Monday, 7 July 2014

Criteria for a Truth Claim

Some say that Truth itself is unknowable and therefore it is absurd to try to claim a belief as true. Others, naturalists and theists alike, say that they have attained truth, they claim their set of beliefs as the Truth. So what must be the nature of a truth claim (TC) be?(and by truth claim i mean the claim of a worldview to be true) Truth itself may be unknowable, but there are criteria which must be fulfilled for a truth claim (TC) to have the probability of being true.

C1
The first criterion is absoluteness, a TC must be an absolute claim. God (as a concrete metaphysical being) can either exist or do not exist, he cannot exist for some people and do not exist for other people. This may be a real claim (RC), that for some people God is real, but it is not a TC. A TC will say that a concrete metaphysical God exist  or He does not exist.

Some will say that light is both a particle and a wave, this is not an absolute claim and yet it is true, hence God may exist and does not exist at the same time, maybe like quantum physics, our perception matters.
First we have to examine the TC that Light is a particle. A particle traditionally is not a wave by definition. Since light exhibit wave like properties, light is not a particle by our traditional definition, therefore the TC that light is a particle is not true.
Second we examine the TC that light is a wave. Traditionally wave is not a particle. Since it exhibits particle like properties, it is not a wave. Therefore this TC is also not true.
The correct TC according to our current understanding is that light is a whole new thing altogether which is neither a particle nor a wave, and this claim is absolute. The truth will be that light is this whole new thing or it is not this whole new thing.

C2
The second criterion is Coherence. A whole set of belief can only be a TC if all the constituent TCs does not contradict each other. Given that our rational faculties are correct (otherwise thinking itself is absurd and epistemological solipsism is inevitable) or reliable to some degree, that it can be considered as a tool to think about the truth. Since one claim can make another claim impossible, then a claim must not contradict itself or else the claim will be impossible altogether.
A TC is all-encompassing and all constituent TCs make up the TC. Therefore a contradiction between the constituent TCs will be a self-contradiction of the TC. A self-contradiction is an impossibility. An impossible claim cannot be a TC.
e.g. One's ethics and epistemology must not contradict one's metaphysics. Naturalists cannot say that there is an abstract set of rules of moral right and wrong which is a concrete abstract object.
However, this criteria may be suspended by C3, elaborated in the next part.

C3
The third criterion is that there must be room for the unexplained (RFU). RFU can suspend C2 by saying that the apparent contradiction lies in the RFU, therefore the apparent contradiction is not a true contradiction and therefore it fulfills C2. RFU suspends C2 not removing the necessity of C2.

To understand why RFU is necessary consider this scenario. We are given five multiple choice questions, with options A B C D, but we can only read four of them. We can only get all questions correct if we answer the four questions correctly and we guess the fifth question correctly. We must guess without explanation, we know that we cannot know question number 5 but we have to guess anyway if we want to get all questions correctly. If we only guess the things that we can explain, we will only be attempting four questions and we will have a zero probability of getting all the questions correct.

Now consider this, if question number four is dependent on all the other questions, i.e. number 1 2 3 and 5, and
     the answer without considering 5 is A and
     if 5 is A then 4 is B
     if 5 is B then 4 is B
     if 5 is C then 4 is C
     if 5 is D then 4 is D,
Then to answer number four with A is a definite wrong, we would have a better chance to guess between B C D, although without considering number 5, 4 is definitely A

Lastly let us consider another rules for scoring, every correct answer is given one mark, a wrong answer is given minus one mark and all the questions are independent of each other.
If we answer the first four questions correctly we get four marks. If we blindly choose number 5 we have a one fourth chance of getting all questions right and three quarter chance of getting 3 marks which is lower than if we do not attempt question 5. Therefore not attempting 5 will give a better chance of getting a higher score, but you will have zero probability of getting all the questions right. Therefore not attempting 5 is a better RC than attempting, but it cannot be a TC, since a TC must have the probability of being true.

Although the relationship between different questions in life may be arguable, human ability is almost certainly limited, and hence there will always be that fifth question that we cannot read. And attempting that question is a must if we are to make a TC.

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