The Intellect and Truth
In the previous post, we examined truth and some of the common objections raised against the idea of truth, especially those posed by the relativists and the skeptics. In this post, we will dive more into the nature of truth and we will see how the human intellect is able to interact with truth and also how we should distinguish between opinions and facts.
So, firstly, what is truth? In the previous post, I had asked this very question and now, we should dig into the mine of details concerning truth. First of all, truth, as defined by Aquinas and many others, consists in the conformity of reality and the mind's judgement of reality. In the first part of his Summa Theologiae, question sixteen, article one, Aquinas cites the Greek philosopher Aristotle as saying, "The true and the false reside not in things, but in the intellect." At first, this statement might appall many people who believe that truth is solely "the way things are" and not "the equation of thought and thing" as Aquinas puts it. At this point, some clarifications and explanations need to be made concerning these statements about truth. We must distinguish between what is called formal or logical truth and ontological truth.
Formal or logical truth is the agreement of the way things are with the human intellectual power of making a judgement on reality. To be sure, this is not to say that anything and everything we can think of about anything and everything is true. It is merely to say that formal truth consists of the human mind judging a thing for what it is in reality.
Now, we also have said that there is a thing called ontological truth (ontology is the science or philosophy of being). Believers in the divine being we call God recognize that the innate and inherent truth of a being comes from God Himself who apprehends it in His divine intellect. In fact, no being could have actual existence or even the potential for this existence without the divine knowledge of God exercised in His divine intellect. To summarize this point, ontological truth is basically the truth of being. Aquinas said that there really is no difference between truth and being; Both of these things are essentially the same thing. The only distinction to be made, Aquinas says, is merely a logical one and not a real, substantive one.
Moving on, let us now consider some important things that pertain to the intellect. We have seen previously that truth is attained when a human intellect is in a proper relationship with reality, with a being. Some people however, namely the relativists, might object to the idea that objective truth exists and resides in the intellect. They might argue that a person can think something about a certain being and another person can think a totally different thing from the first person about that being. This fact is true, we must note, in some instances. Let us employ a concrete example to help us think about these concepts.
Let's say we have some baloney in the fridge, a good hunk of slimy meat. I'm not a big fan of baloney and I much prefer turkey or chicken. This is said to be my opinion about baloney, my personal idea about it. We could call this relationship between my intellect and the reality of baloney 'subjective truth'. However, it is an objective fact that the baloney, regardless of how I feel about it, is really and truly in my fridge. In this case, it would be utterly absurd and preposterous of me to think that the baloney really isn't in my fridge, letting my negative attitude towards the meat guide me into believing a total and apparent falsehood. So, as is evident in the example, there are realities known as objective and subjective truth.
To conclude this post, let's quickly summarize all the points I brought up. We saw that truth can be defined as the conformity between reality and the mind's judgement of reality. In all beings, there is inherent, ontological truth and we say that the intellect has attained truth when it rightly perceives a given being to be what it is in reality. Some intellectual judgments are subjective, like music preferences and sports teams, and some judgements are objective, like the reality that we exist and think about things. In subsequent posts, we will see how the existence of truth points to the reality of a divine being, namely, the being we know as God. In fact, we will see that no objective truth can exist without God's own existence.
So, firstly, what is truth? In the previous post, I had asked this very question and now, we should dig into the mine of details concerning truth. First of all, truth, as defined by Aquinas and many others, consists in the conformity of reality and the mind's judgement of reality. In the first part of his Summa Theologiae, question sixteen, article one, Aquinas cites the Greek philosopher Aristotle as saying, "The true and the false reside not in things, but in the intellect." At first, this statement might appall many people who believe that truth is solely "the way things are" and not "the equation of thought and thing" as Aquinas puts it. At this point, some clarifications and explanations need to be made concerning these statements about truth. We must distinguish between what is called formal or logical truth and ontological truth.
Formal or logical truth is the agreement of the way things are with the human intellectual power of making a judgement on reality. To be sure, this is not to say that anything and everything we can think of about anything and everything is true. It is merely to say that formal truth consists of the human mind judging a thing for what it is in reality.
Now, we also have said that there is a thing called ontological truth (ontology is the science or philosophy of being). Believers in the divine being we call God recognize that the innate and inherent truth of a being comes from God Himself who apprehends it in His divine intellect. In fact, no being could have actual existence or even the potential for this existence without the divine knowledge of God exercised in His divine intellect. To summarize this point, ontological truth is basically the truth of being. Aquinas said that there really is no difference between truth and being; Both of these things are essentially the same thing. The only distinction to be made, Aquinas says, is merely a logical one and not a real, substantive one.
Moving on, let us now consider some important things that pertain to the intellect. We have seen previously that truth is attained when a human intellect is in a proper relationship with reality, with a being. Some people however, namely the relativists, might object to the idea that objective truth exists and resides in the intellect. They might argue that a person can think something about a certain being and another person can think a totally different thing from the first person about that being. This fact is true, we must note, in some instances. Let us employ a concrete example to help us think about these concepts.
Let's say we have some baloney in the fridge, a good hunk of slimy meat. I'm not a big fan of baloney and I much prefer turkey or chicken. This is said to be my opinion about baloney, my personal idea about it. We could call this relationship between my intellect and the reality of baloney 'subjective truth'. However, it is an objective fact that the baloney, regardless of how I feel about it, is really and truly in my fridge. In this case, it would be utterly absurd and preposterous of me to think that the baloney really isn't in my fridge, letting my negative attitude towards the meat guide me into believing a total and apparent falsehood. So, as is evident in the example, there are realities known as objective and subjective truth.
To conclude this post, let's quickly summarize all the points I brought up. We saw that truth can be defined as the conformity between reality and the mind's judgement of reality. In all beings, there is inherent, ontological truth and we say that the intellect has attained truth when it rightly perceives a given being to be what it is in reality. Some intellectual judgments are subjective, like music preferences and sports teams, and some judgements are objective, like the reality that we exist and think about things. In subsequent posts, we will see how the existence of truth points to the reality of a divine being, namely, the being we know as God. In fact, we will see that no objective truth can exist without God's own existence.
Comments
Post a Comment