What is Truth?
Penguin May 22nd, 2008
Truth (with a capital T) is different from something that is true. The distinction comes from individual observation and experience. As every individual experiences things in different ways, the truth of the experience will be different for everyone. This is evident when you interview eye-witness accounts. Each person sees the event transpire in a slightly different way. Sometimes the “facts” are even messed up because our senses aren’t perfect. So how closely related is Truth with fact?
I think facts are a subset of Truth. Facts are verifiable in some way, Truth isn’t necessarily verifiable. When I used to take pictures as a “documentarist”, I was always interested in capturing the trueness of the scene. This was why I wouldn’t photoshop my pictures. But the camera itself runs a gamut of software filters over the image before compressing it, therefore, changing the image.
There is also the fundamental issue of just being there and observing that changes the whole scene. Similar to the observer problem in quantum mechanics, we have an observer problem when doing documentaries. Your presence and the camera’s presence completely changes the environment. But does it make it any less True?
Maybe the images that you see are filtered and processed by software. The documentary you create is edited and interpreted, but the story that you tell can still be True. This brings us back to the question of what is Truth?
Facts are verified knowledge. Verification comes from observation. The act of observation is done through interpretation and violation. But underneath the observer problem is the truth. Just because we foul it with our interpretation, doesn’t make it any less true. As we break from things that are measurable and observable, it will be increasingly difficult to get at the underlying truth.
Truth is independent of the observable. Like the “tree falling in the woods”, the fact that you know that a tree fell, it will create some sort of noise, regardless if there is an observer or not. Or you know that the sun will be somewhere over head even if you can’t see it because of the clouds doesn’t make the sun less real. But we know these things because we have observed them in the past. Through repeated observation, we have come to these truths.
Beyond the observable is the story. Every picture we take, every scene that we shoot, there’s some sort of story behind it. This story is the Truth. But how do we know if that story is true or not? We evaluate it against our past knowledge and experience for consistency. If this new story is compelling enough, we may incorporate it into our story. Or based on our evaluation, we may dismiss the new story as fake. So Truth is the story that resonates with our soul. We learn this story from knowledge of observable reality, personal experience, and cultural framing. As we gain new knowledge that challenges are experience or understanding, we’re forced to change our story to incorporate the knowledge.
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