it is only in the realm of doubt that we engage in the pursuit of truth.
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