Truth among the…
(Ten year ago or so, Maurice Bloch and I started discussing a basic issue in folk-epistemic, the variety of notions of truth across cultures, and we ran several workshops in Paris with psychologists, historians, and anthropologists on the theme. I would like to revive the discussion, maybe in the form of an online workshop, but first, let me raise the issue on this blog.)
Do considerations of "truth" play a role in human intellectual and social practices in all cultures? Are diverse notions of truth involved both across and within cultures? Are implicit notions of truth involved, and, if so, how do they relate to explicit notions? In which cultural practices and domains of discourse is a notion of truth invoked? Are there institutions and social positions which entertain a privileged relationship with "truth"?
There is a rich philosophical, philological, and historical literature relevant to the issue and concerning literate, and more specifically, scholarly traditions (Ancient Greece, Buddhism, judicial practices, modern science – to mention just two examples, Marcel Détienne's The Masters of Truth in Archaic Greece, and Steven Shapin's A Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in Seventeenth-Century England) . Anthropological literature hardly ever directly addesses the issue (Pascal Boyer's Tradition as Truth and Communication: A Cognitive Description of Traditional Discourse being a notable exception), even if it often contains relevant data collected from a different perspective.
It would be useful, in analyzing notions of truth in a given cultural tradition, to consider the following questions:
Are there words or expressions with a meaning roughly similar to "true" in English. What are these words and expressions? How best could they be glossed? In what kind of context are they used, and how? What kind of things are such terms applied to? (in English, for instance, ideas and utterances are typically things that can be called true, and there is another quite different use of the term, where it is a near synonym of "genuine" as in a "true gold" or "true Englishman".) Same question about related words and expression such as English "truth", "fact", "knowledge", "doubt", "falsity", "false", "lie", "liar", "truth-teller", "likely", "sincere". Is some notion of truth implicit in lexical contrasts such as that between "know" and "believe", where you may only know something that is the case? The contrast is sometimes described as one between factive and non-factive verbs of propositional attitude. Such verb express the attitude of the subject towards some proposition. With "non-factive" verbs such as "believe", "suppose", "claim", "doubt" the proposition that is believed, supposed, etc. may be true or false. On the other hand, "factive" verbs such as "know", "realize", "regret", "forget", must have as their object a true proposition. Is there a factive/non-factive contrast in the semantics of the language?
There are various social contexts where some notion of truth is particularly likely to be involved. They include:
Expressions of agreement with statements made by others, from face to face interaction (e.g. "How true!", "That's right!" "So it is!") to formal occasions ("Hear, hear" in Parliament). Reaction to children lying. Such lies typically involve trivial factual matter and are often blatant to the adults. How are received? How are they described? Reactions to children pretend play. Judicial proceedings, starting with the most trivial neighbors' dispute about, e.g. who took the pot. Contradictory versions of the facts are likely to be proffered, and public evaluations of these statements are likely to be made. In which terms? Deliberate cultural transmission, from story-telling to school. Is a distinction made (explicitly? implicitly?) between true stories vs. tales, suppositions or didactic artificial examples vs. facts, etc.?
Is there a simple true/false contrast, or are there degrees of truth? Are there kind of truths? What are the implicit or explicit justifications for accepting a statement as true? What are the respective role of evidence, argument, and authority? Are different kinds of evidence (e.g. material evidence, testimony), of argument (e.g. dialectic, analytic), and of authority (e.g. based on status, on competence, on special powers) explicitly or implicitly distinguished? Are there explicit discussions, theories (e.g. truth as correspondence, truth as coherence, relativistic views of truth), or narrative evocation of knowledge and truth? Of what content? When are they expressed? In what form? Are there social practices aimed at providing truths, such as divination, oracles, initiation, judicial proceedings, forensic investigation, religious or philosophical scholarship, scientific research? What notions of truth are involved? Are there social practices aimed at withholding truths through secrecy or deception?
Truth and value
Is truth recognized as a value in itself, or only inasmuch as it helps in the pursuit of some other value? What is the recognized value of truth in thought? How important is it to have true as opposed to false beliefs? Is the search for truth (personal, general) a goal valued in the society? What is the recognized value of truth in communication? How important is it to tell the truth as opposed to lying (or unwittingly conveying errors)? When is telling the truth encouraged or required? with what sanctions? When is deceiving acceptable or even encouraged? Are being a seeker of truth and a truthful speaker recognized virtues? Of whom are such virtues expected or required (in terms of age, gender, status, etc.)? Is the possibility of clashes between respect for truth and respect for tradition or authority envisaged? How are such clashes handled, in principle and in practice? (In many cultures, it seems, conformity to tradition is seen as truth par excellence or at least as a kind of truth, and therefore conceptualizing such a clash may be particularly difficult.)
Suggestions and questions welcome.