George Rebane
Contrary to common wisdom, in addition to your opinions you can also have your own facts, history, science, logic, sense of justice, fairness, equity, evil, beauty, and, of course, truth. Rebane Doctrine
Two friends of ours tackled the notion of ‘truth’ in recent issues of The Union. Jan Tannarome (‘Facts vs Beliefs’) and Terry McLaughlin (‘What is truth, exactly?’) in which each argued the existence of propositions that are universally and unambiguously assessed as being true. Ms Tannarome leans to the left, and Ms McLaughlin is a conservative.
Tannarome harbors the pejorative view of ‘belief’ as being inimical to a kind and just society. She writes, “And no matter who is using belief as a weapon or as a shield, this is unforgivable. It is unforgivable on a scale of such magnitude that I can’t think of anything worse at this juncture in our human evolution. I will borrow a phrase from a frequent contributor to this newspaper’s pages and say that using belief as a shield or a weapon is the mother dog of all political mischief, all social and cultural malfeasance, all justification for hatred and its many offspring.”
McLaughlin, while never actually defining ‘absolute truth’, believes it to exist and goes through a litany of misguided notions about truth ranging from relativism, through pluralism, to beliefs. She writes, “Why is it important to embrace the concept of absolute truth? Because life has consequences for being wrong. … Today, many people seem to fear publicly and honestly stating facts and truth. … If we wish to heal the present divides within our country, our neighborhoods, even our families, we must be willing to share in truthful and honest discourse.”
From my perch (see also my credo) I join with those who have a more precise and, perhaps, technical understanding and definition of belief. The commonly accepted definition of ‘belief’ is a faith-based proposition. (Here a proposition is a statement or assertion that expresses a judgment or assessment.) As such, a belief requires no reasonable basis.
A more nuanced, and technically correct definition, holds that there are two kinds of beliefs – faith-based and falsifiable. In that sense a person’s worldview or ontology consists of a set of propositions or beliefs which may all be falsifiable or also include some that are faith-based and beyond the pale of reason. Over the years RR readers who have followed my sermons on Bayesian inference and non-monotonic reasoning know that I and most people of my ilk and background embrace an ontology that consists wholly of potentially falsifiable beliefs.
For the more technical/philosophical reader, the Bayesian measure of verity of a proposition is its probability of being verifiably true. This measure ranges between zero (impossible proposition) and one (axiomatically true). Verity measures between zero and one may be updated (by Bayes theorem) with the introduction of new evidence. Faith-based verity measures at zero and one are immune to new evidence and the ministrations of Bayes. (more here, here, and here)
Unfortunately, as beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so is belief in the mind (heart?) of the believer. The pithy shibboleth at the top summarizes the realworld basis for our nation’s polarization, and its negligible prospects for restoring e pluribus unum. IMHO too many of us paint our views of the world with faith-based colors. Such people believe in absolute truths beyond those immediately subject to multi-party verification.
An example of such an absolute truth is the proposition that 2+2=4 which can be immediately verified during an ongoing discourse by everyone present who can count. Claimed absolute truths that are limited to citations of past third-party verifications are immediately open to contention which cannot be resolved in the moment, and therefore give rise to the above pithy shibboleth. And it is in the moment, that is ripe for taking decisions, that one must accept or reject available paths forward when multiple contending truths (beliefs) do battle – absolute truths have no place is such arenas. It was ever thus.
With this understanding one can appreciate why appeals based on Rodney King’s ‘Why can’t we all just get along?’ fail to unite us.
A better course to resolve disputes would be to admit the pithy shibboleth and focus on discovering common aspects in the differing utilities held by contending factions. Without such a basis for dispute resolution expect no light, only heat. (more here and here)
rebanesruminations.com 
Leave a comment