According to Aquinas, what is true is precisely what is. A true statement is one that is consistent with things as they are.

If I say that I am six-foot-four and built like a wrestler, that would not be a true statement, because I am neither of those things. If I say that I’m wearing a T-shirt, that is a true statement, because at present I am indeed wearing a T-shirt.

Telling the truth is closely related. I am telling the truth if what I say is consistent with my understanding of the way things are in reality. My statement might or might not be true in fact–that is, I might be mistaken about the way things are. I am lying if my statement is not consistent with my understanding of the way things are. (At least, I am lying if I intend to deceive. If I say, “What a wonderful movie!” in a sarcastic tone of voice about a movie I hate, my statement is false on the face of it, but it would be hard call my statement a lie.)

Language, however, is tricky: we must define our terms with care. Suppose I were to say, “My desk is made of wood.” This is a true statement, but it’s probably misleading. My desk is, in fact, made of particle board and genuine wood veneer (plus screws, plastic fittings, and so forth). Now, wood veneer is wood, and particle board is mostly wood, so I can claim that my statement is true. However, I suspect that by “wood” most of my readers would expect a desk made out of solid pieces of wood, as cut from a tree, not “boards” made of shredded wood chips and sawdust.

Most words have multiple meanings. It is vitally important to use them precisely, and to understand how your interlocutor is using them; this last is part of listening well. There are two things that you especially need to watch out for: the Word With Shifting Meanings, and the Glorious Symbol.

The first happens when a speaker shifts the meaning of a word as his argument progresses. This is not always intentional. In the Open Source Software community, for example, arguments about “free” software led to the common use of the phrases “free-as-in-speech” vs. “free-as-in-beer” to forestall unintentional shifting of meaning. Used intentionally, it’s a potent technique to make a specious argument seem compelling, a kind of verbal bait-and-switch.

The term “Glorious Symbol” is one that I made up for this post; there might be a better word for it. A Glorious Symbol is a word to which is attached a vast cloud of meaning, mostly unspoken, and never precisely defined. (The Symbol might well have a dictionary definition; but that definition isn’t what most users of the word mean.) The Symbol isn’t so much a concept in-and-of-itself as it is a label to which a collection of meanings are attached. Consider these words: Liberal. Conservative. Progressive. Fundamentalist. Spiritual.

Because the words are not clearly defined, each person brings along their own cloud of meanings. Thus, Glorious Symbols can be used to lead groups of people to think they agree with each other when in fact none of them really know what they are agreeing about. Moreover, they are dangerously susceptible to the shifting of meanings. When a word stands for a loose bundle of meanings, and when no one is quite sure just what the bundle comprises, it’s trivially easy to attach a new meaning and claim it was there all along–provided that it’s not too obviously inconsistent with the existing bundle. Then, other meanings can be dropped, and over time the Glorious Symbol can come to mean something entirely different than it had previously.

More later.

As I pointed out recently, I have difficulty dealing charitably with people whose world-views clash with mine. It’s much easier to ignore them, pretend they aren’t there, and presume that they must be wrong. Unfortunately, whether or not that’s a reasonable way to deal with ideas I disagree with, it’s no way to deal with people whom Jesus commands me to love.

So what is a world-view, anyway? What I mean by the term is that collection of truths I hold dear: the fixed points and landmarks in my mental map of all that is. Some of these landmarks are trustworthy guides, fixed in stone by careful analysis, reasoning, and experience. Others I learned in childhood; some of these no doubt loom so large that I’m hardly even aware of them. They might or might not be trustworthy; but at least they have stood the test of time. Others might be mere prejudices which are better discarded.

In other words, it’s a mixed bag. I call them “truths”; and certainly, some of them are. I want them all to be truths in truth. If I were a perfect intellect, with perfect knowledge, then all of them would be trustworthy guides, appropriately fixed in stone. If I had taken the time and effort (so far as anyone can) to examine all of them, there’d be fewer mistakes and inconsistencies among them. (I take it on faith that there must be mistakes and inconsistencies in plenty–but, of course, I’m not aware of them.) I hope that there are tolerably few errant prejudices remaining.

When someone else’s world-view clashes with mine, that means that they have asserted some proposition—let’s call it “A”—which is in some way counter to some truth I hold dear. Immediately I feel uneasy—that’s my intuition telling me that something is wrong. I’m not sure just where intuition fits in with the intellect, the will, and the other faculties I’ve been writing about recently, but I’ve learned to trust my intuition. It is by no means infallible; many truths are counter-intuitive, and of course the world-view upon which it draws isn’t infallible either. But it’s very good at pointing out ideas that clash.

The problem is, it isn’t always clear just where the problem lies. I have to cast about, trying to figure out why proposition A disturbs me. This usually takes the form of listing as many reasons as I can think of why A must simply be wrong, because of course if it’s wrong I don’t need to think about it any more.

This is sometimes a reasonable thing to do. If the subject is one with which I’m reasonably familiar, and about which I’ve done quite a bit of thinking, I might compile in short order a cogent set of reasons for doubting proposition A; and in that case, spending more time on it probably isn’t worthwhile.

But…what about the person who asserted proposition A? The intellectual point might not be worth my time, but the person who asserted it certainly is. It’s unlikely that beating them over the head with all the reasons they are wrong is the right way to treat them. (The clue stick is useful once in a while, but only once in a while.) And if it’s a subject with which I am not familiar then not only am I far more likely to misunderstand what the person is saying, the fixed points in my world-view are more likely to be unexamined, rudimentary, and flawed, and thus not a sound basis for judgement.

Sometimes charity calls simply for suspending judgement; I certainly don’t have time to pursue every possible line of inquiry:

But other times charity calls for going the extra mile, for surveying the landscape and making sure that all of my landmarks are properly placed.

With regard to my post On Listening, an activity which, as Lindsay notes with some justifiable asperity, I am not always wont to do, I’ve just run across the following passage in Josef Pieper’s Guide to Thomas Aquinas. It’s from the final paragraph of the book, and really gets at what I mean by listening:

….The other side is an intrepid frankness of affirmation, an enthusiasm for ever new explorations into the wonders of reality. Along with that, of course, there come ever new difficulties in incorporating the new data into our total view of the universe, and hence ever new conflicts, compelling us constantly to rethink our previous positions, to revise all our set ideas, even in theology. This attitude, which neither permits us to cast away insights already won nor allows us to rest on our laurels with a false sense of finality, is not easy to achieve. It is a highly demanding affair. But it is perhaps the best lesson among the many that can be learned in the school of the “universal teacher” of Christendom.

This is why listening—intellectual listening—is so hard. Some people, perhaps, can take in and assimilate new data without worrying about how it fits in with what they (think they) already know. I have a great deal of trouble doing that, at least about matters that are important to me. I need to figure out how the things I know fit together. But rethinking one’s previous positions and revising one’s set ideas to take in new data so that it all forms a coherent whole can be really, really hard. It’s even harder to take in new data probationally, so to speak, to see the new data as a whole and determine whether or not it can be made to fit with those “insights already won.” And when the gap between the new data and those “insights already won” is particularly large, the task is particularly daunting. It’s much easier to say, “Oh, it clearly doesn’t fit, so it’s most likely nonsense,” and forget about it.

St. Thomas chose the more difficult path, the path of listening and understanding. Not agreeing, necessarily, but understanding.

“What is Truth?” This is a question that’s been much on my mind, of late. At first, I intended to write a post on it; and then I realized that I have more to say than would fit into a single post; and then I realized that I have enough for a series of posts; and then I realized that I have no idea how to structure said series of posts. So my plan is simply to begin, and we’ll see how it all plays out.

One of the things that’s been spurring my thinking is my reaction to a recent comment of Lindsay’s. I had linked to a post of Lars Walker’s in which he conjectures that Western civilization is becoming an “honor culture”. Lindsay responded with the following:

It’s actually the ERA of Ethics and it was predicted by the Mayan Calendar … so what he is noticing is part of a trend towards ascension….

When I read this, I was completely nonplussed. My first reactions were various short and pithy riffs on “You can’t be serious,” all of which were a knee-jerk reaction to the phrase “predicted by the Mayan Calendar”.

What we have here, in fact, is a world-view clash. My world-view does not include the possibility that the Ancient Mayans have anything useful to say to me. Their Calendar is an interesting curiousity at most; its predictions, if we even know them accurately, are irrelevant to the 21st century. Suddenly, I am presented with an individual who thinks otherwise, and I have trouble knowing what to make of this.

It occurs to me that many people might have a similar response to my frequent invocations of an ancient Greek named Aristotle, and of a 13th-century friar named Thomas.

Fr. Philip Powell quotes the following scholastic maxim in a post I linked to about a month ago: Never deny, rarely affirm, always distinguish. St. Thomas and his disputants assumed that the point of disputation is to find the truth, and that the two parties to the argument are partners in finding it. And it’s often the case that even if you disagree with your disputant’s position, still he has hold of at least a piece of the truth—and if you simply contradict him at the get go, you lose the opportunity of finding out what it is. Hence, “Never deny.”

Instead, your first duty is to find out just what your disputant is saying. Before you can argue with him, you have to understand his position fully—you have to listen. St. Thomas knew about “active listening” long before the term was coined.

I am not arguing for any kind of intellectual relativism, in which you have your reality and I have mine. When two world-views clash, both cannot be true in all particulars. Which leads me back to the question, “What is truth?”

More later.