Hank and Martin, Wyoming, 2015.
Hang with me here. I’m going to point out some things that will seem very elementary. And I’ll point out some things that might seem on their face to be problematic.
Let’s start by level-setting a couple of things about language, regarding both its proper uses as well as where it can go wrong:
First, words are used to point to reality, to what is. While we sometimes miss the mark in our pointing, that’s exactly what we’re trying to do when we use a word: point to what’s really there.
Second, words are not these static things. They have different uses and meanings — varying situational definitions, if you will. For instance, I can know a fact. And I can know a woman.
A good part of our disagreements are simply matters of definition.
Ok, now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s talk about truth. Whether we have every really taken very long to think about it, we all know that objective reality exists. A particular rock is either there or it isn’t. We can say that a thing’s being is independent of our knowledge of or about that thing. A child can tell you – and he’d be right in doing so – that a tree that falls in the forest is really there, falling, whether we are on site to observe it.
Final point for now: Everyone knows that while our senses are imperfect and can fool us, it’s not a very common problem if we are reasonably well in body and mind. So I can rightly say that I know this particular rock is hard, white, slightly abrasive, cool to the touch (though I know that that will change when the morning sun hits it), and about four feet from that small tree (now three and a half after I’ve picked it up and put it back down).
Why on God’s green earth am I taking the time to point out such obvious things?
I bring up these obvious things because in our current culture, we often get confused about the word “truth,” seeming to speak sometimes as if we can make a rock or a tree appear or disappear based on whether we want it to exist.
In the next post, we’ll continue our exploration, starting with the idea of preferences.