Information About the Way Things Really Are
Only slightly less difficult than facts is the philosophy of truth. The search for truth recognizes that one thing isn't another. It also recognizes that for knowledge to be real and trustworthy, a meaningful relationship has to exist in which information is shared between objective reality and you, the subjective thinker.
Now I'll admit that if no such relationship really exists, then there's no such a thing as truth either. Some famous philosophers, like Immanuel Kant and Frederick Nietzsche thought that facts were unknowable. They thought that since we only have access to our own subjective perceptions and thoughts, we don't have access to the world as it really is.
While Kant was right to point out a distinction between the "world of our perceptions" and the "world as it really is"—he failed to appreciate the relationship that unites the two into the knowable world that we all share together. As a consequence, Kant's idea evolved into today's popular notion that truth is a construct; that each of us constructs our "own truth"; and that objective reality is unknowable.
Is that really the case? If it is, the consequences are pretty startling. If truth is an individual construct, then objective meaning can't exist. Therefore meaning can't be shared through communication. Notice that this fact holds for everyone who has ever had something "true" to say. That includes Kant, Nietzsche—and you too! The last time you said "I love you" to someone, did you mean it? Could you really mean it?
Is this sentence meaningless? You know it isn't because right now you and I really are communicating. We are sharing meaning together. You see, we can actually establish the relationship between the world of our perceptions and the world as it really is on the testimony of two or three witnesses—in this case, you, me, and Meaning Itself.
Notice this carefully. You are thinking, and you exist to be doing so. Indeed, your thinking equips you to notice my thinking and infer that you're not the only thinker there is. Since I'm a thinker like you, I exist as well—and we are sharing meaning together. This means that we are also sharing an objective real-world in which meaningful information exists to be thought about together.
It is precisely the unity between information and mutual thinkers that permits "true" access to the world as it really is. Meaning never exists on its own. It is always shared. Now, I certainly didn't construct the world's meaning. It's been around a lot longer than I have. I'm pretty sure you didn't construct it either. So, where does meaning come from in the first place? What is it's Headwaters? My friend, this may be the most important question in all of philosophy.
Jesus of Nazareth: "Everyone who is of the truth hears my voice."
Pontius Pilate: "What is truth?"
The Logos
The word "Logos" was coined by the Greek philosopher Heraclitus in the 5th-century B.C. He used the term in an effort to describe the uniting factor between reality and the thinkers who share it. "Logos" is pregnant with meaning and is quite difficult to translate into English. Essentially, "Logos" denotes the Source and Substance of Meaning Itself—what we might call "The Truth."
This point is crucial, so please notice it carefully. Truth is information that perfectly corresponds to the way things really are. Put a little more simply, truth is perfect information about facts. It is perfect meaning. The key word here is "Perfect," which means complete, unchanging, and lacking nothing essential to itself.
Above, we noticed that "your thinking" equipped you to detect "my thinking" and infer that you aren't the only thinker there is. We are sharing meaning together. An even bigger inference follows, and it's quite unavoidable. If we are sharing meaning, then it has to come from somewhere external to you and me. Indeed, meaning must come to us from a Perfect-Thinker with direct access to the facts. Now, since neither of us are "Him"— we must both have basic access to this Perfect-Thinker—The Logos.
The Logos is the bridge that unites Reality to Meaning in perfect stability so that thinkers like you and me can share reality together. Of course, to accomplish this, the Logos must hold all things together in meaningful unity. The Logos actually Is the Thinking-Truth—and The Fact which is above and before all facts. "He Is" the Unity of Reality and Meaning.
Now, even though this consequence can't be avoided, most of us desperately try to avoid it. How come? Because we want to construct and celebrate our "own truth." We want to become "the logos." But can we be?
Are you a perfect-thinker? Will you ever be? I'm certainly not—and I know deep down that I never can be! So Who Is?
That's the big question...isn't it?
Sauce For the Goose
It is tempting to appeal to relativism or pluralism to get our own way and "live our own truth." But notice that we all appeal to the objective truth when someone else's relativism harms us.
Consider this carefully. Should society hold a ticker-tape parade for a doctor who constructs his own truth by interpreting a patient's brain as their appendix? If he "lives his truth," and lobotomizes his patient instead of treating their appendicitis, will you celebrate "his truth?" What if you are his patient? What if your child is?
No, you're not going to celebrate this doctor's subjective "truth." Instead, you are going to sue him for being an incompetent quack! The board that certified him is going to strip him of his privileges to keep him from harming anyone else. Indeed, he will probably be charged and convicted of a serious crime. But why?
Because it's a matter of fact that your brain isn't your appendix. And it's a matter of truth that doctors all over the world are taught to know the difference. That's why you can usually trust your doctor. What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. If meaning is objective for your doctor, then it's objective for the rest of us too.
Facts are the way things really are. Truth is perfect-information about the way things really are. Truth is the meaning that makes facts knowable to thinkers like you and me. This is accomplished by a communication process called revelation in which information is passed from the Perfect-Thinker to those who have been blessed with the ability to perceive and think about information. Why?
So that we can receive the Truth. So that we can know Reality.
“The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is.”
Winston Churchill, Statesman
