What is Truth?
Lesson 8.2
Embedded Files
There are 3 big questions that we seek to answer in this lesson.
What is Truth?
How Does the Journalistic Process of Verification Work?
Why Does that Process Sometimes Fail?
Your job for the rest of the course is to use the words truth and verification with some precision and this lesson is meant to arm you to do just that. If we could achieve certainty, then truth wouldn’t be so debatable. But the possibility of error means no absolute certainty about truth. If we can’t be certain, what do we want?
…How about Reasonable Confidence?
What creates or increases Reasonable Confidence?
Evidence.
Evidence.
Think of a science class. Scientists seek evidence that will verify or falsify a particular claim, or hypothesis. They propose an explanation, test it, and move on. In science there is always a “margin of error.” By constricting variables, repeating the test, using more test subjects, that margin of error can be lowered, but never eliminated.
In Journalism, we call this collection of evidence the Process of Verification.
The extreme response to “There is No Certainty” is a certain and debilitating skepticism. But there are alternatives to the standard of certainty…our alternative is reasonable confidence.
The Truth and Truthiness
The Truth and Truthiness
Here’s how Philosophers take the idea of truth out for a walk in the real world.
Given time, and diligence, people searching for the truth about the device that you're reading this on would converge on certain common sets of facts: its height and weight, the material its made out of, and its shape. We can have an intelligent conversation about it only if we can at least agree on these facts. You can pretty reliably plan on it being able to work in the way you want it to, And that most times you go to use it, you can be sure that it will work.
But that’s the ideal case. Remember the tale of the blind men and the elephant referenced in a previous lesson?? They compare what they feel and cannot agree what it is.
It is notable that the moral of this story is not relativism about the truth, since despite the plurality of perspectives and theories of what an elephant is, there is a real elephant, and that elephant is a certain way independent of the blind men’s theories. The trick for a scientific community of investigators is to develop a theory that can account for all of the relevant perspectives, and unify them into a single account of what an elephant is, justifiable by evidence.
"A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to put its pants on."
"A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to put its pants on."
... is a quote usually attributed to lots of different people, that we like to use in class to frame the idea of the truth. Given what we now know about the way technologies like the press, the telegram, TV and the Internet have accelerated the spread of news and information.
Think about this quote in the context of news (media) literacy. How might you apply it?
Page updated
Report abuse